The Dolphin (Emblem 39)

Originally an epithet for the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman counterpart: Diana), referring to her mythological birthplace of Mount Cynthos on the Island of Delos, “Cynthia” also came to be applied to Selene (Roman counterpart: Luna), the moon goddess with whom Artemis was often conflated. In the geocentric model of the universe (which had not been fully discredited in Pulter’s time), “fair Cynthia” or the moon marked the boundary between the mutable sublunary region and the unchanging superlunary spheres. The classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire made up everything below the moon, while the superlunary realm was filled with a more refined fifth element known as aether.

Pulter’s interest in the new heliocentric models advanced by the likes of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler is evident from poems such as The Eclipse [Poem 1] and The Wish [Poem 52]. Yet she continues to use the moon as a conventional boundary between earth and sky, speaking to the instability of seventeenth-century astronomy. Indeed, the notion of aether persisted in some form until after the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887.

Pulter’s dolphin is consistently presented as male, and early modern natural histories rarely contain extensive information on female dolphins, although many claimed that dolphins mated with their bellies together and the female on her back. The ostensible sexual passivity of both women and female dolphins was one of many traits that these species were said to share. See Pierre Belon, L’histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins…, vol. 2 (Paris: Regnaud Chaudiere, 1551), fol. 40r; Conrad Gessner, Historiae animalium, vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Andreas Cambier, 1604), p. 242 [322]; and Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis… (Lyon: Mathias Bonhomme, 1554), p. 462.

The word “spokesman” also raises the question of whether nonhuman species possess the capacity for language, a matter of great interest to early modern writers. Philosophers in this period generally agreed that only humans were capable of true speech, since the abstract thought underlying language required a rational soul. However, Pulter depicts the dolphin as an active mediator on Poseidon’s behalf.On early modern beliefs about animal speech, see R[ichard] W. Serjeantson, “The Passions and Animal Language, 1540–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001), pp. 425–444.

Modern scientists recognize that dolphins use a complex system of clicks and whistles, including distinctive sounds for each individual that are comparable to a human’s name, but the question of whether this constitutes “language” remains open.

Marriage by proxy occurs when one or both individuals are physically absent during the ceremony, often being represented by another person. Historical examples include the marriage of Charles I of England to Henrietta Maria of France, which occurred during Pulter’s lifetime, and the short-lived marriage of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, to Anne of Brittany.

Pulter’s phrasing here therefore sets up the comparison with Maximilian in line 11. She may also have been inspired by the active role that Delphinus takes in the Poeticon Astronomicon, which states that he “came at last to the maiden, persuaded her to marry Neptunus, and himself took charge of the wedding” (The Myths of Hyginus, ed. and trans. Mary Grant [Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960], 2.17).

Francis Bacon includes this alleged “consummation by proxy” in his description of Maximilian and Anne’s proxy marriage: “there came in Maximilian’s ambassador with letters of procuration, and in the presence of sundry nobly personages, men and women, put his leg (stripped naked to the knee) between the espousal sheets, to the end that that ceremony might be thought to amount to a consummation” (History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh [London: W[illiam] Stansby, 1622], p. 80, with modernized spelling and punctuation). The dolphin’s tail in Pulter’s poem is therefore aligned with both the ambassador’s leg and the human phallus that this leg represents.

In fact, dolphin tail fins, or flukes, have a closer evolutionary relationship with the tails of cats and dogs than they do with human legs. Dolphins also have two front flippers and two vestigial hind limbs, which are homologous to human arms and legs.

In the seventeenth century, “slippery” could be used euphemistically to indicate wantonness and sexual immodesty. Thus in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, King Leontes of Sicily asks the trustworthy Camillo if he believes that Queen Hermione of Sicily, whom Leontes falsely suspects of adultery, is “slippery” (William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998], I.ii.329-35, pp. 29-31).

The phrase “slippery virgin” can therefore be understood as a paradox: Amphitrite is both virginal and licentious, while her union to Neptune both has and has not been consummated. Pulter’s peculiar wording may also reflect the unique character of this interspecies encounter: specifically, the dolphin’s anatomical characteristics (including his retractable genitalia) may encourage us to read it as sensual beyond the conventions of normative heterosexuality.

