nstead of being drowned, was taken up by a dolphin that had been
charmed by his song, and was borne by him to Taenarus, which is the
promontory formed by the southern extremity of the Peloponnesus. There
Arion landed in safety. From Taenarus he proceeded to Corinth, wearing
the same dress in which he had plunged into the sea. On his arrival,
he complained to the king of the crime which the sailors had
committed, and narrated his wonderful escape. The king did not believe
him, but put him in prison to wait until the ship should arrive. When
at last the vessel came, the king summoned the sailors into his
presence, and asked them if they knew any thing of Arion. Arion
himself had been previously placed in an adjoining room, ready to be
called in as soon as his presence was required. The mariners answered
to the question which the king put to them, that they had seen Arion
in Tarentum, and that they had left him there. Arion was then himself
called in. His sudden appearance, clothed as he was in the same dress
in which the mariners had seen him leap into the sea, so terrified the
conscience-stricken criminals, that they confessed their guilt, and
were all punished by the king. A marble statue, representing a man
seated upon a dolphin, was erected at Taenarus to commemorate this
event, where it remained for centuries afterward, a monument of the
wonder which Arion had achieved.

At length Alyattes died and Croesus succeeded him. Croesus
extended still further the power and fame of the Lydian empire, and
was for a time very successful in all his military schemes. By looking
upon the map, the reader will see that the AEgean Sea, along the coasts
of Asia Minor, is studded with islands. These islands were in those
days very fertile and beautiful, and were densely inhabited by a
commercial and maritime people, who possessed a multitude of ships,
and were very powerful in all the adjacent seas. Of course their land
forces were very few, whether of horse or of foot, as the habits and
manners of such a sea-going people were all foreign to modes of
warfare required in land campaigns. On the sea, however, these
islanders were supreme.

Croesus formed a scheme for attacking these islands and bringing
them under his sway, and he began to make preparations for building
and equipping a fleet for this purpose, though, of course, his
subjects were as unused to the sea as the nautical islanders were
to military operations on the land. Whil