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"Alexander the son of Zeus dedicates Ajax to the Sun."
For he had given this name to the elephant, thinking so great an animal deserved a great name. And the natives reckoned that 350 years had elapsed since the battle, without taking into account how old the elephant was when he went into battle.
13. And Juba, who was once sovereign of the Libyan race, says that formerly the knights of Libya fought with one another on elephants, and division of these had a tower engraved upon their tusks, but the others nothing. And when night interrupted the fray the animals which were so marked had, he says, got the worst of it, and fled into Mount Atlas; but he himself 400 years afterwards caught one of the fugitives and found the cavity of the stamp still fresh on the tusk and not yet worn away by time.
This Juba is of opinion that the tusks are horns, because they grow just where the temples are, and there is no grinding of one upon another, and they remain as they grew and do not, like teeth, fall out and then grow afresh.
But I cannot accept this view; for horns, if not all, at any rate those of stags, do fall out and grow afresh, but the teeth, although in the case of men those which may fall out, will every one of them grow again, on the other hand there is not a single animal whose tusk or dog-tooth falls out naturally, nor in which, when it has fallen out, it will come again. For nature implants these tusks in their jaws for the sake of defence. And moreover, a circular ridge is formed year by year at the base of the horns, as we see in the case of goats and sheep and oxen; but a tusk grows out quite smooth, and unless something breaks it, it always remains so, for it consists of a material and substance as hard as stone.
Moreover the carrying of horns is confined to animals with cloven hoofs, but this animal has five nails and the foot branches into more toes than two, and since these are not squeezed into a hoof, the elephant has a pliable sole.
And in the case of all animals that have horns, nature supplies cavernous bones and causes the horn to grow from outwards, whereas she makes the elephant tusk full and equally massive throughout; and when in the lathe you lay bare the interior, you find a very thin tube piercing the centre of it, as is the case with teeth.
Now the tusks of the marsh elephants are dark in color and porous and difficult to work, because they are hollowed out into many cavities, and often knots are formed in them which resist fashioning by the craftsman's tools; but the tusks of the mountain kind, though smaller than these, are pretty white and there is nothing about them difficult to work; but best of all are the tusks of the elephants of the plain, for these are very large and very white and so pleasant to turn and carve that the hand can shape them into whatever it likes.
If I may also describe the characters of these elephants; those which come from the marshes, and are taken there, are considered to be stupid and flighty by the Indians; but those which come from the mountains they regard as vicious and treacherous and, unless they want something, not to be relied upon by man; but the elephants of the plain are said to be good and tractable, and fond of learning tricks; for they will write and dance, and will sway themselves to and fro and leap up and down from the ground to the sound of the pipe.
14. And Apollonius saw a herd, I think, of about thirty elephants crossing over the River Indus, and they were following as their leader the smallest among them; but the bigger ones had picked up their young ones on their projecting tusks, where they held them fast by twining their trunks around them. Said Apollonius: "No one, O Damis, has instructed them to do this, but they act of their own instinctive wisdom and cleverness; and you see how, like baggage-porters, they have picked up their young, and have them bound fast on, and so carry them along."
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