All elephants were not created equal, smaller ones panicking at the sight of larger elephants. This was the situation at the Battle of Rhaphia, where, according to Polybius, Ptolemy had a contingent of smaller Libyan elephants run away from a group of much larger Indian elephants. The elephants used by Ptolemy would most likely have been the extinct African Forest Elephants, which stood 2.35 meters tall. The average Indian elephant stood 3 meters tall. Therefore, due to fear, most of the Libyan elephants became uncontrollable and ran away.

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When fighting against infantry trained to withstand elephant charges, elephants could become disoriented and enraged when light infantry pelted them with darts and javelins. If this did not break the charge, other infantry would close with the beasts and cut their hamstring tendons. Enraged elephants had a tendency to charge their own infantry formations, forcing the mahout to kill the animal with a spike through its neck. Therefore, the most useful deployment of elephants in battle for shock tactics was against cavalry and infantry not trained to fight them; otherwise the tank of the ancient world became ineffective in even a danger to friendly troops.

The Role of Fear
There are multiple ways to make an army’s morale drop. When the ancient Greeks and Romans looked to create an example for psychological impact, they sought to instill fear in the hearts of enemy troops. When the newly crowned Macedonian king, Alexander, took the throne, he was immediately rejected by the Greek city-states, who rebelled against the Macedonian’s rule. Knowing the he had to display dominance and power, the young king decided to break the spirit of the rebelling city-states. In 335 B.C.E., he began to march his army into Greece, stopping at the city of Thebes, a main instigator of the mass rebellion. Alexander gave the Thebans a chance to surrender their leaders, an apparently benevolent tactic meant to show Alexander wanted to avoid conflict. However, the Thebans refused. In response to the Thebans’ rejection of his offer, Alexander marched on the city, broke down the gates, burned, pillaged, and slaughtered six thousand men, women, and children, selling thirty thousand more into slavery. In doing this, Alexander hoped that Thebes would serve as an object lesson that would terrify the rest of Greece into obedience. It worked. The rest of Greece ceased to rebel. According to the writings of Sun Tzu, this was an excellent form of psychological leadership displayed by Alexander. In the practical art of war, it is much better to take the enemy’s country whole and intact, than to shatter and destroy it and rule over the ashes.

We find the same tactic used in Roman times. The Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio exhibited the Roman practice of terror in 210 B.C.E. against the city of New Carthage during the Second Punic War. Just as Alexander had given Thebes a chance to surrender, so too did Scipio give the Carthaginian city, which gave to Scipio the same response Thebes had given Alexander. After a brilliantly conducted siege of the city, the small Carthaginian force which had survived took to the defense in the city’s center. Knowing that he would lose many men trying to take the center, Scipio relied on the old Roman tactic of slaying every living being, human and animal, male and female, adult and child, in the hopes that the will of the small defense force would break. In this thought, Scipio was correct, as the Carthaginian commander, Mago (not Hannibal’s brother), gave the order to surrender in hopes of sparing the remaining population. With this act of terror, Scipio saved the lives of his men, and gained the respect of Spanish tribes by allowing his Spanish prisoners, who fought with Carthage’s army, to go free. Here we can see that two of the ancient world’s greatest commanders were not above using the psychological shock tactic of fear and terror to subdue their enemies.

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