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Short description

The war elephant is the heaviest weapon used on the Hellenistic battlefields, capable of throwing the entire opposing army into disarray, but also posing a threat to its own allies when caused to panic.

Description

“The elephants followed, trampling on them, tossing them aloft in their trunks, snatching and piercing them with their tusks, and in the end these animals had presented Antiochus with an overwhelming victory […] Antiochus’ Macedonian contingent raised the Paean and gathering round him crowned him “king of glorious victory” with acclamation. Antiochus is said to have wept as he addressed his troops. “Men,” he said, “we owe our lives to these sixteen animals; so let us rather feel shame. For if the strangeness of what they saw had not thrown the enemy into confusion, what should we have been compared with them?” Then he ordered them to decorate the trophy with a carved elephant and nothing else.” (Lucian, Zeuxis, 10-11)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The Indian (Asian) elephant weighs up to 5,5 tons and can be up to 3,5m (11,5ft) tall. They can be identified by their smaller, rounded ears, and only males have tusks. As Polybios (5.84.3-4) describes, “the way in which these animals fight is as follows. With their tusks firmly interlocked they shove with all their might, each trying to force the other to give ground, until the one who proves strongest pushes aside the other's trunk, and then, when he has once made him turn and has him in the flank, he gores him with his tusks as a bull does with his horns.” The elephants would have also carried wooden towers, carrying up to four men, either pikemen, slingers or archers (Polyb., 5.84.2; Livy, 37.40.4; Polyaenus, Stratagems, 8.23.5), but the most important crew member was the Indian driver, known as a mahout, positioned astride the elephant’s neck.

The elephants’ armament in the hellenistic age consisted of a thick rectangular blanket, draped over their back, called a caparison (see the silver phalerae discs at the Hermitage), armour around their legs (see the Myrnia terracotta), plumed frontlets as head protection (Livy, 37.40.4), while some – perhaps the leading elephants – would have worn even more protection (1 Macc, 6.43 mentions one of the elephants having ‘royal armour’). In Caesar’s time, the elephants were known to carry body armour – during his invasion of Britain, he had elephants in scale armour with him (Polyaenus, 8.23.5), while he also had his men trained for facing armoured elephants in Africa (Caesar, BAfr. 72). A first century Roman bed piece (Staatliche Antikensammlung #40) depicts an African elephant with an armoured frontlet like those mentioned by Livy, segmented band armour around the trunk, and scale armour protecting the parts of the body still visible.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

After Alexander’s death, elephants quickly became adopted into the Hellenistic armies: first by Antigonos, Polyperchon, Eumenes and Cassander; then by Seleukos and Lysimachus, too. They already featured in the first Diadochi engagements, in the battles of Paraitakene and Gaza, but perhaps most effectively at the battle of Ipsos in 301 BC, where Seleukos gathered a force of 400 elephants (for the disparity in numbers according to different sources, see: Bar-Kochva, The Seleucid Army, pp. 76-77) to decisively defeat Antigonos. These elephants were acquired in a peace treaty after his Indian campaign against Chandragupta Maurya, in exchange for his daughter marrying the Indian ruler and the eastern provinces of Gedrosia, Arachosia and India. The Indian text Arthashastra mentions that if the king should seek a peace pact with an enemy, “he should give the man elephants and horses that are sluggish, or energetic ones that have been administered poison.” (Arthasasthra, 12.1.25).

Through the years of facing these beasts of war in battles, Hellenistic generals devised a number of countermeasures to neutralize the elephant threat. At the battle of Gaza in 312 BC, Ptolemy used spiked devices made of iron and connected by chains that prevented the beasts from moving forward, as well as javelin throwers and archers (Diodorus Siculus, 19.83.2, 19.84.1-2). At the siege of Megara, the Megarians daubed a herd of swine with pitch, set fire to it, and let them loose among the elephants, who broke their ranks in confusion and fright. This later caused Antigonos to bring up swine among the elephants, so that they would grow accustomed to them (Polyaenus, 4.6.3). Perseus prepared his horses to the sight of elephants by ordering some wooden elephants to be made, and having a trumpeter sound loud and harsh notes from inside them (Polyaenus, 4.21). The Arthashastra, finally, mentions additional countermeasures: a counterforce of elephants; mechanical devices and carts at the centre of an army (9.2.26); and neutralizing the beasts with frightened herds of cattle, buffaloes and camels carrying bags of dried skin and round pebbles (10.3.22): the pebbles would both produce a noise that would frighten the animals, as well as hurt their feet when they fell on the ground.