Polyaenus (<i>Strat.</i> 8.23.5) and Caesar's British Elephant

Abstract Polyaenus ( Strat . 8.23.5) includes an armoured elephant in his description of Julius Caesar crossing a defended ford in Britain (54 b.c. ) – something found nowhere in Caesar's own Bellum Gallicum . From looking at a range of loci in the Strategica dealing with Caesar's military exploits in Celtic lands, it becomes clear that, instead of being the remnant of a now-lost source tradition, Polyaenus either based the elephant vignette on an underlying narrative structure provided by the Bellum Gallicum , or a source using this work very closely. Given the overall unlikelihood of Caesar taking an elephant to Britain, Polyaenus probably inserted an elephant for rhetorical and/or didactic purposes and was perhaps influenced by Caesar's own non-literary propaganda involving elephants.