(b Methymna [now Molyvos], Lesbos; fl 625–600 bce). Greek singer to the kithara and choral lyric poet. He was associated with the beginnings of the dithyramb. None of his works has survived. According to Herodotus he spent most of his life at the court of Periander, tyrant of Corinth (c625–585 bce); this account (i, 23–4) consists almost entirely of a legend that a music-loving dolphin saved Arion from drowning, but nevertheless describes him as ‘to our knowledge the first man who composed a dithyramb and gave it a name and produced it in Corinth’. The Suda attributes to Arion the invention of the tragic mode or style (tragikos tropos; cf Aristides Quintilianus 1.12 [Winnington-Ingram 30.2–3]) and the introduction of ‘satyrs speaking verses’, but without citing its authorities. Proclus (412–85 ce), in chapter xii of his Useful Knowledge, claims that Pindar had said ‘the dithyramb was discovered in Corinth’, and that Aristotle had spoken of Arion ‘as having begun the song’ (arxamenon tēs ōdēs: see below on the compound exarchein in the Poetics). These are late sources, but a writer actually contemporary with Arion was cited very circumstantially by John the Deacon, whose date is unknown: ‘the first performance [drama] of [?]tragedy was introduced by Arion of Methymna, as Solon stated in his Elegies’ (text and translation in Pickard-Cambridge, pp.98, 294). John was familiar with several very early texts, and there is no adequate reason to reject his evidence.
It is therefore no longer possible to deny (with Crusius) Arion's historical existence. The evidence is confusing, but it seems that Arion may well have taken the free dithyrambic invocation, consisting of ritual cries hailing Dionysus (the rude form known to Archilochus and termed dithyrambos by him in Edmonds, frag.77), and made it into an art form, both literary and musical. He may have composed narratives on heroic subjects (the ‘naming’ ascribed to him by Herodotus) and have given the chorus a genuine sung part, rather than a mere refrain, in their exchanges with the exarchōn (‘leader’). Aristotle's declaration (Poetics, 1449a11) that tragedy originated with ‘those who led off [exarchontōn, the verb used by Archilochus] the dithyramb’ can now be seen, thanks to the explicit reference cited by Proclus, to include Arion.
Aristotle cast Arion as a singer. If, as seems probable, Arion altered the music of the early dithyramb, the nature of the changes remains unknown. Whatever term Solon employed (tragōdia would have been unmetrical), it cannot have referred to anything like the developed genre of tragedy. He may have been describing as ‘goatlike’ the fat men and hairy satyrs of the dithyrambic choruses, if tragikos was taken to derive from tragos, ‘he-goat’. The abundant evidence of Corinthian vase paintings contemporary with Arion supports such a conclusion. In that case, the Suda reference to satyrs ‘speaking’ is confused and the satyr-play is not in question.
It would seem likely that Arion gave the dithyramb its initial shape as a force in Greek poetry and music. Minor Hellenistic commentators credited Lasus of Hermione with having done this, but Hellanicus and Dicaearchus (scholium on Aristophanes, Birds, 1403) put the considerable weight of their opinion behind Arion, and were probably correct. It appears equally likely that among the Peloponnesian composer-poets he was the first to provide the early Attic tragedians with ‘models of choral lyric poetry’, set to ‘music appropriate to serious themes’ (Pickard-Cambridge, p.112). No more precise description of that music can be justified from the evidence; Arion remains a major figure, indistinctly perceived.
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, i (London and Cambridge, MA, 1922, 2/1928/R), 136ff
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 16–25
O. Crusius: ‘Arion §5’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii/1 (Stuttgart, 1895/R), 836–9
A.W. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927, rev. 2/1962 by T.B.L. Webster), esp. 97ff
C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 82–3
C.M. Bowra: ‘Arion and the Dolphin’, Museum helveticum, xx (1963), 121–34
K. Preisendanz: ‘Arion’, Der kleine Pauly, ed. K. Ziegler and W. Sontheimer, i (Stuttgart, 1964), 548–9
G.A. Privitera: ‘Il ditirambo come spettacolo musicale: il ruolo di Archiloco e di Arione’, La musica in Grecia: Urbino 1985, 123–31
W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 71–2
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN