The Romans are always up there with the Greeks. So what’s up there with Automaton Dragons? Bulletproof elephants! And no, I am not kidding. His name is Hannibal, and according to here:
link
…and a video in the links, that’s the next step for these books.
What? Elephants? Called Hannibal? (you may read every ‘Hannibal’ as ‘Peanut’ if you really don’t like the name)
But it actually fits in with history. So today we’re going to talk about a lot of things, but the center of it all is going to be Hannibal!
Let’s get started!
Who brings an elephant to war?
Okay, so my friend Hannibal (I don’t know if any of you are scared of elephants or whatnot, but I’ve decided that Hannibal is my friend) isn’t this random out-of-the-blue creature.
Actually, elephants were used as war animals in Ancient times. Elephants were captured in the wild (not bred) and then tamed. At first it was for agriculture, but then it was for war.
It works with basically the same concept as a tank. It charges at you, and ranks and lines are broken, because who wants to die under an elephant’s hooves? Even the Romans have been known to break when those things came charging at them, and no duh! Elephants could reach 20/30 k an hour!
Those things can’t be much stopped either, unlike cavalry horses, the spears from a phalanx or whatnot wouldn’t stop them. And their smell was foreign and just plain weird to the horses, so the cavalry units would get edgy around elephants. Not only do they look scary when they’re in full-battle-mode, but on the battlefield, they are scary!
Trampling was another use of the war elephant, as well as transport, moving heavy things, giving a general height to get a good view of battlefields, and bringing archers in. Elephants sometimes carried towers where people could stay and shoot or observe from, or even travel in.
This whole business started in India, but it caught with everyone in the Mediterranean. Sometimes there were entire cavalries with ONLY elephants, which is –no joke- called an elephantry. Mm-hmm! Their biggest use in the West was under the Greek general Pyrrhus of Ephirus. And guess which Carthage commander used elephants like it was raining them? That’s right; Hannibal. And who did Hannibal go up against? Rome, baby! He actually won once! It was the element of surprise; elephants aren’t native to Italy. So the soldiers were confused, the horses were freaking out, and the elephants were charging!
Sadly, when the cannon was invented elephant in war stopped, because when an elephant went down, not only did it cost a lot of dough, but the men ridding or the men under were squashed like bugs. And also, if you love animals, it was sad- but let’s get this straight, the great armies of ancient times didn’t give a damn about that.
What if I took a gun and shot Hannibal for the heck of it?
Now, supposedly Hannibal is bullet-proof. A bulletproof elephant… How sick is that? How is that happening?
A) First off, they’ve already got really thick hides. It’s already protection right there. Height and mass was also protection for the elephant’s rider, seeing as elephants were most likely the biggest things on the battlefield. Could ‘bulletproof’ be an exaggeration, or an ongoing joke around Camp Caesar Salad? (*gasp* a joke! At Camp Caesar salad! :O There is hope for the croutons!)
B) A lot of armour was designed especially for war elephants. I’m not kidding. If you’re going to bring an elephant to war, you need to make sure it won’t go down easy because elephants are expensive to train, buy, travel with and feed, and it’s not just a random guy on the street that’ll drive an elephant to war. Of course, it won’t die easy, even without the armour. But of course with armour… That’s like if your favourite teacher shows up to class with brownies!
There were also weapons for elephants! Some of them were trained to swing their trunks around, and in battle, masses were tied to their trunks. Talk about destruction!
That would explain the bulletproof factor, and it’s the theory of mine that makes most sense.
C) This theory is more to provide hilarious fantasies or mental images; but maybe Hannibal ploughed through the river Styx! (this is where your imagination starts getting hilarious). Can an animal even do that? Questions, questions, questions… Anyways, I think it’s possible.
D) Look, if this elephant was given to the army at Camp Caesar Salad by Mars, or Jupiter or Juno, Minerva- SOMEONE that is literally up there- I’m pretty sure it makes it special. So maybe
Hannibal is just blessed.
E) This is another very bottom-sucker theory (BS theory for short); but Hannibal might just be an automaton. Of course, that would be extremely déjà-vue, aggravating and unlike RR. Besides, I doubt Frank and Hazel are children of Vulcan, so who would serve as the quest’s Leo? (Leo Valdez is one of a kind Romans back the Hades off-grr…) Like I said; BS theory!
Who calls their elephant Hannibal?
The elephant’s name’s not out of nowhere. Hannibal is an actual historical figure, and he’s a pretty interesting one too.
