De saltatione

And a Bithynian story, not very divergent, moreover, from those current in Italy, says that Priapus, a warlike deity, one of the Titans, I suppose, or one of the Idaean Dactyls who made a business of giving lessons in fencing, had Ares put into his charge by Hera while Ares was still a boy, though hard-muscled and immoderately virile ; and that he did not teach him to handle weapons until he had made him a perfect dancer. Indeed, for this he even got a pension from Hera, to receive

As to the Dionysiac and Bacchic rites, I expect you are not waiting for me to tell you that every bit of them was dancing. In fact, their most typical dances, which are three in number, the Cordax, the Sicinnis, and the Emmeleia, were invented by the attendants of Dionysus, the Satyrs, who named them all after themselves,[*](The drama belonged to Dionysus, and each form of it had its typical dance, that of tragedy being the Emmeleia, that of comedy the Cordax, and that of the satyr-play the Sicinnis (Ath., I, 208; cf. below, §26). That they were named from satyrs seems to be Lucian’s own idea, though the Sicinnis was sometimes said to owe its name to its Cretan or barbarian inventor. ) and it was by the exercise of this art, they say, that Dionysus subdued the Tyrrhenians, the Indians, and the Lydians, dancing into subjection with his bands of revellers a multitude so warlike.

Therefore, you amazing fellow, take care that it isn’t impious to denounce a practice at once divine and mystic, cultivated by so many gods, performed in their honour, and affording at once amusement and profitable instruction in such degree !

Another thing surprises me in you, since I know that you are a great lover of Homer and Hesiod—I am going back, you see, to the poets once more— how you dare contradict them when they praise dancing above all things else. When Homer enumerated all that is sweetest and best—sleep, love, song, and dance[*](Iliad, XIII, 636 ff. )—it was this alone that he called “blameless,” and what is more, he ascribes sweetness to song; but both these things pertain to the dancer’s art, both dulcet song and blameless

1. One man getteth from God the gift of achievement in warfare,
2. One, the art of the dance, and song that stirreth the heart-strings.

As for Hesiod, who was not told by someone else about the dancing of the Muses but saw it himself at break of day, he begins his poem ? by saying about them as the highest possible praise that they “dance with delicate footfall about the violet waters,” circling round the altar of their sire.

In spite of this, my high-spirited friend, you insult dancing almost to the point of quarrelling with the wade and yet Socrates

(the wisest of men, if we may believe Apollo, who said so) not only commended it but wanted to learn it, attributing the greatest value to observance of rhythm and music, to harmonious movement and to gracefulness of limb; and he was not ashamed, aged as he was, to consider it one of the most important subjects of study.[*](In the Symposium of Xenophon (II, 15-16) Socrates commends dancing as an exercise, and expresses a desire to learn figures that he has just seen. Cf. Diog. Laert., II, 5, 15. ) He would, of course, be uncommonly enthusiastic over dancing, since he did not hesitate to study even what was trivial, and not only used to attend the schools of the flute-girls, but did not

Again, it seems to me that when you praise comedy and tragedy, you have forgotten that in each of them there is a special form of dance; that is to say, the tragic is the Emmeleia and the comic the Cordax, though sometimes a third form, the Sicinnis, is included also.[*](The Sicinnis, though regarded as the characteristic dance of the satyr-play, was sometimes presented in comedy. ) But since at the outset you gave greater honour to tragedy and comedy and cyclic fluteplayers and singing with the lyre than to the dance, calling these competitive and therefore grand— come, let us now compare each one of them with the dance. And yet, suppose we omit the flute, if you do not mind, and the lyre, since they are parts of the dancer’s paraphernalia.

As far as tragedy is concerned, let us form our first opinion of its character from its outward semblance. What a repulsive and at the same time frightful spectacle is a man tricked out to disproportionate stature, mounted upon high clogs, wearing a mask that reaches up above his head, with a mouth that is set in a vast yawn as if he meant to swallow up the spectators! I forbear to speak of pads for

And by the way, the charge you were bringing against the dance, that men imitate women, would be a common charge against both tragedy and comedy. Indeed, in them the female parts outnumber the male!

