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
Where are my roses, and where are my violets?
Where is my beautiful parsley?
Are these then my roses, are these then my violets?
And is this my beautiful parsley?
[Sidenote: DANCES.]
Among the Syracusans there was a kind of dance called the Chitoneas,
sacred to Diana, and it is a peculiar kind of dance, accompanied
with the flute. There was also an Ionian kind of dance practised at
drinking parties. They also practised the dance called ἀγγελικὴ at
their drinking parties. And there is another kind of dance called the
Burning of the World, which Menippus the Cynic mentions in his Banquet.
There are also some dances of a ridiculous character:—the Igdis,
the Mactrismus, the Apocinus, and the Sobas; and besides these, the
Morphasmus, and the Owl, and the Lion, and the Pouring out of Meal, and
the Abolition of Debts, and the Elements, and the Pyrrhic dance. And
they also danced to the accompaniment of the flute a dance which they
called the Dance of the Master of the Ship, and the Platter Dance.
The figures used in dances are the Xiphismus, the Calathismus, the
Callabides, the Scops, and the Scopeuma. And the Scops was a figure
intended to represent people looking out from a distance, making an
arch over their brows with their hand so as to shade their eyes. And it
is mentioned by Æschylus in his Spectators:—
And all these old σκωπεύματα of yours.
And Eupolis, in his Flatterers, mentions the Callabides, when he says—
He walks as though he were dancing the Callabides.
Other figures are the Thermastris, the Hecaterides,[74] the Scopus, the
Hand-down, the Hand-up, the Dipodismus, the Taking-hold of Wood, the
Epanconismus, the Calathiscus, the Strobilus. There is also a dance
called the Telesias; and this is a martial kind of dance, deriving its
title from a man of the name of Telesias, who was the first person who
ever danced it, holding arms in his hands, as Hippagoras tells us in
the first book of his treatise on the Constitution of the Carthaginians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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