The history of elephants in Europe dates back to the time of the
Roman Empire, but previously, during the
Ice Age, relatives of elephants were spread across the globe, including
Europe.
Mammoths roamed the northern parts of the Earth, from
Europe to
North America. The
straight-tusked elephant of mainland Europe principally inhabited the
Mediterranean, but reached the rest of Europe during
warm interglacial periods. While it went extinct during the last Ice Age,
insular dwarf forms such as the Cyprus dwarf elephant, the
pygmy elephant, the Naxos dwarf elephant and the Rhodes dwarf elephant survived longer, and the last Mediterranean elephant species survived on
Tilos until about 4000 years ago.[1] Subsequently the presence of actual elephants in Europe was only due to importation of these animals.
Europeans came in contact with live elephants in 327 BC, when
Alexander the Great descended into
India from the
Hindu Kush, but Alexander was quick to adopt them. Four elephants guarded his tent, and shortly after his death his associate Ptolemy issued coins showing Alexander in the elephant headdress that became a royal emblem also in the Hellenized East. Aristotle depended on first-hand information for his account of elephants, but like most Westerners he believed the animals live for two hundred years. Roman scouts in the royal Syrian parks shortly before the last of the
Seleucids fell to Rome had orders to
hamstring every elephant they could capture, and while elephants performed in the
circuses of Rome,
Shapur's war elephants in the mid-4th century numbered in the hundreds (Fox 1973 p 338).
Elephants largely disappeared from Europe after the Roman Empire. As exotic and expensive animals, they were exchanged as presents between European rulers, who exhibited them as luxury pets, beginning with
Harun ar-Rashid's gift of an elephant to
Charlemagne.
Examples
Historical accounts of elephants in Europe include:
The 20[a] elephants in the army of
Pyrrhus of Epirus, which landed at
Tarentum in 280 BC for the first
Battle of Heraclea, recorded by
Plutarch's (in
Lives),
Polybius,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus and
Livy. "The most notable elephant in Greek history, called Victor, had long served in Pyrrhus's army, but on seeing its
mahout dead before the city walls, it rushed to retrieve him: hoisting him defiantly on his tusks, it took wild and indiscriminate revenge for the man it loved, trampling more of its supporters than its enemies".[3] Coins of Tarentum after this battle also featured elephants.
The 37 elephants in
Hannibal's army that crossed the
Rhône in October/November 218 BC during the
Second Punic War, recorded by
Livy.
The first historically recorded elephant in northern Europe was brought by
emperorClaudius during the
Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 to the British capital of
Colchester. At least one skeleton with flint weapons that has been found in England was initially misidentified as this elephant, but later dating proved it to be a
mammoth skeleton from the
Stone Age.[4]
The elephant given by
Louis IX of France to
Henry III of England, for his menagerie in the
Tower of London in 1255 (see:
Sandwich, Kent). Drawn from life by the historian
Matthew Paris for his Chronica Majora, it was the first elephant to be seen in England since Claudius' war elephant. Matthew Paris' original drawing appears in his
bestiary, on display in the
Parker Library of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The bestiary explains that while in residence at the Tower of London, the elephant enjoyed a diet of prime cuts of
beef and expensive red wine, and is claimed to have died in 1257 from drinking too much wine. The accompanying text reveals that at the time, Europeans believed that elephants did not have
knees and so were unable to get up if they fell over (the bestiary contains a drawing depicting an elephant on its back being dragged along the ground by another elephant, with a caption stating that elephants lacked knees – compare
cow tipping). Europeans also interpreted descriptions of
howdahs to mean that Indian elephants were capable of carrying actual stone
castles on their backs, albeit only big enough to be garrisoned by three or four men; note that turreted
war elephants did exist, though not ones made of stone. A carving of the elephant can be found on a contemporary miserichord in
Exeter Cathedral. This animal may be the inspiration for the heraldic device '
Elephant and Castle', the arms of the Cutlers' Company of London, a guild founded in the 13th century responsible for making scissors, knives and the like. Its heraldry survived in an 18th-century pub-sign that in turn gave its name to a largely modern
district in South
London.
In the 1470s King
Christian I of Denmark founded a chivalric order, the Order of the Elephant, and had it confirmed by
Pope Sixtus IV. The order takes its name from the battle elephants which symbolized the Christian Crusades. Today[update], it continues to be awarded under statutes established by king
Christian V in 1693, amended in 1958 to permit the admission of women to the order.
Hanno, or Annone, was a
white elephant presented by king
Manuel I of Portugal to
Pope Leo X on the occasion of his coronation in 1514. He died in 1518, probably of an intestinal obstruction misdiagnosed as angina, with Pope Leo at his side. His story is told in
Silvio Bedini's The Pope's Elephant (Nashville: Sanders 1998). At the
Villa Madama, in the garden facing the loggia, the Elephant Fountain designed by
Giovanni da Udine depicts "Annone", whose tomb was designed by
Raphael himself.
Hansken, a female elephant from
Ceylon that became famous in early 17th-century Europe, touring through many countries demonstrating circus tricks, and sketched by
Rembrandt and
Stefano della Bella.
References
Footnotes
^Contemporary accounts report a significantly higher number of elephants:
Pliny the Elder records 142 "or, as some say", 140; in the
Epitome of Livy and by
Seneca, the number is 120;
Florus says that they were "about a hundred".[2]
^Lane Fox, Robin (1973).
Alexander the Great. Penguin. p. 339.
ISBN9780140088786. The most notable elephant in Greek history, called Victor, had long served in Pyrrhus's army, but on seeing its mahout dead before the city walls, it rushed to retrieve him: hoisting him defiantly on his tusks, it took wild and indiscriminate revenge for the man it loved, trampling more of its supporters than its enemies in the process.
Saurer, Karl and Elena M.Hinshaw-Fischli. They Called him Suleyman: The Adventurous Journey of an Elephant from the Forests of
Kerala to the Capital of Vienna in the middle of the sixteenth Century, collected in Maritime Malabar and The Europeans, edited by K. S. Mathew, Hope India Publications: Gurgaon, 2003
ISBN81-7871-029-3
Robin Lane Fox, 1974. Alexander the Great. Chapter 24 contains an excursus on Alexander and the elephant in Europe,
The Story of Süleyman. Celebrity Elephants and other exotica in Renaissance Portugal, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Zurich, Switzerland, 2010,
ISBN978-1-61658-821-2
Scullard, Howard Hayes (1974). The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World. London: Thames and Hudson.
ISBN0-500-40025-3.