ABSTRACT
IT chanced one day, when the sea was at its calmest, that a large school of dolphins came flocking in a single drove round the entrance to the Black Sea. Suddenly spotting the monster, they darted off along any possible escape route, so that a large number retreated to the mouth of the River Sakarya. 2 However, immediately on their arrival, some of the dolphins, especially the inattentive ones, were devoured by the vast creature. Whether hunger kept it there, or whether it acted through pugnacity, it never abandoned its chase as long as they fled, till at last its headlong assault brought it involuntarily to the mainland, where it plunged into a deep layer of mud. Although it struggled to tear itself away by every means, it was quite powerless to free itself from the mud-bank, and the more it strained, the worse it became stuck. After the report had spread among the local people, they came streaming from all directions and, dashing straight to the monster, hacked away at every side with persistent blows of their axes. Yet this was not the way to dispose of it. Tying it with heavy ropes, a great band of men dragged it off and loaded it on wagons to be carted away. When they measured it carefully, it was found to be forty-five feet long and fifteen broad. Then they shared out the meat among themselves by groups, and, according to the wishes of each, either kept it preserved with salt, or ate it straight away. But the Byzantines, frightened by the earthquake, or influenced by the unusual flooding of the Nile or this portent of the sea-monster, immediately began to speculate on the future, each person having taken the omens to apply to his own case, as human beings are wont to do. While folk are oppressed by present troubles, they brood and make rash predictions about the future. So the Byzantines put forward the theory that the dead whale was exacting vengeance for the wrong done to it. Strabo states in his Bk I that among the Greeks it is difficult to find a larger animal than the whale, yet even this is commonly devoured by a more powerful creature. 3
