—­Id

Cornelius Nepos, I think, mentions among the admirable qualities of the great Epaminondas that he had an extraordinary talent for music and dancing.  Epaminondas accomplishing his jig must be accepted as a pleasing and instructive figure in the history of the dance.

Lucian says that a dancer must have some skill as an actor, and some acquaintance with mythology—­the reason being that the dances at the festivals of the gods partook of the character of pantomime, and represented the most picturesque events and passages in the popular religion.  Religious knowledge is happily no longer regarded as a necessary qualification for the dance, and, in point of fact no thing is commonly more foreign to the minds of those who excel in it.

It is related of Aristides the Just that he danced at an entertainment given by Dionysius the Tyrant, and Plato, who was also a guest, probably confronted him in the set.

The “dance of the wine press,” described by Longinus, was originally modest and proper, but seems to have become in the process of time—­and probably by the stealthy participation of disguised prudes—­a kind of can can.

In the high noon of human civilization—­in the time of Pericles at Athens—­dancing seems to have been regarded as a civilizing and refining amusement in which the gravest dignitaries and most renowned worthies joined with indubitable alacrity, if problematic advantage.  Socrates himself—­at an advanced age, too—­was persuaded by the virtuous Aspasia to cut his caper with the rest of them.

Horace (Ode IX, Book I,) exhorts the youth not to despise the dance: 

              Nec dulcis amores
        Sperne puer, neque tu choreas.

Which may be freely translated thus: 

Boy, in Love’s game don’t miss a trick,
Nor be in the dance a walking stick.

In Ode IV, Book I, he says: 

Jam Cytherea choros ducit, inminente Luna
Junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes
Alterno terram quatiunt pede, etc.

    At moonrise, Venus and her joyous band
    Of Nymphs and Graces leg it o’er the land

In Ode XXXVI, Book I (supposed to have been written when Numida returned from the war in Spain, with Augustus, and referring to which an old commentator says “We may judge with how much tenderness Horace loved his friends, when he celebrates their return with sacrifices, songs, and dances”) Horace writes

    Cressa ne careat pulchra dies nota
    Neu promtae modus amphorae
    Neu morem in Salium sit requies pedum etc.

    Let not the day forego its mark
    Nor lack the wine jug’s honest bark
    Like Salian priests we’ll toss our toes—­
    Choose partners for the dance—­here goes!