In 218 BCE, Hannibal advanced towards Italy with thirty-seven elephants in his army. His men had already crossed the Pyrenees when they reached the Rhône, where hostile Gallic fighters guarded the opposite bank. The Alps still lay ahead. Getting infantry and horses through those mountains would be difficult; moving elephants required suitable paths, food and water, and time to negotiate obstacles that would scarcely slow a soldier on foot. An animal lost on the march was not easily replaced.
Hannibal intended to fight Rome in Italy, and elephants had been part of Carthaginian warfare for decades. They might frighten enemy horses, break infantry formations and demonstrate the strength of the army before a battle started. Their record in Hannibal’s campaigns, however, was mixed. At the Trebia they helped win a battle, but almost all the animals from the original expedition died soon afterwards. At Zama sixteen years later, a different Carthaginian elephant force panicked and harmed its own allies.
Most of what we know comes from Greek and Roman authors rather than Carthaginian handlers. Their accounts explain how the elephants crossed rivers, where they were placed during battle and what happened when they lost control. The animals’ ancestry and training are far less clear. Coin imagery and a recently reported elephant bone add evidence independent of those accounts. They also show how much remains unknown about the elephants themselves, even where the movements of Hannibal’s army are well recorded.
How Carthage came to fight with elephants
Elephants were used in warfare in the Mediterranean world well before Hannibal’s lifetime. Alexander the Great encountered Indian war elephants at the Hydaspes in 326 BCE. Later Hellenistic rulers kept elephant units to threaten enemy troops, protect the sides of their armies and display royal wealth. The Romans first faced elephants in Italy when Pyrrhus of Epirus brought them in 280 BCE. They saw how disruptive the animals could be, but they also began learning how infantry formations and missiles could resist them.
Carthage developed its elephant forces within this wider military tradition, drawing principally on African animals. During the First Punic War against Rome, from 264 to 241 BCE, elephants became an important part of Carthaginian armies. At the battle near Tunis in 255 BCE, the Spartan officer Xanthippus helped reorganize the army and chose open ground where cavalry and elephants could operate together. In Polybius’ account of the battle (1.32–34), the elephants struck the Roman infantry while cavalry attacked the exposed flanks. The Roman commander Marcus Atilius Regulus was captured. Terrain and coordination mattered as much as the elephants themselves.
The Romans adapted. At Panormus in Sicily in 250 BCE, Lucius Caecilius Metellus positioned his defenders to use missile troops against the approaching Carthaginian force. Polybius (1.40) says its elephants fell into disorder, turned back and were partly captured. Rome had begun learning how to blunt elephant attacks long before Hannibal appeared in Italy. Scipio’s tactics at Zama drew on experience accumulated over years of fighting rather than an entirely new answer to an unfamiliar weapon.
After losing Sicily in the First Punic War, Carthage established a new military base in Iberia. Hannibal’s father Hamilcar Barca led campaigns there, followed by Hasdrubal and later Hannibal. Elephants also appeared on the coinage of these armies. A silver double shekel in the British Museum, struck in Punic-controlled Spain around 237–209 BCE, depicts an elephant carrying a cloaked rider with a goad. It shows that the animal was pictured as controlled and ridden. It cannot tell us which species served Hannibal, how one animal was trained or whether the coin commemorated any particular campaign.
Archaeologists have also identified a physical trace of an elephant in Punic-era Iberia. A February 2026 study reported a right forefoot carpal bone from Colina de los Quemados at Córdoba. The settlement also yielded artillery shot and other finds suggesting military activity. The bone came from a sealed later Iron Age context and was dated broadly to the centuries around the Second Punic War. Its presence makes a military association plausible. It does not identify the animal as one of Hannibal’s thirty-seven, establish which army possessed it or distinguish an African elephant from an Asian one.
What kind of elephants did Hannibal use?
