Part 2

An early literary reference to the dolphin occurs in Aesop’s fable, “The Monkey and the Dolphin.” During a violent storm a ship was capsized, and among those thrown into the water was a monkey. Observing its distress a dolphin came to its rescue, and taking the monkey upon its back the dolphin headed for shore. Opposite Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, the dolphin inquired of the monkey whether he was an Athenian. “Oh, yes,” replied the monkey, “and from one of the best families.” “Then you know Piraeus,” said the dolphin. “Very well, indeed,” said the monkey, “he is one of my most intimate friends.” Whereupon, outraged by so gross a deceit, the dolphin took a deep dive and left the monkey to its fate.

I take it that ever since that day monkeys have very sensibly refrained from speech. It is far better to remain silent even at the risk of being taken for a fool or a rogue, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Aesop flourished about 600 B.C. His story suggests a considerable knowledge of the ways of dolphins, and this indicates that knowledge of the dolphin was already old in his time.

There are several variant Greek myths on the origin of the dolphin. All of them relate to Dionysos. In one version Dionysos is an adult, in another he is a child. The first group of legends represent the epiphany of Dionysos, symbolizing the battle between winter and summer. Winter is represented by the death of Dionysos who disappears into the water, from which he is brought back on the top of a dolphin as the returning springtime (Apollodorus, III, 5, 3). Another version has Dionysos, whether as child or adult varies, being conveyed by ship to Naxos by Tyrrhenian mariners. The latter conceive the idea of kidnaping him. Dionysos senses their treachery, and bidding his companions strike up on their musical instruments, he produces a Bacchic wild dance in the mariners who throw themselves overboard and are changed into dolphins.

The popular belief in antiquity in the human intelligence of dolphins and their kindly feeling toward man was explained by the ancient writers in the light of the transformation of the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins. (See Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 8; Oppian, Halieutica, I, 649-654, 1098, V, 422, 519f; Porphyry, De Abstinentia, III, 16.) As Oppian (I, 1089) in his Halieutica has it, in William Diaper’s charming translation:

So Dolphins teem, whom subject Fish revere, And show the smiling Seas their Infant-Heir. All other Kinds, whom Parent-Seas confine, Dolphins excell; that Race is all divine. Dolphins were Men (Tradition hands the Tale) Laborious Swains bred on the Tuscan Vale: Transform’d by Bacchus, and by Neptune lov’d, They all the Pleasures of the Deep improv’d. When new-made Fish the God’s Command obey’d, Plung’d in the Waves, and untry’d Fins displayed, No further Change relenting Bacchus wrought, Nor have the Dolphins all the Man forgot; The conscious Soul retains her former Thought.

The god of the golden trident who rules over the seas, Poseidon, would not have prospered in his wooing of Amphitrite if it had not been for the assistance of a dolphin, who apprized Poseidon of her hiding-place. For this service, as is well-known, Poseidon set the dolphin among the stars in the constellation which bears its name to this day.

It is interesting in this connection that in a modern Greek folktale from Zacynthos, Poseidon changes a hero who has fallen into the sea into a dolphin until such time as he should find a maiden ready to be his wife. After some time the dolphin rescues a shipwrecked king and his daughter, the princess by way of reward takes him for her husband, and the spell is broken (Bernhard Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 135).

The cult of Apollo Delphinus was initiated, so legend has it, by Icadius who, leaving his native land of Lycia, which he had named for his mother, set out for Italy. Shipwrecked on the way, he was taken on the back of a dolphin, which set him down near Mount Parnassus, where he founded a temple to his father Apollo, and called the place Delphi after the dolphin. For this reason the dolphin became among the things most sacred to Apollo (Servius, Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos, III, 332; also Cornificius Longus, De Etymis Deorum).

Herodotos, writing of Periander (fl. 600 B.C.) tyrant of Corinth, tells one of the most famous of all stories of the dolphin (it is mentioned by Shakespeare in the first act of Twelfth Night). “In his time,” writes Herodotos (b. 484 B.C.), “a very wonderful thing is said to have happened. The Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter. They relate that Arion of Methymna, who, as a player on the lyre, was second to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we know, the first to invent the dithyrambic measure, to give it its name, and to conduct in it at Corinth, was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dolphin.

“He had lived, it is said, at the court of Periander, when a longing came upon him to sail across to Italy and Sicily. Having made rich profits in those parts, he wanted to recross the seas to Corinth. He therefore hired a vessel, the crew of which were Corinthians, thinking that there was no people in whom he could more safely confide; and, going on board, he set sail from Tarentum. The sailors, however, when they reached the open sea, formed a plot to throw him overboard and seize upon his riches. Discovering their design, he fell on his knees, beseeching them to spare his life, and making them welcome to his money. But they refused; and required him either to kill himself outright, if he wished for a grave on the dry land, or without loss of time to leap overboard into the sea. In this strait Arion begged them, since such was their pleasure, to allow him to mount upon the quarter-deck, dressed in his full costume, and there to play and sing, and promising that, as soon as his song was ended, he would destroy himself. Delighted at the prospect of hearing the very best singer in the world, they consented, and withdrew from the stern to the middle of the vessel: while Arion dressed himself in the full costume of his calling, took his lyre, and standing on the quarter-deck, chanted the Orthian [a very high-pitched lively and spirited song]. His strain ended, he flung himself, fully attired as he was, headlong into the sea. The Corinthians then sailed on to Corinth. As for Arion, a dolphin, they say, took him upon his back and carried him to Taenarum, where he went ashore, and thence proceeded to Corinth in his musician’s dress, and told all that had happened to him. Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tidings of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. Such is the account which the Corinthians and Lesbians give; and there is to this day at Taenarum an offering of Arion’s at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin.” (The History of Herodotus, Clio, I, 23-24.)

