178 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



on the obverse is decked with the spoils of the elephant.* 

 Other coins appear to have been struck to celebrate the 

 munificence of certain emperors in providing elephants for 

 the games of the circus; specimens of these, each bearing 

 an elephant's figure and the head of Commodus, Cara- 

 calla (188-207 A. D.), or Elagabalus (204-222 A. D.) have 



1. Coin of Antiochus Epiphanes Dionysus, who reigned 

 85 B. C. Showing a torch-bearing elephant, lychnophortis. 



2. Coin of the same king; different type. 



— From Kuypert's "De elephantis in nummis obviis," Hagse 

 Comitum, 1719. 



come down to us.f Another and especially curious type 

 of this class of coins shows the elephant in the act of adoring 

 the heavenly bodies. The fancy that this animal was very 

 pious was quite common in ancient times, Pliny writing that 

 it had a "certain religious sentiment and venerated the 



*Gisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in nummis obviis"; in Sallengre, "Nevus thesaurus 

 antiquitatum romanarum," Venetia, 1735, Vol, III, col. 58. 

 fCuperi, op. cit., col. 208. 