Most discussions connect Carthage’s elephants with North African populations that no longer survive in their former range. Some ancient descriptions and coins suggest that at least some animals were smaller than today’s largest elephants. Their biological identity is nevertheless unsettled. The label Loxodonta africana pharaohensis is sometimes used for a proposed North African subspecies, but it is not a genetic identification of Hannibal’s herd. No authenticated DNA from the animals that crossed the Alps can establish whether they resembled modern forest elephants, savanna elephants or a more complex regional population.
Living African elephants belong to two distinct species, the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). Genetic research identifies them as distinct species. That does not allow scholars to assign a stylized Carthaginian coin image to either species, still less to calculate an animal’s shoulder height from it. Michael Charles’ work on ancient African elephant habitats and representations explains the problems with using artistic representations and assumptions about later habitats to identify elephants from ancient battles.
The Battle of Raphia in 217 BCE offers an often cited comparison. Ptolemy IV of Egypt fought Antiochus III, ruler of the Seleucid kingdom. According to Polybius 5.84–85, many of Ptolemy’s African elephants recoiled when confronted by Antiochus’s Indian elephants, which he considered larger and more fearsome. He was describing a particular encounter, not establishing a rule that all African elephants were smaller or poorer battlefield animals. Nor were Ptolemy’s elephants the same herd as Hannibal’s. A genetic analysis published in the Journal of Heredity identified a modern Eritrean population as savanna elephants rather than forest elephants. Those results complicate old assumptions without telling us the ancestry of animals captured over two millennia ago.
Species matters because an animal’s size, strength and temperament could affect its responses to cavalry, infantry and other elephants. Training and individual experience mattered too. Ancient battle narratives rarely identify a particular elephant, give its age or tell us how long it had been under human control. Claims that Hannibal’s force consisted entirely of one precisely defined extinct subspecies go further than the surviving evidence allows.
Catching, handling and feeding a war elephant
A war elephant could not be marched or deployed without people who knew how to handle it. The chief handler, often called a mahout, directed the animal from close range. On the Carthaginian coin, a rider holds a goad; Polybius also describes handlers bringing Hannibal’s elephants onto rafts behind two females at the Rhône. Leading the other elephants behind two females suggests that the handlers understood how the animals responded to one another. The coin separately shows an elephant being ridden and directed, but neither source explains a complete training method.
We do not know the sequence of commands, rewards, restraints and exercises used to prepare Hannibal’s animals. Indian and other later handling traditions can suggest possibilities, but they cannot simply be transferred to Carthage in the third century BCE. Elephants likely had to become accustomed to people, noise and the presence of other animals, yet no source establishes a standard multiyear training course or particular set of drills. An animal that obeyed on the road might still panic after being wounded or surrounded by the sound of combat.
Feeding the elephants was a problem every day of the march. Each consumed large amounts of vegetation and needed regular water. Modern feeding figures give only an approximation, since the size and habits of the North African animals are uncertain. Even relatively modest estimates imply several tonnes of plant food a day for thirty-seven elephants. Horses and pack animals also required fodder, and soldiers needed their own provisions. Supplies might be gathered in cooperative agricultural districts; hostile terrain and cold valleys made that much harder.
Where Carthage caught its elephants is much less securely recorded than how Hellenistic rulers used them. North African populations offered a possible source. Elsewhere, Ptolemaic Egypt organized hunts in the Red Sea region, while the Nubian kingdom of Meroë represented elephants in its art. The Great Enclosure at Musawwarat es-Sufra has prompted suggestions that elephants were kept or trained there. A study of Meroitic trade and cultural contacts discusses that possibility alongside ceremonial interpretations. A later examination of elephant statuettes in the Nubia Museum warns that images alone cannot establish a Meroitic military elephant industry. Neither line of evidence proves that Musawwarat supplied Hannibal or that elephants travelled along a specific route from Sudan to Iberia.
