Arion

The singer from Methymna

Arion’s story comes from Herodotus, the Greek historian. Arion is a poet and a player of the lyre, a stringed instrument. He comes from Methymna, a city on the island of Lesbos. Herodotus calls him the finest lyre-player of his age.

Herodotus also says that Arion was the first person known to compose and name the dithyramb, a song sung by a chorus, and that he taught it at Corinth. The wording is careful about who came first, but clear about the places. Methymna gives Arion his origin. Corinth gives him the court of Periander, its ruler, where his new choral song was taught.

Later Arion travels to Italy and Sicily and earns a fortune there. He sets out for home from Tarentum, in Italy. He chooses a ship from Corinth because, Herodotus says, he trusts Corinthians more than anyone else. That trust makes what follows worse. The men he chose for his safety become the men who want him dead.

The last song on the ship

Out at sea, the crew decide to kill Arion and take his money. They give him two choices. He can kill himself and be buried on land, or he can jump into the sea at once.

Arion asks for one favour. He wants to put on his full performer’s costume, stand on the raised deck and sing before he dies. The sailors agree and move back to listen. Arion takes up his lyre and performs what Herodotus calls the “Stirring Song”. When it ends, he jumps overboard, still in his costume and still holding his instrument.

The ship sails on towards Corinth. A dolphin takes Arion on its back and carries him to Tainaron, a cape at the southern end of the Mani.

Herodotus says the Corinthians tell this story and the people of Lesbos agree with it. Through one man, the story joins two distant coasts: his home at Methymna and the place where his rescue was later marked, at Tainaron.

The test at Corinth

Arion reaches Corinth still dressed as he was on the ship, and he tells Periander what happened. The ruler does not believe him at once. He keeps Arion under guard and waits for the ship to arrive.

When the sailors come in, Periander asks them about the musician. They say Arion is safe in Italy and that they left him doing well at Tarentum. Then Arion steps out in front of them, wearing the costume he jumped in. Herodotus says the sight leaves them unable to deny what they did.

The ending turns on recognition, not on explanation. The sailors do not see a rescued traveller in ordinary clothes. They see the man they thought was lost at sea, still dressed for his last performance.

The bronze rider at Tainaron

Herodotus ends with an object. At Tainaron in his own time, he says, there was a small bronze offering to the gods, showing a man riding a dolphin. This does not prove the voyage happened. It does show that, by the time he wrote, the story was fixed to the cape by an offering that people could see.

Pausanias, a Greek travel writer, visited centuries later. Among the offerings at Tainaron he saw a bronze statue of Arion the lyre-player on a dolphin. He sends his readers back to Herodotus for the story. The two reports should not be read as proof that both writers saw the same object. What they share is the pairing of singer, dolphin and cape.

Lesbos holds the start of the story, in Arion of Methymna. The Mani holds the landing and its bronze image. His music is the last thing the crew allows him, and in the story it is also how he comes back to face them.