Book 14
22
"But after this, learning the airs of Timotheus and Philoxenus, they every year, at the festival of Bacchus, dance in their theatres to the music of flute-players; the boys dancing in the choruses of boys, and the youths in those of men. And throughout the whole duration of their lives they are addicted to music at their common entertainments; not so much, however, employing musicians as singing in turn: and to admit themselves ignorant of any other accomplishment is not at all reckoned discreditable to them; but to refuse to sing is accounted a most disgraceful thing. And they, practising marches so as to march in order to the sound of the flute, and studying their dances also, exhibit every year in the theatres, under public regulations and at the public expense. These, then, are the customs which they have derived from the ancients, not for the sake of luxury and superfluity, but from a consideration of the austerity which each individual practised in his private life, and of the severity of their characters, which they contract from the cold and gloomy nature of the climate which prevails in the greater part of their country. And it is the nature of all men to be in some degree influenced by the climate, so as to get some resemblance to it themselves; and it is owing to this that we find different races of men, varying in character and figure and complexion, in proportion as they are more or less distant from one another.
