To sum it up, he will not be ignorant of anything that is told by Homer and Hesiod and the best poets, and above all by tragedy.

These are a very few themes that I have selected out of many, or rather out of an infinite number, and set down as the more important, leaving the rest for the poets to sing of, for the dancers themselves to present, and for you to add, finding them by their likeness to those already mentioned, all of which must lie ready, provided and stored by the dancer in advance to meet every occasion.

Since he is imitative and undertakes to present by means of movements all that is being sung, it is essential for him, as for the orators, to cultivate clearness, so that everything which he presents will be intelligible, requiring no interpreter. No, in the words of the Delphic oracle,

That given to Croesus, Herod., I, 47; there was, of course, no reference to dancing in it. The maid of Pytho vaunted her knowledge of the number of the sands and the measure of the sea and her ability to understand the mute and hear the silent, before demonstrating her power by replying to the testquestion “What is Croesus now doing” with the answer that she could smell turtle and lamb boiling in a bronze pot with a lid of bronze. That response, we are told, hit the mark.

That is just what happened, they say, in the case of Demetrius the Cynic. He too was denouncing the dance just as you do, saying that the dancer was a mere adjunct to the flute and the pipes and the stamping, himself contributing nothing to the presentation but making absolutely meaningless, idle movements with no sense in them at all; but that people were duped by the accessories of the business—the silk vestments, the beautiful mask, the flute and its quavers, and the sweet voices of the singers, by all of which the dancer’s business, itself amounting to nothing at all, was embellished. Thereupon the dancer at that time, under Nero, in high repute, who was no fool, they say, and excelled, if ever a man did, in remembrance of legends and beauty of movement,

Probably the first of the several famous dancers who took Paris as their stage name, of whom the emperor, some said, was so jealous that he put him to death (Suetonius, Nero, 54).

Since we are under Nero in fancy, I wish to tell the remark of a barbarian concerning the same dancer, which may be considered a very great tribute to his art. One of the barbarians from Pontus, a man of royal blood, came to Nero on some business or other, and among other entertainments saw that dancer perform so vividly that although he could not follow what was being sung—he was but half Hellenised, as it happened—he understood every- thing. So when it came to be time for him to go back to his own country, Nero, in saying good-bye, urged him to ask for anything that he wanted, and promised to give it him. “If you give me the dancer,’ said he, “you will please me mightily!” When Nero asked, “What good would he be to you there?”, he replied, “I have barbarian neighbours who do not speak the same language, and it is not easy to keep supplied with interpreters for them. If I am in want of one, therefore, this man will interpret everything for me by signs.” So deeply had he been impressed by that disclosure of the distinctness and lucidity of the mimicry of the dance.

The chief occupation and the aim of dancing, as I have said, is impersonating, which is cultivated in the same way by the rhetoricians, particularly those who recite these pieces that they call “exercises”; for in their case also there is nothing which we commend more highly than their accommodating themselves to the roles which they assume, so that what they say is not inappropriate to the princes or tyrant-slayers or poor people or farmers whom they introduce, but in each of these what is individual and distinctive is presented.

In that connection I should like to tell you something that was said by another barbarian. Noticing that the dancer had five masks ready—the drama had that number of acts—since he saw but the one dancer, he enquired who were to dance and act the other roles, and when he learned that the dancer himself was to act and dance them all, he said; “I did not realise, my friend, that though you have only this one body, you have many souls.”

Well, that is the way the barbarian viewed it. And the Greeks of Italy quite appropriately call the dancer a pantomime, precisely in consequence of what he does.

The name signifies one who mimics everything.

In general, the dancer undertakes to present and enact characters and emotions, introducing now a lover and now an angry person, one man afflicted with madness, another with grief, and all this within fixed bounds. Indeed, the most surprising part of it is that within the selfsame day at one moment we are shown Athamas in a frenzy, at another Ino in terror; presently the same person is Atreus, and after a little, Thyestes; then Aegisthus, or Aerope; yet they all are but a single man.

Moreover, the other performances that appeal to eye and ear contain, each of them, the display of a single activity; there is either flute or lyre or vocal music or tragedy’s mummery or comedy’s buffoonery. The dancer, however, has everything at once, and that equipment of his, we may see, is varied and comprehensive—the flute, the pipes, the tapping of feet, the clash of cymbals, the melodious voice of the actor,

The actor (there seems to have been but one) supported the dancer by assuming secondary roles like the “Odysseus” mentioned below (p. 285). Cf. also p. 394, n. 1, and p. 402, n. l.

Then, too, all the rest are activities of one or the other of the two elements in man, some of them activities of the soul, some of the body; but in dancing both are combined. For there is display of mind in the performance as well as expression of bodily development, and the most important part of it is the wisdom that controls the action, and the fact that nothing is irrational. Indeed, Lesbonax of Mytilene, a man of excellent parts, called dancers “handiwise,”

Because of their extensive use of gestures. For the word see also Rhet. Praec.,17 (Vol. IV, p. 157), where it is recommended by the sophist, and Lexiph., 14 (p. 312 of this volume), where it is used by Lexiphanes.

If what Plato

Republic, IV, 436-441.

