De saltatione

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.