The Romans had first encountered elephants in battle at Heraclea in 280 BCE, and then again at Asculum a year later, and both times they had come off worse. When they met Pyrrhus and his army again at Maleventum in 275 BCE things were different, and writers speak of the elephants rampaging out of control and dispersing their own troops, giving Rome the victory. Exactly how this was achieved is not known for sure, but one story is that the Romans coated pigs with grease and pitch, set them alight, and drove them at the elephants, causing them to panic. This sort of event is what is depicted by this somewhat unconventional set from Linear-A.

Beginning with the two handlers, the first is a soldier, indicated by his military belt with cingulum, sword and helmet. He has no body armour over his tunic, but wears normal military shoes. He holds a pilum, which is presumably being used to ‘encourage’ the pigs to fulfil their task, and seems to be fairly relaxed. Beside him is another man, and he shows no signs of belonging to the military, since he simply wears two tunics, but his footwear is of particular interest. He wears simple sandals with a single wide strap across the foot, a style which today we might call flipflops. In the Roman world these were house shoes (‘soleas’), and were worn much like slippers would be today, exchanged for outdoor footwear when entering a house, and rarely seen out of doors. Quite why this man is wearing such sandals is hard to understand, except to reinforce the fact that he is not part of the military, but we feel they are inappropriate here. This man is holding a torch, and clearly is the one responsible for igniting his poor porcine victims. Holding the torch, waving his arms and shouting, he too is concerned to steer the pigs in the right direction.

What can we say of the pigs? You have to be careful with domesticated animals in history, as it is easy to forget that many have changed their appearance enormously in the past few centuries. However, the pigs here look pretty pig-like to us (we are no experts), and Roman depictions of the animal suggest these are reasonable. Some recreations show tusks, as in a boar, but of course no one can say what sort of pig might have been used in such events – probably whatever was to hand at the time. All the animals are in different poses, and all except the last are running, unsurprisingly, as their backs are on fire. How much of the impact on elephants was achieved by the fire, and how much by the squealing of these creatures is unclear, but it must have been an unnerving sight. The last animal has already succumbed to this treatment, and is lying dead with much of his back burned away to reveal the rib cage. Doubtless the rest will soon look much the same.

The sculpting of the figures is very good, with very realistic folds in the clothing and nice expressions on the faces. The only problem is they are both very tall, which will really notice when placed next to 1/72 scale figures from elsewhere. The pigs are, as far as we can tell, also well done, but we must say that fire is a very tricky thing to mould, and much harder to paint, though the attempt made here is probably about as good as you can get, since these are all 3D printed, and so don’t have the limitations of a traditional plastic figure.

The use of pigs, flambéd or not, is reported to have been used several times in the ancient world, particularly to counter elephants, so there are a few instances where such figures might be used. Whether they were actually used this way at Maleventum is open to debate, and the practical problems such an exercise would present hardly bear thinking about, particularly how you shepherd the terrified pigs in the direction you want. Nevertheless, if you want a set of Romans igniting pigs then this is the one for you, and if nothing else it will provide a talking point in some ancient Roman wargame.