64
Since we are under Nero in fancy, I wish to tell the remark of a barbarian concerning the same dancer, which may be considered a very great tribute to his art. One of the barbarians from Pontus, a man of royal blood, came to Nero on some business or other, and among other entertainments saw that dancer perform so vividly that although he could not follow what was being sung—he was but half Hellenised, as it happened—he understood every- thing. So when it came to be time for him to go back to his own country, Nero, in saying good-bye, urged him to ask for anything that he wanted, and promised to give it him. “If you give me the dancer,’ said he, “you will please me mightily!” When Nero asked, “What good would he be to you there?”, he replied, “I have barbarian neighbours who do not speak the same language, and it is not easy to keep supplied with interpreters for them. If I am in want of one, therefore, this man will interpret everything for me by signs.” So deeply had he been impressed by that disclosure of the distinctness and lucidity of the mimicry of the dance.
65
The chief occupation and the aim of dancing, as I have said, is impersonating, which is cultivated in the same way by the rhetoricians, particularly those who recite these pieces that they call “exercises”; for in their case also there is nothing which we commend more highly than their accommodating themselves to the roles which they assume, so that what they say is not inappropriate to the princes or tyrant-slayers or poor people or farmers whom they introduce, but in each of these what is individual and distinctive is presented.
