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This event was recorded by military writers Polyaenus and Aelian. The elephants, naturally, ran helter-skelter, trampling a great number of their own soldiers to an icky demise. The Megarian locals doused pigs with a combustible pitch, either crude oil or resin, set them on fire, and drove them towards the enemy’s war elephants. Incendiary pigs, or flaming pigs, were used to counter a nearly lost battle in Megara by Antigonus II Gonatas in 266 BC. The Romans were not alone in using pigs as weapons of war. ( Анна Богатырева / Adobe Stock) The Flaming Pigs of Megara: Incendiary War Weapon Louis XI Enjoyed an Abominable Orchestra of Squealing Pigs - the Piganinoįlaming razorback pig.War Elephants: The Military ‘Tanks’ of the Ancient World.This forced the Byzantines, the inheritors of the Roman legacy, to change their tactics, which they learned the hard way in their numerous battles with the Abbasids and the Umaiyadds. Elephants were trained to not fear the pig’s squeal and engage in combat comfortably, by rearing elephants with baby pigs. Over time, enemy forces learned to counter this tactic. As the pig was hanging there, he naturally squealed, and this so irritated the elephant that it, stepping back little by little, withdrew.” “But the Romans,” wrote Procopius, “by dangling a pig from the tower, escaped the peril. It reached a stage where Khusrau’s forces had entered the town area. Khusrau I, King of Persia, had besieged Edessa and overwhelmed the Roman forces there. The late antiquity historian Procopius was the one who chronicled the usage of pigs by the Byzantine or Eastern Roman armies. Over time, elephants were trained to resist the squeal of the pig, notably after the Wars of Justinian, and in particular the siege of the Mesopotamian city of Edessa in 544 AD. According to the Pseudo-Callisthenes or ‘A History of Alexander’, Alexander had first learned about the pig as a secret weapon against elephants from Porus. The strategy was hoping that the pigs would run uncontrollably into the ranks of the enemy, causing confusion and pandemonium. The Romans exploited squealing pigs as a counter-measure against the war elephants of Pyrrhus. The Mûmakil Elephant Slayers Of The Ancient WorldĬarthaginian war elephant.Dogs of War: Ancient History of Animals in Warfare.It was by these means, they say, that the Romans put to flight the elephants of Pyrrhus of Epirus, and that the Romans won a glorious victory.” “The elephant has a terror of a horned ram and of the squealing of a pig. This was supported by Roman author and instructor of rhetoric, Aelian, who wrote that the Romans were using these strategies as early as 275 BC in the Battle of Beneventum. It was alleged that just a mere squeak would cause the elephants to retreat. Some histories said that the Roman legions would exploit the power of the squeal, by letting the pigs either run loose among the elephants, or hanging them from walls of retreating enemy buildings.
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Pigs appeared in written sources as tools of combat around 240 BC. War pigs were famously utilized by the ancient Romans to counter elephants, including setting them on fire! Romans and Pigs: A Tactical Maneuverĭespite their massive size and power, Pliny the Elder said of the animals that never forget: “ elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of the hog”. Pigeons, dogs, horses, bears, camels, and even bees have been used in combat, in many cruel and unthinkable ways. While dogs and cattle became effective elements in the immediate domestic territory, elephants were one of the first animals to be trained and guided by humans for combat, called elephantry. Throughout human history, animals have been effectively domesticated and used as an extension of the territorial desires of human beings.