Claudius and his elephants

[Patrick Waterson]

That would depend upon when Caesar first got his hands on a trained and congenial elephant - and what happened to it following the invasions of Britain.  If he actually used one, it would have been during the second invasion (54 BC), following which he took his troops - with or without the elephant - back to Gaul for the winter.  As elephants and European winters do not mix, he would have had to send it back to Italy or stable it in a warm building with plenty of fodder, and not move it during the Gallic revolt that occurred during the winter.  The extent of the revolt suggests that even if Caesar had an elephant on hand it was not seen as much of a problem by the Gauls.

Best guess: if Caesar did take an elephant to Britain in 54 BC it would have needed a  specialised vessel for transporting it; this vessel probably became a victim of the storm noted in Gallic War V.10, and although in V.11 he orders new ships to be built in Gaul, in V.23 he makes the return journey with just the ships he has to hand.  This would have caused him to abandon the elephant in Britain.

If Caesar did take an elephant for this campaign, then Claudius' decision to bring elephants had a suitable precedent.

Caesar's own account of the Thames crossing raises more questions than it answers.

Caesar, discovering their design, leads his army into the territories of Cassivellaunus to the river Thames; which river can be forded in one place only and that with difficulty. When he had arrived there, he perceives that numerous forces of the enemy were marshaled on the other bank of the river; the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river. These things being discovered from prisoners and deserters, Caesar, sending forward the cavalry [praemisso equitatu = the mounted troops sent first or ahead], ordered the legions to follow them immediately. But the soldiers advanced with such speed and such ardor, though they stood above the water by their heads only, that the enemy could not sustain the attack of the legions and of the horse, and quitted the banks, and committed themselves to flight. - Gallic War V.18

So how did the cavalry, advancing though the water against stake obstacles, convince Cassivellaunus' men to run?  Adding an elephant to the equation makes the course of the action much more comprehensible, and an elephant could be concealed within the designation 'equitatus', the mounted force.

[Duncan Head]

The reference to J Caesar's use of an elephant in Britain is mentioned in the link that Duncan provided. If elephants had frightened Celts would they not have also frightened Gauls and we might have heard more about them being more widely used in this period?

They certainly did frighten Gauls: not only did Hannibal's elephants discomfit Rome's Cenomani allies at Trebia, and Antiochos I's terrify the Galatians, but Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus used elephants in Gaul in 121 BC in the campaigns that led to the establishment of the province of Transalpine Gaul:

The proconsul Gnaeus Domitius also defeated the Allobrogian Gauls in a severe battle near the town of Vindalium. The principal reason for his victory was the terror that the strange appearance of the elephants aroused in the horses of the enemy and in the enemy themselves, causing them to flee in every direction. Twenty thousand of the Allobroges, according to report, lost their lives there and three thousand were captured.

[dwkay57]

There are still elephants in Colchester (at the zoo) but I doubt if we can prove any descendency from beasts possibly left behind by Caesar or Claudius.

When I first started this thread, I thought I would get replies along the lines of "not on your nelly" and it would quickly be dismissed as a hoax, however it still seems to be running as a serious discussion so it brings forth two further questions:

1) Why did the Imperial Romans use elephants just in Britain and just on those two occasions? Were our Celtic ancestors really that much more of "hicks from sticks" to warrant the additional hassle of transporting them across the Channel? Given that Vespasian and other notables were present in Britain during the invasion (or with Caesar) and would have known of their use and presumable success would they have thought of using them at other times?

2) What were these elephants doing before being shipped to Britain? Do we have any record of their earlier (or later) use in say parades, games, or other activities? I seem to recall that some wargamers were accused of hiding elephants down rabbit holes so they couldn't be shot at, but what were the Romans doing with them before shipping them to the most northerly and probably most inhospitable bit of their empire?

[Jim Webster]

Remember that for Claudius, getting elephants there would add to the kudos :-)

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

In response to Chuck's questions, my best guesses:

1) Elephants were deemed effective for an initial campaign of conquest; while it might have been possible to build centrally-heated elephant houses with huge stockpiles of fodder for the winter, one does notice that Claudius' elephants accompanied his person so they seem to have been honorary Imperial bodyguards, so to speak.  Ordinary generals and legions did not get them to play with.  While using them against the Parthians would have been eminently logical, the habit never really caught on, and Nero seems to have been more interested in circuses than in thinking of ways to defeat the Parthians.  Vespasian and his immediate successors did not have a serious Parthian war (from Domitian to Trajan Rome's most serious opponent was Dacia; whether Trajan used elephants against the Dacians or Parthians is a conjecture from silence) so the novelty appears to have died out with the Caesars.

Even under Nero there seems to have been no question of shipping elephants to Britannia to quell Boudicca's revolt, so it looks as if the fashion died out with Claudius.  Nero may have had much to do with this: he preferred the stage to the battlefield.