Moreover, comedy accounts the ridiculousness of the masks themselves as part of what is pleasing in her; for example, the masks of Davuses and Tibiuses,[*](Names of slaves in comedy. ) and of cooks.

On the other hand, that the appearance of the dancer is seemly and becoming needs no assertion on my part, for it is patent to all who are not blind. His mask itself is most beautiful, and suited to the drama that forms the theme; its mouth is not wide open, as with tragedy and comedy, but closed, for he has many people who do the shouting in his stead.

In the past, to be sure, they themselves both danced and sang; but afterwards, since the

The themes of tragedy and the dance are common to both, and there is no difference between those of the one and those of the other, except that the themes of the dance are more varied and more unhackneyed, and they contain countless vicissitudes.

If the dance does not feature in contests, I maintain that it is because the governors of the games thought the thing too important and too grand to be called into competition. I forbear to mention that a city in Italy, the fairest that belongs to the Chalcidian race, has added it, by way of embellishment, to the games that are held there.[*](The allusion is to Naples and to the important games instituted there by Augustus in 2 a.d., on which see R. M. Geer, “The Greek Games at Naples,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, LXVI (1935), especially n. 19 in regard to the inclusion of pantomimic contests. rR 2 )

At this point I should like to defend the numerous omissions in my account, that I may not create an impression that I lack sense or learning. I am not unaware that many before our time who have written about the dance have made it the chief matter of their essays to enumerate all its forms and list their names, telling what each is like and by whom it was discovered, thinking to make a display of wide learning thereby. But for my own part, first and foremost, I think that to be zealous about these things is tasteless, pedantic, and as far as I am concerned, out of place, and for that reason I pass them over.

Besides, I want you to understand and remember that the topic which I have proposed for myself at present is not to give the history of every form of the dance, and I have not taken it upon myself as the aim of my discussion to enumerate

Those early forms were roots, so to speak, or initial stages, of the dance; but the flowering of it and the consummate fruition, which precisely at this moment has been brought to the highest point of perfection—that is what our discussion treats of, omitting the Tongs and the Crane-dance[*](The Tongs seems to have involved the performance of entrechats (Eustathius on Odyss., VIII, p. 1161). The Cranedance was said to have been first danced about the altar at Delos by Theseus and his companions, imitating the escape from the Labyrinth (Pollux, IV, 101). ) and so forth as no longer having anything to do with the dancing of to-day. And as to that “Phrygian” form of the dance, the one that accompanied wine and revelry, performed amidst drunkenness, generally by peasants who executed, to the music of flutes played by women, violent and trying gambols still prevalent in the country districts, that too I have not omitted out of ignorance but because those gambols have nothing to do with our present dance. As you know, Plato in the Laws praises certain forms of the dance, but strongly condemns certain others, dividing them with reference to what is

About the dance itself, let this suffice; for it would be tasteless to prolong my discussion by taking up everything. What qualifications the dancer on his part ought to have, how he should have been trained, what he should have studied, and by what means he should strengthen his work, I shall now set forth for you, to show you that Dance is not one of the facile arts that can be plied without pains, but reaches to the very summit of all culture, not only in music but in rhythm and metre, and especially in your own favourite, philosophy, both physics and ethics. To be sure, Dance accounts philosophy’s inordinate interest in dialectics inappropriate to herself. From rhetoric, however, she has not held aloof, but has her part in that too, inasmuch as she is given to depicting character and emotion, of which the orators also are fond. And she has not kept away from painting and sculpture, but manifestly copies above all else the rhythm that is in them, so that neither Phidias nor Apelles seems at all superior to her.

