Arion

Did You Know?

• Arion was a native of Methymna in Lesbos.
• According to some mythological accounts, Arion was a son of Cyclon or of Poseidon and the nymph Oncaea.
• The story of Arion was taken up by Lucian of Samosata, who imagined a dialogue between Poseidon and the dolphin that bore Arion.

The dithyramb

Arion is often called the inventor of dithyrambic poetry and of the name dithyramb. According to Herodotus, he was second to none of the lyre-players of his time and the first known to compose and name the dithyramb and teach it in Corinth. The dithyramb is first mentioned by Archilochus around 665 BC, and Arion, flourishing at least fifty years later, probably gave it a more artistic form by adding a chorus of fifty people personating satyrs who danced around an altar of Dionysus. He was doubtless the first to introduce the dithyramb into Corinth. Ancient sources recognized his reform of the dithyramb, eventually performed in a circle and called kuklios choros, by naming his father Kukleus. Arion is also associated with the origins of tragedy: John the Deacon reports that Solon indicated in his poem Elegies that Arion first introduced the drama of tragedy.

Kidnapping by pirates

Arion, a celebrated musician, won a musical competition in Sicily. On his voyage home from Tarentum, greedy sailors decided to kill him and take the valuable prizes he was carrying. They gave him a choice: kill himself on land and receive a proper burial, or be thrown into the sea to drown. Arion asked to sing one last song.

He played his kithara and sang a hymn to Apollo, the god of poetry. His music drew a group of dolphins to the ship. Some believe Apollo sent the dolphins to rescue him. When the song ended, Arion jumped into the sea rather than let the sailors kill him.

One dolphin saved him and carried him to the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron. Once on land, Arion was in a hurry to continue his journey and did not return the dolphin to the water, so the dolphin died. He told his story to Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, who had the dolphin buried and a monument built for it. Soon after, the ship Arion had sailed on was driven to Corinth by a storm.

Periander ordered the crew brought before him and asked about Arion. They claimed he had died and they had buried him. Periander said they would swear to that at the dolphin's monument the next morning. He kept the crew guarded and told Arion to hide inside the monument, dressed as he was when he jumped into the sea.

When Periander brought the crew to the monument and ordered them to swear by the dolphin's spirit that Arion was dead, Arion stepped out. The crew was stunned into silence. Periander had them crucified at the dolphin's monument. Because of Arion's skill with the kithara, Apollo placed both Arion and the dolphin among the stars. The dolphin became the constellation Delphinus.

Surviving fragment

A fragment of a hymn to Poseidon, quoted by Aelian and ascribed to Arion, survives and is contained in Bergk's Poetae Lyrici Graeci. A poetic translation was made by Herbert Kynaston. The fragment addresses Poseidon as chiefest of gods, sea-lord of the golden trident, and earth-shaking king of the swelling brine. It describes the beasts that swim dancing about him, including the snub-nosed hounds of bristling mane, the dolphin-lovers of the Muse, and sea-creatures of Nereus' goddess-daughters. The fragment recounts how these beasts bore a wanderer on the Sicilian sea to Taenarum's shore after crafty men had cast him from the ship into the sea-purple billows.

In literature

Letitia Elizabeth Landon wrote a narrative poem titled Arion examining his story. Alexander Pushkin's 1827 poem Arion, in which Arion is the sole survivor of a shipwreck and continues to sing the same songs, is thought to allude to Pushkin's situation after the Decembrist revolt of 1825. George Eliot's poem of the same name recounts Arion's murder by pirates with no mention of rescue by dolphins. In Amor Towles' 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow, the Count tells Anna the story of Arion. Jimmy Buffett and Savannah Jane Buffett's children's story The Jolly Mon is heavily based on this myth.