Greek Prose GCSE

1.1

The Cithara-player, Arion, after spending a long time at the court of Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, desired to set sail to Italy and to Sicily. When he had made a large amount of money by working, he wanted to return back to Corinth

1.2

Indeed he had now set out from Tarentum, trusting in nobody other than Corinthians, and had hired a ship of Corinthian men.

2.1

But at sea they began to plot to throw Arion overboard and to have his money. But when he realised this, he started to plead, handing over his money to them and begging for his life.

2.2

However, he certainly did not persuade them, but the sailors ordered him either to kill himself so as to gain a tomb on land, or to leap very speedily into the sea.  

2.3

Forced into a state of helplessness, Arion begged them to allow him after taking up position in all his finery to sing on the stern seats. After he had sung he promised that he would do away with himself.

3.1

But they, because joy came over them if they were about to here the best singer of mankind, moved away from the stern to the middle of the ship.

3.2

He, clothed in all his finery and taking up his cithara, stood on the stern seats and performed a high pitched song. As the song was coming to an end he hurled himself into the sea just as he was along with all his finery. 

3.3

And whilst they sailed away to Corinth, a dolphin, so they say, took Arion up and carried him away to to Taenarum.

4.1

After he got off he made his way to Corinth with all his finery, and when he had arrived he recounted all that had happened. Periander, in disbelief, kept Arion under guard and did not let him go anywhere, but watched carefully for the sailors.

4.2

When they were actually present, they were summoned and he asked them if they had anything to say about Arion.

4.3

When these men said that he was safe wandering around Italy and that they had left him faring well in Tarentum, Arion was revealed to them, just as he was when he leapt overboard. They were thunderstruck and not able, when cross examined further, to deny.

5.1

There are in Apollonia sacred sheep of the sun which graze during the days alongside a river, but during nighttime picked men, the most notable of the citizens in both wealth and lineage, protect them, each one for a year; 

5.2

for the people of Apollonia indeed value these flocks highly as a result of a prophecy. They are penned in a cave far away from the city. There then this man, Euenius, after being picked, was on guard.

6.1

At some point when he had fallen asleep, wolves came into the cave and destroyed approximately sixty of the sheep. But when he noticed he kept it quiet and told nobody, intending to substitute them by buying others. 

6.2

But when the people of Apollonia found out, for these things had not happened without them realising, they brought him to court and condemned him to be deprived of his sight.

6.3

When they had blinded Euenius, immediately afterwards neither did the sheep produce young for them nor, in the same way, did the land bear any produce.