146 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



elephants, with Indian mahouts, were in the army of Darius 

 when he was defeated at Arbela by Alexander, and when the 

 latter was approaching the city of Susa the Persian satrap 

 sent many gifts to him to secure his favour, among which 

 were twelve elephants that Darius had secured from India.* 

 While this shows that to a very moderate extent these ani- 

 mals were beginning to be utilized for warlike purposes in 

 Persia, it essentially confirms the statement that India was 

 still the home of the war elephant. The Greek writer 

 Arrian, who recounted the history of Alexander's campaigns, 

 notes in his "Tactics" that already at that period the tusks 

 of the Indian war elephants were armed with sharp-pointed 

 iron, both to render their thrust more deadly and to protect 

 them from wear.f 



The elephant on which the Indian king Porus rode when 

 he encountered the Greeks of Alexander was said to have 

 been so well trained and so intelligent that it drew out with 

 its trunk the javelins which wounded Porus, and feeling that 

 its master's strength was failing and that he was about to 

 collapse, the animal knelt down to prevent him from falling 

 to the ground. This is the story told by Plutarch in his 

 "Solertia Animalium," but Quintus Curtius (Lib. VHls 

 cap. 25) gives a less romantic version, stating that the ele- 

 phant only obeyed the accustomed signal to kneel down 

 given by his mahout, and adds that the other war elephants, 

 seeing this, did the same, thus rendering their capture by 

 the Greeks an easy task. J 



According to a legend current in the first century of our 

 era, Alexander dedicated to the Sun one of the boldest of the 

 elephants he had captured from Porus in his Indian cam- 



*See Gisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in nummis obviis," Hagse Comitum, 1719, cols. 

 29-44. 



t "Arriani, Techne Taktike," II, 4, in Arriani, "Scripta Minores," ed. Hercher and 

 Eberhard, Lipsiae, 1885, p. 105. 



|Gisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in nummis obviis," Hagse Comitum, 1719, col. 44. 



