β Scribed by de Camp, Sprague L
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
When Alexander the Great decided to give an elephant to his old teacher Aristotle a problem of logistics arose. Alexander was in India and Aristotle was in Athens. Thousands of miles of blazing deserts, towering mountains, turbulent rivers, and savage, scarcely conquered peoples lay between; and Aias, the elephant, had to have his two hundred pounds of hay and vegetables every day.
Around this situation L. Sprague de Camp has written this engaging, imaginative, and extraordinary comedyβwhich might not have come into being if King Poros had not lost his best war elephant to Alexander in a fiercely fought battle ... and if someone other than the good soldier Leon of Atrax had been chosen to lead the expedition to deliver this elephant to Aristotle in Athens.
As it was, a motley swarm set out under Leon's command: soldiers, mahouts, women, children, slaves, and servants; the philosopher Pyrron the Skeptic; and, after a while, a lovely Persian girl named Nirouphar. From Leon's point of view, the only possible thing wrong with Nirouphar was that she had no time for him and spent her days listening to Pyrron.
But as the journey stretched on through weeks and monthsβand through ambush, mutiny, and elephantine balkingβthere was time for almost all things to happen, even for Leon to take hope ... and for the author to blend wit, adventure, philosophy, and romance into this totally entertaining book.
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