3/4 Pliny's natural history. [Book IX. 



lasiis there was another boy also, Hermias by name, who in a 

 similar manner used to traverse the sea on a dolphin's back, 

 but that on one occasion a tempest suddenly arising, he lost 

 liis life, and was brought back dead ; upon which, the dolphin, 

 who thus admitted that he had been the cause of his death, 

 would not return to the sea, but lay down upon the dry land, 

 and there expired. 



Theophrastus^^ informs us, that the yery same thing hap- 

 pened at Naupactus also ; nor, in fact, is there any limit to 

 similar instances. The Amphilochians'^ and the Tarentines^" 

 have similar stories also about children and dolphins ; and all 

 these give an air of credibility to the one that is told of 

 Arion,^^ the famous performer on the lyre. The mariners 

 being on the point of throwing him into the sea, for the pur- 

 pose of taking possession of the money he had earned, he pre- 

 vailed upon them to allow him one more song, accompanied 

 with the music of his lyre. The melody attracted numbers of 

 dolphins around the ship, and, upon throwing himself into the 

 sea, he was taken up by one of them, and borne in safety to 

 the shore of the Promontory of Taenarum.®- 



CHAP. 9. — PLACES WHERE DOLPHINS HELP MEN TO FISH. 



There is in the province of Gallia Narbonensis and in the 

 territory of Nemausus ^^ a lake known by the name of La- 

 tera,^* where dolphins fish in company with men. At the 



''8 Aulus Gellius, B. vii. c. 8, mentions this story, borrowing it probably 

 from Tbeopbrastus. 



"^3 The people of the territory in which Amphilochian Argos was situate, 

 and lying to the south of Ambracia. See B. iv. c. 2. 



**" The people of Tarentum. See B. iii. c. 16. 



^^ Ovid tells the story of Arion more fully, and in beautiful language, 

 in the Fasti, B. ii, 1. 92, et seq. 



"■• A promontory in the south of Laconia, now Cape Matapan. See B. 

 iv. c. 7. Solinus, c. 7, tells us that there was a temple of Arion of Me- 

 tliymna, situate on this spot, in which there was a figure of him seated on 

 a dolphin's back, and made of bronze ; with an inscription stating that this 

 wonderful circumstance took place in the 29th Olympiad, in which year 

 Arion had been victorious in the Sicilian games. Philostorgius, in B. i. of 

 his Ecclesiastical History, tells us also of a martyr who was saved by a 

 dolphin, which bore him to Helenopolis, a city of Nicomedia. 



^^ Now Nismes. See B. iii. c. 5. 



^^ Still known as the Lake of Lattes, in the department of Narbonne. 

 Cuvier says that the mullet-fishing is still carried on in this lake, which is 



