The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
A water-drinker knows no dithyrambics.
So, that it was not merely with a view to superficial and vulgar
pleasure, as some assert, that music was originally introduced into
entertainments, is plain from what has been said above. But the
Lacedæmonians do not assert that they used to learn music as a science,
but they do profess to be able to judge well of what is done in the
art; and they say that they have already three times preserved it when
it was in danger of being lost.
[Sidenote: DANCING.]
25. Music also contributes to the proper exercising of the body and
to sharpening the intellect; on which account, every Grecian people,
and every barbarian nation too, that we are acquainted with, practise
it. And it was a good saying of Damon the Athenian, that songs and
dances must inevitably exist where the mind was excited in any
manner; and liberal, and gentlemanly, and honourable feelings of the
mind produce corresponding kinds of music, and the opposite feelings
likewise produce the opposite kinds of music. On which account, that
saying of Clisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon was a witty one, and a sign
of a well-educated intellect. For when he saw, as it is related,[73]
one of the suitors for his daughter dancing in an unseemly manner
(it was Hippoclides the Athenian), he told him that he had danced
away his marriage, thinking, as it should seem, that the mind of the
man corresponded to the dance which he had exhibited; for in dancing
and walking decorum and good order are honourable, and disorder and
vulgarity are discreditable. And it is on this principle that the poets
originally arranged dances for freeborn men, and employed figures only
to be emblems of what was being sung, always preserving the principles
of nobleness and manliness in them; on which account it was that they
gave them the name of ὑπορχήματα (accompaniment to the dance). And if
any one, while dancing, indulged in unseemly postures or figures, and
did nothing at all corresponding to the songs sung, he was considered
blameworthy; on which account, Aristophanes or Plato, in his
Preparations (as Chamæleon quotes the play), spoke thus:—
So that if any one danced well, the sight
Was pleasing; but they now do nothing rightly,
But stand as if amazed, and roar at random.
For the kind of dancing which was at that time used in the choruses was
decorous and magnificent, and to a certain extent imitated the motions
of men under arms; on which account Socrates in his Poems says that
those men who dance best are the best in warlike exploits; and thus he
writes:—
But they who in the dance most suitably
Do honour to the Gods, are likewise best
In all the deeds of war.
For the dance is very nearly an armed exercise, and is a display not
only of good discipline in other respects, but also of the care which
the dancers bestow on their persons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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