mercenaries, who stood within the elephants, near the phalanx, advanced with fury against the peltastæ, and routed them with little difficulty, because their ranks, likewise, were already broken by the elephants. Thus the whole left wing of the army of Ptolemy was defeated, and forced to fly.” One hundred and fifty years after this, a successor of Antiochus employed elephants in battles against the Jews; and nearly all the monarchs who succeeded Alexander employed them in war. They were used in Syria; and Seleucus Nicator valued them so highly, that, according to Strabo, he gave Sandrocottus an entire province on the Indus for five hundred of the animals. They were stabled at Apamea, in Syria; so that elephants commanded a high price, even in these early times. Two centuries later, when Syria and various Eastern countries became tributary to Rome, the war elephant fell into disuse; and one of the last references to it in Syria is found on a coin struck in honor of Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes Dionysius, who succeeded to the throne in the two hundred and twenty-fifth era of the Seleucidæ (87 B.C.). It represents an elephant bearing a torch, after the custom of Syrian monarchs; a horn of plenty being shown behind it. (See Plates XXI., XXII.) CHAPTER XXIV. WAR ELEPHANTS OF THE ROMANS AND CARTHAGINIANS. The war elephant was a feature of the armies of the Orient many years before it was known in Italy. We have seen that the huge animal was especially effective in spreading terror among the opposing hosts, from its gigantic size and peculiar form: and nations that had never heard of, nor seen, an elephant, were so demoralized at the sight, that they often fled without giving battle; their horses and other animals, equally alarmed, completing the rout and confusion. The Romans were no exception to this; and, with all their valor and courage, they quailed before the astonishing array of monsters—for so they considered them—that King Pyrrhus of Epirus brought upon the field in the reign of Heraclear (280 B.C.). His elephant detachment was a small one, being composed of twenty animals, which bore upon their backs tall wooden towers filled with armed bowmen. The Romans soon rallied, however; but their defeat, according to Floras, was directly due to the terror inspired by the elephants. When Fabricus went to Epirus to negotiate with Pyrrhus for an exchange of prisoners, the latter endeavored to bribe him, and then to frighten him, by producing one of the largest of his elephants. But the old Roman replied on leaving, “Neither your gold yesterday, nor your beast to-day, has made any impression upon me.”