elephant on one of these occasions, contributed in no small degree to the success of the Romans, according to Eutropius; for a young one, smarting with its wounds, roared horribly in its anguish, and its mother, in her anixety to hasten to its succour, broke through every obstacle in her way, and was followed by others, overturning all before them, and throwing the troops of Pyrrhus into irretrievable confusion. The result was the capture of four of these "Lucanian oxen," which were led to Rome in triumph. Nor was this the only disaster sustained by Pyrrhus from the employment of this dangerous arm. At the siege of Argos, when every external barrier had been passed, and the besieging army were pressing into the town, the progress of the tower-bearing elephants was suddenly checked by the lowness of the gates, from which they crowded back upon the eager swarming assailants till all was disorder.

But the Punic wars were soon to introduce the African elephant to the Roman in much greater force than the Indian had presented. The ill-fated Roman consul took no less than eighteen whilst his star was in the ascendant; but the Spartan general opposed to him wielded this powerful agent with such skill, that Regulus, whose subsequent ungenerous and cruel murder will remain a blot upon the page that records it as long as history endures, was utterly defeated by the troops of Carthage. It was long before the legions recovered from the panic of that day; and the Carthaginians seeing the effect produced, transported numbers of these beasts across the sea to Sicily, where nearly a hundred and fifty towered before the beleaguered Palermo. The incessant discharge of javelins directed against them by Metellus, was, however, irresistible. The elephants fled, carrying destruction and disorganisation in their terrified path; and the Romans, sallying forth, obtained a complete victory. More than a hundred elephants were among the spoils of the day; and it is no small proof of the power and mechanical ingenuity of the republic, that they were conveyed to Reggio on a monster-raft, covered with earth and floated upon empty casks. From Reggio they were conducted to Rome, there to feast the eyes of the ill-fed and worse-clothed populace, and pamper their pride with an incontrovertible sign of the prowess of the national

arms.

Hitherto, the African elephant had only been seen at Rome as a triumphant exhibition; but the time was now at hand when the Roman was to behold him as an invader. What stronger instance can be adduced in proof of the indomitable energy of Hannibal than the passage of these animals with his host over the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Apennines?

Great was the tumult there,

Deafening the din, when in barbaric pomp
The Carthaginian on his march to Rome
Entered their fastnesses. Trampling the snows
The war-horse reared; and the towered elephant
Upturned his trunk into the murky sky,

Then tumbled headlong, swallowed up and lost,
He and his rider.

And although the mountaineers fled at the approach of these huge animals, many must have perished among the icy precipices so utterly unfit to afford them sure footing. But, after all such losses, sufficient

E

numbers arrived safely in the plains of Italy, to support Hannibal's line of battle with striking effect, and to afford seasonable aid to his troops in their progress. Thus when he passed the Po, the elephants were so disposed as to act as a breakwater above the crossing army, and lessen the force of the current. The African species was led into battle by him and his brother Asdrubal with various success; but the period was at last come when Scipio was to carry the war into the country of the invaders.

The reinforcements necessary to fill the places of the numbers that were constantly falling in Italy (seven, for instance, died of starvation during their passage over the Apennines after the battle of Trebia, and the remnant, with the exception of the beast that carried Hannibal, were swept away, together with masses of men and horses, by the swollen Arno), together with the supplies demanded for keeping up the requisite force at home, drained Barbary of a great portion of these animals, which at that time must have been plentiful there. In vain did Mago, when he invaded Italy in requital of Scipio's descent upon Africa, present his frowning front of elephants at Insubria. The Roman defeated the Carthaginian, and Hannibal found it necessary to follow Scipio, who was thundering at the gate of Zama. There, the eighty elephants that covered Hannibal's line spread devastation among the light-armed troops of the Roman; but Scipio dismounted his cavalry, and concentrating the whole power of his bowmen against the elephants, threw the galled and terrified beasts in confusion upon Hannibal's right wing, and terminated the second Punic war.

