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 Cor- 

 inth, 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 sec- 

 ond to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we 

 know, the first to invent the didiyrambic 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 out- 

 right, 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 



