The Importance of Elephants in the Hellenistic World
Hi Guys,
Here's another paper I wrote for my course on Hellenistic warfare, this time about elephant warfare and the logistics involved in the acquisition of elephants.
Here goes...
The Battle of Gaugamela is remembered for many things. It was the final victory of Alexander the Great over King Darius III of Persia, and the climax of his campaign against the Persian Empire. It was a battle that revolutionized the politics of the Middle East as a full-half of the Persian Empire fell under Alexander's control. Gaugamela was revolutionary in other ways, however. As part of his contingent, Darius had a small corps of elephants that he had brought from the far reaches of his Empire. It was the first time that Greeks were to encounter the elephant, and as far as we know, they were not aware they existed before this point. Herodotus mentions them in his Histories, but his reference is in passing and contains no description, making it unlikely that he or his contemporaries had any real knowledge of these particular beasts (Karttunen 187).
The presence of elephants at Gaugamela would have made a strong impression on Alexander and his troops, an impression that was reinforced years later at the Battle of the Hydaspes where they faced King Porus and an Indian army that featured hundreds of elephants. By the end of Alexander's life, the Macedonian Empire had accrued a strong corps of elephants, some of which were scavenged from Gaugamela and Hydaspes, while others were given to the king of kings by Porus. For the next two-hundred years, elephants were considered the ultimate weapon of war, and to that end, many of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, particularly the Ptolemaic and Seleukid Empires, engaged in veritable arms races to acquire the massive beasts for their armies. In this paper, I intend to examine the use of elephants at war and to argue that, while the actual benefits of them were rather mixed, their acquisition represented an important sphere of activity in the Hellenistic Era.
Despite the age of his article, Glover is correct in pointing out that the role of elephants, as a weapon of war, was virtually the same as that of cavalry. Cavalry's two major strengths were the shock of its charge and the weapons with which the rider was equipped. These two advantages were the strengths of elephants, as well, although they were different in their application. There was greater emphasis on the positively devastating shock of their charge, and the weapons of the riders tended to be far weaker than the weapons with which the beast itself was equipped: sharp tusks, massive size and great strength. Regardless of the superlative effect these natural weapons had in their own right, the elephants typically had a protective wooden stockade, or tower, mounted on their back as well, and the crew riding inside was equipped with arrows to use against troops, or pikes if they anticipated the presence of enemy elephants (Glover 258).
The elephants were typically deployed in one of two ways; they could be deployed widely-spaced, in the front rank to serve as a screen for the troops, as Hannibal would demonstrate unsuccessfully at Zama; or they might be put at the flank of the army as an effective counter to cavalry. This latter technique was especially effective because horses were terrified of elephants, and it would thus take very few elephants to rout a comparably large force of horsemen (Glover 260). Once the horsemen were out of the way, they would be free to attack the flanks or even the rear of the enemy's main force, devastating the infantry caught in their way.
Elephants were also used, in certain situations, to assault some of the simpler fortifications that might be found in a siege, and could be used to break in a gate when proper siege equipment was lacking (Glover 262). Elephants were also the most effective means of countering the presence of other elephants. A combat between opposing elephants was typically resolved by the two beasts locking tusks and butting heads while attempting to shove each other back and gore one another. At the same time, the men in the towers would seek to use pikes and presumably any means at their disposal to come to the elephants' aid (Polybius, 5.84-5). The combat would typically end when one side was battered and wounded enough that the elephant panicked and routed, which brings us to the disadvantages of elephant combat.
The greatest difficulty presented by elephants lay in the occasions when they routed. As Glover says so succinctly, “...the only difference between a charging and a bolting elephant is the direction in which he is going” (Glover 263). A retreating elephant would move just as quickly and show just as little regard for life and limb as a charging elephant, but now they would be headed for their general's infantry, who could hope, at best, to be merely stampeded, at worst to be gored in the process. As a weapon of war, elephants were thus a double-edged sword. If they succeeded the battle was almost certainly won, but if they routed they would play havoc within one's lines and the battle would most likely be lost. Hasdrubal developed the policy of equipping his mahouts with a chisel and hammer along with orders to use them to sever the elephant's spinal column if it bolted, (Glover 263) but this solution was somewhat Pyrrhic, as it eliminated the prospect of an expensive, rare weapon of war, living to fight another day. Ultimately there was no satisfactory solution to the rampaging elephant, and the best one could hope for was that, if they routed, they would retreat in a direction that did not lead them back to one's battle lines.
