Pliny: Natural History, Vol. III

XIII. Ethiopia produces them elephants equal to those of India, being twenty cubits approx. 30 feet in height. The only surprising thing is what led Juba King of Mauretania and scholar to believe them to be crested. The Ethiopian tribe in whose country they are chiefly bred are called the Asachaeans; it is stated that in the coast districts belonging to this tribe, the elephants link themselves four or five together into a sort of raft, and holding up their heads to serve as sails, are carried on the waves to the better pastures of Arabia.

XIV. Megasthenes writes that in India, snakes grow to such a size that they swallow stags and bulls whole. Metrodorus writes that near the river Rhyndacus in Pontus, they catch and gulp down birds passing over them, even though they are flying high and fast. There is the well-known case of the snake 120 feet long that was killed during the Punic Wars on the River Bagradas in modern Tunisia by General Regulus, using ordnance and catapults just as if storming a town. Its skin and jaw-bones remained in a temple at Rome down to the Numantine War 142–133 BCE. Credibility attaches to these stories on account of the serpents in Italy called boae large snakes, which reach such dimensions that during the principate of Claudius of blessed memory, a whole child was found in the

belly of one that was killed on the Vatican Hill. Their primary food is milk sucked from a cow, from which they derive their name.