Arion

Arion on a sea horse, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1855)

Arion was a legendary kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysiac poet credited with inventing the dithyramb. The islanders of Lesbos claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Although notable for his musical inventions, Arion is chiefly remembered for the fantastic myth of his kidnapping by pirates and miraculous rescue by dolphins, a folktale motif.^[1]

Kidnapping by pirates

According to a digression in Herodotus' account of the Lydian empire under the Mermnads^[2], occasioned simply by the appearance of the name of Periander, Arion attended a musical competition in Sicily, which he won. On his return trip from Tarentum, avaricious sailors plotted to kill Arion and steal the rich prizes he carried home. Arion was given the choice of suicide with a proper burial on land, or being thrown in the sea to perish. Neither prospect appealed to Arion, and he asked for permission to sing a last song to win time.

Playing his kithara, Arion sang a praise to Apollo, the god of poetry, and his song attracted a number of dolphins around the ship. At the end of the song, Arion threw himself into the sea rather than be killed, but one of the dolphins saved his life and carried him to safety at the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron. This dolphin was catasterised as the constellation Delphinus, by the blessings of Apollo.

Arion, according to Herodotus' brief excursus, then continued to Corinth by other means and arrived before the sailors that tried to kill him. On his return to Corinth, the king didn't quite believe Arion's fantastic story. The sailors believed Arion was dead in the sea, and on arrival in Corinth they told the king that Arion had decided to remain in Italy. After Arion presented himself, they could no longer deny the truth.^[3]

The story as Herodotus tells it was taken up in other literature.^[4] Lucian of Samosata wittily imagined the dialogue between Poseidon and the very dolphin who bore Arion.^[5]

Family

From what is told in ancient Greek scripts, Arion, although favored by Apollo, is the son of Poseidon and Ino.

Mythological parallels

The episode may be seen as a doublet of the fate of Melicertes, where the leap into the sea was that of his mother, Ino. transformed into the "white goddess" Leucothea; Melicertes was carried more dead than alive to the shores where the Isthmian Games were celebrated in his honour, as he was transformed to the hero Palaimon, who was placated with a noctunal chthonic rite, and the whose winners were crowned with a barren wreath of spruce.^[6].

Another parallel is the myth of Dionysus and the sailors, related in the Homeric Hymns: Tyrrhenian pirates try to lash the god to the mast, but the wood itself starts to sprout and the mast is entwined with ivy (like the god's thyrsus); the sailors leap into the sea and are transformed into dolphins. This is especially interesting because Arion is credited with the invention of the dithyramb, a dionysiac song.

Scholarly interpretations

In light of the above parallels, Walter Burkert interprets the myth as a significant development in the history of Dionysiac cult: "Released from this gloomy background, the cheerful and liberating legend of the sixth century further developed the image of the dolphin-rider under the colors of the renewed cult of Dionysus."^[7]. G.M. Bowra^[8] tied the myth to the period following the expulsion from Corinth of the aristocratic Bacchiadae, who traced their descent from Dionysus; "the cult of the god had to develop new and more democratic forms."^[9]

Stewart Flory^[10] identified Herodotus' characteristic use of the episode in a historicising context as an example of what Flory calls his "brave gestures", a man faced with death performs with calm dignity some spirited but unnecessary gesture that demonstrates contempt for danger.

Modern uses

Other variations of the story exist. In 1994, it was adapted by Vikram Seth and Alec Roth into the opera Arion and the Dolphin (aka "The Dolphin Opera"), commissioned by the English National Opera for professional performers with community chorus and children's chorus. It premiered at Plymouth in 1994 under conductor Nicholas Kok and director Rebecca Meitlis.

Arion is mentioned in Act 1, scene ii of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, where the Captain reassures Viola that her brother may still be alive after the shipwreck, for "like Arion on the dolphin's back, I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves."

Arion is a journal of humanities and the classics published at Boston University.

Arion on the dolphin is the imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers based in Boston and New York.

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (February 2008)

• The Jimmy Buffett song Jolly Mon is based on this fable.
• The Arion fable inspired the central sculptural group in the main water basin of the formal gardens of Schloss Schwetzingen, Germany.
• There is a poem "Arion" by Alexander Pushkin; Seamus Heaney published an English version in Electric Light (2001):

... Only I, still singing, washed
Ashore by the long sea-swell, sing on,
A mystery to my poet self,
And safe and sound beneath a rock shelf
Have spread my wet clothes in the sun.^[11]

• A Japanese animation film named Arion blends various Greek tales into an original story, following the story of a Hercules-like boy named Arion who struggles against various forces. The music in the film is by Joe Hisaishi, the main composer of all the music in Hayao Miyazaki's films.
• The Greek music awards show is called the ARION.
• There is a cantata by the French Baroque composer André Campra telling the story of Arion
• There is a mystical character in DC Comics called Arion, Lord of Atlantis.

Notes

References

• Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans (University of California Press) 1983, III.7 "The Return of the Dolphin" pp 196-204.

External links

• Arion in Bulfinch's Mythology A longer version of the myth, synthesized from selected sources.
• Theoi.com: Arion