18
The Ethiopians, moreover, even in waging war, do it dancing, and an Ethiopian may not let fly the shaft that he has taken from his head (for they use the head in place of a quiver, binding the shafts about it like rays) unless he has first danced, menacing the enemy by his attitude and terrifying him in advance by his prancing.Heliodorus i in the La opica (IX, 19) goes into greater detail. Cf. also H. P. L’Orange, Symbolae Osloenses XII (1934), 105-113, who calls attention to representations of Roman auxiliaries with arrows bound to their heads in the frieze of the Arch of Constantine.
19
Since we have spoken of India and of Ethiopia, it will repay us to make an imaginary descent into Egypt, their neighbour. For it seems to me that the ancient myth about Proteus the Egyptian means nothing else than that he was a dancer, an imitative fellow, able to shape himself and change himself into anything, so that he could imitate even the liquidity of water and the sharpness of fire in the liveliness of his movement; yes, the fierceness of a lion, the rage of a leopard, the quivering of a tree, and in a word whatever he wished. Mythology, however, on taking it over, described his nature in terms more paradoxical, as if he became what he imitated. Now just that thing is characteristic of the dancers to-day, who certainly may be seen changing swiftly at the cue and imitating Proteus himself. And we must suppose that in Empusa, who changes into countless forms, some such person has been handed down by mythology.Empusa, one of Hecate’s associates, used to frighten people by appearing suddenly out of dark places in one orrid form or another; she seems to have been particularly given to manifesting herself with legs like those of an ass.