Pliny describes dolphins working with humans to catch mullets off the coast of Languedoc (trans. Holland, IX.viii). Similar narratives persisted until Pulter’s time; for example, the thirteenth-century German scholar Albertus Magnus noted that dolphins would hunt with Italian fishermen (On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018], 24.40), and the sixteenth-century Dutch fishmonger Adriaen Coenen claimed that dolphins near Narbonne not only herded mullets into fishing nets, but also helped to inspect the nets (The Whale Book: Whales and Other Marine Animals as Described by Adriaen Coenen in 1584, ed. Florike Egmond and Peter Mason [London: Reaktion, 2003], pp. 94–5).

Recently, a group of bottlenose dolphins in southern Brazil has drawn attention for collaborating with humans to catch grey mullets. See Paulo C. Simões-Lopes et al., “Dolphin Interactions with the Mullet Artisanal Fishing on Southern Brazil,” Revista Brasileira de Zoologia 15.3 (1998): pp. 709–26 and Mauricio Lang dos Santos et al., “No Mullet, No Gain: Cooperation Between Dolphins and Cast Net Fishermen in Southern Brazil,” Zoologia 35 (2018): pp. 1-13.

The word “mullet” may refer to any fish of the families Mugilidae (“grey mullets”) or Mullidae (“red mullets”). Although grey mullets are numerous in English waters, the classical references throughout Pulter’s poem suggest that she is referring to the two species of red mullets found in the Mediterranean, Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus, which have been valuable food sources since the Roman period. According to Pliny, the Romans raised red mullets in ponds and served them alive, since these fish undergo complex colour changes as they expire. Indeed, Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BCE–65 CE) made a point of castigating those who believe that “[n]othing is more beautiful than a dying surmullet” in his Natural Questions. Descriptions of the enormous sums paid for single mullets in Pliny, Macrobius, and Tertullian evoke the modern trade in bluefin tuna.

See Pliny, Natural History, trans. H[arris] Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 353 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), IX.xxx-xxxi; Seneca the Younger, Natural Questions, trans. Thomas H. Corcoran, Loeb Classical Library 450 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), III.18.1; Macrobius, Saturnalia, ed. and trans. Robert Kaster, Loeb Classical Library 511 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), III.16.9; and Tertullian, On the Mantle (De Pallio), Tertulliani Opera, vol. 2, ed. Dom Eligius Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), V.6.

Dolphins were often said to feel affection for humans. Holland’s translation of Pliny gives an endearing account of their tendency to follow ships:

“Of a man he is nothing afraid, neither avoideth from him as a stranger, but of himself meeteth with their ships, playeth and disporteth himself, and fetcheth a thousand frisks and gambols before them. He will swim along by the mariners, as it were for a wager who should make way most speedily, and always out-goeth them, saile they with never so good a forewind.” (IX.viii, with modernized spelling and punctuation)

According to the legend recounted in Herodotus’s Histories (trans. Robin Waterfield [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 1.23–24, pp. 11–12), which also appears in the Poeticon Astronomicon (trans. Grant, 2.17) and Pliny’s Natural History (trans. Holland, IX.viii), Arion was returning home after winning a competition in Sicily when the ship’s crew attacked him for his prize money. When asked how he wanted to die, Arion begged to sing a final song in praise of Apollo. His playing attracted a group of dolphins, creatures often said to enjoy music; Holland’s translation of Pliny claims that dolphins are “delighted … with harmony in song” (IX.viii). After finishing his song, Arion jumped into the sea, but a dolphin carried him safely to Taenarum. In some versions of this narrative, the dolphin died when Arion failed to help it return to the water, but Apollo placed it among the stars, producing an alternate mythological origin of the constellation Delphinus (see note for “Amphitrite”).

On early modern interpretations of the Arion myth, including its eroticism in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1.2.10-17) and its use of music as a bridge between species, see Steve Mentz, “‘Half-Fish, Half-Flesh’: Dolphins, the Ocean, and Early Modern Humans,” The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature, ed. Jean E. Feerick and Vin Nardizzi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 39-41.

