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Re curious statement about Seleucid war elephants
#1
Salvete omnes

I was going through the 1st Book of Maccabees and came across the following curious statement:

"And they (the Seleucids) shewed the elephants the blood of grapes, and mulberries, to provoke them to fight".- Maccabees 1:Ch 6 vs 34.

"et elefantis ostenderunt sanguinem uvae et mori ad acuendos eos in proelium" - Vulgate

Rather odd way to provoke elephants to fight. Was this common in antiquity?
Cry \'\'\'\'Havoc\'\'\'\', and let slip the dogs of war
Imad
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#2
Quote:Rather odd way to provoke elephants to fight. Was this common in antiquity?
There seems to have been a belief that war elephants benefited from drinking wine (e.g. Josephus and Aelian both mention a similar scenario). Scullard thought that it was in order to "stimulate their fury". I wonder if, on the contrary, it was to dull their finer senses, so that they wouldn't mind trampling over bodies? Just my tuppence-worth.

Edit: I should have clarified that "the blood of grapes" is, of course, wine.
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#3
I just recently watched a BBC documentary made in connection with their Hannibal movie. Now, that's not the first I heard of the idea to get your elephant drunk, but they compared it to humans who become aggressive from drinking.

This made me wonder: not every human reacts the same to inebriation, and I doubt you'd want your elephant to decide he simply wants to have a lie down instead of charging. I also cannot rid myself of the image of a drunk elephant staggering and bumping from left rank to right rank in the famous lines between the maniples at Zama as the legionaries try to get out of the way and the mahout holds on for dear life... :mrgreen:

Seriously though: this topic raises some interesting questions. I'd have to guess, in the absence of any actual medical or veterinary knowledge about alcohol, that a drunk elephant might a) become more aggressive, b) not mind trampling bodies (as has been suggested above), c) ignore that he is being pelted by javelins, d) lose the flight response. It might be the elephant version of Dutch courage. I'd assume the trainers knew which elephant would react in which way, and chose them accordingly.

Still, the ancients had some pretty weird idea about animals that did not always work as advertised. Reading through Pliny's natural history, or through Aelian's books on Animals will give you some of them: although we can assume that people generally do not keep repeating ideas that don't work, it may still have been a simple "belief" (as Duncan said) based on some occasional results and comparison to humans taking a swill before battle.

Just how much wine do you need to get an elephant drunk anyway, without making them even more unpredictable in battle than they already are?
M. Caecilius M.f. Maxentius - Max C.

Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493

Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
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#4
Now there is a nice re-enactment/experimental archaeology project, though the animal abuse organisations would be all over you...

M.VIB.M.
Bushido wa watashi no shuukyou de gozaru.

Katte Kabuto no O wo shimeyo!

H.J.Vrielink.
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#5
Quote:Just how much wine do you need to get an elephant drunk anyway, without making them even more unpredictable in battle than they already are?

What did we do without the internet? There is real peer-reviewed science on this. Morris et al. ('Myth, marula, and elephant: an assessment of voluntary ethanol intoxication of the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) following feeding on the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea). link to abstract) estimate between 10 and 27 litres of 8% alcohol in a short period. Anecdotal evidence, at least, says that elephants do like a drink (even if they can't get drunk on fruit). So yes, it would be possible to get an elephant drunk on wine before battle.

As for controlling the thing once you'd got it drunk, I'd imagine that would be tricky. Presumably you just put it in a position where any damage done happened to the opposition infantry! For what it's worth, early versions of the japanese game shogi actually had a piece called the drunken elephant - it could move in any direction, except backwards Smile
Tom Wrobel
email = [email protected]
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