Again, some of the other pursuits promise to give pleasure and others profit, but only the dance has both; and indeed the profit in it is far more beneficial for being associated with pleasure. How much more delightful it is to see than young men boxing, astream with blood, and other young men wrestling in the dust! Why, the dance often presents them in a way that is less risky and at the same time more beautiful and pleasurable. As to the energetic movement of the dance, its twists and turns and leaps and back-flung poses, they are really not only pleasurable to the spectators, but highly healthful for the performers themselves. I should call it the most excellent and best balanced of gymnastic exercises, since besides making the body soft, supple and light, and teaching it to be adroit in shifting, it also contributes no little strength.

Then why is not dancing a thing of utter harmony, putting a fine edge upon the soul, disciplining the body, delighting the beholders and teaching them much that happened of old, to the accompaniment of flute and cymbals and cadenced song and magic that works its spell through eye and ear alike? If it is felicity of the human voice that you seek, where else can you find it or what can you hear that is more richly vocal or more melodious? If it is the high-pitched music of the flute or of the syrinx, in the dance you may enjoy that also to the full. I forbear to mention that you will become better in character through familiarity with such a spectacle, when you see the assembly detesting misdeeds, weeping over victims of injustice, and in general schooling the characters of the individual spectators.

But let me tell you in conclusion what is particularly to be commended in our dancers: that they cultivate equally both strength and suppleness of limb seems to me as amazing as if the might of Heracles and the daintiness of Aphrodite were to be manifested in the same person.

I wish now to depict for you in words what a good dancer should be like in mind and in body. To be sure, I have already mentioned most of his mental qualities. I hold, you know, that he should be retentive of memory, gifted, intelligent, keenly inventive, and above all successful in doing the right thing at the right time; besides, he should be able to judge poetry, to select the best songs and melodies, and to reject worthless compositions.

What I propose to unveil now is his body, which will conform to the canon of Polyclitus. It must be neither very tall and inordinately lanky, nor short and dwarfish in build, but exactly the right measure, without being either fat, which would be fatal to any illusion, or excessively thin; for that would suggest skeletons and corpses.

To illustrate, I should like to tell you about the cat-calls of a certain populace that is not slow to mark such points. The people of Antioch, a very talented city which especially honours the dance, keep such an eye upon everything that is done and said that nothing ever escapes a man of them. When a diminutive dancer made his entrance and began to play Hector, they all cried out in a single voice, “Ho there, Astyanax! where is Hector?” On another occasion, when a man who was extremely tall undertook to dance Capaneus and assault the walls of Thebes, “Step over the wall,” they said, “you have no need of a ladder!” And in the case of the plump and heavy dancer who tried to make great leaps, they said, “We beg you, spare the stage!’ On the other hand, to one who was very thin they called out: “Good health to you,” as if he were ill. It is not for the joke’s sake that I have mentioned these comments, but to let you see that entire peoples have taken a great interest in the art of dancing, so that they could regulate its good and bad points.

In the next place, the dancer must by all means be agile and at once loose-jointed and well-knit, so as to bend like a withe as occasion arises and to be stubbornly firm if that should be requisite.

That dancing does not differ widely from the use of the hands which figures in the public games—that it has something in common with the noble sport of Hermes and Pollux and Heracles, you may note by observing each of its mimic portrayals.

Herodotus says that what is apprehended through the eyes is more trustworthy than hearing ;

Herodotus, I, 8.

Its spell, too, is so potent that if a lover enters the theatre, he is restored to his right mind by seeing all the evil consequences of love; and one who is in the clutch of grief Jeaves the theatre in brighter mood, as if he had taken some potion that brings forgetfulness and, in the words of the poet, surcease from sorrow and angerOdyssey, IV, 221..” An indication that each of those who see it follows closely what is going on and understands what is being presented lies in the fact that the spectators often weep when anything sad and pitiful reveals itself. And certainly the Bacchic dance that is especially cultivated in Ionia and in Pontus, although it is a satyr-show, nevertheless has so enthralled the people of those countries that when the appointed time comes round they each and all forget everything else and sit the whole day looking at titans, corybantes, satyrs, and rustics. Indeed, these parts in the dance are performed by the men of the best birth and first rank in every one of their cities, not only without shame but with greater pride in the thing than in family trees and public services and ancestral distinctions.

Now that I have spoken of the strong points of dancers, let me tell you also of their defects. Those of the body, to be sure, I have already set forth; those of the mind I think you will be able to note with this explanation. Many of them, through ignorance—for it is impossible that they should all be clever—exhibit dreadful solecisms, so to speak, in their dancing. Some of them make senseless movements that have nothing to do with the harpstring, as the saying goes; for the foot says one thing and the music another. Others suit their movements to the music, but bring in their themes too late or too soon, as in a case which I remember to have seen one time. A dancer who was presenting the birth of Zeus, with Cronus eating his children, went off into presenting the misfortunes of Thyestes because the similarity led him astray. And another, trying to enact Semele stricken by the thunderbolt, assimilated her to Glauce, who was of a later generation.

The reason for confusing the two parts lay in the. fact that both were burned to death, since Glauce perished by the poisoned robe which Medea sent her.