Images of elephant equipment raise another problem. Polybius describes fighting towers mounted on elephants at Raphia, so the equipment certainly existed in some Hellenistic armies. The British Museum’s Carthaginian coin, however, shows a rider without a tower. Michael Charles in his study of African elephants and turrets discusses the disputed evidence for mounting turrets on smaller African elephants. Equipment could differ by army, campaign and animal. The surviving accounts do not justify imagining all thirty-seven of Hannibal’s elephants carrying heavy fighting platforms across the Alps.
Why Hannibal took thirty-seven elephants towards Italy
Hannibal became commander in Iberia in 221 BCE. His siege and capture of Saguntum, a city connected with Rome, in 219 BCE helped bring on renewed war between Carthage and Rome. Roman leaders expected campaigns in Iberia and Africa. Instead, Hannibal marched towards Italy by land, intending to attack Roman armies at home, win over communities that resented Roman dominance and weaken the Italian alliance network on which Rome depended for soldiers.
Elephants might help Hannibal intimidate opponents before a battle began. Their arrival demonstrated Carthage’s ability to move powerful military resources over a great distance. Against troops unfamiliar with them, the animals could frighten horses or disrupt infantry, and their presence might impress communities Hannibal hoped to persuade. But they demanded food and water and could slow a column whose strategy depended on movement. Hannibal accepted those costs in the expectation that the animals would be useful once he reached the Roman heartland.
Polybius (3.42) records thirty-seven elephants when Hannibal arrived at the Rhône in 218 BCE. The figure refers to that stage of the campaign and should not be treated as a headcount for every later engagement. Hannibal had already left men behind in Iberia and faced resistance as the army advanced. Infantry, cavalry, guides, camp followers, wagons and pack animals all had to reach Italy together. Moving the elephants was therefore part of the supply and transport problem facing the whole force.
The Rhône crossing and the earth-covered rafts
The Rhône crossing was dangerous even before the elephants reached the bank. Gallic fighters opposed Hannibal, and a Roman force under Publius Cornelius Scipio was near the river’s mouth. Hannibal sent some troops upstream, where they crossed and attacked the defenders from behind. His main force then crossed with the help of boats. Polybius (3.42–45) describes horses swimming behind vessels and a smoke signal used to coordinate the assault. The elephants could follow once most of the army had crossed.
According to Polybius 3.46, the engineers tied large rafts together and laid earth on top, extending what looked like the riverbank out onto the water. Two female elephants moved onto the rafts first, drawing the others after them. At the end of the floating platform, detachable rafts could be towed across the Rhône with groups of animals aboard. Polybius adds that some elephants became frightened and leapt into the river. Their handlers drowned, but the elephants reached the far bank by keeping their trunks raised above the water.
Polybius gives substantial detail, though he did not leave an engineering plan. Roger Fischer’s study of Polybius 3.46 examines difficulties in reconstructing the arrangement, and Livy (21.28) records other explanations of the crossing. Elephants can swim, but their physical ability to do so does not show that they would willingly enter a broad river on command with a military timetable to meet. Polybius himself says some entered the water. Neither the claim that every animal swam freely nor the assumption that every element of his raft description is exact can be established.
Hannibal brought his elephants to the eastern bank and continued towards the Alps before the Roman forces near the Rhône could block his advance. Reaching the far side of a river, however, had required elaborate arrangements. The mountain tracks ahead would make the animals a challenge for the army again.
The Alpine march and what survived it
Hannibal entered the Alps in the autumn of 218 BCE. Polybius gives fifteen days for the passage through the mountains, following the longer advance from New Carthage in Iberia. Local opponents attacked the column, narrow tracks endangered both men and animals, and supplies became scarce. Polybius says he investigated the route and visited the country, which makes his testimony unusually valuable. Scholars still disagree about which modern Alpine pass best fits the description.
