Arion

Arion, Greek poet, inventor of the dithyramb. He is said to have lived at Periander's court in Corinth in the late 7th cent. B.C. A legend repeated by Herodotus tells how, having been thrown overboard by pirates, Arion was saved by a dolphin charmed by his music.

(born June 14, 1855, Primrose, Wis., U.S.—died June 18, 1925, Washington, D.C.) U.S. politician. He served as a county district attorney in Wisconsin (1880–84) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1885–91). Advocating progressive reforms, he was elected governor of Wisconsin (1901–06). In the U.S. Senate (1906–24), he sponsored bills to restrict the power of the railroad companies. He founded La Follette's Weekly (1909) to broaden his reform movement, and he led Republican opposition to the policies of Pres. William H. Taft. He opposed U.S. entrance into World War I and policies of Pres. Woodrow Wilson that favoured big business. After the war he worked vigorously to expose corruption in government, including in the Teapot Dome scandal. As the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party in the 1924 election, he won five million votes, one-sixth of the total national vote. He died the next year; his son Robert (1895–1953) held his Senate seat from 1925 until 1947, when he was defeated by Joseph McCarthy.

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Semilegendary Greek poet and musician. He lived at Methymna on the island of Lesbos and is identified as the inventor of the dithyramb. He was sailing homeward after a performing tour when the sailors decided to kill him and steal his wealth. After singing a dirge for himself, he jumped overboard, but a dolphin charmed by his music carried him to shore. He reached Corinth before the ship; when the sailors arrived, the ruler Periander forced them to confess and punished them. Arion's lyre and the dolphin were placed in the heavens as the constellations Lyra and Delphinus.

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Arion was a legendary kitharode in ancient Greece, a Dionysiac poet credited with inventing the dithyramb. The islanders of Lesbos claimed him as their native son, but Arion found a patron in Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Although notable for his musical inventions, Arion is chiefly remembered for the fantastic myth of his kidnapping by pirates and miraculous rescue by dolphins, a folktale motif.

Kidnapping by pirates

According to a digression in Herodotus' account of the Lydian empire under the Mermnads, occasioned simply by the appearance of the name of Periander, Arion attended a musical competition in Sicily, which he won. On his return trip from Tarentum, avaricious sailors plotted to kill Arion and steal the rich prizes he carried home. Arion was given the choice of suicide with a proper burial on land, or being thrown in the sea to perish. Neither prospect appealed to Arion, and he asked for permission to sing a last song to win time.

Playing his kithara, Arion sang a praise to Apollo, the god of poetry, and his song attracted a number of dolphins around the ship. At the end of the song, Arion threw himself into the sea rather than be killed, but one of the dolphins saved his life and carried him to safety at the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron. This dolphin was catasterised as the constellation Delphinus, by the blessings of Apollo. Arion, according to Herodotus' brief excursus, then continued to Corinth by other means and arrived before the sailors that tried to kill him. On his return to Corinth, the king didn't quite believe Arion's fantastic story. The sailors believed Arion was dead in the sea, and on arrival in Corinth they told the king that Arion had decided to remain in Italy. The king then understood that Arion's story was true and punished the sailors with death.

The story as Herodotus tells it was taken up in other literature. Lucian of Samosata wittily imagined the dialogue between Poseidon and the very dolphin who bore Arion.

Mythological parallels

The episode may be seen as a doublet of the fate of Melicertes, where the leap into the sea was his mother's, Ino transformed into the "white goddess" Leucothea; Melikertes was carried more dead than alive to the shores where the Isthmian Games were celebrated in his honour, transformed to the hero Palaimon, who was placated with a noctunal chthonic rite, and the whose winners were crowned with a barren wreath of spruce..

Another parallel is the myth of Dionysus and the sailors, related in the Homeric Hymns: Tyrrhenian pirates try to lash the god to the mast, but the wood itself starts to sprout and the mast is intwined with ivy (like the god's thyrsus); the sailors leap into the sea and are transformed into dolphins. This is especially interesting because Arion is credited with the invention of the dithyramb, a dionysiac song.

Scholarly interpretations

In light of the above parallels, Walter Burkert interprets the myth as a significant development in the history of Dionysiac cult: "Released from this gloomy background, the cheerful and liberating legend of the sixth century further developed the image of the dolphin-rider under the colors of the renewed cult of Dionysus.. G.M. Bowra tied the myth to the period following the expulsion from Corinth of the aristocratic Bacchiadae, who traced their descent from Dionysus; "the cult of the god had to develop new and more democratic forms.

Stewart Flory identified Herodotus' characteristic use of the episode in a historicising context as an example of what Flory calls his "brave gestures", a man faced with death performs with calm dignity some spirited but unnecessary gesture that demonstrates contempt for danger.

Modern uses

Other variations of the story exist. In 1994, it was adapted by Vikram Seth and Alec Roth into the opera Arion and the Dolphin (aka "The Dolphin Opera"), commissioned by the English National Opera for professional performers with community chorus and children's chorus. It premiered at Plymouth in 1994 under conductor Nicholas Kok and director Rebecca Meitlis.

Arion is mentioned in Act 1, scene ii of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, where the Captain reassures Viola that her brother may still be alive after the shipwreck, for "like Arion on the dolphin's back, I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves."

Arion is a journal of humanities and the classics published at Boston University.

Trivia

• The Jimmy Buffett song Jolly Mon is based on this fable.
• The Arion fable inspired the central sculptural group in the main water basin of the formal gardens of Schloss Schwetzingen, Germany.
• There is a poem "Arion" by Alexander Pushkin; Seamus Heaney published an English version in Electric Light (2001):

... Only I, still singing, washed
Ashore by the long sea-swell, sing on,
A mystery to my poet self,
And safe and sound beneath a rock shelf
Have spread my wet clothes in the sun.

• There is a Japanese animation (anime) film named Arion that blends various Greek tales into an original story, following the story of a Hercules-like boy named Arion who struggles against various forces. The music in the film is by Joe Hisaishi, the main composer of all the music in Hayao Miyazaki's films.
• The Greek music awards show is called the ARION.
• There is a cantata by the French Baroque composer André Campra telling the story of Arion
• There is a mystical character in DC Comics called Arion, Lord of Atlantis.
• A sixteen year old boy named himself Arion Beats after the Greek poet to represent the treasures he hopes to find by following his passion for music.

Notes

References

• Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans (University of California Press) 1983, III.7 "The Return of the Dolphin" pp 196-204.

External links

• Arion in Bulfinch's Mythology A longer version of the myth, synthesized from selected sources.
• Theoi.com: Arion