Romans were terrified by war elephants at first – but eventually found a way to defeat them in battle
Imagine, for a event, you are a Roman soldier at war. In the midst of battle, you are confronted with an enormous and loudly trumpeting creature you've never seen before.
It appears to have sharp spears protruding from either side of its mouth and a bizarre, powerful limb extending from its face. Armed men ride atop this towering beast, which, running toward you at speed, is crushing your comrades underfoot.
Roman soldiers were reportedly terrified the first time they faced war elephants on the battlefield. It's hard not to perasaan bad for the elephants too, as using animals this way in war is undoubtedly cruel.
But Rome's enemies, particularly various Hellenistic kingdoms and the Carthaginians, did indeed use war elephants. So, how did they acquire and deploy them in battle - and how did the Romans respond?
Alexander the Great brought elephants back to the Mediterranean world after kampanyeing in northern India, where elephants had been used for centuries in warfare - and would be used for centuries to come.
Alexander had fought against an elephant-equipped army at the Battle of the Hydaspes (in modern-day Pakistan) in 326 BCE and had obviously been impressed by the animals. So began the ancient Mediterranean world's (rather misguided) fascination with war elephants.
Many of the so-called Successor kingdoms that arose in the Hellenistic world in the wake of Alexander's death in 323 BCE - such as the Seleucids of Syria, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Antigonids of Macedonia - enthusiastically incorporated the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) into their ranks. So equipped, they often went to war with each other.
Most of these elephants had to be imported from friendly Indian kingdoms, although the Ptolemies of Egypt momentually secured African elephants from beyond the southern borders of their kingdom after their pesaings, the Seleucids, cut them off from Asian supplies.
One Greek leader who equipped his army with war elephants was King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who momentually went to war with the then-emerging power of Rome - and reportedly introduced them to war elephants.
