238 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. VII. 



and makes no mistake. Thus has Nature formed him not only 

 the greatest in size, but the most gentle and the most easily- 

 taught. Now if I were going to write about the tractability 

 and aptitude to learn amongst those of India, ^Ethiopia, and 

 Libya, I should probably appear to be concocting a tale and 

 acting the braggart, or to be telling a falsehood respecting the 

 nature of the animal founded on a mere report, all which it 

 behoves a philosopher, and most of all one who is an ardent 

 lover of truth, not to do. But what I have seen nryself, and 

 what others have described as having occurred at Eome, this 

 I have chosen to relate, selecting a few facts out of many, to 

 show the particular nature of those creatures. The elephant 

 when tamed is an animal most gentle and most easily led to do 

 whatever he is directed. And by way of showing honour to 

 time, I will first narrate events of the oldest date. Cassar 

 Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, exhibited once a public 

 show, wherein there were many full-grown elephants, male 

 and female, and some of their breed born in this country. 

 When their limbs were beginning to become firm, a person 

 familiar with such animals instructed them by a strange and 

 surpassing method of teaching ; using only gentleness and kind- 

 ness, and adding to his mild lessons the bait of pleasant and 

 varied food. By this means he led them by degrees to throw 

 off ail wildness, and, as it were, to desert to a state of civilisa- 

 tion, conducting themselves in a manner almost human. He 

 taught them neither to be excited on hearing the pipe, nor to 

 be disturbed by the beat of drum, but to be soothed by 

 the sounds of the reed, and to endure unmusical noises and 

 the clatter of feet from persons while marching ; and they 

 were trained to feel no fear of a mass of men, nor to be enraged 

 at the infliction of blows, not even when compelled to twist 

 their limbs and to bend them like a stage-dancer, and this too 

 although endowed with strength and might. And there is in 

 this a very noble addition to nature, not to conduct themselves 

 in a disorderly manner and disobediently towards the instructions 

 of man ; for after the dancing-master had made them expert, 