Besides that, there were several minor problems that made their use inefficient. Elephants functioned best on wide open plains, where their numbers, their size and their charge could be combined and used to greatest effect. They did not function well in narrow passes or rough terrain, as Antiochos III discovered at the Second Battle of Thermopylae, where he tried to send his elephant corps through the hot gates ahead of the rest of his task force. Indeed, some armies who knew they would be facing elephants would actively choose to fight in areas that would be difficult for the beasts (Glover 259).
Also, while elephants had a devastating effect on the enemy's cavalry, this advantage had ramifications for one's own horsemen as well, since the general either had to keep his cavalry and elephant corps far apart, or else find a way to acclimate the horses to the presence of elephants (Glover 261). Even their use as an ad hoc siege machine was fairly limited, as competent defenders or wide trenches lined with stakes were an effective way of countering them (Glover 262). Indeed, if the elephant came upon these difficulties during the siege, they were likely to rout, causing great difficulty for the army that commanded them. Thus, while elephants had the potential to be a devastating weapon of war, they nonetheless presented a mercurial advantage that could easily be negated or even made a handicap by the enemy. Nevertheless, they were greatly desired in the Hellenistic World for their power, as well as perhaps the prestige with which they were associated.
Of the successor states of Alexander's kingdom, the Seleukid Empire certainly held the best location for the acquisition of elephants. Their proximity to India put them into frequent diplomatic relations with the rulers of the subcontinent, even occasionally in a position of control over small portions of the region. As a result, the Seleukids were in a strong position with regard to elephants for much of their history. The animals were a strong bargaining chip in diplomacy as well. In the middle of the third century, Bactria revolted against Seleukid rule. Before the Seleukids could respond, however, the rebel leader, Diodotos, was overthrown and killed. At this point Euthydemos ascended to the throne, only to find himself at war with the Seleukid king, Antiochos III. After several years of war, however, Antiochos allowed the Bactrian Kingdom to claim independence. They were in a position to act as a buffer state against nomadic invasions, and, perhaps just as importantly, they offered elephants as part of their peace treaty (Karttunen 273).
The founder of the Seleukid Empire had made a similar deal as well. After the death of Alexander, the great conqueror's large corps of elephants was divided among his generals, including Seleukos (Karttunen 190). Recognizing the utility of the animals, however, the former cavalry officer quickly acquired more. In the last decade of the fourth century, Strabo tells us that he gave the eastern-most reaches of his holdings, lands located along the Indus river, to King Sandrocottos of the Mauryan Empire in exchange for marriage rites, probably a marriage between Sandrocottos and one of Seleukos' daughters (Karttunen 261-262), and 500 elephants (Strabo 15.2.9).
It is tempting to view this decision as an attempt to barter away Alexander's Empire in exchange for a special weapon, but in all likelihood it was a wise move on Seleukos' part; he probably had no real control over the region anyway and at least one source hints that he and Sandrocottos were at war before the creation of the treaty. If this is the case, the remoteness of the region and the outbreak of hostilities with Antigonos Monophthalmos in Greece would have made the prospects of holding the province against the Indian King very slim, even if Seleukos was winning up until that point. As it is, we don't even know that any battles were fought in this alleged war, but regardless, Seleukos was clearly persuaded that his Indian holdings were untenable. He thus made shrewd use of diplomacy and, in exchange for a relatively small portion of land, gained a lasting peace and utter dominance in a field of warfare that was highly appreciated by the Greeks (Karttunen 261). These elephants would quickly prove decisive. At the Battle of Ipsos, Seleukos and Ptolemy faced their rival, Antigonos, who had, what he probably assumed, was a large force of 75 elephants to compliment his army. Antigonos would lose that day, however, as Seleukos brought to bear the 500 elephants from his Indian cession (Glover 257).
This was not the only effect of Seleukos' deal, however. The presence of such a vast force of elephants, fighting on behalf of his neighbor, would have made a powerful impression on Ptolemy I Soter, and encouraged him to develop his own corps of elephants, as a preparation for the inevitable day when his kingdom would find itself opposed to that of Seleukos. Elephants were hard to acquire for the Ptolemies early on, however, as India was geographically remote and had no common border with Ptolemaic territory. Ptolemy had managed to salvage a few in 321 after defeating Perdikkas' army, and several more were acquired from the remnants of Demetrius' force at Gaza, but this would have been a rather small contingent; certainly nothing that could begin to compare with Seleukos' 500-strong corps (Casson 247-248). The Ptolemies would have to find a new source for the animals if they hoped to compete in the arms race for elephants. This source would be discovered early in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos. In 270 BCE, Soter's successor sent a man named Satyros south to investigate the possibility of taming and training the African elephant for war. Within the next ten years, at least two major cities were founded on the frontier of Ptolemaic holdings for the purpose of hunting and transporting elephants north to Egypt (Casson 248-249).
