The general character of the dancing in the Greek drama has already been described. As far as details are concerned our information is very defective, and only slight indications are to be obtained from the existing plays. It is probable that, when the parodoi commenced with a series of anapaests, the chorus only marched in, without dancing. But all parodoi written in lyrical metres were undoubtedly accompanied with a dance. The iambic and trochaic tetrameters, in which many of the parodoi in Aristophanes are written, seem to have been generally intended for choruses which entered running, and with an appearance of great haste.[948] The stasima, or long choral odes between the acts, are said by many of the scholiasts to have been unaccompanied by dancing, and to have been delivered by the chorus standing perfectly still.[949] The statement is no doubt an error, due to false etymology. The stasima, or ‘stationary songs’, were so called, not because the chorus stood still during their delivery, but because it remained all the time in the orchestra. They were therefore opposed to the parodoi, which were delivered while the chorus was coming in, and to the exodoi, which were delivered while it was going out.[950] That the stasima were accompanied by dancing is proved by several references to dancing which they contain.[951] A tradition has been preserved by one scholiast concerning the manœuvres of the chorus in the stasima. It is said that during the strophe they moved to the right, during the antistrophe to the left; and that during the epode they remained standing in the same position as at first.[952] This description, however, has probably been applied to the drama by mistake. A manœuvre of the kind mentioned, though suitable to the circular chorus of the dithyramb, would be out of place in the rectangular formations of the dramatic choruses. Also it is comparatively rare to find epodes in the stasima. As for the incidental odes, which occur in the middle of the dialogue, many of those were written in the lively hyporchematic style, to mark the joy of the chorus at an unexpected turn of fortune. Some of the regular stasima were of the same type.[953] The dances by which these odes were accompanied were extremely brisk and energetic, in tragedy as well as in comedy.[954] The exodoi, or concluding utterances of the chorus, were not usually attended with dancing, but were delivered in recitative as the chorus marched out. There is an exception in the Wasps and the Ecclesiazusae, which are terminated by the chorus dancing out of the orchestra. But Aristophanes himself remarks that this was an innovation.[955] There is no reason to suppose that in tragedy the kommoi, or musical dialogues between actors and chorus, were unaccompanied with dancing. But naturally, if this was the case, the dance would be of a quiet and sober kind, consisting more of appropriate gestures and motions than of dancing in the modern sense of the word.