Originally an epithet for the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman counterpart: Diana), referring to her mythological birthplace of Mount Cynthos on the Island of Delos, “Cynthia” also came to be applied to Selene (Roman counterpart: Luna), the moon goddess with whom Artemis was often conflated. In the geocentric model of the universe (which had not been fully discredited in Pulter’s time), “fair Cynthia” or the moon marked the boundary between the mutable sublunary region and the unchanging superlunary spheres. The classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire made up everything below the moon, while the superlunary realm was filled with a more refined fifth element known as aether.

Pulter’s interest in the new heliocentric models advanced by the likes of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler is evident from poems such as The Eclipse [Poem 1] and The Wish [Poem 52]. Yet she continues to use the moon as a conventional boundary between earth and sky, speaking to the instability of seventeenth-century astronomy. Indeed, the notion of aether persisted in some form until after the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887.

Pulter’s dolphin is consistently presented as male, and early modern natural histories rarely contain extensive information on female dolphins, although many claimed that dolphins mated with their bellies together and the female on her back. The ostensible sexual passivity of both women and female dolphins was one of many traits that these species were said to share. See Pierre Belon, L’histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins…, vol. 2 (Paris: Regnaud Chaudiere, 1551), fol. 40r; Conrad Gessner, Historiae animalium, vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Andreas Cambier, 1604), p. 242 [322]; and Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis… (Lyon: Mathias Bonhomme, 1554), p. 462.

The word “spokesman” also raises the question of whether nonhuman species possess the capacity for language, a matter of great interest to early modern writers. Philosophers in this period generally agreed that only humans were capable of true speech, since the abstract thought underlying language required a rational soul. However, Pulter depicts the dolphin as an active mediator on Poseidon’s behalf.On early modern beliefs about animal speech, see R[ichard] W. Serjeantson, “The Passions and Animal Language, 1540–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001), pp. 425–444.

Modern scientists recognize that dolphins use a complex system of clicks and whistles, including distinctive sounds for each individual that are comparable to a human’s name, but the question of whether this constitutes “language” remains open.

Marriage by proxy occurs when one or both individuals are physically absent during the ceremony, often being represented by another person. Historical examples include the marriage of Charles I of England to Henrietta Maria of France, which occurred during Pulter’s lifetime, and the short-lived marriage of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, to Anne of Brittany.

Pulter’s phrasing here therefore sets up the comparison with Maximilian in line 11. She may also have been inspired by the active role that Delphinus takes in the Poeticon Astronomicon, which states that he “came at last to the maiden, persuaded her to marry Neptunus, and himself took charge of the wedding” (The Myths of Hyginus, ed. and trans. Mary Grant [Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960], 2.17).

Francis Bacon includes this alleged “consummation by proxy” in his description of Maximilian and Anne’s proxy marriage: “there came in Maximilian’s ambassador with letters of procuration, and in the presence of sundry nobly personages, men and women, put his leg (stripped naked to the knee) between the espousal sheets, to the end that that ceremony might be thought to amount to a consummation” (History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh [London: W[illiam] Stansby, 1622], p. 80, with modernized spelling and punctuation). The dolphin’s tail in Pulter’s poem is therefore aligned with both the ambassador’s leg and the human phallus that this leg represents.

In fact, dolphin tail fins, or flukes, have a closer evolutionary relationship with the tails of cats and dogs than they do with human legs. Dolphins also have two front flippers and two vestigial hind limbs, which are homologous to human arms and legs.

In the seventeenth century, “slippery” could be used euphemistically to indicate wantonness and sexual immodesty. Thus in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, King Leontes of Sicily asks the trustworthy Camillo if he believes that Queen Hermione of Sicily, whom Leontes falsely suspects of adultery, is “slippery” (William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998], I.ii.329-35, pp. 29-31).

The phrase “slippery virgin” can therefore be understood as a paradox: Amphitrite is both virginal and licentious, while her union to Neptune both has and has not been consummated. Pulter’s peculiar wording may also reflect the unique character of this interspecies encounter: specifically, the dolphin’s anatomical characteristics (including his retractable genitalia) may encourage us to read it as sensual beyond the conventions of normative heterosexuality.