Who calls their kid Hannibal
Gerenal Hamilcar Barca of Cathage!
What exactly does one Hannibal do? (apart from hiding out at recess to not get beaten up on the playground)
247 BCE, Hannibal was born to general Hamilcar Barca in Carthage. Carthage was losing a big war against -you guessed it- Romans, in what we call the First Punic war. Eventually Carthage lost, because the Romans were the Romans.
Hamilcar added some more territory to the unformal empire of Carthage, and supposedly made his son swear eternal hatred against the Romans. Lovely, I know (and hopefully not foreshadowing).
When Hamilcar died, a guy in the family named Hasdrubal was new general. He was a lot more diplomatic than Hamilcar had been. Well, that lasted until Hannibal was 26, when Hasdrubral was murdered. The soldiers voted for Hannibal to become their new leader and poof, so let it be written so let it be done!
In 220, Salamanca was captured by the new general. Sagantum was next, a year later. The Romans didn’t like that, because there were questions flying around about yes/no that was a violation of a treaty between Hasdrubral and the Romans (and let’s face it, they weren’t thrilled about losing something either).
And the Hannibal/Rome clash took off! That’s how Hannibal got to power, and to this day, the guy is known for using war elephants in a battle against Rome; and it worked like a charm considering he won!
In 218 BC, 37 elephants were taken across the Alps to go fight.
It was a lot of the surprise factor. The horses and soldiers weren’t familiar with those beasts, so the horses panicked because the elephants smelled foreign as well (I see Blackjack/Hannibal clashes coming on), and the soldiers weren’t used to having big, grey tanks with tusks charging at them. The losses would have been much greater if a wounded elephant wouldn’t have confused all the others and thrown them off track.
To read more on Hannibal’s history, you can visit this site: link
I’d like to bring up something else (and of course I’m the writer, so you have to listen to me- muah-ha-ha!)
Hannibal gave all the elephant riders heavy weapons, that were big enough for killing an elephant. Why? Because if one made a single move to attack Carthaginian lines, the rider was to kill it. The risk and potential damage of an elephant changing sides and attacking its own armies was too big, and risky. Hannibal wouldn’t risk it; it was better to kill 1 out of control elephant than to have it rampaging and exciting other elephants. It happened once, to the Romans if I recall, and it was not pretty.
So what if Hannibal –our Hannibal, the elephant one- does this? What if we lose Hannibal like we lost Festus? What if Percy has to kill Hannibal? Or Frank or Hazel, while they’re on owners from whoever’s in charge at Camp Caesar Salad?
Anyways, it’s not one of those mystery-until-the-last-few-pages things why Hannibal was named Hannibal. Hannibal (elephant) is most likely a war elephant, just like those that Hannibal (man) brought through the Alps and into fights. Of course, Hannibal wasn’t the only one who used a war elephant. Alexander the Great, they were popular in India, Pyrrhus of Ephirus…
What type of elephant could Hannibal be?
An elephant is like a dog; you’ve got breeds of them. Not that many, though. At some point there were an estimated 350 types of elephants roaming around, but thanks to deforestation and hunting, love us, there are only two left. If we’re assuming that Hannibal is a type of elephant that still exists on the planet in real life; here are the runner ups (even if I’ve seen ‘Indian elephant’ counted as one of its own and scientists here have found DNA changes in etc, etc…)
-An Asian Elephant: Those were the first elephants that were ever trained for anything (except them it was for agriculture). It has smaller ears than the African elephant, and only the males grow tusks (which is quite stupid considering that the female is the one that defends the young, but who am I to bash on evolution, I mean, it didn’t screw up on me! :P)
The Asian elephant is better known for being kept in captivity although it is no harder to keep than the African elephant. It’s just more likely to be found in zoos and circuses.
In India there were sometimes elephants with painted trunks and colorful saddle-types on them. They look amazing!
-An African Elephant: Hannibal (man) came from Northern Africa, and it seems to be African elephants that he used although the question is still up for debate apparently. But it makes sense; African elephants are the biggest type of elephants. Both males and females get tusks. Their trunks are less hard, so those are still flexible. They’ve got 2 ‘fingers’ at the end of it.
The African elephant is stronger than the Asian one; so it would be more destructive just by its built. It’s like how Clarisse is just buffer than Annabeth- it just is, even if both are awesome!
And NO, Hannibal couldn’t be half-Asian, half-African. I checked already and supposedly there has been one recorded case, but the baby died at 2 weeks old even with intense nursing care.
