34 ACCOUNT OF INDIA BY STRABO rejected which are too old or too young for service; the remainder are led away to the stables. They tie their feet one to another and their necks to a post firmly fastened in the ground, and then tame them by hunger. They afterwards recruit their strength with green cane and grass. Then they teach the elephants to obey; some of them they train by words; others they pacify by tunes, accompanied with the beating of a drum. Few of the elephants are difficult to tame, for they are naturally of a mild and gentle disposition, so as to approximate to the character of a rational animal. Some have taken up their drivers, who have fallen fainting on the ground, and carried them safe out of battle. Others have fought and protected their drivers, who have crept between their fore-legs. If they have killed any of their feeders or masters in anger, they feel their loss so much that they refuse their food through grief, and sometimes starve themselves to death. Elephants copulate like horses, and they produce their young chiefly in the spring. That is the season for the male; he is then in heat and is ferocious. At this period he discharges some fatty matter through an opening in the temples. It is the season also for the females, when this same passage is open. Eighteen months is the longest, and sixteen the shortest period of gestation. The dam suckles her young for six years. Many elephants live as long as men who attain to the greatest longevity, some even to the protracted age of two hundred years. . . . Onesikritos says that they
