The Dance (11-15)

That is why the song which they sing while dancing is an invocation of Aphrodite and of the Loves, that they may join their revel and their dances. The second of the songs, moreover—for two are sung—even contains instruction how to dance: “Set your foot before you, lads,” it says, “and frolic yet more featly,”[*] that is, dance better.

The same sort of thing is done by those who dance what is called the String of Beads.

That is a dance of boys and girls together who move in a row and truly resemble a string of beads. The boy precedes, doing the steps and postures of young manhood, and those which later he will use in war, while the maiden follows, showing how to do the women’s dance with propriety; fence the string is beaded with modesty and with manliness. In like manner their Bareskin Plays are dancing.[*]

Taking it that you have read what Homer has to say about Ariadne in “The Shield,” and about the chorus that Daedalus fashioned for her,[*] I pass it by; as also the two dancers whom the poet there calls tumblers, who lead the chorus, and again what he says in that same “Shield”: ‘ Youthful dancers were circling”; which was worked into the shield by Hephaestus as something especially beautiful.[*] And that the Phaeacians should delight in dancing

In Thessaly the cultivation of dancing made such progress that they used to call their front-rank men and champions “fore-dancers.”” This is demonstrated by the inscriptions upon the statues which they dedicated in honour of those who showed prowess in battle. “The citie,” they say, “hath esteemed him fore-dancer;” and again, “To Eilation the folk hath sett up thys ymage for that he danced the bataille well.”[*]

I forbear to say that not a single ancient mysterycult can be found that is without dancing, since they were established, of course, by Orpheus and Musaeus, the best dancers of that time, who included it in their prescriptions as something exceptionally» beautiful to be initiated with rhythm and dancing. To prove that this is so, although it behoves me to observe silence about the rites on account of the uninitiate, nevertheless there is one thing that everybody has heard; namely, that those who let out the mysteries in conversation are commonly said to “dance them out.”