De saltatione

Thrace also has much that is essential to one who intends to dance—Orpheus, his dismemberment and his talking head that voyaged on the lyre;[*](The story of the head of Orpheus is told by Lucian in The Ignorant Book-Collector, 11-12 (Vol. III, pp. 188 ff.). )

and Thessaly affords still more—Pelias, Jason, Alcestis, the expedition of the fifty youths, the Argo and her talking keel, the incidents at Lemnos, Aeétes, the dream of Medea,[*](Apollonius of Rhodes (III, 616-682) describes at some length a dream of Medea’s, shortly after the arrival of Jason, to the effect that he came to win her, that she helped him with the oxen; that she was chosen to arbitrate the strife that arose, and decided in Jason’s favour; whereupon her parents clamoured, and she awoke. Since this dream is not traditional, its inclusion in Lucian’s list is perhaps to be explained by assuming that he knew of its actual use as a pantomimic theme. ) the dismemberment of Apsyrtus, the happenings of the cruise,

and after that, Protesilaus and Laodameia.

If you cross the sea again to Asia, there are many dramas there—Samos, at the outset, with the fate of Polycrates and his daughter’s wanderings, extending to Persia,[*](This allusion is puzzling. Nothing about the daughter of Polycrates is known to us except that she foretold her father’s death through a dream (Herod., III, 124). Since Herodotus tells also how Syloson, the brother of Polycrates, went to Egypt as an exile, earned the gratitude of Darius, who was serving there as a guardsman, by giving him a cloak which Darius coveted and sought to buy, and later, after the death of Polycrates, visited Susa and obtained from Darius his restoration to Samos and establishment as ruler of the island, it has been thought that Lucian has been guilty of confusing the brother with the daughter. But Lucian was a little too well acquainted with Herodotus (and the world with the story of Syloson’s cloak) to make this quite credible. A gap in the text here is easily possible, but it may also be that Hellenistic imagination gave the daughter a romantic history which dancers had selected for portrayal. ) and the stories that are still older—the loquaciousness of Tantalus, the feast of the gods at his house, the butchering of Pelops, and his shoulder of ivory.

In Italy, moreover, we have the Eridanus, and Phaethon, and the poplars that are his sisters, mourning and weeping amber.