Abstract
The program of elephant hunting inaugurated by the Ptolemies has received mention in all histories of their reign and has been dealt with in more or less detail by a number of writers.1 Yet nowhere do we find full awareness of how great an achievement it was or of who deserves the chief credit. The honors, I will show, are to be awarded to Philadelphus: it was he who put in place the complex and farflung organization the program required, solved difficult problems of recruitment, and promoted an essential new development in naval technology.2 The Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 B.C., in which Porus' army with its two hundred war elephants revealed how effective these behemoths could be on the battlefield, convinced Alexander and his generals of the desirability of such a military arm. Alexander soon built up an elephant corps for his own forces (Scullard 73-76), and Seleucus Nicator and Ptolemy Soter, once established on the throne, sought to do the same (cf. Tam 94). There was at the time only one source of elephants, India. For Seleucus, whose realm stretched to India's border, importing the beasts presented no problem; for Soter off in Egypt it presented an insurmountable one.
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