PLINY: NATURAL HISTORY

BOOK VIII. vi. 16 - vii. 20

There were 142 of them, or as some say, 140, transported on rafts that Metellus had constructed by placing flooring upon lashed rows of casks. Verrius records that they fought in the Circus and were killed by javelins due to a lack of a better plan, since it was decided they should neither be kept nor given to kings. Lucius Piso states they were merely led into the Circus and, to increase the contempt for them, were driven around the whole arena by workers holding spears with blunted points. Authors who do not think they were killed do not explain what was done with them afterward.

18 VII. There is a famous account of a Roman fighting single-handed against an elephant, when Hannibal had forced our prisoners to fight among themselves. For he pitted one survivor against an elephant, and that man, having struck a bargain that he would be released if he killed it, engaged it alone in the arena and dispatched it, much to the chagrin of the Carthaginians. Hannibal, realizing that the fame of this encounter would bring the beasts into contempt, sent horsemen to kill him as he was leaving. That their trunks are very easily amputated was made clear by the experience of the wars with Pyrrhus.

19 Fenestella records that the first time they fought in the circus at Rome was during the curule aedileship of Claudius Pulcher and the consulship of Marcus Antonius and Aulus Postumius in the year of the city 655. Twenty years later, during the curule aedileship of the Luculli, they fought against bulls.

Fights with elephants in war and in the circus.