Chap. 7.] 
ELEPHANTS. 
253 
Pompeius, at the dedication of the temple of Yenus Yictrix/^ 
twenty elephants, or, as some say, seventeen, fought in the 
Circus against a number of Gsetulians, who attacked them with 
javelins. One of these animals fought in a most astonishing 
manner ; being pierced through the feet, it dragged itself on 
its knees towards the troop, and seizing their bucklers, tossed 
them aloft into the air : and as they came to the ground they 
greatly amused the spectators, for they whirled round and 
round in the air, just as if they had been thrown up with a 
certain degree of skill, and not by the frantic fury of a wild 
beast. Another very wonderful circumstance happened; an 
elephant was killed by a single blow. The weapon pierced 
the animal below the eye, and entered the vital part of the 
head. The elephants attempted, too, by their united efforts, to 
break down the enclosure, not without great confusion among 
the people who surrounded the iron gratings.*^ It was in con- 
sequence of this circumstance, that Csesar, the Dictator, when 
he was afterwards about to exhibit a similar spectacle, had the 
arena surrounded with trenches^* of water, which were lately 
filled up by the Emperor Nero,*^ when he added the seats for 
"Venus the Conqueror." This temple was dedicated by Pompey, 
after his conquests in the East, in his second consulship, b.c. 55. 
^2 Pliny here refers to an art, practised among the Romans, of throwing 
up a shield into the air, in such a manner that, after performing a circuit, 
it would fall down on a certain spot ; this trick is also alluded to by Mar- 
tial, B. ix. Ep. 39.— B. The exercise with the boomerang, which was known 
to the ancient Assyrians, and has been borrowed in modern times from 
the people of Australasia, seems to have been somewhat similar to this. 
*3 Clathri.*' These were gratings of iron trellis- work, placed in front 
of the lowest row of the spectators, to protect them from the wild beasts. 
This exhibition took place in Pompey's Amphitheatre, in the Campus Mar- 
tins. The arena of the amphitheatre was mostly surrounded by a wall, 
distinguished by the name of " podium,'' which was generally about eighteen 
feet in height, and the top of which was protected by this trellis-work. In 
the present instance, however, the " podium " can hardly have been so much 
as eighteen feet in height. 
" Euripis.'* Julius Caesar caused a canal, ten feet wide, to be formed 
in the Circus Maximus, around the bottom of the " podium,*' to protect the 
spectators from the wild beasts. These *'euripi" probably took their 
name from the narrow channel so called, which lay between Boeotia and 
the island of Euboea. 
45 We learn, however, from Lampridius, in his Life of Heliogabalus, 
that this euripus was afterwards restored to the Circus. 