During the descent, the army encountered a damaged path blocked by snow and dangerous ground. Polybius (3.54–55) says Hannibal ordered it repaired beside a precipice. A day of work allowed horses and pack animals to get through. Moving the elephants required another three days of labour by Numidian soldiers, and the animals were suffering from hunger by the time they crossed. The army had to stop and make the route usable for animals larger and less manoeuvrable than its other transport. Their size determined how quickly the column could descend.
Livy (21.37) adds the famous story that the soldiers heated rock and poured vinegar onto it. Polybius does not mention this method, and it has not been verified as Hannibal’s engineering practice. The mountain pass remains disputed, with Col du Clapier, Col de la Traversette and other routes still proposed. In July 2026, Emilio Berti and Fritz Vollrath published an energy-cost model in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comparing the energy demands of different crossings. Their calculations favour Traversette, but the model depends on biological and landscape assumptions. It cannot establish what route Hannibal actually chose while balancing weather, local politics and security.
Polybius (3.56) gives Hannibal roughly 20,000 infantry and at most 6,000 cavalry on arrival in the Po plain, citing an inscription Hannibal later erected as support. He does not state exactly how many elephants reached Italy. Some certainly did, because they fought at the Trebia. The evidence establishes neither that the Alps killed nearly all thirty-seven nor that every animal survived the crossing. The best-attested catastrophic losses occurred after the army had already entered northern Italy.
What the elephants did at the Trebia
Hannibal fought and won at the Ticinus and the Trebia in northern Italy in 218 BCE. Before the Trebia battle, the Roman consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus advanced after a clash with Numidian cavalry. Hannibal had arranged for the Romans to cross the cold river and meet his army in difficult conditions. He also hid a force commanded by his brother Mago, ready to attack the Roman rear once the main fighting began.
Hannibal stationed elephants near the wings of his army. Polybius (3.72–74) describes them operating alongside cavalry, whose pressure on the Roman flanks was severe. The elephants inflicted casualties on men who could not get away. Mago’s ambush and the cold conditions added to the Roman losses. The elephants contributed to Hannibal’s victory alongside the cavalry, Mago’s ambush and the difficult conditions of the Roman advance. Polybius does not credit the victory to the elephants alone.
The elephants paid heavily for the campaign after that success. Polybius (3.74) reports that rain and snow killed all but one, together with many men and horses. Livy (21.58) gives a different detail, saying seven elephants died in the severe weather after the battle. We cannot combine these reports into a reliable daily tally of losses. Both show how exposure and campaigning conditions could wipe out valuable animals even after they had survived the Alpine crossing and fought successfully.
That explains why elephants disappear from accounts of the celebrated victories Hannibal won next. At Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE, he ambushed a Roman army. At Cannae in 216 BCE, his cavalry and infantry surrounded a much larger Roman force. These were not victories won by charging great herds of elephants into Roman lines. Their outcome depended on the manoeuvres of Hannibal’s remaining troops, the decisions of Roman commanders and an army that had endured extraordinary losses during its march.
Surus, Hannibal's famous surviving elephant
Later tradition preserves a name for one of Hannibal’s elephants: Surus. It is often interpreted as ‘the Syrian’, which has encouraged claims that the animal came from the eastern Mediterranean or belonged to an Asian species. A name alone cannot establish any of those things. The evidence consists largely of scattered ancient references and later interpretations. H. H. Scullard’s study of Ennius, Cato and Surus explains why the scattered references cannot be assembled into a secure account of Surus’s life.
In the spring of 217 BCE, Hannibal passed through flooded marshes in Etruria, a journey during which he lost sight in one eye. Polybius (3.79) and Livy (22.2) describe him riding the one elephant still alive. Livy does not call it Surus in that passage. Identifying the mount with the named elephant is a reasonable traditional suggestion, but it is an inference, not a name recorded by Livy as he describes the crossing.
