Elephant II

Oliver East’s commemoration of Maharajah the Indian Elephant’s historic journey from Edinburgh to Manchester in 1872 has stimulated a lot of interest in elephants amongst tweeters and blog contributors. Yesterday I looked at some examples of elephants in the ancient world undertaking even longer journeys than the one that Oliver is re-enacting. The time taken by elephants to cover the distance was longer in the ancient world because they did not have the benefit of walking over surfaced roads like the ones that Maharajah followed with his keeper, Lorenzo Lawrence, and it is to be hoped that Oliver doesn’t face the sort of opposition that Hannibal and his army faced from the locals when he was crossing the Alps. In this respect the elephants in Hannibal’s army proved to be a great asset because the mountain tribesmen had never seen elephants before and were intimidated by their unfamiliar appearance, their size, the noise they made and their smell.

Terracotta figurine of Galatian in Manchester Museum collection.

More often than not they were as much a problem for their own side as the enemy, but in some circumstances elephants proved to be an extremely dangerous weapon of war but  One of the best examples of the debilitating psychological impact elephants had on the enemy on the battlefield in the ancient world is the ‘Elephant Victory’.  The Seleucids deployed sixteen elephants against an army of Galatians in Asia Minor in 275 BC. The Galatian warriors and their horses were terrified by the elephants. Their chariots and cavalry were reduced to chaos when their horses bolted. The Galatian infantry were trampled. The Seleucid king Antiochus I took the title Soter or Saviour because of this victory. He alone had proved equal to the challenge of defeating the Galatians. Tellingly, the victory monument took the form of an elephant because really it had been thanks to the elephants that the Galatians had been defeated, not the fighting skills of Antiochus’s men. The surviving Galatians were settled by a magnanimous Antiochus in central Anatolia where they gave their name to the place: Galatia. St Paul’s letters or epistles to the Galatians were addressed to the descendants of Antiochus’s former enemies. Who would have thought that but for elephants we might not have had an important component of New Testament Christian theology.

Gruesome fate: Galatian  roughly handled by an elephant

Another example of a military victory gained with the help of elephants is the battle of Heraclea. In 280 BC King Pyrrhus of Epirus in northern Greece crossed the Adriatic sea to fight the Romans in Italy on behalf of the city of Tarentum. The Tarentines  were Greeks who had settled in southern Italy and were now coming under pressure from the expanding Roman Republic. Pyrrhus landed with a Hellenistic army comprising 20,000 infantry, 3000 cavalry and 20 elephants. The Romans attacked Pyrrhus before he could receive any reinforcements . The advantage in the battle is said to have swung backwards and forwards seven times before Pyrrhus gave the order for the elephants to attack:

                                                 ‘as the Romans began to be driven back by the elephants and their horses, before they could get near the beasts, started to panic and bolt, Pyrrhus seized his opportunity: as the Romans faltered, he launched a charge with his Thessalian cavalry and routed the enemy with great slaughter.’

Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Penguin Books)

Despite his victory Pyrrhus had lost 4,000 of his best troops and this has given rise to the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’ meaning a victory that has been gained at great cost.

One of Pyrrhus’ elephants with calf on a southern IIalian plate

In 279 BC Pyrrhus, now reinforced by the Samnites and various other hill-tribes of southern and central Italy, fought the Roman legions again at the battle of Ausculum. Depending on which ancient historian you follow this was a one or a two day battle. At first heavily wooded ground on the edge of the swiftly flowing river caused Pyrrhus and his allies considerable difficulty. The next day at first light Pyrrhus sent troops to occupy the difficult ground, posted contingents of archers and slingers in the spaces between the elephants and made his attack. It was a fiercely contested battle until the elephants charged:

                                                           ‘Against this even the Romans’courage was of little avail: they felt as they might have done before the rush of a tidal wave or the shock of an earthquake, that it was better to give way than to stand their ground to no purpose, and suffer a terrible fate without the least advantage.’

Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Penguin Books)

Pyrrhus’ elephants rout the Romans at the battle of Heraclea 280 BC. Artistic license has run riot here.

Another account of the battle says the Romans deployed ‘anti-elephant’ wagons complete with burning brands and scythes as a counter measure to deal with the elephants but they were a failure. The Romans are recorded as having lost 6,000 men, Pyrrhus 3,505. Another Pyrrhic victory. On being congratulated on his success, Pyrrhus is said to have remarked ‘One more victory like that over the Romans will destroy us completely!’

Roman Republican currency bar decorated with a depiction of an elephant, presumably one of Pyrrhus’ beasts.

