The popular belief in antiquity in the human intelligence of dolphins and their kindly feeling toward man was explained by the ancient writers in the light of the transformation of the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins. (See Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 8; Oppian, Halieutica, I, 649-654, 1098, V, 422, 519f; Porphyry, De Abstinentia, III, 16.) As Oppian (I, 1089) in his Halieutica has it, in William Diaper’s charming translation:
So Dolphins teem, whom subject Fish revere,
And show the smiling Seas their Infant-Heir.
All other Kinds, whom Parent-Seas confine,
Dolphins excell; that Race is all divine.
Dolphins were Men (Tradition hands the Tale)
Laborious Swains bred on the Tuscan Vale:
Transform’d by Bacchus, and by Neptune lov’d,
They all the Pleasures of the Deep improv’d.
When new-made Fish the God’s Command obey’d,