During the reign of Augustus the art of pantomime reached its zenith. The dances of this time were more spectacular and impressive on account of their carefully executed stage effects. As far as music was concerned, this was produced by flutes and harps, sometimes by singing voices. The Romans never cared for dancing itself, but they were fond of it as a spectacle. A great rôle in Roman life at this juncture was played by the female dancers from Cadiz, which were said to be so brilliant and passionate that poets declared it impossible to withstand the great charm these women exercised over the spectators. Some one says ‘they were all poetry and voluptuous charm.’ An English writer maintains that the famous Venus of Cailipyge was modelled from a Caditian dancer in high favor at Rome. Another noted writer calls the _delicias caditanas_ the most fascinating performances that ever could be seen, and calls all other dances of the Romans and even the Greeks amateurish puerilities. Of great Roman female dancers we know by name Lucceia, who was said to give performances when she was one hundred years old; Stephania, ‘the first to dance on the stage in comedy descriptive of Roman manners’; Galeria Copiola, who danced before Emperor Augustus ninety-one years after her first appearance; and Alliamatula, who danced before Nero at the age of one hundred and twenty. The most known of all the great women dancers in ancient Rome was Telethusa, a fascinating girl from Cadiz, to whose extraordinary beauty and art the poet Martial dedicated many of his songs. CHAPTER VIII DANCING IN THE MIDDLE AGES The mediæval eclipse; ecclesiastical dancing in Spain; the strolling ballets of Spain and Italy; suppression of dancing by the church; dances of the mediæval nobility; Renaissance court ballets; the English masques; famous masques of the seventeenth century. There is a lapse of time, nearly a thousand years, from the fall of the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome to the Grand Ballet of France, when the art of dancing was almost stifled by the Mediæval ecclesiastic scholasticism. Since we have practically no records of the dancing that was fostered in Cadiz, which was probably the most conspicuous at that time, we must confess that the greatly esteemed art of the ancients nearly came to a ruin. If it had not been for Spain, where dancing was introduced even into the churches, it might have taken centuries longer to revive the vanishing ideas of the ancient choreography and keep alive the plastic religion. We are told that a bishop of Valencia adopted certain sacred dances in the churches of Seville, Toledo and Valencia, which were performed before the altar. In Galicia a slow hymn-dance was performed by a tall priest, while carrying a gorgeously dressed boy on his shoulders, at the festival of Corpus Christi.