months as if it had been driven away by insult; but afterwards 

 it returned and was an object of wonder as before. The expense 

 caused to their hosts by persons of official position who came to 

 see it forced the people of Hippo to destroy it. Before these oc- 

 currences a similar story is told about a boy in the city of lasus, 

 with whom a dolphin was observed for a long time to be in love, 

 and while eagerly following him to the shore when he was going 

 away it grounded on the sand and expired; Alexander the Great 

 made the boy head of the priesthood of Poseidon at Babylon, 

 interpreting the dolphin's affection as a sign of the deity's favour. 

 Hegesidemus writes that in the same city of lasus another boy 

 also, named Hermias, while riding across the sea in the same 

 manner lost his life in die waves of a sudden storm, but was 

 brought back to the shore, and the dolphin confessing itself the 

 cause of his death did not return out to sea and expired on dry 

 land. Theophrastus records that exactly the same thing occurred 

 at Naupactos too. Indeed there are unlimited instances : the peo- 

 ple of Amphilocus and Taranto tell the same stories about boys 

 and dolphins; and these make it credible that also the skilled 

 harper Arion, when at sea the sailors were getting ready to kill 

 him with the intention of stealing the money he had made, suc- 

 ceeded in coaxing them to let him first play a turn on his harp, 

 and the music attracted a school of dolphins, whereupon he 

 dived into the sea and was taken up by one of them and carried 

 ashore at Cape Matapan." 



A very similar but apparently quite independent account of 

 these stories is given by the younger Pliny, in his Letters (IX, 



23)- 



The elder Pliny then goes on to tell of the manner in which 

 dolphins assist fishermen, which corresponds closely with the ac- 

 counts given by recent observers of this cooperative activity be- 

 tween fishermen and dolphins. (For accounts of these see 

 Antony Alpers, Dolphins, 146 sq.) 



There are numerous other stories similar to those given by the 



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