Claudius and the elephants for Britain (Cassius Dio 60.21.2)

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Date
2023-09-04
Authors
Woods, David
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Cambridge University Press
Published Version
10.1017/s0068113x23000399
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Abstract
Charles and Singleton have explained why Cassius Dio's claim (60.21.2) that elephants were among the equipment prepared for use in Britain during the Claudian invasion of A.D. 43 is probably untrue, if one assumes that by ‘elephant’ he means the animal of that name. It is argued here that the best explanation of this apparent error is that Dio preserves a reference to a type of military machine, probably a siege-tower, rather than to the animal of this name.
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Keywords
Elephants , Britain , Claudius , Cassius Dio , Siege-tower
Citation
Woods, D. (2023) ‘Claudius and the elephants for Britain (Cassius Dio 60.21.2)’, Britannia, 54, pp. 321–325. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X23000399.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X23000399
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/15345
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Classics - Journal Articles
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© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.