Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως

Lines

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İngilizce İngilizce Yunanca

7 LYCINUS Good, Crato; that is what I wanted most. You will very soon find out whether what I am going to say will strike you as nonsense. First of all, you appear to me to be quite unaware that this practice of dancing is not novel, and did not begin yesterday or the day before, in the days of our grandfathers, for instance, or in those of their grandfathers. No, those historians of dancing who are the most veracious can tell you that Dance came into being contemporaneously with the primal origin of the universe, making her appearance together with Love—the love that is age-old.That is to say, the Hesiodean, cosmogonic Eros, elder brother of the Titans, not Aphrodite’s puny boy. In fact, the concord of the heavenly spheres, the interlacing of the errant planets with the fixed stars, their rhythmic agreement and timed harmony, are proofs that Dance was primordial. Little by little she has grown in stature and has obtained from time to time added embellishments, until now she would seem to have reached the very height of perfection and to have become a highly diversified, wholly harmonious, richly musical boon to mankind.