Very unusual was the Roman festival of Pan, or the _Lupercalia_, at which half-naked youths danced about the streets with whips in their hands, lashing freely everyone whom they chanced to meet. The Roman women liked to be lashed on this occasion, as they believed it would keep them young. Another kind of Pan festival was celebrated by the peasants in the spring at which the young men and maidens joined in the dances, which took place in the woods or on the fields. They wore garlands of flowers and wreaths of oak on their heads. Similar dances, only more solemn and magnificent, were performed at the festival of Pallas by shepherds. Dancing and singing around blazing bonfires in a circle they worshipped the goddess of fruitfulness. Frequently the officiators were disreputable women who appeared dressed in long white robes, symbolic of chastity. Then there were the great _Floralia_ or May Day festivals which in the beginning were of sufficiently decent manner but eventually degenerated into scenes of unbounded licentiousness. Still wilder than these were the orgies of Bacchus, which contributed greatly to the demoralization of the people until the consuls Albinus and Philippus banished them from Rome by a decree of the Senate. On account of their sensuous character the Romans were unable to keep their art of dancing in such poetic and yet simple æsthetic frames as did the Greeks, for which reason all the Roman women characters in a pantomime were disguised young men. They lacked the ability of self-control in the stage art which in Greece had reached a standard of classic perfection. It is sufficient to say that they must have been wicked enough when a ruler like Tiberius commanded the dancers to be expelled from Rome. But Tacitus relates that, while publicly Tiberius reprimanded Sestius Gallus for the elaborate balls given at his house, privately he made arrangements to be his guest on the condition that he should himself be entertained in the usual manner. Of his successor, Caligula, Suetonius writes: ‘So fond was the emperor of singing and dancing that he could not refrain from singing with the tragedians and imitating the gestures of the dancers either by way of applause or correction.’