De saltatione

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 5. Harmon, A. M., editor. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

At Delos, indeed, even the sacrifices were not without dancing, but were performed with that and with music. Choirs of boys came together, and while they moved and sang to the accompaniment of flute and lyre, those who had been selected from among them as the best performed an interpre-

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tative dance. Indeed, the songs that were written for these choirs were called Hyporchemes (interpretative dances), and lyric poetry is full of them.[*](That the “hyporchematic” style of dancing was interpretative, which in Lucian’s description of it is only implicit, is expressly stated by Athenaeus (I, 15 D).. In previously Forming to it as “dance accompanying song” (τὴν πρὸς τὴν ᾠδὴν ὄρχησις), he seems to agree with Lucian in the point that its ormers do not themselves sing. Elsewhere in his work (XIV, 6310) he gives a definition (from Aristocles) that is diametrically opposed: “when the chorus dances si Bad But this is connected with a highly theoretical classification of dances under six heads, three of which are dramatic (tragic, comic, satyric) and three lyric (pyrrhic, gymnopaedio, ype hematio). was we know that gymnopaedic c need singing,” it seems pretty clear that the definition of “hyporehematic ’» has been incorrectly transmitted in the text. )

Yet why do I talk to you of the Greeks? Even the Indians, when they get up in the morning and pray to the sun, instead of doing as we do, who think that when we have kissed our hand the prayer is complete, face the sunrise and welcome the God of Day with dancing, posturing in silence and imitating the dance of the god; and that, to the Indians, is prayer and dance and sacrifice all in one. So they propitiate their god with those rites twice each day, when it begins and when it declines.

The Ethiopians, moreover, even in waging war, do it dancing, and an Ethiopian may not let fly the shaft that he has taken from his head (for they use the head in place of a quiver, binding the shafts about it like rays) unless he has first danced, menacing the enemy by his attitude and terrifying him in advance by his prancing.[*](Heliodorus i in the La opica (IX, 19) goes into greater detail. Cf. also H. P. L’Orange, Symbolae Osloenses XII (1934), 105-113, who calls attention to representations of Roman auxiliaries with arrows bound to their heads in the frieze of the Arch of Constantine. )

Since we have spoken of India and of Ethiopia, it will repay us to make an imaginary descent into Egypt, their neighbour. For it seems to me that the ancient myth about Proteus the Egyptian means nothing else than that he was a dancer, an imitative

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fellow, able to shape himself and change himself into anything, so that he could imitate even the liquidity of water and the sharpness of fire in the liveliness of his movement; yes, the fierceness of a lion, the rage of a leopard, the quivering of a tree, and in a word whatever he wished. Mythology, however, on taking it over, described his nature in terms more paradoxical, as if he became what he imitated. Now just that thing is characteristic of the dancers to-day, who certainly may be seen changing swiftly at the cue and imitating Proteus himself. And we must suppose that in Empusa, who changes into countless forms, some such person has been handed down by mythology.[*](Empusa, one of Hecate’s associates, used to frighten people by appearing suddenly out of dark places in one orrid form or another; she seems to have been particularly given to manifesting herself with legs like those of an ass. )

Next in order, it is proper that we should not forget that Roman dance which the best-born among them, called Salii (which is the name of a priesthood), perform in honour of Ares, the most bellicose of the gods—a dance which is at once very majestic and very sacred.