The famous Pyrrhic dance was of course mimetic and represented a series of war-like incidents, all of which had an educational purpose, as by their means the youthful soldier was taught how to advance and retreat, how to aim a blow or hurl a javelin and to dodge them; and how to leap and vault, in event of meeting ditches and walls. Apart from military dances in which physical culture and grace were the chief aims, there were many dances of a purely festival character taken part in by young men and girls, and by girls alone. The close association between religion and the Dance in ancient Hellenic days is seen in the number of festivals in honour of the gods, at which special dances were performed, apart from those which formed part of the classic drama and others which were merely by way of joyous pastime. Certain dances were performed annually in honour of Jupiter; others, such as the _Procharysteriæ_, were in honour of Minerva; then there was the _Pæonian_ dance in honour of Apollo; the _Ionic_, and the _Kalabis_ and the famous Dance of Innocence, instituted by Lycurgus, and executed to the glory of Diana, by young Lacedæmonian girls before the altar of the goddess. The Delian dance, special to the isle of Delos, was much the same in character and closed with the offering of floral garlands on the altar of Aphrodite. One of the most solemn incidents of the Eleusinian mysteries was the mystical dance-drama representing the search of Ceres for her daughter Proserpine--practically a “ballet,” in the older acceptance of the word. The secular dance of the Greeks was essentially an individualistic form. Men and women only rarely danced together, and when they did, the joining of hands, or anything like chain-dancing was exceptional. One of these exceptions was the _Hormos_, or Collar-dance as it was called, which Lucian describes as being danced by youths and maidens advancing one by one in the form of a collar, made up of the alternating jewels of feminine grace and manly strength, the dance being led by a youth. Most of the Greek dances had a leader, and the favour in which the art was held is shown by the fact that they termed their Chief Magistrate _Pro-orchestris_, or Leader of the Dance. As a rule, chain-dances were performed by one or the other sex. In another sense also the Hellenic dance was individualistic. We are accustomed to see entire groups, eight, sixteen, or even thirty-two or more dancers all performing the same step simultaneously. It is one of the conventions of Ballet, like the chorus in “musical comedy.” But the Greeks had not that convention.