Second century Seleucid elephants

[Jim Webster]

reading Paul J Kosmin 'The Land of the Elephant Kings.'

He quotes a Babylonian Astronomical Diary entry for 150BC

'That month I he[ard] King Demetrius with twenty-five elephants and the troops... they went out from Antioch.'

I don't know whether the army lists have changed, but my version gives the Seleucids elephants up to 162BC and then from 145BC to 125BC
So this entry rather drops into the middle of the elephant free gap

Jim

[Duncan Head]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

[Jim Webster]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

were there perhaps some out with a detached force? Or spirited away by their keepers before the Romans actually arrived?

Wasn't there some resistance from the local inhabitants at 'their' elephants being killed. Struggling to remember the text

[nikgaukroger]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

By the lists I assume you mean the DBMM lists - other lists are available 

[Duncan Head]

There only seems to be mention of opposition after the fact:

Polybios XXXI.2.9-11

For they at once named as legates Gnaeus Octavius, Spurius Lucretius, and Lucius Aurelius and dispatched them to Syria to manage the affairs of that kingdom as the senate determined, there being no one likely to oppose their orders, since the king was a child and the principal people were only too glad that the government had not been put in the hands of Demetrius, as they had been almost certain it would be. Octavius and his colleagues thereupon left, with orders in the first place to burn the decked warships, next to hamstring the elephants, and by every means to cripple the royal power.

Appian, Syrian Wars, X.46

Learning that there were many elephants in Syria and more ships than had been allowed to Antiochus in the treaty, they sent ambassadors thither, who killed the elephants and burned the ships. It was a pitiful sight, the killing of these rare and tame beasts and the burning of the ships. A certain Leptines of Laodicea was so exasperated by the sight that he stabbed Gnaeus Octavius, the chief of this embassy, while he was anointing himself in the gymnasium at that place, and Lysias buried him.

Lysias had been in Judaea with much of the Seleucid army fighting the Maccebees; but he had returned to Antioch, so it looks as if all the elephants should have been in one place.

[nikgaukroger]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

were there perhaps some out with a detached force? Or spirited away by their keepers before the Romans actually arrived?

Wasn't there some resistance from the local inhabitants at 'their' elephants being killed. Struggling to remember the text

I seem to recall John Grainger in his volume of the Seleukids that covers post-Antiochos III mentions military nellies existing after the supposed destruction of the herd, and speculates they may not have all been present where the killing took place because of this later use.

[nikgaukroger]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

were there perhaps some out with a detached force? Or spirited away by their keepers before the Romans actually arrived?

Wasn't there some resistance from the local inhabitants at 'their' elephants being killed. Struggling to remember the text

I seem to recall John Grainger in his volume of the Seleukids that covers post-Antiochos III mentions military nellies existing after the supposed destruction of the herd, and speculates they may not have all been present where the killing took place because of this later use.

He also says that the diary states that in a subsequent civil war battle both Demetrios and Alexander had nellies.

[Jim Webster]

Interesting. The lists assume that the Romans kill off the entire elephant herd c.162 and there are no more till they acquire some Ptolemaic Africans. So where do these in 150 come from?

By the lists I assume you mean the DBMM lists - other lists are available 

if I had copies I would refer to them 

[Dangun]

We can't really read histories so literally - as indicating they executed every last elephant.
25 does not seem like a large number to have been missed.

[Jim Webster]

We can't really read histories so literally - as indicating they executed every last elephant.
25 does not seem like a large number to have been missed.

Well nobody talks about the elephant in the room 

On a more serious note it probably wasn't difficult to 'lose' elephants from a handful of inspectors in the heartland of the Seleucid Empire, especially when the population seems to have had a soft spot for them.

[Patrick Waterson]

If the Seleucids were breeding elephants (around Apamea or wherever), they might have had a younger generation still in training.

The Romans would doubtless have ordered the demise of all trained wart elephants in the army, and stayed to see that it was done.  But would they have travelled to the elephant farms and overseen the slaughter of every female and calf?  Perhaps not, so the Seleucid army's elephant-less period may have been only a few years during which younger elephants grew up and were trained and then it would have been business more or less as usual, if on a reduced scale.

Just a thought.

[Andreas Johansson]

I note that acc'd WP the Syrian elephant (a subspecies of the Indian) didn't die out in the wild until ca 100 BC. So maybe the Seleucids needed turn to neither importation nor breeding to replenish the corps. One might even conjecture that an elephant shortage after the Roman slaughter led to increased captures which nudged the population over the brink into extinction.

On another line of thought, in 150 BC Mesopotamia and much of Iran was still under Seleucid control, so is there any reason further import from India is necessarily excluded?

[RichT]

I note that acc'd WP the Syrian elephant (a subspecies of the Indian) didn't die out in the wild until ca 100 BC. So maybe the Seleucids needed turn to neither importation nor breeding to replenish the corps. One might even conjecture that an elephant shortage after the Roman slaughter led to increased captures which nudged the population over the brink into extinction.

Hmm that's interesting and news to me (though it seems Scullard does talk about Syrian elephants). WP's 3,000,000 years ago to 100 BC as a date range is perhaps excessively specific at one end... I imagine the 100 BC extinction date comes from the assumption that late Seleucid elephants were Elephas maximus asurus, so is essentially a circular argument.

The best info I could find on the interweb is here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00758914.2016.1198068

Interesting article, and TL;DR is:

"... textual, pictorial and physical evidence for these animals stops during the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. A few scholars (e.g. Scullard 1974) argue that they survived into the 3rd century BC, possibly by considering the Syrian elephant and the Seleucid war elephants as the same population. However, the combined osteoarchaeological and historical evidence suggests that an 8th century BC date is most plausible for the extinction."

And also that they they aren't properly a subspecies anyway:

"the subspecies description of the Elephas maximus asurus should also be considered erroneous, because the Syrian elephant was not endemic", but introduced by human activity.

[Patrick Waterson]

On another line of thought, in 150 BC Mesopotamia and much of Iran was still under Seleucid control, so is there any reason further import from India is necessarily excluded?

Unless the elephants came by sea, an unfriendly Bactria would have been a problem.

[Jim Webster]

On another line of thought, in 150 BC Mesopotamia and much of Iran was still under Seleucid control, so is there any reason further import from India is necessarily excluded?

Unless the elephants came by sea, an unfriendly Bactria would have been a problem.

I think by the this time it was an unfriendly Parthia (which controlled the Bactrian western Satrapies) that might have been a bigger problem. But yes, unless you can bring elephants in by sea, you've got problems.
Now Ptolemaic armies seem to have been disembarked on the coast probably taking their elephants with them, and the Carthaginians transported elephants to Sicily and Italy, so sea transport probably isn't out of the question