De saltatione

Lucian of Samosata

The Works of Lucian of Samosata, complete, with exceptions specified in thepreface, Vol. 2. Fowler, H. W. and Fowlere, F.G., translators. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905.

According to a Bithynian legend, which agrees well with this Italian institution, Priapus, a war-like divinity (probably one of the Titans, or of the Idaean Dactyls, whose profession it was to teach the use of arms), was entrusted by Hera with the care of her son Ares, who even in childhood was remarkable for his courage and ferocity. Priapus would not put weapons into his hands till he had turned him out a perfect dancer; and he was rewarded by Hera with a tenth part of all Ares’s spoils.

As to the rites of Dionysus, you know, without my telling you, that they consisted in dancing from beginning to end. Of the three main types of dance, the cordax, the sicinnis, and the emmelia, each was the invention and bore the name of one of the Satyrs, his followers. Assisted by this art, and accompanied by these revellers, he conquered Tyrrhenians, Indians, Lydians, dancing those warlike tribes into submission.

Then beware, my enlightened friend, of the guilt of sacrilege.

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Will you attack the holy mystic art in which so many Gods delight; by which their worshippers do them honour; which affords so much pleasure, so much useful instruction? To return once more to the poets: when I think of your affection for Homer and Hesiod, I am amazed to find you disputing the preeminence they assign to the dance. Homer, in enumerating all that is sweetest and best, mentions sleep, love, song, and dance; but of these dance alone is ‘faultless.’ He testifies, moreover, to the ‘sweetness’ of song: now our art includes ‘sweet song’ as well as the ‘faultless dance’ which you take upon you to censure. Again, in another passage we read:
  • To one the God hath given warlike deeds:
  • But to another dance and lovely song.
    • And lovely indeed is the song that accompanies the dance; it is the Gods’ best gift. Homer seems to divide all things under the two heads of war and peace; and among the things of peace he singles out these two as the best counterpart to the things of war.

    Hesiod, not speaking from hearsay, but coming fresh from the sight of the Muses’ morning dance, has this high tribute to them in the beginning of his poem:

  • Their dainty feet round the dark waters dance,
    • about the altar of Zeus.—My dear sir, your onslaught upon the dance is little short of blasphemy.

    Socrates—that wisest of men, if we may accept the judgement of the Pythian oracle—not only approved of dancing, but made a careful study of it; and, in his zeal for grace and elegance, for harmonious movement and carriage of the body, thought it no shame, reverend sage that he was, to rank this among the most important branches of learning. And well might he have an enthusiasm for dancing, who scrupled not to study the humblest arts; who frequented the schools of the flute-girls, and could stoop to learn wisdom from the mouth

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    of an Aspasia. Yet in his days the art was in its infancy, its beauties undeveloped. Had Socrates seen the artists who have made modern Pantomime what it is, he would assuredly have given it his exclusive attention, and assigned it the first place in the education of youth.