Final part of hannibal

Then, it is claimed that the elephants either run blindly into corridors left open in the Roman formation for the purpose of directing the animals to harmlessly pass through—Scipio’s alleged “solution” to the problem posed by an elephant charge—or they panicked and turned against Hannibal’s own army, wrecking havoc with his cavalry on the flanks. This also does not hold up against logical scrutiny. Since the animals carried mahouts on their backs, in addition to one or more armed warriors, and the animals were trained to respond to the commands or pressure of their riders, they would surely have been steered to one side or the other to trample men at the edges of any such open corridors. Furthermore, as Haywood (1933) and Scullard (1974) point out, it is not credible that rampaging elephants would do a lot of damage turning against their own side, because the mahouts carried a hammer and chisel to kill any elephant running out of control, as was the case at the battle of the Metaurus (Livy 27:49).  Incidentally, it can also not be argued that these were poorly trained elephants, for if Carthage did not send any elephants with Hasdrubal Gisgo to Utica or to the Great Plains battle, it would have had available all its remaining trained pachyderms, while had the city exhausted its supply there would not have been time, between the Great Plains battle and Zama, to capture and train more.

But it should not surprise us that the elephants at Zama were fictional, for recent research has questioned the very historicity of the battle itself. The reader is referred to Abdelaziz Belkhodja’s book Hannibal Barca: L’histoire veritable as well as to my two previous articles on the battle of Zama up on TheHistoryHerald website. Also recommended is the recent novel by Laura Fernandez-Montesinos, Anibal, El Rayo de Cartago, which brilliantly reconstructs the creation of a hoax for the ages.