For the History Channel, I wrote about the enduring impact of elephants throughout history.
Although known for millennia by many of the peoples of Africa and Asia, elephants’ introduction to the classical West came around 331 B.C., when Alexander the Great encountered war elephants as his army swept from Persia into India. At the river Jhelum, in present-day Pakistan, Alexander defeated the Indian ruler Porus, who was said to have 100,000 war elephants in his army. Ever since, whether revered as a divine symbol of luck and wisdom, used as unique tools of diplomacy between leaders, deployed to intimidate opposing armies or put on display in the service of status or science, elephants have loomed large in the historical record. Check out 10 notable examples.
After Alexander, it became fashionable (if not always militarily expedient) for up-and-coming generals to field a few elephants in their armies. In 279 B.C., the Greek general Pyrrhus attempted to revive Alexander’s empire, invading southern Italy with a force that included 20 armed and armored elephants. Pyrrhus hoped his tuskers would terrify the defending Romans, but the beasts’ main effect was to block his own army’s advances through narrow streets. Pyrrhus also ran into the most common difficulty with war elephants: whenever the beasts panicked they often bolted, trampling his own army’s foot soldiers. Pyrrhus’ invasion was successful, but costly, spawning the term “Pyrrhic Victory”—the ancient historian Plutarch quotes him as quipping: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”