For more differences between both types of elephants, take a look at this site: link (you’ll also see why African elephants are stronger)
Who keeps an elephant in Ancient Greece or Rome?
Elephants were kept in Greece or Rome for a few reasons.
1) Well, now we all know that elephants were used as weapons of mass destruction.
2) Elephants were used for agriculture! Pulling ploughs, for one (Demeter would love this), and can anybody say fertiliser?
3) Elephants were actually used in Gladiator games! Some Games included animal hunts or fights, and elephants offered spectacular ones! I mean, these things… Wow… But they didn’t respond right with the crowds.
Seneca, too, refers to the slaughter in De Brevitate Vitae (XIII),
"...does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. He then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname was."
The elephants, writes Cassius Dio, "were pitied by the people when, after being wounded and ceasing to fight, they walked about with their trunks raised toward heaven, lamenting so bitterly as to give rise to the report that they did so not by mere chance, but were crying out against the oaths in which they had trusted when they crossed over from Africa, and were calling upon Heaven to avenge them" (XXXIX.38).
–Source link
What would Hannibal do?
a) First off, Hannibal would be a war elephant, meaning he’d fight.
b) Reach! Elephants have trunks so they can reach and pull down high branches in the wild to eat.
c) Transportation, most likely
d) If Hannibal is magic I’d write another article on all the things he could do
e) Fly! (no wait, wrong elephant…)
f) Pull obstacles out of the way
g) Scare bears and maybe monsters away (elephants are VERY loud for those who’ve ever been on safaris.
h) Protection! It’s just safer to sleep on the back of an elephant, which is elevated, than on the ground, where you risk waking up half sunk down in quicksand (but if he’s a flesh and blood elephant he’ll have to rest too, especially if he’s carrying 3 people and/or a tower)
i) He’d probably also offer a lot of comical relief. Look me in the eye, and tell me that if Percy gets woken up in the middle of the night because he’s completely covered in slobber, you would keep a serious face. HA! You wouldn’t!
j) Sacrifice! D: (save him Percy, save him! He’s like Bessie, you’ve just got to! BS THEORY!)
k) And probably some more!
What about our Hannibal?
I think that our Hannibal is…
• A male African elephant
• He was trained as a war elephant that was raised at CCS
• I think that he has his own set or armour
• That he was named after the original Hannibal (therefore why I assume that Hannibal is male)
• That he’s going on the quest with Frank and Hazel and Percy, or he’ll be gathered up along the way and provide transport (like Festus did; some elephants could carry towers on their backs to transport people) and maybe some
• That he might die along the way (but not in an accident like Festus if he does because it’s too déjà-vue)
What does this mean? What questions are left?
Several.
1) Leo was on the quest because of Festus, right? So what if Frank or Hazel are on the quest for Hannibal’s benefit? That would mean that one of them would have to be the child of either a war god, or a god that presides over animals.
-Mars
-Bellona
-Minerva (war strategy, probably not as much)
-Silvanus (was a bit like Faunus-Pan)
-Diana (of course here we’re talking hunter unless somebody really messed up on an oath and burst the bubble of millions- BS THEORY!)
-Iris (this is weak, but her Greek son seems to be good with horses, so could maybe, just maybe, her Roman child is good with elephants)
I know that a lot of you think that Frank might be a son of Mars. Personally, I’m torn between Mars and Neptune, but this is just a bit more proof that Frank if a son of Mars. If he is; that might be his pass into the quest.
2) Is Hannibal the only elephant? Or is there an elephantry at Camp Caesar Salad? Is Hannibal even from Camp, or did he pop into the quest? Or maybe, like Festus, Hannibal was just there.
Hazel looked at the woods like they were filled with secrets.
“Supposedly there’s an elephant over here.”
“An elephant… You mean, in the woods?”
“Oh yeah. There used to be an elephantry, but it was scattered. Apparently they kept breeding in the woods and moved up to other places. Sasquatch sightings, you know? But supposedly there’s one elephant still out there somewhere. My big sister swore she saw it once, when she was guarding the tunnel at night. Apparently it’s just too shy to come here, but boy, if I could ever get close to it… That’s one beast I’d want to ride.”
3) Hannibal most likely travels on land unless he’s a winged bulletproof elephant. Well, it’s not like Percy could travel overland by flight, and it’s not that easy to travel to a place inland by water, depending what point A and point B are. How’s that going to go down seeing as Gaia is obviously even stronger than before?
4) How is Percy going to like mounting on something he can’t talk to?
5) Will Hannibal die or be squashed like Hannibal (man)’s rebelling elephants?
