Don’t Look Now, But There’s an Ancient Roman Depiction of a Dolphin Under Your Bed a horrifying inquiry, with pictures and Benjamin Franklin

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Don’t Look Now, But There’s an Ancient Roman Depiction of a Dolphin Under Your Bed

a horrifying inquiry, with pictures and Benjamin Franklin

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The ancient Romans conquered the entire Mediterranean. They gave the world legendary badasses, both real and fictional, such as Julius Caesar, Spartacus, and Decimus Meridius Maximus (yes, that’s the correct order). And they were terrified of dolphins.

You can tell a lot about cultural fears from iconography, and to the Romans, dolphins didn’t look like this (an image telling its own creepy tale about the American obsession with cuteness, but that’s a story for a different time):

Instead, they looked like this:

Thank you, mosaic artist, for making sure the teeth were picked out in black tiles. Your effort is noted and appreciated (not really). Also noted: the demonic yellow eyes and crab-pincer tails, and their size relative to Eros (often depicted riding a dolphin). These are what nightmares are made of.

I first became aware of the creepiness of ancient dolphins when I was in Rome a few years ago. Since then, this question has bothered me: how did the Roman perception of dolphins come to diverge so sharply from our own Flipper-and-Sea World version?

I’m not going to answer that question here. Instead, I’m going to show you some pictures of dolphins and share Benjamin Franklin’s insane theory for why paintings of them are so inaccurate and terrifying. In the end, you will be a little confused but probably not any wiser. I have warned you.