Pliny Natural History, Vol. III (Loeb Latin-English)

'...wrote this and dedicated these spoils won from the Celts.' He also states that he personally saw elephants that, having been brought by sea to Puteoli, were forced to exit the ship. Frightened by the length of the bridge A gangway or floating bridge connecting the ship to the shore. stretching far out from the land, they turned around and walked backwards, effectively tricking themselves in their estimation of the distance.

7 IV. They are aware that the only part of them worth plundering is their weapons—which Juba calls "horns," but which the author Herodotus, who lived long before him, and common custom more accurately term "tusks." Consequently, when these fall out due to some accident or age, they bury them in the ground. Only the tusk is ivory; otherwise, even in these animals, the skeleton that forms the framework of the body is common bone. However, recently, due to our poverty, even the bones have begun to be cut into layers, because a large supply of tusks is now rarely found except from India; all the rest in our world have succumbed to luxury.

8 A young elephant is identified by the whiteness of its tusks. The beasts take the greatest care of them; they spare the point of one so that it may not be blunted in fighting, and they use the other as a tool for digging up roots and pushing over massive objects. When surrounded by a party of hunters, they place those with the smallest tusks in front, so that the hunters will think them not worth the fight, and afterwards, when exhausted, they break their tusks against a tree to ransom themselves at the price of the desired booty.

9 V. It is remarkable in the case of most animals...