Prayer to Poseidon
Poseidon · Amphitrite · the NereidsArion the citharode was robbed and thrown overboard by sailors; he finished his song, and a dolphin carried him to Cape Taenarum. Herodotus tells the story; Aelian, seven hundred years later, also supplies the hymn Arion is supposed to have composed in thanksgiving.
The thanks here are given obliquely: Poseidon is praised through his creatures. More than half the text is about dolphins — "gilled swimming beasts", "snub-nosed, bristle-necked, swift-running puppies, lovers of the Muses". Compound epithets are heaped up in the dithyrambic manner, and the rescuers named are not the god but his retinue; his is the credit of an owner.
Lovers of the Muses is a substantive argument: the dolphins came for the song. The rescued singer explains his rescue by his own profession.
The provenance requires a caveat. Arion lived in the seventh century BC, and the hymn, were it genuine, would be the oldest text in this collection. But its language and manner are later, and scarcely any scholar takes these verses for archaic: this is in all likelihood a learned composition of Hellenistic or later date, put into a legendary man's mouth. Herodotus, who knew the story, quotes no hymn at all.