30. King Theodahad to Honorius, Praefect of the City.

The elephants in the Via Sacra.

'We regret to learn from your report that the brazen elephants placed in the Via Sacra[695] (so called from the many superstitions to which it was consecrated of old) are falling into ruins.

'This is to be much regretted, that whereas these animals live in the flesh more than a thousand years, their brazen effigies should be so soon crumbling away. See therefore that their gaping limbs be strengthened by iron hooks, and that their drooping bellies be fortified by masonry placed underneath them.

Natural history of the elephant.

'The living elephant, when it is prostrate on the ground, as it often is when helping men to fell trees, cannot get up again unaided. This is because it has no joints in its feet; and accordingly you see numbers of them lying as if dead till men come to help them up again. Thus this creature, so terrible by its size, is really not equally endowed by Nature with the tiny ant.

'That the elephant surpasses all other animals in intelligence is proved by the adoration which it renders to Him whom it understands to be the Almighty Ruler of all. Moreover it pays to good princes a homage which it refuses to tyrants.

'It uses its proboscis[696], that nosëd hand which Nature has given it to compensate for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, mindful of that fatal fall [into the hunter's pit] which was the beginning of its captivity. At its master's bidding it exhales its breath, which is said to be a remedy for the human headache.

'When it comes to water it sucks up in its trunk a vast quantity, which at the word of command it squirts forth like a shower. If anyone have treated it with contempt, it pours forth such a stream of dirty water over him that one would think a river had entered his house. For this beast has a wonderfully long memory, both of injury and of kindness. Its eyes are small, but move solemnly. There is a sort of kingly dignity in its appearance, and while it recognises with pleasure all that is honourable, it seems to despise scurrilous jests. Its skin is furrowed by deep channels, like that of the victims of the foreign disease named after it[697], elephantiasis. It is on account of the impenetrability of this hide that the Persian Kings used the elephant in war.

'It is most desirable that we should preserve the images of these creatures, and that our citizens should thus be familiarised with the sight of the denizens of foreign lands. Do not therefore permit them to perish, since it is for the glory of Rome to collect all specimens of the process by which the art of workmen hath imitated the productions of wealthy Nature in all parts of the world.'

[This letter traverses the same ground as Pliny's 'Historia Naturalis' viii. 1-11, but supplies some new facts. Pliny makes the elephant live to the age of 200 or even 300 years. Cassiodorus boldly says 'more than a thousand.' The curious story of the elephant's religion is given with more detail by Pliny; but he knows nothing of the political sagacity which enables it to discern between a good king and a tyrant. Pliny mentions the fact that the elephant's breath is a cure for headache, but adds, 'especially if he sneeze[698].'

Upon the whole, though Cassiodorus had probably read Pliny's description, his own must be pronounced original.

This marvellous letter is the last that we have, written in the name of Theodahad.]