61
These are a very few themes that I have selected out of many, or rather out of an infinite number, and set down as the more important, leaving the rest for the poets to sing of, for the dancers themselves to present, and for you to add, finding them by their likeness to those already mentioned, all of which must lie ready, provided and stored by the dancer in advance to meet every occasion.
62
Since he is imitative and undertakes to present by means of movements all that is being sung, it is essential for him, as for the orators, to cultivate clearness, so that everything which he presents will be intelligible, requiring no interpreter. No, in the words of the Delphic oracle,That given to Croesus, Herod., I, 47; there was, of course, no reference to dancing in it. The maid of Pytho vaunted her knowledge of the number of the sands and the measure of the sea and her ability to understand the mute and hear the silent, before demonstrating her power by replying to the testquestion “What is Croesus now doing” with the answer that she could smell turtle and lamb boiling in a bronze pot with a lid of bronze. That response, we are told, hit the mark. whosoever beholds dancing must be able “to understand the mute and hear the silent” dancer.