The Roman generals, relying upon the discipline and valour of their soldiery, had hitherto directed their energies to turning the elephants of their enemies against the troops on whose side the beasts were arrayed, and when they took those living pieces of artillery-for elephants seem to have been employed by the ancients for the same purposes, in some degree, as cannon in modern strategy-they merely kept them as trophies; but when the Punic wars were ended, and the Macedonian wars commenced, we find the elephants of Africa in the Roman ranks, and managed with such tact that they contributed largely to the reduction of Macedonia to the grade of a Roman province. The share attributed to these belligerents in the victories which led to that conclusion was in fact admitted and illustrated by the device of the last Macedonian king, who for lack of living beasts, imitated Semiramis in the construction of artificial elephants, only that those of Perseus were made of wood, and each contained a trumpeter ready to imitate the animal's battle-cry.

Moreover in the interval between the first and second Macedonian wars, African and Indian elephants were again opposed to each other, but the Roman's African beasts appear to have been very inferior to the Indian elephants of Antiochus. Scipio's quick eye saw this at a glance, and he ordered them into the rear. But if Antiochus had the superiority in this respect, he had not the sword before which, when wielded by Roman hands, both man and elephant went down. Only fifteen of the Syrian king's elephants survived the lost battle, (and he was reduced to the same humiliating necessity which had been enforced in the case of the Carthaginians-the delivery to his European conquerors of those which he already possessed, and an undertaking never

again to train elephants for war. His successor, however, seems to have got up a herd of them, for, as we have seen, he led thirty-two against Jerusalem.

Topsell, in his quaint language, gives an interesting summary of the use of the elephant as a military engine, and, as the book is scarce, the length of the extract may be forgiven:

"The King of India was woont to go to warre with 30,000 elephants of war, and beside these he had also followed him 3000 of the chiefest and strongest in India, which at his command would overthrow trees, houses, walles, or any such thing standing against him: and, indeed, upon these were the Indians wont to fight, for the defence of their coast and country. The farthest region of that continent is called Partalis inhabited by the Gangarides and Calinga, the king whereof was wont to have seven hundred elephants to watch his army, and there was no meane prince in all India which was not lord of many elephants. The King of Palibotræ kept in stipend eight thousand every day, and, beyond his territory, was the King of Modubæ and Molindæ, which had four hundred elephants. These fight with men, and overthrowe all that come within their reach, both with trunkes and teeth."

"There were certaine officers and guiders of these elephants, which were called elephantarcha, whoe were the governors of sixteene elephants, and they which did institute and teach them martiall discipline were called elephantayogi. The military elephant did carry 4. persons on his bare backe, one fighting on the right hand, another fighting on the left hand, a third which stood fighting backward from the elephant's head, and a fourth in the middle of these holding the raines and guiding the beast to the descretion of the souldiers, even as the pilot in a ship guideth the sterne, wherein was required an equall knowledge and dexterity, for they understand any language quickly, for when the Indian which ruled them said, strike heere; on the right hand, or els on the left, or refraine and stand stil, no reasonable man could yeald readier obedience. They did fasten by iron chaines, first of all upon the elephant that was to beare ten, fifteene, twenty, or thirty men on either side, two panniers of iron bound underneath their belly, and upon them the like paniers of wood hollow, wherein they place their men at armes, and covered them over with small boards, for the trunk of the elephant was covered with a maile for defence, and upon that a broad sword, and two cubits long: this (as also the wodden castle or paniers aforsaid) were fastened first to the necke, and then to the rumpe of the elephant. Being thus armed, they entered the battell, and they shewed unto the beast to make them more fierce, wine, red liquor made of rice, and white cloth, for at the sight of any of these, his courage and rage increaseth above all measure; then at the sound of the Trumpet he beginneth with teeth to strike, teare, beate, spoyle, take up into the aire, cast down again, stamp upon men under feet, overthrow with his trunke, and make way for his riders to pierce with speare, shield and sword; so that his horrible voice, his wonderfull body, his terrible force, his admirable skill, his ready and inclinable obedience, and his straunge and sildome seene shape, produced in a maine battell no meane accidents and overturnes. For this cause we read how that Pyrrhus first of all produced elephants against the Romans in Lucania:

afterward Asdruball in Affrica, Antiochus in the East, and Iugurtha in Numidia."