6) Will my sanity hold until October 4th?
link
…and a video in the links, that’s the next step for these books.
What? Elephants? Called Hannibal? (you may read every ‘Hannibal’ as ‘Peanut’ if you really don’t like the name)
But it actually fits in with history. So today we’re going to talk about a lot of things, but the center of it all is going to be Hannibal!
Let’s get started!
Who brings an elephant to war?
Okay, so my friend Hannibal (I don’t know if any of you are scared of elephants or whatnot, but I’ve decided that Hannibal is my friend) isn’t this random out-of-the-blue creature.
Actually, elephants were used as war animals in Ancient times. Elephants were captured in the wild (not bred) and then tamed. At first it was for agriculture, but then it was for war.
It works with basically the same concept as a tank. It charges at you, and ranks and lines are broken, because who wants to die under an elephant’s hooves? Even the Romans have been known to break when those things came charging at them, and no duh! Elephants could reach 20/30 k an hour!
Those things can’t be much stopped either, unlike cavalry horses, the spears from a phalanx or whatnot wouldn’t stop them. And their smell was foreign and just plain weird to the horses, so the cavalry units would get edgy around elephants. Not only do they look scary when they’re in full-battle-mode, but on the battlefield, they are scary!
Trampling was another use of the war elephant, as well as transport, moving heavy things, giving a general height to get a good view of battlefields, and bringing archers in. Elephants sometimes carried towers where people could stay and shoot or observe from, or even travel in.
This whole business started in India, but it caught with everyone in the Mediterranean. Sometimes there were entire cavalries with ONLY elephants, which is –no joke- called an elephantry. Mm-hmm! Their biggest use in the West was under the Greek general Pyrrhus of Ephirus. And guess which Carthage commander used elephants like it was raining them? That’s right; Hannibal. And who did Hannibal go up against? Rome, baby! He actually won once! It was the element of surprise; elephants aren’t native to Italy. So the soldiers were confused, the horses were freaking out, and the elephants were charging!
Sadly, when the cannon was invented elephant in war stopped, because when an elephant went down, not only did it cost a lot of dough, but the men ridding or the men under were squashed like bugs. And also, if you love animals, it was sad- but let’s get this straight, the great armies of ancient times didn’t give a damn about that.
What if I took a gun and shot Hannibal for the heck of it?
Now, supposedly Hannibal is bullet-proof. A bulletproof elephant… How sick is that? How is that happening?
A) First off, they’ve already got really thick hides. It’s already protection right there. Height and mass was also protection for the elephant’s rider, seeing as elephants were most likely the biggest things on the battlefield. Could ‘bulletproof’ be an exaggeration, or an ongoing joke around Camp Caesar Salad? (*gasp* a joke! At Camp Caesar salad! :O There is hope for the croutons!)
B) A lot of armour was designed especially for war elephants. I’m not kidding. If you’re going to bring an elephant to war, you need to make sure it won’t go down easy because elephants are expensive to train, buy, travel with and feed, and it’s not just a random guy on the street that’ll drive an elephant to war. Of course, it won’t die easy, even without the armour. But of course with armour… That’s like if your favourite teacher shows up to class with brownies!
There were also weapons for elephants! Some of them were trained to swing their trunks around, and in battle, masses were tied to their trunks. Talk about destruction!
That would explain the bulletproof factor, and it’s the theory of mine that makes most sense.
C) This theory is more to provide hilarious fantasies or mental images; but maybe Hannibal ploughed through the river Styx! (this is where your imagination starts getting hilarious). Can an animal even do that? Questions, questions, questions… Anyways, I think it’s possible.
D) Look, if this elephant was given to the army at Camp Caesar Salad by Mars, or Jupiter or Juno, Minerva- SOMEONE that is literally up there- I’m pretty sure it makes it special. So maybe
Hannibal is just blessed.
E) This is another very bottom-sucker theory (BS theory for short); but Hannibal might just be an automaton. Of course, that would be extremely déjà-vue, aggravating and unlike RR. Besides, I doubt Frank and Hazel are children of Vulcan, so who would serve as the quest’s Leo? (Leo Valdez is one of a kind Romans back the Hades off-grr…) Like I said; BS theory!
Who calls their elephant Hannibal?
The elephant’s name’s not out of nowhere. Hannibal is an actual historical figure, and he’s a pretty interesting one too.
Who calls their kid Hannibal
Gerenal Hamilcar Barca of Cathage!
