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(the wisest of men, if we may believe Apollo, who said so) not only commended it but wanted to learn it, attributing the greatest value to observance of rhythm and music, to harmonious movement and to gracefulness of limb; and he was not ashamed, aged as he was, to consider it one of the most important subjects of study.In the Symposium of Xenophon (II, 15-16) Socrates commends dancing as an exercise, and expresses a desire to learn figures that he has just seen. Cf. Diog. Laert., II, 5, 15. He would, of course, be uncommonly enthusiastic over dancing, since he did not hesitate to study even what was trivial, and not only used to attend the schools of the flute-girls, but did not disdain to listen to serious discourse from Aspasia, a courtesan.See Plato, Menexenus, 2358 and249c; Xen., Oecon., II, 14. Yet the art was just beginning when he saw it then, and had not yet been elaborated to such a high degree of beauty. If he could see those who now have advanced it to the utmost, that man, I am sure, dropping everything else, would have given his attention to this spectacle alone; and he would not have had his young friends learn anything else in preference to it.
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Again, it seems to me that when you praise comedy and tragedy, you have forgotten that in each of them there is a special form of dance; that is to say, the tragic is the Emmeleia and the comic the Cordax, though sometimes a third form, the Sicinnis, is included also.The Sicinnis, though regarded as the characteristic dance of the satyr-play, was sometimes presented in comedy. But since at the outset you gave greater honour to tragedy and comedy and cyclic fluteplayers and singing with the lyre than to the dance, calling these competitive and therefore grand— come, let us now compare each one of them with the dance. And yet, suppose we omit the flute, if you do not mind, and the lyre, since they are parts of the dancer’s paraphernalia.
