Porphyrios (whale)

The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.

An animal that can change itself to match its surroundings, just by contracting its skin? That can weigh as many stone as a man and stretch the length of a carriage, and yet fold its body through a crevice? Whose brain is wrapped about its throat—a brain no larger than a pea—but who is clever enough to play actual games? An animal with this much in

Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallic diplomat, poet and inveterate correspondent in the mid-to-late fifth century, wrote to his friend, a naval commander called Admiral Namatius: I whiled away some time talking with [the courier] about you; and he was very positive that you had weighed anchor, and in fulfilment of those half military, half naval duties o

In Japan, they used to tell of a beautiful pearl fisher named Tokoyo who saved her father from a long and cruel exile in the Oki Islands. Single-handedly, she sailed a coracle to find him, and then as ransom for his freedom she killed the evil god Yofune-Nushi. Like Beowulf, the Icelandic hero, she dived into the roaring deep to meet and murder her

This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.