8 Arion (§§23-24)
Herodotus uses the mention of Periander as an opportunity to relate the adventure of Arion, which happened during Periander’s reign. Neither Arion nor Periander really fits into Herodotus’s History except very tangentially, for neither would appear causally connected to or affected by the Persian Wars. Herodotus uses Periander as the paradigm of the bad tyrant in Socles’s speech in Book Five, and Arion here in Book One, to illustrate several major themes of the History. The stories are thus important because they fulfill the promise of “great and wonderful deeds” and because they introduce and embody some of the philosophical themes of the whole History.[1]
Arion, says the historian, was the greatest lyre player of his age and the first to compose the dithyramb. He had been spending a lot of time in Periander’s court when he conceived the desire to sail to Italy and Sicily; he went there and earned a lot of money. He decided to return home in a boat manned by Corinthians since he trusted them more than anyone else. At sea, the Corinthians betrayed his trust and plotted to throw Arion over board and steal his money. Unable to persuade them simply to take his money, he begged them to let him sing one last time, after which, he promised, he would throw himself into the sea. He donned his gear, sang a special song in honor of Apollo (the ὄρθιος νόμος), and jumped into the sea. While the ship sailed to Corinth, a dolphin picked up Arion and carried him to Taenarum.[2] He made his way to Corinth, where he told Periander what had happened. The tyrant, not believing the tale, held Arion under guard until the sailors arrived. When they claimed to have left Arion doing well in Tarentum, Arion appeared. The sailors were astounded and unable to deny their guilt. Herodotus tells us that the Corinthians and Lesbians agree on the story and that at Taenarum stands a dedicatory offering that depicts Arion on the dolphin.
The story is justly famous for the extraordinary episode of the rescue by a dolphin, especially after a religious song in honor of Apollo, and perhaps there is a pun on Delphi—delphinos.[3] But the story also contains other significant features, including numerous unexplained motivations. Why does Arion wish to sail to Italy? Why does he trust Corinthians more than anyone else? Why does he offer to sing for the sailors and then to throw himself overboard? Nor does Herodotus explain how he made his way penniless and with all his gear overland the very long way from Taenarum, at the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, to Corinth. While all these details might flesh out the story, they are clearly not necessary: the story stands as told, and as told, delivers a number of important messages. Munson summarizes many of these:
This short narrative passage is structurally analogous to the work as a whole, in that it focuses upon an overwhelming aggression against a numerically weaker victim and it suggests certain thematic contrasts central in the Histories: barbarism and civilization, physical force and moral excellence, divine punishment and reward.[4]
There appear in addition several other lessons, and in some of these Herodotus prepares us for the proto-Stoic lessons he will deliver in the Croesus story. Arion went to Italy and made a lot of money, money justly earned through his art. On the ship he was willing to give up the money for his life. When the sailors would not accept the offer, he was still devoted to his art and wished to sing one last time, so it is clear that he was not motivated only by money. Then, having sung his song, true to his word he flung himself into the sea. What a contrast to the Corinthians! Even when they had the opportunity to satisfy their greed with Arion’s honest money, they demanded his life. Clearly Arion trusted them (by going on a Corinthian ship) more than they trusted him (despite his consistent honesty, they wanted to kill him, doubtless, to destroy the evidence of their crime). Periander too did not believe Arion, and one can wonder whether Herodotus does not intend for us to see Periander and the sailors as cut from the same cloth, both untrustworthy and untrusting.[5]
Herodotus tells us no more about Arion than this single story. Nor does he tell us the fate of the Corinthian sailors. His aim is the lesson to be learned from the story and the help the lesson gives in understanding the next story. Thus the stories build one on the next.[6] In the first few stories we have learned the consequences of improper sexual impulses (in Candaules), of the wrongful preference for life and power over right conduct (Gyges), and of the punishment for insufficient piety (Alyattes). I do not think that the unhappy consequences of the sailors’ greed is one of Herodotus’s lessons in the Arion story, for we never learn what happened to the sailors. Instead, he gives us a contrasting example, of how the gods help one who is good and pious (Arion’s honestly earned money and his song for Apollo). Finally, he shows us in all of these stories the validity of the principle that happiness does not continue long. The Corinthian sailors learned this lesson too, for their ill-gotten wealth lasted a very short time.
Thus the Arion story foreshadows the truth of Solon’s advice to await the end before judging: it would have been premature to judge the life of Arion even as he was leaping into the sea.