Before all else, however, it behoves her to enjoy the favour of Mnemosyne and her daughter Polymnia, and she endeavours to remember everything. Like Calchas in Homer, the dancer must know “what is, and what shall be, and was of old,”[*](Iliad, I, 70. ) so thoroughly that nothing will escape him, but his memory of it all will be prompt. To be sure, it professes in the main to be a science of imitation and portrayal, of revealing what is in the mind and making intelligible

Beginning with Chaos and the primal origin of the world, he must know everything down to the story of Cleopatra the Egyptian.[*](The compendium of mythology that follows is notable not only for its brevity but for its arrangement on geographical lines, which is unique, and I think was ado: by Lucian as an aid to memory, since the passage was clearly composed off-hand and very little retouched. He must have thought of it not only as displaying his own command of mythology and knowledge of what Pindar calls “the short road” in story-telling, but as a help to dancers, libretto-writers, and audiences, and incidentally of interest to the latter as a memorytest (cf. True Story, 1; The Dead Come to Life, 6; Mistaken Critic, 6). This is certainly the way in which most of its readers will want to use it now. Those who, perhaps from interest in it as a dancer’s repertory, wish to study it and find the notes given here and the further hints in the Index insufficient to their purpose should make use of Sir J. G. frazer’s Apollodorus (L.C.L.), which will make it all plain sailing. ) Let this be the range we prescribe for the dancer’s learning, and let him know thoroughly all that lies within it: the castration of Uranus, the begetting of Aphrodite, the battle of the Titans, the birth of Zeus, the stratagem of Rhea, the substitution of the stone, the fetters of Cronus, the casting of lots among the three brothers.[*](Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, for their respective dominions. )

Then, in order, the revolt of the Giants, the theft of fire, the fashioning of man,[*](The allusion is not to the making of Pandora, but to the legend of the moulding of man out of earth and water by Prometheus, with the help of Athena, who supplied the breath of life: see Lucian’s Prometheus, 1, and 11-17; A Literary Prometheus, 4; and Frazer on Apollodorus I, 7, 1, to whose references add Callimachus, Fr. 87 and Fr. 133 Schn. (Mair [L.C.L.], pp. 292, 310). It took place at Iconium in Lycaonia; cf. Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Ixdévov. ) the punishment of Prometheus, the power of the two Erotes;[*](The ancient cosmogonic Eros of § 7, and the son of Aphrodite. ) and after that, the errancy of Delos, the

Next comes Deucalion, with the great shipwreck of life in his time, and the single ark conserving a remnant of the human race, and men created afresh from stones. Then the dismemberment of Iacchus,[*](Dionysus Zagreus (Sabazius), son of Persephone, was dismembered by the Titans, boiled in a cauldron, and eaten; Zeus swallowed his heart. He was reborn as Iacchus. ) the trick of Hera,[*](Inducing Semele to beg Zeus to come to her in all his majesty. ) the burning of Semele, the double birth of Dionysus, the story of Athena and the story of Hephaestus and Erichthonius, the rivalry for Attica, Halirrhothius and the first trial on the Areopagus, and in a word, Attic mythology complete ;

but particularly the wandering of Demeter, the finding of Core, the visit to Celeus, the husbandry of Triptolemus; the vine-planting of Icarius, and the sad fate of Erigone; the story of Boreas, of Oreithyia, of Theseus and Aegeus. Also, the reception of Medea and her later flight to Persia, the daughters of Erechtheus, and the daughters of Pandion, with what they suffered and did in Thrace. Then Acamas, Phyllis,[*](The Thracian princess Phyllis hanged herself because her lover, one of the sons of Theseus, did not return to her. As the story is usually told, the lover was Demophon (Apoll., Epit., vi, 16-17; Ovid, Herotdes, ii). Another version, however, gave ‘that part to Acamas (Aeschines, II, 31), and that is probably Lucian’s intention here. But it is also possible that he expects us to supply from memory the name of Demophon in connection with that of Phyllis, and to associate with that of Acamas his affair with Laodice, daughter of Priam, who came to him self-invited (Lycophron, Alez., 496), and later, at the fall of Troy, gave him Munitus, the son she had borne him, and was herself swallowed up by the earth. ) the first rape of Helen, the campaign of the Dioscuri against the city, the fate

These Athenian tales that I have run over are a very few by way of example out of the many that have been omitted.