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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 24718694, member: 128351&quot;]Elephants appeared on Greek coinage in the late 4th c. BC, on the famous large 5 shekels silver coins of Alexander, minted in Babylon c. 337 BC. Many other coins with elephants will be minted in the 3rd c. BC in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Kingdoms, at Carthage or Punic Sicily, even at Rome and in Etruria. All these 4th-3rd c. BC elephants were seen as symbols of military might, for elephants were frequently deployed on battlefields. </p><p>In the 2nd c. BC it became obvious that war elephants represented a disproportionate investment for very limited tactical benefits on the battlefield. A little like battleships in WW2. In the 1st c. BC and AD Rome continued to import elephants but only for the show, in imperial funerals or in the Circus or the Amphitheatre. These Vespasian or Antoninus Pius coins with elephants allude to exceptional shows. </p><p><br /></p><p>Let&#039;s now consider rhinos. Rhinos were extremely rare animals in the Mediterranean countries. It seems that Hellenistic Greek texts call them &quot;rhinoceros&quot; for African species, &quot;monoceros&quot; for the Indian species. Very few individuals, wild or tamed, were transported to the Mediterranean in classical Antiquity, so few that Kees Rookmaaker could make a list of them. The first one was an &quot;Aethiopic rhinoceros&quot; seen in Alexandria in 279 BC, in the Dionysiac parade of Ptolemy Philadelphus. According to Pliny the first one seen in Rome was in the games offered by Pompey the Great in 55 BC, but Cassius Dio writes that the first one seen in Rome was brought by Octavius in 29 BC. Cicero, who watched the Pompeian Games and wrote about them in his letters mentions elephants but no rhino: it&#039;s possible that Pliny was mistaken. Octavian&#039;s rhino came from Alexandria, probably from the royal menagerie. It was an Indian one horned rhino, probably tamed, that embarked to Corinth (where he was displayed to the public and seen by Strabo), then to Rome where he was displayed in the Saepta. In 8 AD another rhino (which species?) was opposed to an elephant at the games. The elephant won. </p><p><br /></p><p>The third rhinoceros seen in Rome was shown by Domitian in the Colosseum for the Capitoline Games of 86 or the Secular Games of 87. The poet Martial wrote two epigrams about him. He was an African two-horned rhino, and was opposed to a bear and to a bull. He won both fights. </p><p><br /></p><p>This rhino was a sensation in Rome at the time. No such animal had been seen there since 78 or 79 years (roughly like Halley&#039;s Comet), and it was probably the first African two-horned specimen in Rome. He was chosen as the symbol of Domitian&#039;s munificence, and his very realistic image (obviously it had been accurately drawn) was struck on the famous Domitian rhino quadrantes. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1580906[/ATTACH]</p><p>Domitian, AE quadrans, 17 mm, 2.60 g, Rome</p><p>Obv: African rhinoceros walking left.</p><p>Rev: IMP DOMIT AVG GERM around large SC</p><p><br /></p><p>This quadrans was later imitated in Alexandria under Trajan in 113/4 on a small AE dichalkon. But we can see that many depictions of this rhino also appeared in art (mosaics, bronze statuettes, gems, oil lamps, etc.). It is impossible to date precisely these objects, but it is likely that they are all posterior to 88 and represent this very popular rhino.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1580912[/ATTACH] </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><font size="6">Next up :</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font size="6"><b>Domitian</b> ! </font></p><p>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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