Meeting Hannibal’s elephants at the Philly Zoo

My object is the statue of elephants at the entrance to the Philly Zoo. I believe it was created in 1946, and while I do not know for sure that the artist explicitly made the state in honor of the 2,164 year anniversary of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, I have no doubt that it played a subliminal part in the artistic choice. The material seemed to be made out of Norwegian granite (far inferior to Roman marble) and the internet states that it was sculpted by Carol Highsmith. Originally, I planned to go to the zoo to take a picture with a vulture as they played crucial role in Roman mythos and have an extensive history with Rome. However, there is apparently a raging avian flu pandemic occurring at the moment and all the birds either died or were caged up inside. I immediately thought that this was analogous to the Gallic sack of Rome of 390 BC, only far more devastating in scale for me personally. The zookeepers who saved the birds by moving them inside should be thought of as similar to the Geese who saved the Romans on top of the Capitoline.

I would have preferred to take a picture with live animals, and there were some very cute otters, but I do not know how important they were in Roman history/culture. Additionally, there were no she-wolves there (of either interpretation), thus I was left with no choice but the Norwegian elephant. I believe Rome had its first experience with elephants after conceding a Pyrrhic victory vs Pyrrhus who in turn had them by virtue of Alexander’s interactions with India a 1/2 century earlier. The Romans were (understandably) freaked out the first time they face them in battle, but it appears that they soon got a hang of anti-elephant tactics and were able to withstand elephant charges later. Also, famously Hannibal brought elephants with him over the Alps in his 2nd Punic War with Rome, but evidently as in the case of the tortoise and the hare, they were no match for the slow, boring tactics of Fabius. After this, it seems they played a larger role in Roman mythos and culture/history than in real battles. Elephants reveal the most important Roman cultural ideal: hatred of all things Greek. Rome liked to suggest that they were above using elephants as this was a “Greek thing”, but they still did it sometimes.