ELEPHANTS how they where and should be

**PROMETHEUS** · 11-12-2004, 22:26

Also found this about an antielephant unit....

Anti-elephant Wagons
300 of these curious devices were, according to Dionysios of Halikarnassos, used by Rome against Pyrrhos' elephants at Asculum. They were four-wheeled ox-drawn wagons (the reconstruction is based on a relief of a solidwheeled Italian farm cart) with wattle screens to protect the crew. They were fitted with upright poles, to which were attached mobile horizontal beams which could be swung in any direction. The beams were fitted with "tridents or swordlike spikes or scythes all of iron", while some had grapnels wrapped in pitch-daubed tow. These would be set on fire and swung at the elephants' trunks and faces. In addition, the wagons were manned by archers, slingers "shooting iron caltrops" and stone-throwers.

There are two accounts of their performance in battle. Dionysios says they initially stopped the elephants' charge, but were then shot at with javelins by the elephant crews and overwhelmed by supporting light infantry, who cut through the wattle screens to get at the crew and hamstrung the oxen; the wagon crews then took flight. Zonaras however says the wagons were never engaged, because the elephants attacked at the other end of the battlefield the wagons no doubt being too clumsy to redeploy. As Asculum was a two-day battle, both stories may be correct, each referring to one day of the battle. The wagons' very existence has been doubted, as the invention of later Roman annalists; but they are described as such a dismal failure that they hardly reflect well on Rome, and serve no Roman propaganda purpose. They probably represent a real and ingenious, though ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to deal with a military problem new to Rome.