250 
plti^y's itatfeal histoet. 
[Book VIII. 
command. Upon this, the elephant that had been degraded re- 
fused to take its food, and so preferred death to ignominy. In- 
deed their sense of shame is wonderful, and when one of them 
has been conquered, it flies at the voice of the conqueror, and 
presents him with earth and yervain.^^ 
These animals are sensible to feelings of modesty ; they 
never couple but in secret the male after it has attained its 
fifth year, the female after the age of ten.^^ It is said, that 
their intercourse takes place only every second year, and for 
five days only, and no more ; on the sixth day they plunge 
into a river, before doing which they will not rejoin the herd- 
Adulterous intercourse is unknown to them, and they have none 
of those deadly combats for the possession of the female, which 
take place among the other animals. Nor is this because they 
are uninfluenced by the passion of love. One in Egypt, we 
are told, fell in love with a woman, who was a seller of gar- 
lands ; and let no one suppose that he made a vulgar choice, for 
she was the especial object of the love of Aristophanes, who 
held the very highest rank as a grammarian. Another became 
attached to the youth Menander, a native of Syracuse, in the 
army of Ptolemy; whenever it did not see him, it would manifest 
the regret which it experienced, by refusing its food. Juba 
gives an account also of a female who dealt in perfumes, to 
whom one of these creatures formed an attachment. All 
these animals manifested their attachment by their signs of joy 
at the sight of the person, by their awkward caresses, and by 
keeping for them and throwing into their bosom the pieces 
of money which the public had given them.^^ Wor, indeed, 
28 Pliny informs us, in B. xxii. c. 4, that this was done by those con- 
quered in battle. — B. 
We may conclude, from the account given by Aristotle, Hist. Anim. 
B. V. c. 2, and by JElian, B. viii. c. 17, that this opinion was generally 
adopted by the ancients.— B. We learn from Cuvier, who mentions the 
results of M. Corse's observations, that there is no such modesty in the 
elepaant, and that the two at the Museum of Natural History at Paris 
gave proof of the fact. 
30 This is erroneous ; the males do not arrive at puberty before the 
females, which takes place about the fourteenth or fifteenth year. In the 
elephant which was under the inspection of M. Corse, the period of gesta- 
tion was between twenty and twenty- one months, so that there may be 
some foundation for the biennial period, but the term of five days is en- 
tirely imaginary. Aristotle makes the interval three years. — B. 
31 There is a passage in Suetonius, in his Life of Augustus, and one in 
