Chap. 6.] 
ELEPHANTS. 
251 
ought we to be surprised, that an animal which possesses me- 
mory should be sensible of affection : for the same author re- 
lates, that an elephant recognized, after the lapse of many- 
years, an old man who had been its keeper in his youth. 
They would seem also to have an instinctive feeling of justice. 
King Bocchus once fastened thirty elephants to the stake, 
with the determination of wreaking his vengeance on them, 
by means of thirty others ; but though men kept sallying 
forth among them to goad them on, he could not, with all his 
endeavours, force them to become the ministers of the cruelty 
of others. 
CHAP. 6. (6.)— WHEN ELEPHANTS WERE FIRST SEEN IN ITALY. 
Elephants were seen in Italy, for the first time, in the war 
with King Pyrrhus,^^ in the year of the City 472 ; they were 
called Lucanian oxen," because they were first seen in Lu- 
cania.^^ Seven years after this period, they appeared at Eome 
in a triumph.^* In the year 502 a great number of them were 
brought to Eome, which had been taken by the pontiff Me- 
tellus, in his victory gained in Sicily over the Carthaginians 
they were one hundred and forty-two^^ in number, or, as some 
say, one hundred and forty, and were conveyed to our shores 
upon rafts, which were constructed on rows of hogsheads joined 
together. Yerrius informs us, that they fought in the Circus, 
Macrobius, where the custom of offering pieces of money to elephants, which 
they took up with the proboscis, is referred to. — B. 
32 In the Epitome of Livy, B. xiii., it is said, that Valerius Corvinus * 
was unsuccessful in his engagements with Pyrrhus, in consequence of the 
terror produced by the elephants. — B. 
33 Yarro, De Ling. Lat. B. vi. calls the elephant "Lucas bos,'* "the 
Lucanian ox," from the fact of this large quadruped being first seen by the 
Romans in the Lucanian army. — B. 
3* According to Seneca, Manius Curius Dentatus was the first who 
exhibited elephants in his triumph over Pyrrhus. See also Florus, B. i. 
c. 18.— B. 
35 There are coins extant struck to commemorate this victory, in which 
there is the figure of an elephant. — B. 
36 The number of elephants brought to Rome by Metellus is differently 
stated; Florus, B. ii., says that they were "about a hundred;" in the 
Epitome of Livy, B.xix., they are one hundred and twenty, and the same 
number is mentioned by Seneca, — B, 
