ELEPHANTS, HISTORICAL 149 



tells us that the Gangarides and Prasians sent 6,000 elephants 

 to oppose the advance of Alexander after his defeat of Porus 

 on the Hydaspes, in 327 B. C. The best authorities, how- 

 ever, believe that Porus himself had only about a hundred 

 elephants in this battle.* 



The first view the Romans had of elephants was in 280 

 B. C, when Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (318-272 B. C), 

 invaded Italy, and for a time, by means of his "Pyrrhic vic- 

 tories," carried everything before him. Then came Hanni- 

 bal's (247-183 B. C.) invasion of Italy, elephants forming 

 an important and much-dreaded element of his army. He 

 is said on one occasion to have offered a Roman prisoner his 

 freedom if he would engage in single combat with an elephant. 

 The Roman accepted, and succeeded in killing the elephant 

 — by cutting off its trunk, as it appears. But the wily 

 Carthaginian was unwilling that the prestige of his elephants 

 should be destroyed by this news reaching the Romans, 

 and therefore, while keeping the letter of his promise and 

 freeing the prisoner, he sent some horsemen in pursuit of 

 him, who soon overtook him and effectually silenced this 

 inconvenient witness. f 



A somewhat curious circumstance is that Roman writers 

 state that the African elephants were not only much less 

 courageous than those from Asia, but also of much smaller 

 size, so that at the battle of Thyatira in 189 B. C, between 

 Scipio Asiaticus and Antiochus the Great (238-187 B. C), 

 the Romans did not dare to expose their African elephants 

 to the attack of the Asiatic elephants of Antiochus, not 

 merely because the former were fewer in number, but, as 

 Pomponius Mela expressly states, because even if equally 

 numerous the African elephants could not withstand the 

 onset of Asiatic ones, which greatly surpassed them in size 



*Annandi, "Histoire militaire des elephants," Paris. 1843, p. 35. 

 JSee Plinii, Historia Naturalis, Lib. VIII, cap. 6. 



