Bacchic wild dance in the mariners who throw themselves over- 

 board 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 Dia- 

 logues, 8; Oppian, Halieutica, I, 649-654, 1098, V, 422, 5i9f; 

 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, Posei- 

 don, 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 folk- 

 tale 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 (Bern- 

 hard Schmidt, Das VolI{sleben der Neugriechen, p. 135). 



8 



