Hi there. You're listening to The Hellenistic Age podcast.

Episode 31, The Age of Giants, Elephants in the Hellenistic world. Within pop culture, there seems to be a number of set archetypes when it come to the depiction of the ancient world, whether in film, literature, video games.

You have the stock standard ones, like leather wristbands, sandals, and buildings of white

marble stone as far as the eye can see.

However, certain aspects over others seem to capture our imagination and add a sense of

exoticism about the period.

What I am talking about is none other than the war elephant, giant beasts

with great towers and their drivers, lumbering around the battlefield and smashing any poor

soldier, typically Roman ones, in their way. The elephant was introduced as a weapon of war to the Greeks

and Macedonians during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and the birth of the Hellenistic age saw them turn into a weapon of war to the Greeks and Macedonians during the campaigns of Alexander the Great,

and the birth of the Hellenistic Age saw them turn into a sort of Wunderfaffen, a wonder weapon

to bolster the status of any Hellenistic ruler worth their salt. But to exclusively describe them

in a military context is too simple. These creatures became objects of immense fascination

to the Hellenistic and later Roman authors, thinkers and artists, and acted as symbols of power

and prestige to the monarchies who utilize them. What I plan to do with this episode is to analyze

all the various aspects of the elephant, ranging from their biology to their

depictions in art and coinage, and to ultimately figure out why the Hellenistic period was

an age of giants.

I think an excellent place to start would be a brief zoology lesson regarding elephants.

You'll have to forgive me for my indulgence, but my undergraduate

years spent studying biology were heavily focused on animals and biodiversity, so this topic is

right up my alley. The family elephantidae contains a number of species of what we know as

...