An elephant’s revenge in Constantinople?

An elephant’s revenge in Constantinople?

Apparently, yes! An elephant that had been imported to Constantinople from India allegedly held a grudge against a man who had hit him 10 years prior, and when he saw him again “attacked and tore him apart” in the street.

“In the time of Theodosios the Great a small elephant was brought from India, and was raised there in the houses, and they brought him <to the hippodrome> when a chariot race was held. When he came to the Milion, a moneychanger hit him in jest with a switch. Ten years later, when he had grown up and passed again on the way to the Hippodrome, he remembered the man who had beaten him. And when he saw him sitting there, he roared and attacked him and tore him apart in the middle of the Milion.”

Source - Accounts of Medieval Constantinople: The Patria. Translated by Albrecht Berger