But, dear Poseidon! What an absurd and ridiculous error I have almost fallen into: while I am spending my time on seals and frogs, I have neglected and omitted the wisest of sea creatures, the most beloved of the gods!As it is to Thetis: Virgil, , i. 399. For what nightingales are to be compared with the halcyonSee Thompson, ; Kraak, (3rd series), vii. 142; Pliny, x. 89 ff.; Aelian, vii. 17; Gow on Theocritus, vii. 57; and the pleasant work found in mss. of Lucian and Plato. for its love of sweet sound, or what swallows for its love of offspring, or what doves for its love of its mate, or what bees for its skill in construction ? What creature’s procreation and birth pangs has the godPoseidon. so honoured ? For Leto’s parturition,For the birth of Apollo and Artemis. so they say, only one islandDelos, the wandering island. was made firm to receive her; but when the halcyon lays her eggs, about the time of the winter solstice, the godPoseidon. brings the whole sea to rest, without a wave, without a swell. And this is the reason why there is no other creature that men love more. Thanks to her they sail the sea without a fear in the dead of winter for seven days and seven nights.The Halcyon Days (Suidas, s.v.); Aristotle, v. 8 (542 b 6 ff.); Aelian, i. 36; Pliny, xviii. 231; al. For the moment, journey by sea is safer for them than by land. If it is proper to speak briefly of her several virtues, she is so devoted to her mate that she keeps him company, not for a single season, but throughout the year. Yet it is not through wantonness that she admits him to her company, for she never consorts at all with any other male; it is through friendship and affection, as with any lawful wife. When by reason of old age the male becomes too weak and sluggish to keep up with her, she takes the burden on herself, carries him and feeds him, never forsaking, never abandoning him; but mounting him on her own shoulders, she conveys him everywhere she goes and looks after him, abiding with him until the end.Cf. Alcman’s famous lines: frag. 26 Edmonds (, i, p. 72, L.C.L.), frag. 94 Diehl (, ii, p. 34); Antigonus, 23; al.

As for love of her offspring and care for their preservation, as soon as she perceives herself to be pregnant, she applies herself to building the nest,Cf. . 494 a-b; Aristotle, ix. 13 (616 a 19 ff.); Aelian, ix. 17. not making pats of mud or cementing it on walls and roofs like the house-martinCf. 966 d-e supra.; nor does she use the activity of many different members of her body, as when the bee employs its whole frame to enter and open the wax, with all six feet pressing at the same time to fashion the whole mass into hexagonal cells, But the halcyon, having but one simple instrument, one piece of equipment, one tool - her bill and nothing else, co-operating with her industry and ingenuity - what she contrives and constructs would be hard to believe without ocular evidence, seeing the object that she moulds - or rather the ship that she builds. Of many possible forms, this alone cannot be capsizedAristotle (loc. cit.), on the contrary, seems to say (though his text is corrupt; see Thompson ad loc.): The opening is small, just enough for a tiny entrance, so that even if the nest is upset, the sea does not enter. or even wet its cargo. She collects the spines of garfishBelone was usually a term for the garfish and the needlefish, neither of which has spines of any size. Thompson (, pp. 31-32) rightly regards the meaning of belone here as indeterminable. Cf. also 494 a, which is almost certainly mistranslated in the L.C.L. edition. and binds and weaves them together, some straight, others transverse, as if she were thrusting woven threads through the warp, adding such bends and knots of one with another that a compact, rounded unit is formed, slightly prolate in shape, like a fisherman’s weel. When it is finished, she brings and deposits it beside the surging waves, where the sea beats gently upon it and instructs her how to mend and strengthen whatever is not yet good and tight, as she observes it loosened by the blows. She so tautens and secures the joints that it is difficult even for stones or iron to break or pierce it. The proportions and shape of the hollow interior are as admirable as anything about it; for it is so constructed as to admit herself only, while the entrance remains wholly hidden and invisible to others - with the result that not even a drop of water can get in. Now I presume that all of you have seen this nest; as for me, since I have often seen and touched it, it comes to my mind to chant the words Once such a thing in Delos near Apollo’s shrineHomer, , vi. 162. That there was some religious mystery associated with the so-called nest is indicated by the close of Plutarch’s description. (Thompson on Aristotle, loc. cit.) I saw, the Altar of Horn, celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the WorldCf. Strabo, xiv. 2. 5. because it needs no glue or any other binding, but is joined and fastened together, made entirely of horns taken from the right side of the head.Curiously enough, the , xxi. 2 (9 e) says the left side. Now may the godApollo. From this point on the text of the rest of this chapter is very bad and full of lacunae. The restorations adopted here are somewhat less than certain. be propitious to me while I sing of the Sea SirenThis is not fulfilled and so is presumably an indication of another lacuna toward the end of Phaedimus’ speech, the location of which we cannot even guess. - and indeed, being both a musician and an islander, he should laugh good-naturedly at my opponents’ scoffing questions. Why should he not be called a conger-slayer or Artemis be termed a surmullet-slayer?Cf. 966 a supra. Since he well knows that Aphrodite, born of the sea, regards practically all sea creatures as sacred and related to herself and relishes the slaughter of none of them. In Leptis,Andrews suspects a confusion here and at 730 d with Lepidotonpolis on the Nile, not far below Thebes, apparently a focal point of a taboo on eating the bynni, allegedly due to its consumption of the private parts of Osiris when they were thrown into the river (cf. . 358 b). you know, the priests of Poseidon refrain entirely from any sea food, and those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis hold the surmullet in veneration, while the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from this fish to pay it honour. For surmullets are particularly good at killing and eating the sea-hare, which is lethal to man.Cf. Aelian, ii. 45; ix. 51; xvi. 19; Pliny, ix. 155; Philostratus, vi. 32. It is for this reason that surmullets possess this immunity, as being friendly and life-saving creatures.

