With Easter come the most elaborate of the peasant dances that accompany all kinds of local religious festivals. Close at hand are the famous dances of Megara, but in defiance of tradition the Athenian sojourner may elect to visit those at Menidi, a large village about three miles to the north, whose _panegyris_ or fair is not overrun by non-participants. There are several varieties of peasant dances, and a technical knowledge of the accompanying music will be of great service in interpreting them; but whatever their particular measure may be, and whether they are performed by men and women together or by women alone, they all possess a dignity and gravity which mark them off as something quite different from the gratification of a lively humour. The religious impulse is not wholly forgotten in the delights of a carnal holiday, and the dances are the expression, in unison, of a public feeling which in origin, at least, was reverential. Save for the leader, no individual assumes liberty of movement. In long lines or semi-circles the dancers link hands and sway in monotonous harmony. Readers of ancient Greek literature will remember how important dances were in the religious festivals of all epochs. Their variety and their ancestral relation to the modern dances are subjects for technical study, but the spectator at Menidi is at liberty to let his imagination travel the Sacred Way to Eleusis, or cross the Ægean to Delos, or seek out Argos and distant Sparta. The modern inheritance is a limited one, for it recalls only the grave choral movements that originated in Sparta, and discards the license of the Dionysiac worship. And altogether preventive of any real reconstruction of the past is the fact that now only peasants at a country fair exhibit an art which once was an important element in city as well as in village religion, and which tested the grace of the gentlest born. It is a far call from a country field and the daughters of Menidi, bedight though they are with embroideries and necklaces and often fair of form and face, to the chief temple in Sparta and the choicest maidens of the Spartan state. But one certain bond there is between the girls of to-day and the princesses of yesterday. The Easter fair serves the purpose of a market for brides, and many a wedding follows it. Dancing is a part of this happy festival as it was in antiquity in all ranks of society. And were the maidens of Menidi exiled to America, they would long for the village green and the bridal feasts, even as Iphigeneia and her comrades, exiled among the northern Taurians, longed for Agamemnon’s palace and their Argive playfellows:—