Pliny: Natural History, Vol. III

battle against the same number of infantry as on the former occasion and an equal number of cavalry; and subsequently for the emperors Claudius and Nero, elephants fought single-handed as the crowning exploit of the gladiators’ careers.

Gentleness of elephants.

A story is told that the animal’s natural gentleness towards those not so strong as itself is so great that if it gets among a flock of sheep it will remove with its trunk those that come in its way, so as not unwittingly to crush one. Also, they never do any harm unless provoked; and that, although they go about in herds, they are the least solitary of all animals. When surrounded by horsemen, they withdraw the weak ones, or those that are exhausted or wounded, into the middle of their column, and advance into the fighting line in relays as if by command or strategy.

Elephants captured for domestication and for food.

When captured, they are very quickly tamed by means of barley juice. VIII. The method of capturing them in India is for a mahout riding one of the domesticated elephants to find a wild elephant alone or detach it from the herd, and to flog it. When it is tired out, he climbs across onto it and manages it just as he did his previous mount. Africa captures elephants by means of pit-falls. When an elephant straying from the herd falls into one of these, all the rest at once collect branches of trees, roll down rocks, and construct ramps, exerting every effort in the attempt to get it out. Previously, for the purpose of taming them, the kings used to round them up with horsemen into a trench made by hand so as to deceive them by its length. When they were enclosed within its banks and ditches, they were starved into submission. The proof of this would be if, when a man held out a branch to them, they gently took it from him. At the present day, hunters for the sake of their tusks shoot them with javelins in the foot, which in fact is extremely soft.