The Ptolemaic elephant hunts would be a massive program throughout the next century, and it is difficult to imagine the lengths to which the Ptolemies had to go in order to establish a source of war elephants for themselves. The first obstacle was the capture of elephants. The indigenous people of the Sudan had hunted elephants for centuries, millenia even, but they only knew how to kill elephants. In order to capture elephants alive it was necessary to create a large corral, fenced only by a wide trench. Several tame female elephants were placed inside of the corral, who then lured wild elephants in. Once inside, more tame elephants were ridden in and used to separate out individual animals so that they could be broken for human handling (Casson 249-250). It was an ingenious method, and one to which, unfortunately for the Ptolemies, no one outside of India had access (Casson 249). To acquire this skill set, Philadelphos turned to his ambassador to India, Dionysios, who managed to accrue enough elephants, mahouts, herders and also interpreters to get the program started (Casson 250-251).
This was only the beginning, however. Once the elephants were trained, they needed to be transported north to Egypt. The Nile is notorious for its cataracts in the upper portions, making it problematic for the purpose of transporting regular cargo and all but impossible for the transportation of elephants downstream. Additionally, large portions of the elephant herds appear to have been located far from the Nile in Somalia and on the coast of the Red Sea. As a result, ports such as Ptolemais Theron (“of the hunts”), had to be constructed; this necessitated not just the transportation of work crews, but of engineers and carpenters as well. Roads were constructed that linked the newly-founded city of Berenike Troglodytica to the Nile River Valley (Casson 249), and a whole new type of ship, a sailing barge with a low draft, was designed for the purpose of carrying the elephants into shallow harbors (Casson 253). Beyond that, the newly-created camps and cities had to be manned with hunting parties and supplied with food (Casson 252) for the elephants as well (Casson 254). On the whole, this operation bears the hallmarks of considerable planning and organization. It is a testament to how important the Ptolemies felt it was to develop an elephant corps to counter that of the Seleukids.
To what extent did Ptolemaic elephants counter those of the Seleukds, however? The battle of Raphia provides us with our best case study. In Book 5 chapters 84 and 85, Polybius gives us an account of the first meeting of the African and Indian Elephants on the battlefield. According to him, most of the Ptolemaic elephants refused to meet the Seleukid elephants in battle due to the latter's larger size. What few did remain fought bravely, but were ultimately overwhelmed by numbers, and the dichotomy suggests that there was still a few Asian elephants in Ptolemy IV's stables (Charles 310). The claim that the African elephants fled due to their smaller size is confounding, however, because the African Bush Elephant (Loxodanta africana africana) is not smaller than the Asian Elephant. The Indian elephant is known to reach a maximum size of about ten feet at the shoulder, while the African elephant stands eleven feet. The solution has been to claim that the Ptolemies were not using the African Bush Elephant, but its smaller cousin, the African Forest Elephant (Loxodanta africana cyclotis), which is approximately seven or eight feet in size (Karttunen 196).
The question that has not been sufficiently addressed by modern scholars, is why? The Ptolemies must have known, from comparing their freshly caught elephants to the ones sent over from India that their native breed was smaller. As Charles points out, the smaller size of the forest elephants most likely prevented them from carrying a tower (Charles 308), and, more importantly, made them weaker in warfare than their Asian brethren, as demonstrated at Raphia. If the bush elephant is the largest of all, why did the Ptolemies hunt the forest elephant? There seem to be conflicting answers to this important question. Charles claims, reasonably enough, that the ancients were not aware of bush elephants (Charles 309). Casson outright contradicts him by claiming that in ancient times both forest and bush elephants could be found throughout the African continent, but skirts the issue of why the Ptolemies would fail to use the larger breed if it was available to them (Casson 248). Perhaps the bush elephant was prohibitively difficult to capture or train. In the absence of further evidence, it is difficult to reach any conclusion. The issue deserves further investigation.
The question of size is not the only conundrum which plagues the Ptolemaic elephant hunts, however. Our knowledge of these hunts suggests that over the relatively short period of time, during which these hunts were conducted, the location of the camps was moved further and further south. Casson claims that this was because they exhausted the coastal population of elephants and were reluctant to move inland (Casson 256). As Burstein points out, however, this seems unlikely. At Raphia Ptolemy IV was only able to muster 73 elephants, suggesting that the Ptolemaic elephant corps probably was rarely more than around 100 strong. Given the need to replace elephants that died of old age or battle wounds, this would not come even close to stripping the Red Sea coast of its population of elephants (Burstein 802).
