Emmanuel, who has written an interesting work on the Greek choreography, maintains that the accuracy of rhythm was of foremost importance. A choreographic time-marker was attached to sandals that produced sounds modified to the changing sentiments of the action. A little tambourine or cymbals were occasionally employed. A special branch of dance instruction was the _Chironomia_, or the art of using the hands. Greek dancing was by no means predominantly gesturing with hands, as some people think, but it was the harmonious use of every limb of the human body, in connection with the corresponding art of pantomime. There were numerous dancing schools in Greece, and each of them had its particular method of instruction. The first exercise in a school was the learning of flexibility of the body, which lasted a few years. A special school dance was the _Esclatism_, which was chiefly a rhythmic gymnastic, on the order of Jaques-Dalcroze’s method at Hellerau. We know comparatively little of the details of the ancient technical mechanism of choreography. Unfortunately all the ancient dancing figures represent merely one moment of a dance, therefore it is extremely difficult to grasp the principal points of the vanished art. CHAPTER VII DANCING IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE Æsthetic subservience to Greece; Pylades and Bathyllus; the _Bellicrepa saltatio_; the Ludiones; the Roman pantomime; the Lupercalia and Floralia; Bacchantic orgies; the Augustinian age; importations from Cadiz; famous dancers. As with all their arts, the ancient Romans borrowed their dancing from the Greeks. A nation raised in adoration of military and aristocratic ideals, conceited, and with a strong tendency to materialism and formalities, the Romans contributed little to choreography. Their civilization was imitative rather than creative. Their art is void of ethnographic characteristics and a kind of artificial stiffness breathes from their best achievements. The only conspicuous contribution of the Roman dancers to the evolution of dance lies in their unique dramatic and ecclesiastic pantomimes and their celebrated masque dances. But it seems surprising that dancing was far more highly developed and esteemed in the earlier period of Roman history than in those days of luxury and vice which preceded the downfall of the empire. Under the republic, dancing was considered one of the foremost factors in education, and the children of patricians and statesmen were obliged to take lessons in Greek dancing. But of the social views of later centuries we read from Quintilian that ‘it disgraced the dignity of a man,’ or as Cicero said, ‘No sober man dances, unless he is mad.’ Horace rebukes the Romans for dancing as for an infamy. Various other Roman writers tell us how much the women of standing were criticized for their lack of virtue if they entertained a dancer at their house or shook hands with him.