hannibal and elephants Part.7

We must first ask, how many elephants did the city of Carthage, which did not support a regular standing army, maintain? If the Carthaginians had a large supply of trained war elephants at hand, it would have made sense for them to send along a sizeable contingent of pachyderms, the tanks of antiquity, with Hasdrubal Gisgo, when he marched to stop Scipio’s invading force surrounding Utica. But we do not read Roman reports of any elephants, not a single solitary one, accompanying Hasdrubal’s forces. But surely, after Scipio’s treacherous sneak attack in the middle of the night, burning the tents of Hasdrubal’s unsuspecting soldiers lulled into complacency with a promise of peace, the Carthaginian senate would have ordered all its available war elephants to march to face the ruthless enemy at the decisive battle of the Great Plains that followed. Once again, the elephants are conspicuous by their absence. Naturally, all we have are the Roman accounts—the work of the Carthaginian historians are no longer extant, having been conveniently lost or intentionally destroyed in the burning of Carthage and its libraries in 146 BCE.