Surus was believed to be the last

war elephant A war elephant was an elephant that was trained and guided by humans for combat. The war elephant's main use was to charge the enemy, break their ranks and instill terror and fear. Elephantry is a term for specific military units using elephant ...

Carthaginian The term Carthaginian ( la, Carthaginiensis ) usually refers to a citizen of Ancient Carthage. It can also refer to: * Carthaginian (ship), a three-masted schooner built in 1921 * Insurgent privateers; nineteenth-century South American privateers, ...

general

Hannibal Hannibal (; xpu, 𐤇𐤍𐤁𐤏𐤋, ''Ḥannibaʿl''; 247 – between 183 and 181 BC) was a Carthaginian general and statesman who commanded the forces of Carthage in their battle against the Roman Republic during the Second Puni ...

's army in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

History

Several

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

writers give accounts of Surus, a large elephant with a

tusk Tusks are elongated, continuously growing front teeth that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain mammal species. They are most commonly canine teeth, as with pigs and walruses, or, in the case of elephants, elongated incisors. Tusks share c ...

broken. According to

Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the gen ...

, Surus wore a red cloth, and may also have carried a red shield and a

howdah A howdah, or houdah (Hindi: हौदा ''haudā''), derived from the Arabic (hawdaj), which means "bed carried by a camel", also known as ''hathi howdah'' (''hāthī haudā'', हाथी हौदा), is a carriage which is positioned o ...

(a construction on the animal's back), which served as a platform for Hannibal, who had difficulties overlooking the battlefield after losing one eye from an infection. According to some accounts, the animal was the last of the 37 war elephants Hannibal took with him on his 218 BC crossing of the Alps, during the

Second Punic War The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Ital ...

. Although a Carthaginian coin struck in the time of Hannibal depicts a

North African elephant The North African elephant (''Loxodonta africana pharaohensis'') is an extinct possible subspecies of the African bush elephant (''Loxodonta africana''), or possibly a separate elephant species, that existed in North Africa, north of the Sahar ...

, historians believe Surus was a Western Asiatic or

Syrian elephant The Syrian elephant or Western Asiatic elephant (''Elephas maximus asurus'') was the westernmost population of the Asian elephant (''Elephas maximus''), which became extinct in ancient times. Skeletal remains of ''E. m. asurus'' have been record ...

descended from those seized by the Ptolemies of Egypt in the

Syrian Wars The Syrian Wars were a series of six wars between the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, successor states to Alexander the Great's empire, during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC over the region then called Coele-Syria, one of th ...

, as its name, "Surus", would translate as "The Syrian". However, others have proposed it was a North African elephant like the rest of animals used by Carthage, interpreting the name as a nickname Romans would have given it for its broken tusk (''surus'' or '' sudus'' being the name for a stake used in fortifications).Ido Yahalom, ''The Carthaginian Elephants and their Handlers: Only African Forest Elephants and Local Personnel'', 2018, Folia Phoenicia

History

See also

References

Further reading