42 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



mans, they were sufficiently explained by the prodigious num- 

 ber of elephants possessed by these respective nations. The 

 Macedonians were the first Europeans who possessed any; and 

 Alexander, after the defeat of Porus, brought a sufficient 

 number from India, to enable Aristotle to form very precise 

 notions respecting them. It is certain that this great philoso- 

 pher was much better acquainted with the elephant's mode of 

 copulation, of sucking, and, in truth, with almost all the other 

 details of its history, than the Count de Buffian. Every thing 

 which he relates concerning these points, has been confirmed 

 by the testimony of recent observers in India. 



The princes of the house of Seleucus always maintained a 

 considerable number of these animals. Seleucus himself, sur- 

 named Nicator, received fifty from Sandrocottus, in exchange 

 for an entire district on the banks of the Indus. Plutarch also 

 assures us, that this prince and his allies had four hundred of 

 these animals at the battle of Issus, in which they were vic- 

 torious over Antigonus, three hundred and one years before 

 Christ. 



Antiochus the Great employed two hundred elephants at the 

 battle of Raphia, against Ptolemy Philopator, who had but 

 seventy-three, and fifty -four in that of Magnesia against the 

 Romans, who had but sixteen. This superiority, however, 

 proved but of small utility, inasmuch as he was worsted in 

 both engagements. 



Pyrrhus was the first who brought elephants into Italy, and 

 the Romans, who were strangers to these animals, gave them 

 the name of Lucanian oxen, from the circumstance of Pyrrhus 

 having disembarked at Tarentum. Four of these, taken by 

 Curius Dentatus, were the first ever exhibited at Rome. 



When Metellus defeated the Carthaginians in Sicily, in 502, 

 A. R., he transported their elephants to Rome on rafts. Au- 

 thors differ respecting the number of those animals : Orosius 

 makes them one hundred and four, Seneca one hundred and 

 twenty, Eutropiuis one hundred and thirty, and Pliny one 



