Thus we begin to appreciate the serious nature and the importance of the dance among primitive folk. To dub a youth "a good dancer" is to pay him a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes what is really meant--namely the fitness of the loved comrade to lead in religious and magical rituals--then indeed the compliment takes on a new complexion. Religious dances, in dedication to a god, have of course been honored in every country. Muller, in the work just cited, (1) describes a lively dance called the hyporchema which, accompanied by songs, was used in the worship of Apollo. "In this, besides the chorus of singers who usually danced around THE BLAZING ALTAR, several persons were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate pantomimic display." It was probably some similar dance which is recorded in Exodus, ch. xxxii, when Aaron made the Israelites a golden Calf (image of the Egyptian Apis). There was an altar and a fire and burnt offerings for sacrifice, and the people dancing around. Whether in the Apollo ritual the dancers were naked I cannot say, but in the affair of the golden Calf they evidently were, for it will be remembered that it was just this which upset Moses' equanimity so badly--"when he SAW THAT THE PEOPLE WERE NAKED"--and led to the breaking of the two tables of stone and the slaughter of some thousands of folk. It will be remembered also that David on a sacrificial occasion danced naked before the Lord. (2) (1) Book II, ch. viii, Section 14. (2) 2 Sam. vi.