Stories about Surus have acquired other details: unusual size, a damaged tusk, elaborate clothing and a particular homeland. Some may reflect old literary material, but others cannot be securely connected with this one animal. There is no proof he survived because his training was exceptional, that he belonged to a Syrian subspecies or that his portrait appears on an identifiable coin. The ancient accounts describe Hannibal crossing the marshes on a single surviving elephant after his first Italian winter had cost him almost his entire original contingent.
Zama: a different elephant army meets a prepared Roman force
The elephants Hannibal deployed at Zama in 202 BCE were a different force from the thirty-seven that had crossed the Rhône sixteen years earlier. Scipio had taken the war into Africa, and Hannibal was recalled from Italy to defend Carthage. His new army combined veterans from Italy with other Carthaginian troops and elephants gathered for the African campaign. Polybius (15.11) says he placed more than eighty in front of his line, while Livy gives the rounded number of eighty. Neither writer traces the origins or training of each animal.
Scipio prepared his infantry to reduce the danger of an elephant charge. According to Polybius 15.9, he aligned gaps between the maniples, the Roman tactical units in his front line, with openings in the ranks behind them. The velites, light-armed soldiers who usually screened the heavy infantry, stood in those intervals and could withdraw down the gaps or step to one side as an animal approached. This created routes through the Roman formation instead of confronting every charging elephant with an unbroken mass of soldiers.
Hannibal’s handlers sent the animals forward as trumpets and horns sounded. Polybius (15.12) says some elephants panicked immediately and ran into Carthaginian-allied Numidian horsemen. Others fought the Roman velites, both injuring and being injured, before passing along the gaps or being repelled by missiles. The Romans did not simply lead them through without harm. Scipio’s arrangements limited the impact on his main infantry, while the opening of the battle still caused casualties and disorder.
The confusion along Hannibal’s wings helped the Roman cavalry. Masinissa’s Numidian horsemen attacked on one side, while Gaius Laelius commanded cavalry on the other. Later, the Roman mounted troops returned to strike the Carthaginian infantry from behind, helping decide the battle. The elephant attack contributed to Carthage’s early problems, but the result also depended on infantry, cavalry and the larger campaign in Africa. The full sequence is covered in the Spoken Past history of the Battle of Zama.
Later explanations sometimes assume the elephants panicked because they had received hurried training. That is possible, but the sources do not supply the animals’ individual histories. Defeat at Zama is poor evidence for the claim that war elephants were inherently ineffective. Their performance depended on handlers, terrain, opponents and the support available from other troops. Carthaginian armies had already won with elephants and lost with them. Hannibal himself had also won his greatest Italian battles without a continuing elephant corps.
The limits of an ancient battlefield weapon
Elephants remained military animals after the defeat at Zama. They served in other Mediterranean and Asian armies, and Roman commanders sometimes used those provided by allies or taken from enemies. Against inexperienced troops or horses they could be frightening, and they could defend flanks or display a ruler’s resources. Their power came with a risk that was never eliminated: wounded or frightened animals could turn into their own formations, particularly if their handlers lost control.
Livy describes one harsh response to that danger during the Battle of the Metaurus in 207 BCE. Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal had brought another army with elephants into Italy. In Livy 27.49, drivers killed animals they could no longer control using a chisel and mallet, and Livy credits Hasdrubal with introducing the method. This does not prove that the handlers of Hannibal’s original thirty-seven carried the same equipment in 218 BCE. For Livy, the episode illustrates the threat that an uncontrolled elephant posed to its own army.
The North African elephant populations on which Carthage probably drew eventually disappeared from their former habitats. Hunting, environmental change and demand from states may all have played a part. There is no secure single extinction date, and the disappearance cannot be attributed simply to Hannibal’s wars. Their exact ancestry also remains disputed. Ancient writers, Punic coins and a small archaeological record show us animals that needed skilled handlers, extensive supplies and conditions in which their strength could be used. Hannibal’s campaigns from the Rhône to Zama also show how fear and exhaustion could overcome the advantage an elephant offered in battle.
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