When we reflect on the larger purpose of the History we see already in this first sequence of stories their relevance for Athens. Wealth is no bulwark against the inevitability of punishment for injustice and grasping. Gifts to Delphi might postpone but cannot prevent vengeance for wrong doing. These are lessons that Athens, in the years just before the Peloponnesian Wars, could well learn.[7]
Herodotus, I think, saw in the events that preceded the Persian Wars the same kind of arrogant blindness manifested so splendidly by Athens.[8] By indirection subtle and not so subtle he was seeking in his book to warn his contemporaries to correct their behavior before it was too late. The great historian realized, however, that his warning would likely be in vain-as were the warnings of most of the wise advisers in his History. One of the saddest, and truest, moments in the History is the story of Thersander of Orchomenos (9.16), who, before the Battle of Plataea, attended a banquet where Persians and Thebans were sitting together. In the course of the conversation, a Persian amicably warns Thersander to escape, that soon few of those among the Persians will survive. Thersander advises the Persian to warn Mardonius, the Persian commander, but the Persian responds with resignation: “It is not possible for a man to avert what comes from the divine. No one believes those saying the most trust worthy things. Many of us Persians know our situation, but, constrained by necessity, we follow orders. The most hateful anguish among people is to know many things but to have power over nothing.” Like Samuel Johnson, Herodotus is a cheerful pessimist, and throughout the History his pessimism looms behind the smiles.[9]
- For a fine article on the themes of the story and how they relate to the moral of the History, see R. V.Munson, “The Celebratory Purpose of Herodotus: The Story of Arion in Histories 1.23-24,” 93-104. Also very fine is S. Flory, “Arian’s Leap: Brave Gestures in Herodotus,” 411-21, who, comparing Arion to others in the History who act bravely and consistently with their roles, finds the story to support two important themes in Herodotus: the importance of nomos and the superiority of death over life. See also J.T. Hooker, “Arion and the Dolphin,” Greece & Rome 36(1989): 141-46, who sees the story as demonstrating Herodotus’s “belief in the moral government of the world” and as a chapter in the history of man’s credulity (man’s credulity being one of the historian’s major topics). For other views, see J. Cobet, Herodots Exkurse und die Frage der Einheit seines Werkes, Historia Einzelschrift 17 (Wiesbaden, 1971), 149; H. Schwabl, “Hdt. als Historiker u. Erzahler,” Gymnasium 76(1969): 259-61; and H. Wood, The Histories of Herodotus (The Hague, 1972), 23-24. K.H. Waters, “The Structure of Herodotos’ Narrative,” Antichthon 8(1974): 6, sees the story as having no purpose except to be a break, “to get people laughing while you send the hat around.” ↵
- Flory (“Arian’s Leap,” 40), thinks that Herodotus is putting little emphasis on the miraculous rescue of Arion by the dolphin, a view that I think measures emphasis by the amount of space devoted to a matter. But emphasis may also be shown by understatement when an extraordinary event is described, as here, in a matter-of-fact manner. ↵
- This pun is suggested by H. Schwabl (above n. 54) and by S. Benardete, 15. The connection of Apollo and dolphins is expanded by Konstan (“The Stories in Herodotus’s Histories: Book 1”), 14:
we may recollect the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in which the god assumes the shape of a dolphin to guide his future priests to the site of Delphi, there to found his oracle; the aetiological pun is ancient and well-established. Thus Arion, sacrificed at the hands of mortals who disregard the law, is borne up by the deeper traditions enshrined in the oracle which was widely regarded as the divine conscience of Hellas.
↵ - Munson, “The Celebratory Purpose,” 98. ↵
- Here I disagree with Konstan, who sees justice as reigning under the direct supervision of Periander’s court (Konstan 14). I think that Periander in Herodotus represents an archetype of the wicked tyrant. ↵
- Nowhere is this use of stories’ lessons building one on the other clearer than in the sequence of tales beginning with Sesostris and extending through Mycerinus, a sequence understandable only if the succession of stories is examined together. See Appendix on Egyptian tales. ↵
- K.H. Waters (“The Structure of Herodotos’ Narrative,” 2) denies that there is any motive of moral instruction in Herodotus’s work. Yet while he ably points out the assumptions of other scholars, he puts forth as his own that Herodotus is aiming at producing a work of art and has no “ulterior motives.” Is it to be assumed that art does not aim at instruction? That Herodotus had a serious purpose and did not intend merely to entertain or amuse has been argued very persuasively by S. Flory, ‘Who Read Herodotus’s Histories,” AJP 101(1980): 12-28. He shows that so large a book as the History would have had a very small but intelligent audience, probably, among others, the elite of Athens. These would likely have been the individuals whose policies could have averted the coming catastrophe. I think that the first history of Europe already shows what will be a permanent feature in the annals of humanity: the failure to learn from the past. Ayo, in his lyrical article “Prolog and Epilog: Mythical History in Herodotus,” Ramus 13(1984): 31-47, sees Herodotus’s purpose as “highlighting the conflict of tyranny and freedom, of despotic empire and more democratic coalition.” I think, however, that Herodotus’s purpose is persuasive, not merely informative. Forrest (“Herodotus and Athens,” Phoenix 38[1984]: 1-11) sees in Herodotus’s History a pro-Athenian bias (and, incidentally, believes Herodotus’s audience to be “Athenian polite society, enormously civilised, tremendously cultivated, intellectually way out ahead of its time” [10]). But he over-circumscribes Herodotus’s purpose, which he thinks is simply to find out how things happen. If Herodotus was truly a friend of Athens-and I agree with Forrest in thinking that he was-he would want what was best for Athens, and what was best for Athens was to curb its exploitative imperialism. There has been considerable discussion of whether Herodotus spent much time in Athens. Among those who think he did are F. Jacoby, RE Supplementband 2(1913): 226-37; P.-E. Legrand, Hérodote: Introduction (Paris, 1932), 29-37; L.A. Stella, “Erodoto e Atene,” Atene e Roma 4(1936): 73-100; K. von Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin, 1967), 1.123-35; and C.C. Chaisson, “Tragic Diction in Herodotus: Some Possibilities,” Phoenix 36(1982): 156-61. Taking the view that he did not is A.J. Podlecki, “Herodotus in Athens?” in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory: Studies Presented to Fritz Schachermeyr on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday. Ed. K. H. Kinzl. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1977) 246-65. ↵
- Konstan observes that Herodotus sees a tension between active virtue and money and that he “valorizes the city-state ethos as the ground of a qualitative and active conception of value.” I believe he is right and would add that Herodotus, by the example of the Asians, is warning his readers to pay attention to this lesson. So also Redfield, “Herodοtus the Tourist,” Classical Philology 80(1985): 115, who tentatively suggests “that for Herodotus and his audience in the mid-fifth century the tyrannical Athenian empire was the moral heir of the Persians, threatened with the same moral collapse.” ↵
- On Herodotus’s pessimism see How and Wells, 49-50. ↵
