Herodotus, Histories 1.24.6 · 1.24.6
The dolphin
Read the full text in our reader
καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἀποπλέειν ἐς Κόρινθον, τὸν δὲ δελφῖνα λέγουσι ὑπολαβόντα ἐξενεῖκαι ἐπὶ Ταίναρον. ἀποβάντα δὲ αὐτὸν χωρέειν ἐς Κόρινθον σὺν τῇ σκευῇ, καὶ ἀπικόμενον ἀπηγέεσθαι πᾶν τὸ γεγονός.
They sailed away to Corinth; but a dolphin, they say, took him up and carried him to Taenarum. He stepped ashore and went to Corinth in his costume, and when he arrived he told everything that had happened.
Word by word
The setting
The marvel itself, told in one clause.
A note on this passage
The miracle gets one participle, <em>hypolabonta</em>, "taking him up from beneath," and Herodotus wraps it in a fresh <em>legousi</em>, "they say," in case the reader had forgotten whose story this is. There is no description of the rescue, no night at sea, no wonder expressed. The dolphin appears, carries, and is gone. The restraint is the point: Herodotus will report a marvel, but he will not vouch for it.
What he does keep is the costume. Arion walks from Taenarum to Corinth <em>syn tēi skeuēi</em>, "with his costume," still in the robes he jumped in. It looks like colour, a singer tramping across the Peloponnese in concert dress. In the next section it turns out to be evidence.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Herodotus, Histories 1.24.6 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Herodotus, Histories — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Herodotus, Histories 1.24.6 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/herodotus/1.24.6/