2) What the elephants may have been doing before being shipped to Britain can only be conjectured, but the Caesars did provide ever more lavish games, and one suspects without being able to prove it that Caesar may have 'borrowed' an animal originally intended for the arena, plus a trainer, and Claudius would have done much the same thing, but more systematically, in advance of his Britannia campaign.  Numidia was fielding war elephants as late as 45 BC so with the right connections Caesar could have acquired the genuine article; Claudius would most probably have had to retrain animals intended for the arena unless Mauretania had some war beasts on strength.

[Jim Webster]

Actually they may not have needed the central heating

http://www.upali.ch/snow_en.html

Probably a roof to keep the rain off would be appreciated :-)

Jim

[Duncan Head]

1) Why did the Imperial Romans use elephants just in Britain and just on those two occasions?

One - Caesar's still under the Republic.

What were these elephants doing before being shipped to Britain? Do we have any record of their earlier (or later) use in say parades, games, or other activities?

Elephants were apparently readily available in Italy, whence Caesar obtained some to train his troops before Thapsus:

Here, however, was one problem to which he had found an answer; for he had ordered elephants to be brought across from Italy to enable our troops not only to become familiar with them, but also to get to know both the appearance and capabilities of the beast, what part of its body was readily vulnerable to a missile and, when an elephant was accoutred and armoured, what part of its body was still left uncovered and unprotected, so that their missiles should be aimed at that spot. He had also this further object in mind, that his horses would learn by familiarity with these beasts not to be alarmed by their scent, trumpeting or appearance. From this experiment he had profited handsomely: for the troops handled the beasts and came to appreciate their sluggishness; the cavalry hurled dummy javelins at them; and the docility of the beasts had brought the horses to feel at home with them.

Much later, Didius Julianus tried to use circus elephants against Severus in AD 193:

In the city he made what preparations he could for the battle with Severus. All the elephants used by the Romans in parades were trained to carry men and towers on their backs. It was hoped that the elephants would terrify the troops from Illyricum and stampede the enemy cavalry when these huge beasts, which the horses had never seen before, appeared on the field.

Great was the turmoil on the part of the various forces that were encamped and drilling, — men, horses, and elephants, — and great, also, was the fear inspired in the rest of the population by the armed troops, because the latter hated them. 3Yet at times we would be overcome by laughter; for the Pretorians did nothing worthy of their name and of their promise, for they had learned to live delicately; the sailors summoned from the fleet stationed at Misenum did not even know how to drill; and the elephants found their towers burdensome and would not even carry their drivers any longer, but threw them off, too.

[Citizen6]

I was just basing that aspect off of what has been previously written by other authors both recent and classical. Personally I think it is unlikely that Caesar had one. Whether Caesar did or didn't have an elephant though, is to my mind, not that important. The importance of Claudius having them is in the association of Caesar's "emblem" being an elephant and Caesar having invaded Britannia. The Caesar elephant coin was supposedly the third most minted coin in the Republican era, so the association between Caesar and an elephant would have been very widely appreciated. Subsequent emperors were often keen to tie their actions to the legacy of Caesar or Augustus as a propaganda tool, and Claudius being a Julian, is likely to be even more inclined to do it.

[Citizen6]

It also needs to be remembered that training elephants for war is a complicated and long process. This is one of the main reasons for their failure at Zama. Not only were Scipio's troops prepared but the elephants had only recently been harvested (the time between Hannibal being recalled and issuing orders for an elephant corps to be obtained, and their use at Zama is too short).

I suspect that the diminution of Roman elephant use in war is due to a certain extent, to a progressive lack of obtainable North African forest elephants, their relative small size and thus lesser effectiveness in war and the Parthian Empire blocking land access to the East. As such, large numbers were not available and small numbers really aren't very effective. The elephants reputation for being a liability to me is a bit of a historical misnomer. They were very often poorly deployed which led to problems. Elephants need open spaces and escort troops to be most effective and work best against massed troops. When well deployed they were generally very successful but deploy them in a city or just throw them at the enemy or deploy them against a highly mobile/tactically flexible force and the outcome wont be good. The same can be said about WW2 tanks. They were very effective tools of war... but deploy them in a city or in a forest without infantry support and they were easily and quickly neutralised.

Which brings me to another reason, I suspect, for their decline in use....the need for light/med infantry support and this didn't fit in well with the Marian/Imperial modus of combat (which was far more aligned to flexible heavy shock infantry tactics). Plus, the main enemies of Rome after Hannibal were predominantly Celts / Gauls / Germani and other Romans - all quite mobile (compared to sarrissa blocks and their flank troops) and thus less likely to be adversely disordered by elephants, especially small ones.

[Patrick Waterson]

Oddly enough, there seems to be nothing in our sources to support the idea that Hannibal's elephants at Zama were untrained/poorly trained.  After the battle Carthage had to hand over the elephants in its possession, which perforce means elephants which were not at Zama were being surrendered: these would have been the ones not yet trained.

