Hannibal Crossing the Rhonedetails

Hannibal Crossing the Rhone

mastodon

Out of copyright (called public domain in the USA), hence royalty-free stock image for all purposes usage credit requested
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This painting shows an elephant with a small castle built on it, battlements and all, and people inside that tower. The elephant stands on a raft which men are moving apparently with giant oars resembling shovels on pivots, and punting or fishing with spears. Two shirtless men are in a smaller boat that seems to have the ends of giant logs in it that go all the way under the raft to a boat on the other side.

In the background are more elephants on rafts.

This all seems very improbable, and depends on the elephants cooperating. The men all also seem to be wearing boots or shoes, which is not always wise on a raft as leather doesn’t like getting wet. At least it’s not salt water.

Hannibal led an uprising against Rome, destroyed over three hundred towns, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and in the end won battles but lost the war.

The image here is a scan from the reproduction in the book, which appears to be done with photolithography; at any rate there is no sign of a dot screen.

hannibal, elephants, men, soldiers, people, rafts, rivers, water, boats, shirtless, topless, tusks

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2400 dots per inch