What exactly does one Hannibal do? (apart from hiding out at recess to not get beaten up on the playground)
247 BCE, Hannibal was born to general Hamilcar Barca in Carthage. Carthage was losing a big war against -you guessed it- Romans, in what we call the First Punic war. Eventually Carthage lost, because the Romans were the Romans.
Hamilcar added some more territory to the unformal empire of Carthage, and supposedly made his son swear eternal hatred against the Romans. Lovely, I know (and hopefully not foreshadowing).
When Hamilcar died, a guy in the family named Hasdrubal was new general. He was a lot more diplomatic than Hamilcar had been. Well, that lasted until Hannibal was 26, when Hasdrubral was murdered. The soldiers voted for Hannibal to become their new leader and poof, so let it be written so let it be done!
In 220, Salamanca was captured by the new general. Sagantum was next, a year later. The Romans didn’t like that, because there were questions flying around about yes/no that was a violation of a treaty between Hasdrubral and the Romans (and let’s face it, they weren’t thrilled about losing something either).
And the Hannibal/Rome clash took off! That’s how Hannibal got to power, and to this day, the guy is known for using war elephants in a battle against Rome; and it worked like a charm considering he won!
In 218 BC, 37 elephants were taken across the Alps to go fight.
It was a lot of the surprise factor. The horses and soldiers weren’t familiar with those beasts, so the horses panicked because the elephants smelled foreign as well (I see Blackjack/Hannibal clashes coming on), and the soldiers weren’t used to having big, grey tanks with tusks charging at them. The losses would have been much greater if a wounded elephant wouldn’t have confused all the others and thrown them off track.
To read more on Hannibal’s history, you can visit this site: link
I’d like to bring up something else (and of course I’m the writer, so you have to listen to me- muah-ha-ha!)
Hannibal gave all the elephant riders heavy weapons, that were big enough for killing an elephant. Why? Because if one made a single move to attack Carthaginian lines, the rider was to kill it. The risk and potential damage of an elephant changing sides and attacking its own armies was too big, and risky. Hannibal wouldn’t risk it; it was better to kill 1 out of control elephant than to have it rampaging and exciting other elephants. It happened once, to the Romans if I recall, and it was not pretty.
So what if Hannibal –our Hannibal, the elephant one- does this? What if we lose Hannibal like we lost Festus? What if Percy has to kill Hannibal? Or Frank or Hazel, while they’re on owners from whoever’s in charge at Camp Caesar Salad?
Anyways, it’s not one of those mystery-until-the-last-few-pages things why Hannibal was named Hannibal. Hannibal (elephant) is most likely a war elephant, just like those that Hannibal (man) brought through the Alps and into fights. Of course, Hannibal wasn’t the only one who used a war elephant. Alexander the Great, they were popular in India, Pyrrhus of Ephirus…
What type of elephant could Hannibal be?
An elephant is like a dog; you’ve got breeds of them. Not that many, though. At some point there were an estimated 350 types of elephants roaming around, but thanks to deforestation and hunting, love us, there are only two left. If we’re assuming that Hannibal is a type of elephant that still exists on the planet in real life; here are the runner ups (even if I’ve seen ‘Indian elephant’ counted as one of its own and scientists here have found DNA changes in etc, etc…)
-An Asian Elephant: Those were the first elephants that were ever trained for anything (except them it was for agriculture). It has smaller ears than the African elephant, and only the males grow tusks (which is quite stupid considering that the female is the one that defends the young, but who am I to bash on evolution, I mean, it didn’t screw up on me! :P)
The Asian elephant is better known for being kept in captivity although it is no harder to keep than the African elephant. It’s just more likely to be found in zoos and circuses.
In India there were sometimes elephants with painted trunks and colorful saddle-types on them. They look amazing!
-An African Elephant: Hannibal (man) came from Northern Africa, and it seems to be African elephants that he used although the question is still up for debate apparently. But it makes sense; African elephants are the biggest type of elephants. Both males and females get tusks. Their trunks are less hard, so those are still flexible. They’ve got 2 ‘fingers’ at the end of it.
The African elephant is stronger than the Asian one; so it would be more destructive just by its built. It’s like how Clarisse is just buffer than Annabeth- it just is, even if both are awesome!
And NO, Hannibal couldn’t be half-Asian, half-African. I checked already and supposedly there has been one recorded case, but the baby died at 2 weeks old even with intense nursing care.
For more differences between both types of elephants, take a look at this site: link (you’ll also see why African elephants are stronger)
Who keeps an elephant in Ancient Greece or Rome?