Pliny describes dolphins working with humans to catch mullets off the coast of Languedoc (trans. Holland, IX.viii). Similar narratives persisted until Pulter’s time; for example, the thirteenth-century German scholar Albertus Magnus noted that dolphins would hunt with Italian fishermen (On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018], 24.40), and the sixteenth-century Dutch fishmonger Adriaen Coenen claimed that dolphins near Narbonne not only herded mullets into fishing nets, but also helped to inspect the nets (The Whale Book: Whales and Other Marine Animals as Described by Adriaen Coenen in 1584, ed. Florike Egmond and Peter Mason [London: Reaktion, 2003], pp. 94–5).

Recently, a group of bottlenose dolphins in southern Brazil has drawn attention for collaborating with humans to catch grey mullets. See Paulo C. Simões-Lopes et al., “Dolphin Interactions with the Mullet Artisanal Fishing on Southern Brazil,” Revista Brasileira de Zoologia 15.3 (1998): pp. 709–26 and Mauricio Lang dos Santos et al., “No Mullet, No Gain: Cooperation Between Dolphins and Cast Net Fishermen in Southern Brazil,” Zoologia 35 (2018): pp. 1-13.

The word “mullet” may refer to any fish of the families Mugilidae (“grey mullets”) or Mullidae (“red mullets”). Although grey mullets are numerous in English waters, the classical references throughout Pulter’s poem suggest that she is referring to the two species of red mullets found in the Mediterranean, Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus, which have been valuable food sources since the Roman period. According to Pliny, the Romans raised red mullets in ponds and served them alive, since these fish undergo complex colour changes as they expire. Indeed, Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BCE–65 CE) made a point of castigating those who believe that “[n]othing is more beautiful than a dying surmullet” in his Natural Questions. Descriptions of the enormous sums paid for single mullets in Pliny, Macrobius, and Tertullian evoke the modern trade in bluefin tuna.

See Pliny, Natural History, trans. H[arris] Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 353 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), IX.xxx-xxxi; Seneca the Younger, Natural Questions, trans. Thomas H. Corcoran, Loeb Classical Library 450 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), III.18.1; Macrobius, Saturnalia, ed. and trans. Robert Kaster, Loeb Classical Library 511 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), III.16.9; and Tertullian, On the Mantle (De Pallio), Tertulliani Opera, vol. 2, ed. Dom Eligius Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), V.6.

Dolphins were often said to feel affection for humans. Holland’s translation of Pliny gives an endearing account of their tendency to follow ships:

“Of a man he is nothing afraid, neither avoideth from him as a stranger, but of himself meeteth with their ships, playeth and disporteth himself, and fetcheth a thousand frisks and gambols before them. He will swim along by the mariners, as it were for a wager who should make way most speedily, and always out-goeth them, saile they with never so good a forewind.” (IX.viii, with modernized spelling and punctuation)

According to the legend recounted in Herodotus’s Histories (trans. Robin Waterfield [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 1.23–24, pp. 11–12), which also appears in the Poeticon Astronomicon (trans. Grant, 2.17) and Pliny’s Natural History (trans. Holland, IX.viii), Arion was returning home after winning a competition in Sicily when the ship’s crew attacked him for his prize money. When asked how he wanted to die, Arion begged to sing a final song in praise of Apollo. His playing attracted a group of dolphins, creatures often said to enjoy music; Holland’s translation of Pliny claims that dolphins are “delighted … with harmony in song” (IX.viii). After finishing his song, Arion jumped into the sea, but a dolphin carried him safely to Taenarum. In some versions of this narrative, the dolphin died when Arion failed to help it return to the water, but Apollo placed it among the stars, producing an alternate mythological origin of the constellation Delphinus (see note for “Amphitrite”).

On early modern interpretations of the Arion myth, including its eroticism in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1.2.10-17) and its use of music as a bridge between species, see Steve Mentz, “‘Half-Fish, Half-Flesh’: Dolphins, the Ocean, and Early Modern Humans,” The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature, ed. Jean E. Feerick and Vin Nardizzi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 39-41.

