154 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



Burma, elephants are still in use as traction animals and 

 may therefore be occasionally employed in the building 

 of fortifications, but this European instance is quite 

 unique. 



On March 20, 1513, the Portuguese envoy to the papal 

 court, Tristan da Cunha, entered Rome conducting an ele- 

 phant destined as a gift to Pope Leo X, who had a great taste 

 for the collection of wild animals. This rare and singular 

 present of course excited unbounded curiosity, but the poor 

 beast did not long survive in its new home, for its death is 

 recorded on June 16, 1516.* 



Pope Leo X is stated to have made use of his elephant in 

 a burlesque ceremony at the expense of the Abate de Gaeta, 

 a verse writer of the period. He caused the poor abbe to be 

 mounted on the elephant's back, and ordered that he should 

 be thus paraded through the streets wearing a crown made 

 of laurel and cabbage leaves. This shows that then, as in 

 our own day, in our Occidental world where the elephant is a 

 rarity, no idea of dignity or majesty is associated with the 

 act of riding upon it, while in Roman times, when troops of 

 elephants were brought to Italy and the animal must have 

 become, for the inhabitants of Rome at least, a familiar sight, 

 conquerors and emperors were proud to have their chariots 

 drawn by these animals at triumphal processions. 



The sixteenth-century author, Cardano, states that he 

 had seen an elephant, thirteen years old, which belonged to 

 Mary, Queen of Bohemia, a daughter of Emperor Charles 

 V. This animal was so obedient to the commands of its 

 guide that when led before the Bishop of Milan it knelt 

 down and saluted him with its head. When it was com- 

 manded to speak, it trumpeted. Cardano states that he 

 had more than once seen curved tusks six cubits long, which, 



*Louis Madelin, "Le journal d'un habitant Frangais de Rome an XVI siecle," in Me- 

 langes d'Archeologie et d'Histoire, XXII eme Annee, 1902, p. 277. 