Let us see now how his opponents contended with this formidable adversary, and the wild sway of his trunk wielding a long and trenchant sword.

66

Against these new kindes of castle-fighting and souldier-bearing beastes, on the contrary, they invented new kindes of stratagems, as is before sette downe, and also new instrumentes of warre, for a centuryon in Lucania with a new devised sharp sword, cutte off the trunke of this Beast againe other invented, that two armed horsses should draw a charriot, and in the same armed men with Iavelins and sharpe speares, the speedy Horsses should with all force run upon the elephants, and the speare-men directing their course and weapons some upon the beast, other upon the riders, did not onely wound the beast, but also by celerity of the horses, escape all danger.'

In Potter's "Archæologia Græca"* there is an engraving of an armed elephant and a war-chariot. The front of the head of the elephant is protected by scale armour, and from the centre of the forehead projects a sharp spike. The forepart of his trunk is defended with jointed plate armour. On his neck sits a governor holding the reins for his guidance in the right hand and a long spear in the other. On his back is a wooden tower in the top of which are seen two men in the act of casting javelins, and two archers with their arrows drawn up to the heads. The chariot is drawn by two horses covered with scale armour, excepting their crests, which are surmounted with plates of steel. From the pole two long spears project, and from a crosspiece behind the horses and made fast to the front of the car proceed scythes (two on each side). Scythes also project from the naves of the four wheels. The horses are guided by a man armed with two javelins, and behind him sits a soldier with his bow bent, as in the act of discharging his arrow. But to return to Topsell:

"Other againe sent against him armed souldiers, having their armour made full of sharpe prickes or piercing piked Nayles" [as Moore, of Moore-hall, went forth to fight the dragon of Wantley] "so that when the beast did strike at them with his trunke, he received grievous woundes by his owne blowes. Againe there were certaine young men souldiers, armed with light armour, which being mounted uppon swift horsses, could cast darts with singular facility, and without the reach of the beast, many times wounding him with long speares, and so by example of the horse-men, the foote-men grew more bold, and with piles in the earth annoyed the belly of the Beast, and utterly vanquishing it and the rider. Againe, they devised slings to cast stones, whereby they beate off the riders, and many times overthrewe the castle-bearer, as it were by some violent stroke of a cannon shot; neither was there ever any more easie way to disaster these monster-seeming-soldiers, then by casting of stones, and lastly they would suffer their elephants and their riders by poore hopes and appearances of feare, to enter into the middest among them, and so begirte and inclose them, that they tooke the elephants alive; and also more shooters of Darts carried in chariots with the strong course of horsses, did so annoy them, that whereas their bodies were great and unweldy, not nimble to stir out of

8vo. London, 1706,

place, it became more easie to kill an elephant than a Horsse, because many shooters at one time could pierce so faire a marke with unresistable weapons. And these things are related by Vegetius."*

And here we may close our sketch of the use made of the elephant in ancient warfare; for although it is clear that Julius had elephants in his armies, he seems to have held them in the same estimation that Alexander did. The enormous armed beast came, it is true, effectively upon the battle-scene when the object was to terrify antagonists unaccustomed to such a sight. One of Cæsar's victories over the Gauls has been ascribed to a single war-elephant, and it is affirmed that he brought one to Britain, a fact, by the way, unnoticed in his own commentaries. Milton, however, adopts the statement of Dion, that Claudius employed armed elephants as antagonists to the valour of the naked Briton.

In our next we shall endeavour to present the elephant as he was exhibited in ancient processions and shows.