Originally an epithet for the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman counterpart: Diana), referring to her mythological birthplace of Mount Cynthos on the Island of Delos, “Cynthia” also came to be applied to Selene (Roman counterpart: Luna), the moon goddess with whom Artemis was often conflated. In the geocentric model of the universe (which had not been fully discredited in Pulter’s time), “fair Cynthia” or the moon marked the boundary between the mutable sublunary region and the unchanging superlunary spheres. The classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire made up everything below the moon, while the superlunary realm was filled with a more refined fifth element known as aether.

Pulter’s interest in the new heliocentric models advanced by the likes of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler is evident from poems such as The Eclipse [Poem 1] and The Wish [Poem 52]. Yet she continues to use the moon as a conventional boundary between earth and sky, speaking to the instability of seventeenth-century astronomy. Indeed, the notion of aether persisted in some form until after the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887.

Pulter’s dolphin is consistently presented as male, and early modern natural histories rarely contain extensive information on female dolphins, although many claimed that dolphins mated with their bellies together and the female on her back. The ostensible sexual passivity of both women and female dolphins was one of many traits that these species were said to share. See Pierre Belon, L’histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins…, vol. 2 (Paris: Regnaud Chaudiere, 1551), fol. 40r; Conrad Gessner, Historiae animalium, vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Andreas Cambier, 1604), p. 242 [322]; and Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis… (Lyon: Mathias Bonhomme, 1554), p. 462.

The word “spokesman” also raises the question of whether nonhuman species possess the capacity for language, a matter of great interest to early modern writers. Philosophers in this period generally agreed that only humans were capable of true speech, since the abstract thought underlying language required a rational soul. However, Pulter depicts the dolphin as an active mediator on Poseidon’s behalf.On early modern beliefs about animal speech, see R[ichard] W. Serjeantson, “The Passions and Animal Language, 1540–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001), pp. 425–444.

Modern scientists recognize that dolphins use a complex system of clicks and whistles, including distinctive sounds for each individual that are comparable to a human’s name, but the question of whether this constitutes “language” remains open.

Marriage by proxy occurs when one or both individuals are physically absent during the ceremony, often being represented by another person. Historical examples include the marriage of Charles I of England to Henrietta Maria of France, which occurred during Pulter’s lifetime, and the short-lived marriage of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, to Anne of Brittany.

Pulter’s phrasing here therefore sets up the comparison with Maximilian in line 11. She may also have been inspired by the active role that Delphinus takes in the Poeticon Astronomicon, which states that he “came at last to the maiden, persuaded her to marry Neptunus, and himself took charge of the wedding” (The Myths of Hyginus, ed. and trans. Mary Grant [Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960], 2.17).

Francis Bacon includes this alleged “consummation by proxy” in his description of Maximilian and Anne’s proxy marriage: “there came in Maximilian’s ambassador with letters of procuration, and in the presence of sundry nobly personages, men and women, put his leg (stripped naked to the knee) between the espousal sheets, to the end that that ceremony might be thought to amount to a consummation” (History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh [London: W[illiam] Stansby, 1622], p. 80, with modernized spelling and punctuation). The dolphin’s tail in Pulter’s poem is therefore aligned with both the ambassador’s leg and the human phallus that this leg represents.

In fact, dolphin tail fins, or flukes, have a closer evolutionary relationship with the tails of cats and dogs than they do with human legs. Dolphins also have two front flippers and two vestigial hind limbs, which are homologous to human arms and legs.

In the seventeenth century, “slippery” could be used euphemistically to indicate wantonness and sexual immodesty. Thus in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, King Leontes of Sicily asks the trustworthy Camillo if he believes that Queen Hermione of Sicily, whom Leontes falsely suspects of adultery, is “slippery” (William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998], I.ii.329-35, pp. 29-31).

The phrase “slippery virgin” can therefore be understood as a paradox: Amphitrite is both virginal and licentious, while her union to Neptune both has and has not been consummated. Pulter’s peculiar wording may also reflect the unique character of this interspecies encounter: specifically, the dolphin’s anatomical characteristics (including his retractable genitalia) may encourage us to read it as sensual beyond the conventions of normative heterosexuality.

