And a Bithynian story, not very divergent, moreover, from those current in Italy, says that Priapus, a warlike deity, one of the Titans, I suppose, or one of the Idaean Dactyls who made a business of giving lessons in fencing, had Ares put into his charge by Hera while Ares was still a boy, though hard-muscled and immoderately virile; and that he did not teach him to handle weapons until he had made him a perfect dancer. Indeed, for this he even got a pension from Hera, to receive from Ares in perpetuity a tenth of all that accrued to him in war.

This Bithynian myth of Priapus is not recorded elsewhere, but as it is known that Priapus was held in high honour there, it may well be that he was associated with Ares and that dances played a part in the cult.

As to the Dionysiac and Bacchic rites, I expect you are not waiting for me to tell you that every bit of them was dancing. In fact, their most typical dances, which are three in number, the Cordax, the Sicinnis, and the Emmeleia, were invented by the attendants of Dionysus, the Satyrs, who named them all after themselves,

The drama belonged to Dionysus, and each form of it had its typical dance, that of tragedy being the Emmeleia, that of comedy the Cordax, and that of the satyr-play the Sicinnis (Ath., I, 208; cf. below, §26). That they were named from satyrs seems to be Lucian’s own idea, though the Sicinnis was sometimes said to owe its name to its Cretan or barbarian inventor.

Therefore, you amazing fellow, take care that it isn’t impious to denounce a practice at once divine and mystic, cultivated by so many gods, performed in their honour, and affording at once amusement and profitable instruction in such degree!

Another thing surprises me in you, since I know that you are a great lover of Homer and Hesiod—I am going back, you see, to the poets once more— how you dare contradict them when they praise dancing above all things else. When Homer enumerated all that is sweetest and best—sleep, love, song, and dance

Iliad, XIII, 636 ff.

As for Hesiod, who was not told by someone else about the dancing of the Muses but saw it himself at break of day, he begins his poem? by saying about them as the highest possible praise that they “dance with delicate footfall about the violet waters,” circling round the altar of their sire.

In spite of this, my high-spirited friend, you insult dancing almost to the point of quarrelling with the wade and yet Socrates

(the wisest of men, if we may believe Apollo, who said so) not only commended it but wanted to learn it, attributing the greatest value to observance of rhythm and music, to harmonious movement and to gracefulness of limb; and he was not ashamed, aged as he was, to consider it one of the most important subjects of study.

In the Symposium of Xenophon (II, 15-16) Socrates commends dancing as an exercise, and expresses a desire to learn figures that he has just seen. Cf. Diog. Laert., II, 5, 15.