Furthermore, many of the Greeks have temples
and altars to Artemis Dictynna
1 and Apollo Delphinios ; and that place which the god had chosen
for himself the poet
2 says was settled by Cretans
under the guidance of a dolphin. It was not, however,
the god who changed his shape and swam in front of
the expedition, as tellers of tales relate ; instead,
he sent a dolphin to guide the men and bring them
to Cirrha.
3 They also relate that Soteles and Dionysius, the men sent by Ptolemy Soter
4 to Sinope to
bring back Serapis, were driven against their will by
a violent wind out of their course beyond Malea,
with the Peloponnesus on their right. When they
were lost and discouraged, a dolphin appeared by the
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prow and, as it were, invited them to follow and led
them into such parts as had safe roadsteads with but
a gentle swell until, by conducting and escorting the
vessel in this manner, it brought them to Cirrha.
Whence it carne about that when they had offered
thanksgiving for their safe landing, they carne to see
that of the two statues they should take away the
one of Pluto, but should merely take an impress of
that of Persephone and leave it behind.
5
Well might the god be fond of the music-loving
character of the dolphin,
6 to which Pindar
7 likens
himself, saying that he is roused
Like a dolphin of the sea
Who on the waveless deep of ocean
Is moved by the lovely sound of flutes.
Yet it is even more likely that its affection for men
8
renders it dear to the gods; for it is the only creature
who loves man for his own sake.
9 Of the land animals,
some avoid man altogether, others, the tamest kind,
pay court for utilitarian reasons only to those who
feed them, as do dogs and horses and elephants to
their familiars. Martins take to houses to get what
they need, darkness and a minimum of security, but
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avoid and fear man as a dangerous wild beast.
10 To
the dolphin alone, beyond all others, nature has
granted what the best philosophers seek : friendship
for no advantage. Though it has no need at all of
any man, yet it is a genial friend to all and has helped
many. The story of Arion
11 is familiar to everyone
and widely known ; and you, my friend, opportunely
put us in mind of the tale of Hesiod,
12
But you failed to reach the end of the tale.13
When you told of the dog, you should not have left
out the dolphins, for the information of the dog that
barked and rushed with a snarl on the murderers
would have been meaningless if the dolphins had not
taken up the corpse as it was floating on the sea near
the Nemeon
14 and zealously passed it from group
to group until they put it ashore at Rhium and so
made it clear that the man had been stabbed.
Myrsilus
15 of Lesbos tells the tale of Enalus the
Aeolian who was in love with that daughter of
Smintheus who, in accordance with the oracle of
Amphitrite, was cast into the sea by the Penthilidae,
whereupon Enalus himself leaped into the sea and
was brought out safe on Lesbos by a dolphin.
And the goodwill and friendship of the dolphin for
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the lad of Iasus
16 was thought by reason of its greatness to be true love. For it used to swim and play
with him during the day, allowing itself to be touched;
and when the boy mounted upon its back, it was not
reluctant, but used to carry him with pleasure wherever he directed it to go, while all the inhabitants of
Iasus flocked to the shore each time this happened.
Once a violent storm of rain and hail occurred and the
boy slipped off and was drowned. The dolphin took
the body and threw both it and itself together on the
land and would not leave until it too had died, thinking it right to share a death for which it imagined that
it shared the responsibility. And in memory of this
calamity the inhabitants of Iasus have minted their
coins with the figure of a boy riding a dolphin.
17
From this the wild tales about Coeranus
18 gained
credence. He was a Parian by birth who, at Byzantium, bought a draught of dolphins which had
been caught in a net and were in danger of slaughter,
and set them all free. A little later he was on a sea
voyage in a penteconter, so they say, with fifty
pirates aboard ; in the strait between Naxos and
Paros the ship capsized and all the others were lost,
while Coeranus, they relate, because a dolphin sped
beneath him and buoyed him up, was put ashore at
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Sicinus,
19 near a cave which is pointed out to this day
and bears the name of Coeraneum.
20 It is on this
man that Archilochus is said to have written the line
Out of fifty, kindly Poseidon left only Coeranus.21
When later he died, his relatives were burning the
body near the sea when a large shoal of dolphins
appeared off shore as though they were making it
plain that they had come for the funeral, and they
waited until it was completed.
22
That the shield of Odysseus had a dolphin emblazoned on it, Stesichorus
23 also has related ; and
the Zacynthians perpetuate the reason for it, as
Critheus
24 testifies. For when Telemachus was a
small boy, so they say, he fell into the deep inshore
water and was saved by dolphins who came to his aid
and swam with him to the beach ; and that was the
reason why his father had a dolphin engraved on
his ring and emblazoned on his shield, making this
requital to the animal.
Yet since I began by saying that I would not tell
you any tall tales and since, without observing what
I was up to, I have now, besides the dolphins, run
aground on both Odysseus and Coeranus to a point
beyond belief, I lay this penalty upon myself : to
conclude here and now.