Pliny describes dolphins working with humans to catch mullets off the coast of Languedoc (trans. Holland, IX.viii). Similar narratives persisted until Pulter’s time; for example, the thirteenth-century German scholar Albertus Magnus noted that dolphins would hunt with Italian fishermen (On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018], 24.40), and the sixteenth-century Dutch fishmonger Adriaen Coenen claimed that dolphins near Narbonne not only herded mullets into fishing nets, but also helped to inspect the nets (The Whale Book: Whales and Other Marine Animals as Described by Adriaen Coenen in 1584, ed. Florike Egmond and Peter Mason [London: Reaktion, 2003], pp. 94–5).

Recently, a group of bottlenose dolphins in southern Brazil has drawn attention for collaborating with humans to catch grey mullets. See Paulo C. Simões-Lopes et al., “Dolphin Interactions with the Mullet Artisanal Fishing on Southern Brazil,” Revista Brasileira de Zoologia 15.3 (1998): pp. 709–26 and Mauricio Lang dos Santos et al., “No Mullet, No Gain: Cooperation Between Dolphins and Cast Net Fishermen in Southern Brazil,” Zoologia 35 (2018): pp. 1-13.

The word “mullet” may refer to any fish of the families Mugilidae (“grey mullets”) or Mullidae (“red mullets”). Although grey mullets are numerous in English waters, the classical references throughout Pulter’s poem suggest that she is referring to the two species of red mullets found in the Mediterranean, Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus, which have been valuable food sources since the Roman period. According to Pliny, the Romans raised red mullets in ponds and served them alive, since these fish undergo complex colour changes as they expire. Indeed, Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BCE–65 CE) made a point of castigating those who believe that “[n]othing is more beautiful than a dying surmullet” in his Natural Questions. Descriptions of the enormous sums paid for single mullets in Pliny, Macrobius, and Tertullian evoke the modern trade in bluefin tuna.

See Pliny, Natural History, trans. H[arris] Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 353 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), IX.xxx-xxxi; Seneca the Younger, Natural Questions, trans. Thomas H. Corcoran, Loeb Classical Library 450 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), III.18.1; Macrobius, Saturnalia, ed. and trans. Robert Kaster, Loeb Classical Library 511 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), III.16.9; and Tertullian, On the Mantle (De Pallio), Tertulliani Opera, vol. 2, ed. Dom Eligius Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), V.6.

Dolphins were often said to feel affection for humans. Holland’s translation of Pliny gives an endearing account of their tendency to follow ships:

“Of a man he is nothing afraid, neither avoideth from him as a stranger, but of himself meeteth with their ships, playeth and disporteth himself, and fetcheth a thousand frisks and gambols before them. He will swim along by the mariners, as it were for a wager who should make way most speedily, and always out-goeth them, saile they with never so good a forewind.” (IX.viii, with modernized spelling and punctuation)

According to the legend recounted in Herodotus’s Histories (trans. Robin Waterfield [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 1.23–24, pp. 11–12), which also appears in the Poeticon Astronomicon (trans. Grant, 2.17) and Pliny’s Natural History (trans. Holland, IX.viii), Arion was returning home after winning a competition in Sicily when the ship’s crew attacked him for his prize money. When asked how he wanted to die, Arion begged to sing a final song in praise of Apollo. His playing attracted a group of dolphins, creatures often said to enjoy music; Holland’s translation of Pliny claims that dolphins are “delighted … with harmony in song” (IX.viii). After finishing his song, Arion jumped into the sea, but a dolphin carried him safely to Taenarum. In some versions of this narrative, the dolphin died when Arion failed to help it return to the water, but Apollo placed it among the stars, producing an alternate mythological origin of the constellation Delphinus (see note for “Amphitrite”).

On early modern interpretations of the Arion myth, including its eroticism in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1.2.10-17) and its use of music as a bridge between species, see Steve Mentz, “‘Half-Fish, Half-Flesh’: Dolphins, the Ocean, and Early Modern Humans,” The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature, ed. Jean E. Feerick and Vin Nardizzi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 39-41.