Commenting on this tale the poet Bianor, in The Greek Anthology (Declamatory Epigrams, 308), remarks, “So the sea presumably contains fish whose righteousness exceeds that of mankind.”

Coins of Methymna, in Lesbos, Arion’s birthplace, show him riding a dolphin. In one form or another the dolphin is represented on the coins of some forty Greek cities, and doubtless most Greeks knew the reason why.

Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (IX, 8, 24-28), writes as follows:

“The dolphin is an animal that is not only friendly to mankind but is also a lover of music, and it can be charmed by singing in harmony, but particularly by the sound of the water-organ. It is not afraid of a human being as something strange to it, but comes to meet vessels at sea and sports and gambols round them, actually trying to race them and passing them even when under full sail. In the reign of the late lamented Augustus a dolphin that had been brought into the Lucrine Lake fell marvellously in love with a certain boy, a poor man’s son, who used to go from the Baiae district to school at Pozzuoli, because fairly often the lad when loitering about the place at noon called him to him by the name of Snubnose and coaxed him with bits of the bread he had with him for the journey,—I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by Maecenas and Fabianus and Flavius Alfius and many others,—and when the boy called to it at whatever time of day, although it was concealed in hiding, it used to fly to him out of the depth, eat out of his hand, and let him mount on its back, sheathing as it were the prickles of its fin, and used to carry him when mounted right across the bay to Pozzuoli to school, bringing him back in similar manner, for several years, until the boy died of disease, and then it used to keep coming sorrowfully and like a mourner to the customary place, and itself also expired, quite undoubtedly from longing. Another dolphin in recent years at Hippo Diarrhytus on the coast of Africa similarly used to feed out of people’s hands and allow itself to be stroked, and play with swimmers and carry them on its back. The Governor of Africa, Flavianus, smeared it all over with perfume, and the novelty of the scent apparently put it to sleep: it floated lifelessly about, holding aloof from human intercourse for some months as if it had been driven away by insult; but afterwards it returned and was an object of wonder as before. The expense caused to their hosts by persons of official position who came to see it forced the people of Hippo to destroy it. Before these occurrences a similar story is told about a boy in the city of Iasus, with whom a dolphin was observed for a long time to be in love, and while eagerly following him to the shore when he was going away it grounded on the sand and expired; Alexander the Great made the boy head of the priesthood of Poseidon at Babylon, interpreting the dolphin’s affection as a sign of the deity’s favour. Hegesidemus writes that in the same city of Iasus another boy also, named Hermias, while riding across the sea in the same manner lost his life in the waves of a sudden storm, but was brought back to the shore, and the dolphin confessing itself the cause of his death did not return out to sea and expired on dry land. Theophrastus records that exactly the same thing occurred at Naupactos too. Indeed there are unlimited instances: the people of Amphilocus and Taranto tell the same stories about boys and dolphins; and these make it credible that also the skilled harper Arion, when at sea the sailors were getting ready to kill him with the intention of stealing the money he had made, succeeded in coaxing them to let him first play a turn on his harp, and the music attracted a school of dolphins, whereupon he dived into the sea and was taken up by one of them and carried ashore at Cape Matapan.”

A very similar but apparently quite independent account of these stories is given by the younger Pliny, in his Letters (IX, 23).

The elder Pliny then goes on to tell of the manner in which dolphins assist fishermen, which corresponds closely with the accounts given by recent observers of this cooperative activity between fishermen and dolphins. (For accounts of these see Antony Alpers, Dolphins, 146 sq.)

There are numerous other stories similar to those given by the Plinys from classical antiquity, but it is quite impossible to recount them here. What they all have in common is the friendliness of the dolphin for human beings, their rescue of them when they were thrown into the sea, their playfulness, especially with children, and their interest in almost any sort of sound. All these traits came to be regarded as mythical by later and more sophisticated ages, and Usener (Die Sintfluthsagen) comments on the effect that the prevalence of these tales had even upon the scientific thought of antiquity, making it difficult for such thinkers as Aristotle to get away from the belief in the dolphin’s ability to carry a rider, and in its capacity for human feeling (Aristotle, History of Animals, 631a). But Aristotle was right and Herr Usener wrong. The delightful thing about most of these myths is that they all appear to be based on solid fact, and not on the fancies attributed to the original narrators. Another typical modern gloss by a highly sophisticated writer, biologically not unknowledgeable, Norman Douglas, is the following: Commenting on the delphic mythology, he writes, “From these and many other sources, we may gather that there was supposed to exist an obscure but powerful bond of affection between this animal and humanity, and that it was endowed with a certain kindheartedness and man-loving propensity. This is obviously not the case; the dolphin cares no more about us than cares the haddock. What is the origin of this belief? I conjecture that the beast was credited with these social sentiments out of what may be called poetic reciprocation. Mankind, loving the merry gambols and other endearing characteristics of the dolphin, which has a playful trick of escorting vessels for its own amusement, whose presence signified fair weather, and whose parental attachment to its offspring won their esteem—quite apart from its fabled, perhaps real, love of music or at least of noisy sounds—were pleased to invest it with feelings akin to their own. They were fond of the dolphin; what more natural and becoming than that the dolphin should be fond of them?” (Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology, p. 161.)

