Arion seemed at first at a loss how to decide in so hard an alternative. At length he told the sailors that he would throw himself into the sea, but he asked permission to sing them one of his songs before he took the fatal plunge. They consented. He accordingly went into the cabin, and spent some time in dressing himself magnificently in the splendid and richly-ornamented robes in which he had been accustomed to appear upon the stage. At length he reappeared, and took his position on the side of the ship, with his harp in his hand. He sang his song, accompanying himself upon the harp, and then, when he had finished his performance, he leaped into the sea. The seamen divided their plunder and pursued their voyage. Arion, however, instead 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.