Note {3} — Chapter LI

Note 3.—It is very difficult to know what to make of the repeated assertions of old writers as to the numbers of men carried by war-elephants, or, if we could admit those numbers, to conceive how the animal could have carried the enormous structure necessary to give them space to use their weapons. The Third Book of Maccabees is the most astounding in this way, alleging that a single elephant carried 32 stout men, besides the Indian Mahaut. Bochart indeed supposes the number here to be a clerical error for 12, but this would even be extravagant. Friar Jordanus is, no doubt, building on the Maccabees rather than on his own Oriental experience when he says that the elephant “carrieth easily more than 30 men.” Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius, speaks of 10 to 15; Ibn Batuta of about 20; and a great elephant sent by Timur to the Sultan of Egypt is said to have carried 20 drummers. Christopher Borri says that in Cochin China the elephant did ordinarily carry 13 or 14 persons, 6 on each side in two tiers of 3 each, and 2 behind. On the other hand, among the ancients, Strabo and Aelian speak of three soldiers only in addition to the driver, and Livy, describing the Battle of Magnesia, of four. These last are reasonable statements.