Historians, travellers, poets, biologists and even philosophers have celebrated and marvelled at the elephant. It is an animal known as an exceptional symbol of strength, greatness and dignity, gifted with super intelligence, rarely found among other creatures of the animal kingdom. Famous historians, writers from Marco Polo to Rudyard Kipling have revered the elephant as the most marvellous creature in creation. In 250 BC, with an army of 25,000 men and 20 elephants the king of Epirus won a hard-fought victory over the Romans at Heraclea. At a crucial phase of the battle, Pyrrhus ordered his elephants to charge and it was too much for the Roman legions. The Romans who had never seen elephants before called them 'Lucanian Cows'.