But Douglas was undisillusionedly wrong, and the dolphins are right, and so is the “mankind” that believed in their friendliness. Though pleased to see the dolphins play, it is to be regretted that Douglas did not mind his compass and his way, for:

Had the curteous Dolphins heard One note of his, they would have dar’d To quit the waters, to enjoy In banishment such melody. John Hall, 1646.

In order to avoid any imputation that I may be attempting to play Euhemerus to the dolphin’s tale, the facts may be allowed to speak for themselves—always remembering that facts never speak for themselves, but are at the mercy of their interpreters. All, then, that I am concerned to show here, by citing the contemporary evidence, is that, in essence, the so-called myths of the ancients were based on solid facts of observation and not, as has hitherto been supposed, on the imaginings of mythmakers.

Let us begin with a brief account of the most recent and most thoroughly documented story of a free-dwelling dolphin’s social interaction with human beings. This is the story of Opo, a female Tursiops that made its appearance early in 1955 at Opononi, a small township just outside the mouth of Hokianga Harbour, on the western side of the North Island of New Zealand. From allowing itself at first to be rubbed with an oar or mop carried on the fishermen’s launches, it began to glide in near the beach among the bathers. The cheerful putt-putt of a motor-launch or of an outboard motor was an irresistible attraction for Opo, and she would follow the boat like a dog, playing or cruising round it. If she had an urge to wander, starting up the motor would invariably draw her back again. Mr. Piwai Toi, a Maori farmer, who was the first to observe Opo, writes, “She was really and truly a children’s playmate. Although she played with grownups she was really at her charming best with a crowd of children swimming and wading. I have seen her swimming amongst children almost begging to be petted. She had an uncanny knack of finding out those who were gentle among her young admirers, and keeping away from the rougher elements. If they were all gentle then she would give of her best.” (Antony Alpers, The Dolphin, pp. 228-229.)

The child the dolphin favored was a thirteen-year-old girl named Jill Baker. At fourteen Jill wrote the following account of her experience with Opo:

“I think why the dolphin became so friendly with me was because I was always gentle with her and never rushed at her as so many bathers did. No matter how many went in the water playing with her, as soon as I went in for a swim she would leave all the others and go off side-by-side with me. I remember on one occasion I went for a swim much further up the beach than where she was playing, and I was only in the water a short while when she bobbed up just in front of my face and gave me such a fright. On several other occasions when I was standing in the water with my legs apart she would go between them and pick me up and carry me a short distance before dropping me again. At first she didn’t like the feel of my hands and would dart away, but after a while when she realized I would not harm her she would come up to me to be rubbed and patted. She would quite often let me put little children on her back for a moment or two.” (In Antony Alpers, The Dolphin, p. 229.)

Opo’s choice of the gentle Jill Baker for the rides which she gave this thirteen-year-old, suggests not only a sensitive discrimination of the qualities of human beings, but also that the reports of similar incidents which have come down to us from antiquity were based on similarly observed events. The one element in these stories which seemed most difficult to accept, and which is so often represented in ancient art, the boy riding on the back of a dolphin, is now removed from the realm of fancy and placed squarely in the realm of fact. It has been corroborated and sustained.

Mr. Antony Alpers in his book on the dolphin, and especially that part devoted to the eyewitness accounts of Opo’s behavior, goes far toward establishing the fact of the dolphin’s remarkable capacity for rapport with human beings. But for those striking facts I must recommend you to Mr. Alper’s charming book.

The dolphin’s extraordinary interest in and, what we will I am sure not be far wrong in interpreting as, concern for human beings, is dramatically told by George Llano in his report Airmen Against the Sea. This report, written on survival at sea during the Second World War, records the experience of six American airmen, shot down over the Pacific, who found themselves in a seven-man raft being pushed by a porpoise toward land. Unfortunately the land was an island held by the Japanese. The friendly porpoise must have been surprised and hurt when he found himself being dissuaded from his pushing by being beaten off with the oars of the airmen.

Dr. Llano also reports that “Most observers noted that when porpoises appeared sharks disappeared, and they frequently refer to the ‘welcome’ appearance of porpoises, whose company they preferred to that of sharks.” This confirms all earlier reports that sharks are no match for the dolphin kind.