Furthermore, many of the Greeks have temples and altars to Artemis DictynnaAs though Artemis of the Net; see Callimachus, iii. 198. and Apollo Delphinios; and that place which the god had chosen for himself the poetHomer, , iii. 393 ff. (as restored by van Herwerden). For Delphinian Apollo see lines 495 f. 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.The port of Delphi. They also relate that Soteles and Dionysius, the men sent by Ptolemy SoterCf. . 361 f; Tacitus, , iv. 83-84. 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 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.That is, in Sinope.

Well might the god be fond of the music-loving character of the dolphin,Cf. . 162 f; Pliny, xi. 137. to which PindarPage 597, ed. Sandys (L.C.L.); frag. 125, line 69-71 ed. Bowra (O.C.T.); frag. 222. 14-17, ed. Turyn. The quotation is found also in 704 f - 705 a. The lines were partially recovered in , iii. 408 b (1903); for the critical difficulties see Turyn’s edition. 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 menPliny, x. 24. For Dionysus and the pirate-dolphins see the seventh and Frazer on Apollodorus, iii. 5. 3 (L.C.L., vol. i, p. 332). renders it dear to the gods; for it is the only creature who loves man for his own sake.The hunting of dolphins is immoral: Oppian, v. 416 (see the whole passage). 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 avoid and fear man as a dangerous wild beast.Cf. . 728 a; but see Aelian, i. 52; Arrian, , i. 25. 8. 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 ArionHerodotus, i. 24; Mair on Oppian, v. 448. In 161 a ff. the story is told by an eye-witness at the banquet of the Seven Wise Men. is familiar to everyone and widely known; and you, my friend, opportunely put us in mind of the tale of Hesiod,Cf. 969 e supra. But you failed to reach the end of the tale.Homer, , ix. 56. 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 NemeonThe shrine of Zeus at Oeneon in Locris. 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.

MyrsilusMüller, iv, p. 459; Jacoby, ii, frag. 12; cf. . 163 b-d; Athenaeus, 466 c gives as his authority Anticleides. 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 the lad of IasusAelian, vi. 15 (cf. viii. 11), tells the story in great detail and with several differences; Cf. also the younger Pliny’s famous letter (ix. 33) on the dolphin of Hippo and the vaguer accounts in Aelian, ii. 6; Antigonus, 55; Philo, 67 (p. 132). Gulick on Athenaeus, 606 c-d collects the authorities; see also the dolphin stories in Pliny, ix. 25 ff. and Mair on Oppian, v. 458; Thompson, , pp. 54 f. Iasus is a city in Ionian Caris on the gulf of the same name. 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.The story has a happier ending in one version found in Pliny, ix. 27: the dolphin dies, but Alexander the Great makes the boy head of the priesthood of Poseidon in Babylon.

From this the wild tales about CoeranusAelian, viii. 3; Athenaeus, 606 e-f cites from Phylarchus, Book XII (Jacoby, i, p. 340). There are many other examples of dolphins rescuing people, such as the fragment of Euphorion in Page, , i, p. 497 (L.C.L.). 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 Sicinus,An island south of Paros. near a cave which is pointed out to this day and bears the name of Coeraneum.Cf. Edmonds, , ii, p. 321 (L.C.L.). It is on this man that Archilochus is said to have written the line Out of fifty, kindly Poseidon left only Coeranus.Edmonds, op. cit. ii, p. 164; Diehl, , i, p. 243. frag. 117. 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.On the grief of dolphins see Pliny, ix. 25, 33.

That the shield of Odysseus had a dolphin emblazoned on it, StesichorusEdmonds, , ii, p. 66, frag. 71. also has related; and the Zacynthians perpetuate the reason for it, as CritheusNothing whatever is known about this author, whose name may be given incorrectly in our mss. 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.

ARISTOTIMUS.Perhaps rather Heracleon (975 c) or Optatus (965 d). So, gentlemen of the jury, you may now cast your votes.

SOCLARUS. As for us, we have for some time held the view of SophoclesNauck, p. 314, frag. 783; Pearson, iii, p. 69, frag. 867.: It is a marvel how of rival sides The strife of tongues welds both so close together. For by combining what you have said against each other, you will together put up a good fight against thoseThe Stoics, as always in this essay. who would deprive animals of reason and understanding.To some critics the ending is suspicious because of its brevity and vagueness; they regard it as added by an ancient editor who could not find the original termination. But the sudden turn at the end may merely indicate that the whole debate is in reality a single argument to prove the thesis that animals do have some degree of rationality (see also the Introduction to this dialogue).