Scipio's success against Hannibal's elephants seems to have come more from divining Hannibal's plan and preparing his troops to nullify their effect by giving them 'escape corridors' (the Romans could have had problems if the pachyderms had been used against their cavalry instead of their infantry).

One may note in passing that the Republican Roman successes against Pyrrhus at Beneventum, Philip V at Cynoscephalae, Antiochus III at Magnesia and Perseus at Pydna all used elephants to break part of the phalanx and allow the legionaries to engage successfully.  On two of these occasions the elephants were used, and on the other two cunningly abused, by the Romans ...

The elephants reputation for being a liability to me is a bit of a historical misnomer.

Inclined to agree.  My own observations are that they were usually devastatingly effective against troops who had never encountered them (see Lucian's account of the 'elephant victory' in Zeuxis and Antiochus) but when troops were well-trained at dealing with them their effectiveness was rather limited (vide Thapsus).

[Duncan Head]

Oddly enough, there seems to be nothing in our sources to support the idea that Hannibal's elephants at Zama were untrained/poorly trained.

Getting off topic here - because the basic point that elephants need a good deal of training is a sound one - but this idea seems to have arisen from Polybios' statement (XV.16.2) that Hannibal had collected the elephants "hastily", plus the fact that they panicked. I agree with Patrick that this isn't really enough to suggest that they were inadequately trained.

[Mark G]

I think the descriptions in P and L of the elephants performance does suggest more than just a bad day though
- some of them stream off at trumpet blasts alone.  acclimatising animals to battlefield noise is one of the first stages of military animal training.

that they were noted to have been hastily raised, and then noted to have performed well below expectation surely necessitates accepting a causal link - namely a lack of time for satisfactory training - and the resulting bad performance.

ditto the likelihood that the mahouts were also inadequately trained in both animal handling and in knowledge of the individual animals - for surely it was basic training to know to put a spike through the back of the head when they were panicking.

[Patrick Waterson]

I would be inclined to put the elephants' less than sparkling performance down to Scipio's countermeasures: it is perhaps not too great a leap to suggest that these would have been effective against elephants of any level of training, simply because there was a considerable element of the unexpected - the noise, the concentrated javelin volleys as opposed to the customary panicky sprinkling and most of all the lanes down which the majority of the elephants went without causing damage to the Roman heavy infantry.

So the 'causal link' I see as being good and effective anti-elephant measures, which we are told about, rather than assumed poor training, which we are not.

ditto the likelihood that the mahouts were also inadequately trained in both animal handling and in knowledge of the individual animals - for surely it was basic training to know to put a spike through the back of the head when they were panicking.

This has been ascribed to Hasdrubal, but does not by any means seem to have become universal or even standard practice.

[Jim Webster]

ditto the likelihood that the mahouts were also inadequately trained in both animal handling and in knowledge of the individual animals - for surely it was basic training to know to put a spike through the back of the head when they were panicking.

I've often wondered about this, a lot will depend on the relationship between the mahout and the elephant and how well he knows his elephant.
'Panicking' and 'rampaging in berserk fury' are probably different things. A panicking elephant may not present a risk to the mahout (who you'd hope would be the best person to judge this).
Kill the elephant too soon and you're just an unarmed man on foot in front of the enemy lines, whereas if you can get it to the rear and calm it down, firstly you're at the rear, and secondly you've an elephant to ride away on if the army gets defeated :-)

Jim

[Citizen6]

I agree we're well off topic now - but I don't know if I can quote in a new topic. Maybe we should start a Zama elephant topic as this is quite interesting (to me anyway).

this idea seems to have arisen from Polybios' statement (XV.16.2) that Hannibal had collected the elephants "hastily", plus the fact that they panicked. I agree with Patrick that this isn't really enough to suggest that they were inadequately trained.

It's not surprising though that Polybius would not mention poorly trained animals. It would diminish the magnitude of the Roman victory and he is unlikely to do that given the he was a close friend of Scipio Aemillianus.

My assertion is based on Polybius but also on Appian Libyca VIII 3.9
"When the Carthaginians learned these things they sent Hasdrubal, the son of Cisco, to hunt elephants..." [In reference to the Senates decision to send Scipio to Africa]

Here Appian specifically says hunt (though as my Latin is self taught and quite poor and my Greek non-existent, I have to rely on English translations). So while the elephants at Zama may have been trained they, in my opinion, can't have been well trained.

The problem I have with the loud noise being the main reason for the rout of the elephants is two-fold. Firstly, why did it not also affect the Carthaginian horses (horses also being notoriously skittish); and secondly many of the elephants ran through the Roman lines where Scipio had his men form lanes to allow their passage. Now animal behaviour shows this is unlikely....panicking animals do not run toward a stimulus which is frightening them especially when the stimulus would worsen the closer they got. I suspect the javelin showers and associated loss of mahouts was a far greater motivator. Javelins would come from all sides and would explain why the elephants spread out the way they did. For me, the elephant failure was a combination of small poorly trained elephants and Scipio's excellent use of javelins and his prior training of the troops.