The key to this question lies in the large collection of papyri that has been recovered from the period, specifically P. Petric. III.114, which suggests that the payment of a soldier who participated in the hunts was somehow connected to ivory (Burstein 805). Given the extreme costs of these hunts, it seems unlikely that the Ptolemies would have turned down an opportunity to offset their economic losses through the acquisition of ivory. Indeed, evidence from the era seems to suggest that ivory hunting, already prevalent in earlier eras, sky-rocketed in Ptolemaic Egypt. Inscriptions at Delos note a sharp drop in the price of ivory during the reign of Ptolemy II, which suggests a significant increase in supply (Burstein 803). Even two centuries later, Ptolemies XII and XIII had enough ivory to comfortably make a donation of 68 tusks for the decoration of the doors to the shrine of Apollo at Didyma (Burstein 805-806). Papyrus documents also note the continued payment of the ivory tax.
At Ptolemy II's procession in 275 BCE, gift-bearers from Ethiopia carried 600 elephant tusks as evidence of the honor in which he was held by his neighbors to the south (Burstein 804). Elephants seem to have been an important facet of diplomacy in Ptolemaic Egypt as well. A large portion of the ivory acquired would have been attained through trade and diplomacy, as in previous eras, and Ptolemy's possession of 600 elephant tusks in 275, half a decade before the elephant hunts began, is a potent testimony to this fact. Even for the considerable portion that was acquired through the hunts, diplomacy would have been necessary as well, since the newly-built cities and camps would have encroached on the lands of local tribes. Beyond just warfare, elephants represented an important possession to the Ptolemies, as the animals were another of the resources that made Egypt so fabulously wealthy. It was a resource that they felt no shame in exploiting, and the necessity of moving camps around the Red Sea and Somalia to find new herds is a testament to this aspect of the Egyptian economy.
The Battle of Raphia in many ways encapsulates the various aspects of elephant warfare, as it pitted the Asian Eephants of the Seleukids against the African Forest Elephants of the Ptolemies. At the same time, however, Raphia is an anomaly. It is one of the only elephant battles that was won by the side whose elephants lost. In almost every other battle recorded, victory was contingent upon the success of the elephants. To that end, the Ptolemies and Seleukids vied with each other for dominance in the field of elephant combat. Within a couple centuries, however, tactics to counter the elephant were developed, most especially by the Romans, who after having fought Pyrrhus, the Carthaginians and Antiochos III could count themselves quite experienced in the field of elephant combat. They in turn would make occasional use of the elephant, but never to any great extent. Reasons such as the unreliability of elephants and the difficulty of acquiring them could be cited, but just as likely, it could be argued, is the possibility that the Romans simply did not want to be militarily dependent on an animal that was not readily available to them. Regardless, for their two centuries of preeminence, elephants were of great importance. For some they were a bargaining chip to help maintain peaceful relations with the hinterlands. For others they were a source of great wealth. To all they were a devastating weapon of war. Although questions linger about the specific use of the African species, elephants were an important aspect of war, diplomacy and trade in the tumultuous centuries that followed the death of Alexander.
Annotated Bibliography
1.Burstein, S. M. (1996) "Ivory and Ptolemaic Exploration of the Red Sea: The Missing Factor," Topoi Orient-Occident, 799-807.
2.Casson, L. (1993) "Ptolemy II and the Hunting of African Elephants," Transactions of the American Philological Association 123, 247-60.
3.Charles, M. (2007) "Elephants at Raphia: Reinterpreting Polybius 5.84-5," The Classical Quarterly 57, 306-11.
4.Glover, R. (1944) "The Elephant in Ancient War," The Classical Journal 39, 257-69.
5.Karttunen, K. (1997) India and the Hellenistic World. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society.
This paper was pretty well received by my teacher - her greatest criticism was that I didn't really delve into the ways in which elephants were symbolically and ideologically linked with Hellenistic Kingship, although she felt that was in some ways good as it highlighted the fact that there has not been much work on that topic done.
Also, with regard to the issue I raised about why the Ptolemies would use the Forest Elephant if the Bush Elephant was available, she answered that it's not entirely known why in the academic community. More than likely it's that the range of Bush Elephants was somewhat farther south and inland, making them more difficult to acquire. Also, their greater size may have made them more difficult to transport by sea and they may have been more difficult to train and control due to their larger size and/or potential differences in their temperament.
Another point which she brought up, which hadn't been present in any of the literature I had read is that part of the reason why the Ptolemies kept extending their elephant hunts further and further south might have not so much been that they were running out of elephants to hunt, but an attempt to extend their sphere of control. By establishing cities and moving their camps further south they could effectively assert hegemony over the land, which was an end unto itself.
Anyway, I hope you liked the paper, and hope it's useful to the EB team. Thanks, -M
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Originally Posted by Mulceber
from Megas Methuselah for helping with city names 
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