Of all wild animals the elephant is the most tame and gentle; for many
of them are capable of instruction and intelligence, and they have
been taught to worship the king. It is a very sensitive creature, and
abounding in intellect. The male never again touches a female that he
has once impregnated. Some persons say that the elephant will live for
two hundred years, others an hundred and twenty, and the female lives
nearly as long as the male. They arrive at perfection when sixty years
old. They bear winter and cold weather very badly. It is an animal
that lives in the neighbourhood of rivers, though not in them. It can
also walk through rivers, and will advance as long as it can keep its
proboscis above the surface; for it blows and breathes through this
organ, but it cannot swim on account of the weight of its body.