War pig

For the Black Sabbath song, see War Pigs. For other uses, see War pigs (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Pig War.

War pigs are pigs reported to have been used in ancient warfare as military animals. In combat, they were mostly employed as a countermeasure against war elephants.

Historical accounts of incendiary pigs or flaming pigs were recorded by the Greek military writer Polyaenus[1] and by Aelian.[2] Both writers reported that Antigonus II Gonatas' siege of Megara in 266 BC was broken when the Megarians doused some pigs with combustible pitch, crude oil or resin, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming, squealing pigs, often killing great numbers of their own soldiers by trampling them to death.[3][4] According to an account, Gonatas later made his mahouts keep a swine among elephants to accustom the animals to pigs and this practice was immortalized by a Roman bronze coin dating back to his time, which showed an elephant on one side and a pig on the other.[5]

  1. ^ Polyaenus, "Stratagems" 4.6.3
  2. ^ Aelian, "On Animals" 16.36
  3. ^ Harden, A. (2013). Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts. Springer. p. 139. ISBN 9781137319319.
  4. ^ Mayor, Adrienne (2014). "Chapter 17: Animals in Warfare". In Campbell, Gordon Lindsay (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life. Oxford University Press. pp. 292–293. ISBN 9780191035159.
  5. ^ Kistler, John (2007). War Elephants. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 90. ISBN 9780803260047.