What did Europeans do with captured war elephants?
score:6
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, gives several examples of how captured elephants were part of Roman triumphs. The two earliest examples are after the battles of Beneventum (against Pyrrhus) and Panormos (against Carthago).
What happened to the elephants after being paraded around is not entirely clear to Pliny, but some of his sources said they were killed because the Romans did not know what to do with so many elephants. (Also note that there seems to be a slight problem with the year of the Panormos battle in Pliny's account):
Elephants were seen in Italy, for the first time, in the war with King Pyrrhus, in the year of the City 472 [281 BCE]; they were called "Lucanian oxen," because they were first seen in Lucania. Seven years after this period [i.e. in 274 BCE], they appeared at Rome in a triumph. In the year 502 [251 BCE] a great number of them were brought to Rome, which had been taken by the pontiff Metellus, in his victory gained in Sicily over the Carthaginians; they were one hundred and forty-two in number, or, as some say, one hundred and forty, and were conveyed to our shores upon rafts, which were constructed on rows of hogsheads joined together. Verrius informs us, that they fought in the Circus, and that they were slain with javelins, for want of some better method of disposing of them; as the people neither liked to keep them nor yet to give them to the kings. L. Piso tells us only that they were brought into the Circus; and for the purpose of increasing the feeling of contempt towards them, they were driven all round the area of that place by workmen, who had nothing but spears blunted at the point. The authors who are of opinion that they were not killed, do not, however, inform us how they were afterwards disposed of.
(source, via wp and another online source)
More post
- 📝 What degree of relations did the different Hawaiian islands have between themselves before Kamehameha's unification?
- 📝 Who of the British military had access to the ULTRA messages of the Enigma in September 1944?
- 📝 Why didn't China try to explore or colonize the Americas?
- 📝 What is the date of this photograph of a woman riding a horse sidesaddle?
- 📝 Where did Roman senators mostly live in the time of Tiberius or Caligula?
- 📝 What adaptations allowed left-handers to write left-to-right with dip pens?
- 📝 Why did water stored on premodern ships "go brackish" or "go bad" while at sea?
- 📝 What did ancient countries call themselves?
- 📝 How many people were fighting in the North Korean Army in peak strength in the Korean War?
- 📝 How long has western civilization known the body contains a significant fraction of water?
- 📝 What really happen to 100k people in Changban?
- 📝 During the American Civil war did gunboats range far into enemy territory?
- 📝 Pre-Islamic cultural inheritance in contemporary Iran
- 📝 Was there a state or kingdom in the Maghreb of North Africa that predates the founding of Carthage?
- 📝 Did the Bush administration or their successors ever comment on the alleged Taliban warning about 9/11?
- 📝 Did Comecon [even] fail to standardize container sizes?
- 📝 Is there, or was there ever a venue known as "Cobo Arena" in Detroit?
- 📝 Are the Samaritans descendants of Israel's lost tribes, and so rightfully considered Israelites?
- 📝 Did Russia and Lenin benefit from the Treaty of Versailles?
- 📝 Are there any good books in English about the mechanics of German reunification?
- 📝 Why is Toledo not the capital of Spain anymore?
- 📝 Italian History from 1870-1913: Why did Italy have such a hard time becoming a "Great Power" like Germany?
- 📝 Why was Queretaro chosen as a fail-safe capital of Mexico?
- 📝 What are some indicators that distinguish pseudo-history from actual history?
- 📝 Early reasons to bury the dead
- 📝 Why did so few militaries use semi automatic rifles as their standard issue infantry weapon?
- 📝 Were cities that enacted lockdowns during the 1918 flu pandemic successful in preventing any infections?
- 📝 Why were monasteries built in obscure places around Ireland?
- 📝 Who was the first woman ruler?
- 📝 For who or what was Cojo Creek named?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What did Europeans do with captured war elephants?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during World War II, and with whom?
- 📝 What role did War elephants play in the battle of Thermopylae?
- 📝 Did the King of Siam offer war elephants to the Union during the Civil War?
- 📝 What did Germany do in World War II about the different rail gauge in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What language did Gaius Julius Caesar speak with Cleopatra?
- 📝 Which war games did Napoleon practice with his generals?
- 📝 What did Germany do after World War II to recover so successfully that it became more prosperous than its WW2 victors?
- 📝 What language did Brahe talk with Kepler?
- 📝 What did Hitler mean with the following statement about Franco?
- 📝 What is the name and meaning of a World War 2 CCC Medal with both the Polish Eagle and British Statant Gardant Lion?
- 📝 How did the Japanese treat captured "Flying Tigers" in World War II?
- 📝 To what extent did the CPC avoid fighting with the Japanese?
- 📝 At what point, and why, did snuff tobacco fall out of favor with European nobility?
- 📝 What percentage of British and American troops were involved in direct combat with enemy in World War II
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during the Weimar Republic, and with whom?
- 📝 To what degree did women participate in the air war during WW2?
- 📝 What is the story of war that started with "if"?
- 📝 When did Europeans stop writing the month with Roman numbers?
- 📝 At what point did Soviet armored units have qualitative parity with Wehrmacht armored units?
- 📝 What treatment did Allied Jewish POWs get when captured by the Germans?
- 📝 What did indigenous North Americans trade amongst themselves before Europeans arrived?
- 📝 What specifically did Caesar believe he would be charged with had he disbanded his army?
- 📝 Why did General Billy Mitchell regard war with Japan as inevitable as early as 1912?
- 📝 How did the Swedish army deal with prisoners of war in the Thirty Years War?
- 📝 How did the US "Greek" fraternity system at universities arise and what is its relationship with ancient Greece?
- 📝 What impact did the Seven Years War have on the American Revolution?
- 📝 What uniforms did each of the American Civil War regiment wear during First Bull Run / First Manassas
- 📝 At what point after the war did Confederate money begin to attain value again?
- 📝 What effect did the Mafia have during World War 2?