I have good news and bad news for animal lovers. The bad new is that there is no hippopotamus in this story. The good news, though, is that there is a dolphin! In fact, this anecdote comes to us from the small Roman colonial town of Hippo in North Africa, whose name is in fact unrelated to the animal! I came across this story recently, related by Pliny the Younger in his letters, and was intrigued by the similarities (and differences) to one from my own home country. Let’s start with the Dolphin in question:
The coastal town of Hippo, a Roman colony in the 1st Century AD, featured something of a natural lagoon or stream that the young boys would swim in when the tide was right. Pliny passes on the story he was told at a dinner party, that on one occasion one of the bolder young men swam out farther than usual and met a dolphin. The dolphin was, by all accounts, incredibly friendly; swimming around him, making circles and turns, and even swimming under the boy and letting him ride on his back. This incredible display finished with the dolphin returning him to his stunned companions on the shore.
As you can imagine, this was something of a sensation in this small town, so naturally everyone came to see if this dolphin would return. True to form, on the next day the boys went out to swim and he returned! Despite his friendly appearance and antics, the boys retreated out of fear, but the dolphin followed them and once again showed off his array of tricks. In this way, his superstardom was confirmed among the colony and, as Pliny puts it, word spread fast!
Soon all the nearby dignitaries and magistrates flocked to the town to see this miraculous dolphin, who would apparently flop onto the beach to dry off and then roll back into the water. At one point he brought a friend, but the other dolphin was shy and wouldn’t let others touch him. There was one notable incident, where a member of the Proconsul’s staff decided to pour some perfume on the dolphin, who did not take kindly to this. It took some days for him to return and regain his amicable nature.
Now this is a lovely story, you are surely thinking. Well yes, but Pliny goes to great lengths to explain that this situation was not a good one for the town. The arrival of so many important people who needed to be hosted wore down the resources of the meagre town to the point where they could not go on. (If only the modern tourism industry was around!). So… Pliny does not say who, but we can assume it was someone in a position of power… but someone decided to solve the problem and killed the dolphin. The end!
It’s quite a remarkable end to the story which shows the sometimes beautiful and sometimes brutal mindset of the Romans. Whilst useful, the dolphin was a source of wonder and admiration. But they had no real qualms with doing it in when it was no longer beneficial. Pliny himself gives a disclaimer at the end of his letter that the story is so remarkable that it needs no embellishment and should be told strictly to the facts, as I have related it to you. The interest in dolphins was clearly genetic as well, as his uncle Pliny the Elder himself wrote about several human-friendly dolphins, including this very one.
Apart from the rather stark and abrupt end to this story, what else captured my attention was its similarity to a story from a town in my home country of New Zealand. In a sleepy coastal town known as Opononi in the North Island, a friendly dolphin arrived one summer in the 1950s. She was named Opo and followed the fishing boats into harbour, there playing with the local children. Opo too became a national sensation, attracting people from afar and putting Opononi on the map. The local population were also worried about the safety of the dolphin, who was unfortunately found dead at the end of the summer - possibly due to the actions of the fishermen. In this case, it is unlikely the local officials would have done this, as Opo became a symbol of the town that you can still see today - most famously in her statue near the beach.
There are, no doubt, many more stories of these kinds of creatures that fill us with wonder and awe. Unfortunately we often hear today of their endangerment or death due to human activity. It would truly be a shame to lose some of the most beautiful and fascinating creatures on Earth.