Elephants were kept in Greece or Rome for a few reasons.
1) Well, now we all know that elephants were used as weapons of mass destruction.
2) Elephants were used for agriculture! Pulling ploughs, for one (Demeter would love this), and can anybody say fertiliser?
3) Elephants were actually used in Gladiator games! Some Games included animal hunts or fights, and elephants offered spectacular ones! I mean, these things… Wow… But they didn’t respond right with the crowds.
Seneca, too, refers to the slaughter in De Brevitate Vitae (XIII),
"...does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. He then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname was."
The elephants, writes Cassius Dio, "were pitied by the people when, after being wounded and ceasing to fight, they walked about with their trunks raised toward heaven, lamenting so bitterly as to give rise to the report that they did so not by mere chance, but were crying out against the oaths in which they had trusted when they crossed over from Africa, and were calling upon Heaven to avenge them" (XXXIX.38).
–Source link
What would Hannibal do?
a) First off, Hannibal would be a war elephant, meaning he’d fight.
b) Reach! Elephants have trunks so they can reach and pull down high branches in the wild to eat.
c) Transportation, most likely
d) If Hannibal is magic I’d write another article on all the things he could do
e) Fly! (no wait, wrong elephant…)
f) Pull obstacles out of the way
g) Scare bears and maybe monsters away (elephants are VERY loud for those who’ve ever been on safaris.
h) Protection! It’s just safer to sleep on the back of an elephant, which is elevated, than on the ground, where you risk waking up half sunk down in quicksand (but if he’s a flesh and blood elephant he’ll have to rest too, especially if he’s carrying 3 people and/or a tower)
i) He’d probably also offer a lot of comical relief. Look me in the eye, and tell me that if Percy gets woken up in the middle of the night because he’s completely covered in slobber, you would keep a serious face. HA! You wouldn’t!
j) Sacrifice! D: (save him Percy, save him! He’s like Bessie, you’ve just got to! BS THEORY!)
k) And probably some more!
What about our Hannibal?
I think that our Hannibal is…
• A male African elephant
• He was trained as a war elephant that was raised at CCS
• I think that he has his own set or armour
• That he was named after the original Hannibal (therefore why I assume that Hannibal is male)
• That he’s going on the quest with Frank and Hazel and Percy, or he’ll be gathered up along the way and provide transport (like Festus did; some elephants could carry towers on their backs to transport people) and maybe some
• That he might die along the way (but not in an accident like Festus if he does because it’s too déjà-vue)
What does this mean? What questions are left?
Several.
1) Leo was on the quest because of Festus, right? So what if Frank or Hazel are on the quest for Hannibal’s benefit? That would mean that one of them would have to be the child of either a war god, or a god that presides over animals.
-Mars
-Bellona
-Minerva (war strategy, probably not as much)
-Silvanus (was a bit like Faunus-Pan)
-Diana (of course here we’re talking hunter unless somebody really messed up on an oath and burst the bubble of millions- BS THEORY!)
-Iris (this is weak, but her Greek son seems to be good with horses, so could maybe, just maybe, her Roman child is good with elephants)
I know that a lot of you think that Frank might be a son of Mars. Personally, I’m torn between Mars and Neptune, but this is just a bit more proof that Frank if a son of Mars. If he is; that might be his pass into the quest.
2) Is Hannibal the only elephant? Or is there an elephantry at Camp Caesar Salad? Is Hannibal even from Camp, or did he pop into the quest? Or maybe, like Festus, Hannibal was just there.
Hazel looked at the woods like they were filled with secrets.
“Supposedly there’s an elephant over here.”
“An elephant… You mean, in the woods?”
“Oh yeah. There used to be an elephantry, but it was scattered. Apparently they kept breeding in the woods and moved up to other places. Sasquatch sightings, you know? But supposedly there’s one elephant still out there somewhere. My big sister swore she saw it once, when she was guarding the tunnel at night. Apparently it’s just too shy to come here, but boy, if I could ever get close to it… That’s one beast I’d want to ride.”
3) Hannibal most likely travels on land unless he’s a winged bulletproof elephant. Well, it’s not like Percy could travel overland by flight, and it’s not that easy to travel to a place inland by water, depending what point A and point B are. How’s that going to go down seeing as Gaia is obviously even stronger than before?
4) How is Percy going to like mounting on something he can’t talk to?
5) Will Hannibal die or be squashed like Hannibal (man)’s rebelling elephants?
6) Will my sanity hold until October 4th?