Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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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,¹ 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 [p. 1003] 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 dis- play not only of good discipline in other respects, but also of the care which the dancers bestow on their persons.