39. Thirdly, Athena is the air in its power over the sea.
On the earliest Panathenaic vase known--the "Burgon" vase in the British
museum--Athena has a dolphin on her shield. The dolphin has two
principal meanings in Greek symbolism. It means, first, the sea;
secondarily, the ascending and descending course of any of the heavenly
bodies from one sea horizon to another--the dolphins' arching rise and
replunge (in a summer evening, out of calm sea, their black backs roll
round with exactly the slow motion of a water-wheel; but I do not know
how far Aristotle's exaggerated account of their leaping or their
swiftness has any foundation) being taken as a type of the emergence
of the sun or stars from the sea in the east, and plunging beneath in the
west. Hence, Apollo, when in his personal power he crosses the sea,
leading his Cretan colonists to Pytho, takes the form of a dolphin,
becomes Apollo Delphinius, and names the founded colony "Delphi." The
lovely drawing of the Delphic Apollo on the hydria of the Vatican (Le
Normand and De Witte, vol. ii. p. 6) gives the entire conception of this
myth.
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