Literature
The Greek shall come against thee,
The conqueror of the East.
Beside him stalks to battle
The huge earth-shaking beast,
The beast on whom the castle
With all its guards doth stand,
The beast who hath between his eyes
The serpent for a hand.
The conqueror of the East.
Beside him stalks to battle
The huge earth-shaking beast,
The beast on whom the castle
With all its guards doth stand,
The beast who hath between his eyes
The serpent for a hand.
— Sir Thomas Maculay, "Lays of Ancient Rome"
Tabletop Games
"From out of the blizzard’s whitewash came three massive shapes, pounding forwards through the snow and ice, the ground reverberating with every titanic footfall of the monsters. They were giant, shaggy-hided beasts, each as tall as a castle wall. They had huge trunks of muscle extending from their wide heads, and one of them raised this prehensile limb to the heavens and again the terrifying trumpeting sound echoed across the battlefield. The immense beasts were quadrupeds, with large flapping, dark furred ears and beady eyes filled with burning rage, and each had four immense tusks that curved down to the ground. Atop the backs of these monsters were strapped immense howdahs of timber, their sides draped with furs and leathers and dotted with shields, and within these structures were dozens of warriors."
—A Bretonnian knight on Chaos War Mammoths, Warhammer Fantasy
Granted, most of Hannibal's elephants died while crossing the Alps — perhaps unsurprisingly — but it doesn't take a lot of elephants to have a scary amount of elephant on the battlefield.
