This is an online event.
Sponsored by: Archaeological Institute of America
Since the Roman poet Juvenal stated two thousand years ago that Hannibal would be eternally famous for bringing elephants over the Alps, history has proved him right: this seems the single most memorable fact history has recorded about Hannibal. What kind of elephants, how many and how they journeyed was not as recorded in detail, but this can be deduced as well from the writings of Polybius and Punic coins of the late third century BCE. It appears both African and Asian war elephants traveled with Hannibal’s army and this lecture details what facts we know about Hannibal’s elephants trained for Hellenistic warfare since Alexander the Great first encountered them in India a century earlier.
Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic:
Patrick Hunt. Hannibal (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
Patrick Hunt. “Hannibal’s Elephants” Electrum Magazine, November 2017
(http://www.electrummagazine.com/2017/11/hannibals-elephants/)
Patrick Hunt. “Elephants, African” in Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues, Salem Press, 2011, 431-33.
Patrick Hunt. “Jumbo Journey” Monocle (Alpino) 02 Winter 2010-11, 20.
La Follette Lecture
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