Pyrrhus accepted an invitation to intervene in Sicily as a champion of the Greeks against the Carthaginians. He enjoyed tremendous success but in the end alienated the people he was supposed to be defending and returned back to Italy where the Romans were once again pressing his southern Italian allies. At the battle of Beneventum in 276 BC Pyrrhus deployed his elephants but they proved to be as much a weapon against their own side as the Romans and Pyrrhus was defeated. One of the elephants had a calf (presumably the very animal depicted on the plate in the image above) and when they became separated during the battle, the calf panicked and the mother went to its aid, trampling nearby friendly troops. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with the survivors. He campaigned in Macedonia and the Peloponnese again with elephants but was killed during confused street fighting at the city of Argos. It was a sad end to one of the great heroic characters of antiquity. Fittingly, his tomb was marked with a carving of an elephant.

One of the things that makes these characters from antiquity so deeply interesting is their use of elephants. It’s hard not to think they were just as much fascinated with the animals as we are.

Fascination with elephants? Child’s toy from Cyprus in Manchester Museum

Elephant

Ceramic elephant in Manchester Museum’s archaeology collection

News that the 160 mile journey of the Indian Elephant Maharajah from Edinburgh to Manchester is being repeated by comic artist Oliver East has really struck a chord here at Manchester Museum, not least because the skeleton of Maharajah is displayed here. Maharajah walked to Manchester with his keeper in 1872. Edinburgh’s menagerie had got into financial difficulty and the animals were being auctioned. Belle Vue zoo in Manchester bought Maharajah but then had the task of bringing him back. The original plan involved putting the elephant onto a train, but Maharajah did not take kindly  to this and so the elephant and his keeper Lorenzo Lawrence walked back to Manchester. It’s been suggested this may have been orchestrated by the keeper in order to make more money from undertaking the 160 mile journey on foot.

Maharajah’s route

The journey took ten days covering about 20 miles each day. Maharajah was a famous attraction at the zoo and gave rides to visitors on a seat suspended between his tusks. After he died his skeleton was acquired by Manchester Museum and can be seen on display on the first floor in the Manchester gallery.

Skeleton of Maharajah at Manchester Museum

Oliver East’s commemoration of Maharaja’s journey invites comparison with other long journeys involving elephants. One of the most famous journeys in history was Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with no less than 37 elephants in 219-218 BC.

Elephants over the Alps – illustration by Andrew Howat in Neil Grant’s ‘Roman Conquests’ (1991)

Hannibal was a general from the city of Carthage in North Africa. The city had established an empire for itself in Spain after being defeated in the First Punic War by the  Roman Republic.  Hannibal’s attempt to defeat the Romans by taking an army overland from Spain to Italy was inspired and after defeating the legions in a number of battles, much of southern Italy went over to the Carthaginians. Rome, however, had the determination and the resources in manpower to withstand any number of defeats and after many long years of warfare,  Hannibal was ordered to return to Africa. He was defeated by the Roman general Scipio at the battle of Zama in 201 BC, Carthage sued for peace and the Second Punic War came to an end.

Smaller African Forest elephant on a Carthaginian coin

Marching elephants across the Alps has captured the imagination of many people over the generations but militarily the elephants were not terribly reliable as weapons of war. Most of Hannibal’s elephants sadly died during the northern Italian winter and although Hannibal received some more as reinforcements from Carthage, they were not really a major threat once the Romans knew how to deal with them. They were only really dangerous if the opposing forces had not encountered them before. Nowadays the elephants would be seen as an incredible piece of PR. Many of Hannibal’s elephants were of the smaller African Forest elephant species and it is debatable whether they were big enough and strong enough to carry a howdah or turret. Hannibal seems to have had at least one Indian Elephant, “the Syrian”, on which he rode during his campaigns.

So Maharajah’s long journey to Manchester (160 miles) is pretty modest in comparison with that undertaken by Hannibal’s elephants (almost 1000 miles) but even that is fairly modest compared to the earlier journey from North West India to Turkey made by elephants in the army of the Macedonian general Seleucus (about 2000 miles). Even if an elephant cannot trot, gallop or jump, it is perfectly capable of making very long journeys at a slow and steady walking pace.  The bones of the elephant’s foot are embedded in sponge-like tissue which, as writer H.H.Scullard says in his book The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Thames and Hudson, 1974)  acts like a shock-absorber. Maharajah’s daily stint of 20 miles or so is high in comparison with ancient journeys but it reflects the fact that he was walking on a road. Hannibal and Seleucus’s elephants had to walk at least for part of the way over the most challenging terrain ever tackled by elephants. Hannibal’s elephants averaged about 80 stades, which is about 10 miles a day.

More about the beloved pachyderms in a future blog post.