Then are you willing to leave off your abuse, my friend, and hear me say something about dancing and about its good points, showing that it brings not only pleasure but benefit to those who see it; how much culture and instruction it gives; how it imports harmony into the souls of its beholders, exercising them in what is fair to see, entertaining them with what is good to hear, and displaying to them joint beauty of soul and body? That it does all this with the aid of music and rhythm would not be reason to blame, but rather to praise it.

I have little leisure to hear a madman praise his own ailment, but if you want to flood me with nonsense, I am ready to submit to it as a friendly service and lend you my ears, for even without wax I can avoid hearing rubbish. So now I will hold my peace for you, and you may say all that you wish as if nobody at all were listening.

Good, Crato; that is what I wanted most. You will very soon find out whether what I am going to say will strike you as nonsense. First of all, you appear to me to be quite unaware that this practice of dancing is not novel, and did not begin yesterday or the day before, in the days of our grandfathers, for instance, or in those of their grandfathers. No, those historians of dancing who are the most veracious can tell you that Dance came into being contemporaneously with the primal origin of the universe, making her appearance together with Love—the love that is age-old.

That is to say, the Hesiodean, cosmogonic Eros, elder brother of the Titans, not Aphrodite’s puny boy.

In fact, the concord of the heavenly spheres, the interlacing of the errant planets with the fixed stars, their rhythmic agreement and timed harmony, are proofs that Dance was primordial. Little by little she has grown in stature and has obtained from time to time added embellishments, until now she would seem to have reached the very height of perfection and to have become a highly diversified, wholly harmonious, richly musical boon to mankind.

In the beginning, they say, Rhea, charmed with the art, ordered dances to be performed not only in ‘Phrygia by the Corybantes

The Corybantes, mentioned frequently by Lucian, are to him male supernatural beings (Timon, 41), alien denizens of Olympus like Pan, Attis, and Sabazius (Icarom., 27; cf. Parl. of the Gods, 9), whom Rhea attached to_herself because they too were crazy; in her orgies, one cuts his arm with a sword, another runs about madly, another blows the Phrygian horn, another sounds some instrument of percussion (Dial. Deor., 12, 1; cf. Tragodopod., 38). He does not ascribe to them any regular dance, or confuse them with the Curetes, as others often did.

but in Crete by the Curetes, from whose skill she derived uncommon benefit, since they saved Zeus for her by dancing about him; Zeus, therefore, might well admit that he owes them a thank-offering, since it was through their dancing that he escaped his father’s teeth. They danced under arms, clashing their swords upon their shields as they did so and leaping in a frantic, warlike manner.

This is Lucian’s only mention of the Curetes. His account of their dance agrees with representations in ancient art (cf..Kekulé-von Rohden, Archit. rém. Tonreliefe, Pl. 25) as well as with the description of Lucretius (I1, 629-639), who had seen it performed by mimic Curetes in the train of the Great Mother. Lucian’s use of the past tense (jv) suggests not only that his knowledge of them came from books but that he thought the dance obsolete. That, however, can hardly have been the case, for we have now a cletic hymn invoking (Zeus) Kouros, discovered at Palaecastro in Crete, which probably belongs to the cult with which the Curetes were connected, and is a late Imperial copy of an early Hellenistic text (Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Graeca, II, p. 279). Their dancing saved Zeus from being discovered and swallowed by his father Cronus because the clashing of their weapons drowned his infantine wailing.

Thereafter, all the doughtiest of the Cretans practised it energetically and became excellent dancers, not only the common sort but the men of princely blood who claimed leadership. For example, Homer calls Meriones a dancer, not desiring to discredit but to distinguish him; and he was so conspicuous and universally known for his dancing that not only the Greeks but the very Trojans, though enemies, were aware of this about him. They saw, I suppose, his lightness and grace in battle, which he got from the dance. The verses go something like this: Meriones, in a trice that spear of mine would have stopped you,Good as you are at the dance.Iliad, XVI, 617-618. Nevertheless, it did not stop him, for as he was well versed in dancing, it was easy for him, I suppose, to avoid the javelins they launched at him.

Although I could mention many others among the heroes who were similarly trained and made an art of the thing, I consider Neoptolemus sufficient. Though the son of Achilles, he made a great name for himself in dancing and contributed to it the variety which is most beautiful, called Pyrrhic after him; and upon hearing this about his son, Achilles was more pleased, I am sure, than over his beauty and all his prowess. So, though till then Troy had been impregnable, his skill in dancing took it and tumbled it to the ground.

Since Neoptolemus was also called Pyrrhus, it was inevitable that the invention of the Pyrrhic dance should be ascribed to him. According to Archilochus (Fr. 190 Bergk), he originated it when he danced for joy over killing Eurypylus. That Achilles was more pleased to hear of this than when Odysseus told him of his son’s beauty and bravery (Odyssey, XI, 505-540) is known to us only from Lucian, as also the real reason for the fall of Troy. Lucian’s persiflage derives especial point from the fact that by this time the Pyrrhic had become anything but a war-dance. Athenaeus does not hesitate to call it Dionysiac (XIV, 6314) and compare it with the cordax.

The Spartans, who are considered the bravest of the Greeks, learned from Pollux and Castor to do the Caryatic, which is another variety of dance exhibited at Caryae in Lacedaemon,

This statement is decidedly unorthodox. Others say that the Spartans derived their war-dances from Castor and Pollux, and that Castor gave them a fine martial tune, the Kastoreion. It remained for Lucian to ask us to imagine the horse-tamer and his pugilistic twin, with basket-like contrivances on their heads, facing each other demurely and executing on tip-toe the graceful figures of the dance performed in honour of Artemis by the maidens of Caryae—the famous Caryatides! What these figures looked like is well known to us from ancient reliefs (cf. G. H. Chase, Loeb Collection of Arretine Pottery, Pl. III, No. 53, and the Albani relief in F. Weege, Der Tanz in der Antike, Fig. 52). Sculptural representations of the Caryatides in their statuesque poses, functioning as architectural supports, were so frequent that the name was extended to other similar figures just as it is now when it is applied to the Attic “Maidens” of the Erechtheum porch.

and they do everything with the aid of the Muses, to the extent of going into battle to the accompaniment of flute and rhythm and well-timed step in marching; indeed, the first signal for battle is given to the Spartans by the flute. That is how they managed to conquer everybody, with music and rhythm to lead them.

Even now you may see their young men studying dancing quite as much as fighting under arms. When they have stopped sparring and exchanging blow for blow with each other, their contest ends in dancing, and a flute-player sits in the middle, playing them a tune and marking time with his foot, while they, following one another in line, perform figures of all sorts in rhythmic step, now those of war and presently those of the choral dance, that are dear to Dionysus and Aphrodite.