Surus (elephant)

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Elephants at Hannibal's crossing of the Alps
( Heinrich Leutemann )

Surus ("the Syrian") is a war elephant of the army of the Carthaginian general Hannibal in Italy .

supporting documents

Coin of Hannibal
( reverse and obverse )

Several Roman writers report Surus, who was likely a large Asian elephant with a tusk . He was considered the last of Hannibal's war elephants.

Although a Carthaginian coin represents an African elephant in Hannibal's time , historians believe that Surus was an Indian elephant descended from those captured by the Ptolemies in their campaigns in Syria . According to some reports, the animal was the last of 37 war elephants that Hannibal found on his 218 BC. Chr. Were made across the Alps during the Second Punic War took. All the others did not survive the harsh Central European winter.

Appearance

According to Plautus , Surus wore a red cloth and possibly also a red shield and a howdah (a construction on the back of the animal) that served as a platform for Hannibal.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jakob Seibert: Research on Hannibal . Ed .: Scientific Book Society . Darmstadt 1993, ISBN 978-3-534-12091-8 , pp. 220 .
  2. ↑ a b Ursula Händl-Sagawe: The beginning of the 2nd Punic War: a historical-critical commentary on Livius Book 21 . Ed .: Editio Maris. Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-925801-15-0 .
  3. ↑ Christoph Drösser: Right ?: Did Hannibal really cross the Alps with war elephants? In: The time . February 14, 2013, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 20, 2019]).