10
Neither the Galatians themselves nor their horses had previously seen an elephant and they were so confused by the unexpected sight that, while the beasts were still a long way off and they could only hear the trumpet, ing and see their tusks gleaming all the more brightly against their bodies dark all over and their trunks raised like hooks, they turned and fled in a disorderly rout before they were within bowshot. Their infantry were impaled on each other’s spears and trampled underfoot as they were, by the cavalry, which came riding into them. The chariots too turned back against their own men and broke their ranks, not without bloodshed—in the words of Homer “the chariots clattered as they overturned.” Homer, Il. xvi, 379. Once the horses had veered from their straight course in their fear of the elephants, they threw off their drivers and the “empty chariots rattled on,” Homer, Il. xi, 160. actually tearing and cutting with their scythes any of their own men in their path. Many men were caught since there was utter confusion. The elephants followed, trampling on them, tossing them aloft in their trunks, snatching and piercing them with their tusks, and in the end these animals had presented Antiochus with an overwhelming victory.
11
The Galatians lost many killed in the great slaughter. The rest were taken prisoner, except for a very few who escaped to the mountains in time. Antiochus’s Macedonian contingent raised the Paean and gathering round him crowned him “king of glorious victory” with acclamation. Antiochus is said to have wept as he addressed his troops. “Men,” he said, “we owe our lives to these sixteen animals; so let us rather feel shame. For if the strangeness of what they saw had not thrown the enemy into confusion, what should we have been compared with them?” Then he ordered them to decorate the trophy with a carved elephant and nothing else.
12
It is time for me to consider whether my army is
