dance was of a graceful and becoming character. Sophocles himself, the great tragic poet and fellow general of Pericles, was not ashamed to appear in a dance in one of his own tragedies.[933] At the same time it should be remembered that dancing in ancient Greece was a very different thing from dancing in modern times. It included a great deal more. The word ‘dancing’ in English necessarily implies movement with the feet. It would be impossible in English to say that a man was dancing, if he continued to stand in the same position. But in Greek dancing this was not necessarily the case. The word ‘orchesis’, which we translate as ‘dancing’, had in reality a much wider meaning. Greek dancing originated, according to Plato, in the instinctive tendency of mankind to accompany speech and song with explanatory movements of the body.[934] It was essentially a mimetic performance. It included, not only all such motions as are denoted by dancing in the modern sense of the word, but also every kind of gesture and posture by which various objects and events can be represented in dumb show. Its principal function was to interpret and illustrate the words of poetry. For this purpose nothing could be more important than appropriate gesticulation. Hence in Greek dancing the movements of the hands and arms played a larger part than the movements of the feet. The same was the case in Roman dancing also. A few quotations will illustrate this fact. Telestes, the celebrated dancer employed by Aeschylus, was said to be able to ‘depict events with his hands in the most skilful manner’.[935] Demetrius the Cynic, after witnessing the performance of a celebrated dancer, exclaimed that he ‘spoke with his hands’.[936] Ovid, in his Art of Love, when advising a lover to show off his best qualities before his mistress, tells him to sing if he has a good voice, to dance ‘if his arms are flexible’.[937] The flourishes and gesticulations with which a professional carver cut out a hare were called ‘dancing’ by the ancients.[938] Quintilian, speaking of the gestures used in oratory, gravely says that there ought to be a considerable difference between the orator and the dancer; that the gestures of the orator should represent the general sense of the words, rather than the particular objects mentioned.[939] The bare fact of his comparing an orator with a dancer is a proof of the vital difference between ancient and modern dancing, and the importance of mere gesticulation in the former.