12
Well, not very long ago at Rome, Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 6, which shows that Plutarch is drawing on literature, not personal observation; Cf. also Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 11, for the elaborateness of the manoeuvres; Philostratus, Vita Apoll. ii. 13; Philo, 54 (p. 126); see also 992 b infra. where a large number of elephants were being trained to assume dangerous stances and wheel about in complicated patterns, one of them, who was the slowest to learn and was always being scolded and often punished, was seen at night, alone by himself in the moonlight, voluntarily rehearsing his lessons and practising them.
12
Formerly in Syria, HagnonOf Tarsus, pupil of Carneades. tells us, an elephant was brought up in its master’s house and every day the keeper, when he received a measure of barley, would filch away and appropriate half of it; but on one occasion, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure. The elephant gave a look, raised its trunk, and made two piles of the barley, setting aside half of it and thus revealing as eloquently as could be the dishonesty of its keeper. And another elephant, whose keeper used to mix stones and dirt in its barley ration, when the keeper’s meat was cooking, scooped up some ashes and threw them into the pot. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 52. And another in Rome, being tormented by little boys who pricked its proboscis with their writing styluses, grabbed one of them and raised him into the air as if to dash him to death; but when the spectators cried out, it gently set the child down on the ground again and passed along, thinking it sufficient punishment for one so young to have been frightened.
