The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 114: CHAP. 11. (11.)—IN WHAT COUNTRIES THE ELEPHANT IS FOUND; THE ANTIPATHY OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE DRAGON.

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About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 11. (11.)—IN WHAT COUNTRIES THE ELEPHANT IS FOUND; THE ANTIPATHY OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE DRAGON.

Africa produces elephants, beyond the deserts of the Syrtes, and in Mauritania; they are found also in the countries of the Æthiopians and the Troglodytæ, as mentioned above.1640 But it is India that produces the largest,1641 as well as the dragon,1642 which is perpetually at war with the elephant, and is itself of so enormous a size, as easily to envelope the elephants with its folds, and encircle them in its coils. The contest is equally fatal to both; the elephant, vanquished, falls to the earth, and by its weight, crushes the dragon which is entwined around it.1643