09-13-2007, 10:03 AM
Quote:For transporting elephants, see:
S. O'Bryhim, "Hannibal's elephants and the crossing of the Rhone", Class. Q. 41 (1991), pp. 121-125.
I've always found the account of the passage of the Rhone strange, since elephants, rather than being afraid of water, love the stuff and are strong swimmers so unlikely to be as terrified as Livy and Polybius believed. One nineteenth-century authority describes how in 1875 a batch of 79 Indian elephants (Elephas maximus) being moved from Dacca to Calcutta by way of the Ganges and several of its large tidal branches, swam 6 hours without touching the bottom then, after a rest on a sandbank, finished the trip in another 3 hour stint - adding that 'I have heard of more remarkable swims than these'.
African savannah (Loxodonta Africana)elephants apparently share the same love of water and it seems the problem was more likely to be getting the beasts to come out again.
Far be it from me to gainsay such an authority as Polybius; perhaps it just demonstrates the sheer force of the Rhone at that point (which I know nothing about) that even elephants were afraid to swim it. Or perhaps the African forest or bush elephant that the Carthaginians seem to have used mostly (almost certainly Loxodonta Africanus Cyclotis) does not share the penchant for swimmng of the other two species.
Phil Sidnell :?
