Epitome 31. Dolphin
IT is said to have been placed among the constellations for the following reason. When Poseidon wanted to take Amphitrite as his wife, she stole away and fled to Atlas,* being anxious to preserve her virginity; and when she had hidden herself away, most of the Nereids* followed her example. Poseidon sent many out in search of her, the dolphin among them. In the course of its wanderings, it arrived at the islands of Atlas, and coming across Amphitrite there, it sent news of this to Poseidon, and carried her to him. Poseidon married her and granted the dolphin the highest honours of the sea; he declared it to be sacred, and placed an image of it among the constellations. And all who want to give pleasure to Poseidon portray him with a dolphin in his hand, so conferring the highest honour on it for its good deed.
Hyginus
The Constellation
The Dolphin is represented not far from the constellation of the Eagle, and it touches that circumference of the equator with the tip of the curve of its tail, while its head almost touches the muzzle of the horse Pegasos.* It rises with the first part of the Archer, and sets when the Maiden has risen as far as her head.
It has two stars on its head, two stars above its head in the direction of its neck, three stars on its belly, where something like fins can be seen, one on its back, and two on its tail. In all, nine stars.
The Mythology
The reason for its [the Dolphin’s] presence among the stars is explained as follows by Eratosthenes and others: when Poseidon wanted to take Amphitrite as his wife, and she wanted to retain her virginity and fled to Atlas, he sent out many men in search of her, including one called Delphinus,* who, after having roamed from isle to isle, finally came upon the girl, and persuaded her to marry Poseidon, arranging the wedding in person. By way of a reward, Poseidon placed an image of a dolphin among the constellations. And furthermore, we see that those who make statues of Poseidon place a dolphin either in his hand or beneath his foot, thinking that this will be most pleasing to that god.
According to Aglaosthenes, the author of the Naxica, there were some Tyrrhenian shipmasters* who took Dionysos away when he was still a child, along with his companions, to convey him to Naxos and entrust him to the nymphs who were to be his nurses. For as our authors and many Greeks too have said in their theogonies, he was brought up by those nymphs. But to return to the matter in hand, the shipmasters were induced by hope of gain to want to turn the ship on to another course. Dionysos gained wind of their plan, however, and told his companions to sing together in a common strain, and the unaccustomed sounds so enchanted the Tyrrhenians that they began to dance, and in their desire to leap around, they unwittingly threw themselves into the sea, and there they were turned into dolphins. Wanting to recall their actions to human memory, Dionysos placed an image of them among the stars.
Others say, however, that this is the dolphin that carried the citharode* Arion from the Sicilian Sea to Tainaron.* As a musician who surpassed all others in his skill, he was travelling around the islands to make money, but his young slaves, thinking that it would suit their advantage better to gain freedom through treachery than continue in tranquil servitude, devised a plan to throw their master into the sea and divide his property between them. On recognizing their intent, Arion asked them, not as a master might ask his slaves or an innocent man might ask criminals, but as a father would ask his sons, to be allowed to wear the robes that he had often worn as a victor, because there was no one other than himself who would be better able to mark his own end with a fitting lament. When his request was granted, he immediately picked up his lyre and began to lament his own death, and attracted by the harmonies, dolphins came swimming from every part of the sea to listen to the singing of Arion. Invoking the power of the immortal gods, he hurled himself down among them, and one of them took him on to its back and carried him to the shore at Tainaron. In commemoration of this episode, an image of a dolphin can be seen to be attached to the statue of Arion* that was erected there. As for the slaves who supposed they had gained freedom from their servitude, they were driven by a storm to Tainaron, where they were captured by their master and subjected to no slight punishment.
Alternative account
Since Arion of Methymna was very skilled in the art of singing to the cithara, Pyranthus,* king of Corinth held him in very high regard. After he had asked the king’s permission to display his art from city to city, and had acquired a considerable fortune, his servants and the sailors [on the ship on which he was travelling back from Sicily] plotted together to kill him. Apollo appeared to him in his sleep and told him to sing in his robes and crown, and to entrust himself to those who would come to his aid. So when the servants and sailors were about to kill him, he asked that he should be allowed to sing beforehand. On hearing the sound of his lyre and his voice, dolphins began to gather around the ship, and when Arion caught sight of them, he hurled himself into the waves. They took him on to their back and carried him to Corinth, to King Pyranthus. When he was set ashore, he was so eager to proceed on his way that he failed to push the dolphin back into the sea, and it died there. After he had recounted his misfortunes to Pyranthus, the king ordered that the dolphin should be buried, and that a monument should be raised to it.
Shortly afterwards Pyranthus was informed that the ship on which Arion had been travelling had been driven to Corinth by a storm. He ordered that the sailors should be brought to him, and asked them about Arion, but they said that he had died and that they had seen to his burial. The king replied, ‘You can swear to that tomorrow in front of the dolphin’s monument.’* He then ordered that they should be kept under guard, and told Arion to hide himself away in the dolphin’s monument early on the following day, dressed as he had been when he had thrown himself into the sea. When the king brought the sailors there and told them to swear by the departed spirit of the dolphin that Arion was dead, Arion emerged from the monument in front of their eyes. Wondering to what divine intervention he had owed his rescue, they were unable to utter a word. The king ordered that they should be crucified* on the dolphin’s monument, while Apollo for his part arranged that Arion, because of his skill in the art of the cithara, should be placed among the stars along with the dolphin.
Commentary
(i) Dolphins were associated with the sea-god Poseidon as his special beast, and he was often represented with them in works of art. To provide a more specific explanation for why he should have wished to place a dolphin in the sky, Eratosthenes provided a myth, quite possibly of his own invention, in which a dolphin helped him to win his reluctant bride, the Nereid Amphitrite. She is mentioned as his consort by Hesiod (Theogony 390), but there is no earlier record of the present story; there is otherwise a tale in which Poseidon is said to have abducted her from the island of Naxos, when she emerged from the sea to dance there with her sisters (schol. Od. 3.91). Hyginus offers what is in effect a rationalized version of the myth, by attributing the relevant actions to a man called Delphinus (Dolphin), evidently as the result of a misinterpretation of the Greek text on which his narrative was founded.
(ii) There was a famous myth of early origin in which some sailors tried to abduct the young Dionysos, who responded by driving them into a frenzy, and causing them to leap into the sea and turn into dolphins (Homeric Hymn 7, to Dionysos, cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.528–691); a catasterism could easily be added through the suggestion that Dionysos commemorated the episode by placing an image of a dolphin in the sky.
(iii) Tales in which dolphins make friends with human beings or come to their rescue had the same appeal in ancient times as they do nowadays (e.g. Pliny, Natural History 9.28 ff.). The most famous story of that kind, though admittedly not the most authentic, was that in which Arion of Lesbos, a lyric poet of the seventh century who worked at the court of Periandros, tyrant of Corinth, was rescued by a dolphin in the circumstances described by Hyginus; the tale was recounted by Herodotus (1.23–4), and then retold with many variations thereafter. Hyginus records two versions of the catasterism that could be added to explain the origin of the constellation—a rationalistic account in which the constellation-figure was devised by astronomers to commemorate the incident, and a mythical account in which the dolphin itself was set in the sky by Apollo, who could be thought to have taken an interest in Arion as the god of music. When Hyginus suggests in his Mythical Tales that Arion was placed in the sky along with the dolphin, he has clearly fallen into error, for it was his musical instrument that was placed there, as the neighbouring constellation of the Lyre (Serv. Ecl. 8.55). He would have sung his poems to the cithara, a form of lyre.