The usage of elephant by the civilizations of Hellenistic and Roman periods

Phenomenon of war elephant which originally belongs to the Eastern World, got involved in the Werstern Civilization by Alexander The Great's Asian campaign and became widespread in a significantly rapid manner. At the service of either Hellenistic or Roman periods' armies, war elephants rose to prominence as the factors directly swinging the balance. After being involved into theWestern warfare, they gained absolute successes unexceptionally against the armies which never met them before. Besides, a lot of commanders who simply relied on the brute force of these animals and ignored the physical and mental structures, weaknesses and capacities of them, faced with extreme losses. The war elephants, which took on critical tasks and changed the course of history with their activities in a lot of battles within the Hellenistic and Roman periods, became the important figures for propaganda enterprises of Roman Civilization which became the supreme power of Mediterranean World consequently. Accordingly, our study presents the activities of the war elephants which represents one of the most extraordinary war innovations of the history, either in the battles occured during the Hellenistic and Roman periods or Roman Civilization's social life on the basis of classical sources and in consideration of archeological materials. With the intention of understanding these animals in detail, classical accounts were evaluated basically with the numismatic and archeological evidences within the context of our study. Keywords: Elephant, Hellenistic, Rome, Army, Propaganda