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Moreover, the other performances that appeal to eye and ear contain, each of them, the display of a single activity; there is either flute or lyre or vocal music or tragedy’s mummery or comedy’s buffoonery. The dancer, however, has everything at once, and that equipment of his, we may see, is varied and comprehensive—the flute, the pipes, the tapping of feet, the clash of cymbals, the melodious voice of the actor,The actor (there seems to have been but one) supported the dancer by assuming secondary roles like the “Odysseus” mentioned below (p. 285). Cf. also p. 394, n. 1, and p. 402, n. l. the concord of the singers.
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Then, too, all the rest are activities of one or the other of the two elements in man, some of them activities of the soul, some of the body; but in dancing both are combined. For there is display of mind in the performance as well as expression of bodily development, and the most important part of it is the wisdom that controls the action, and the fact that nothing is irrational. Indeed, Lesbonax of Mytilene, a man of excellent parts, called dancers “handiwise,”Because of their extensive use of gestures. For the word see also Rhet. Praec.,17 (Vol. IV, p. 157), where it is recommended by the sophist, and Lexiph., 14 (p. 312 of this volume), where it is used by Lexiphanes. and used to go to see them with the expectation of returning from the theatre a better man. Timocrates, too, his teacher, one day, for the sole and only time, came in by chance, saw a dancer ply his trade and said: “What a treat for the eyes my reverence for philosophy has deprived me of!”
