10
The Spartans, who are considered the bravest of the Greeks, learned from Pollux and Castor to do the Caryatic, which is another variety of dance exhibited at Caryae in Lacedaemon,This statement is decidedly unorthodox. Others say that the Spartans derived their war-dances from Castor and Pollux, and that Castor gave them a fine martial tune, the Kastoreion. It remained for Lucian to ask us to imagine the horse-tamer and his pugilistic twin, with basket-like contrivances on their heads, facing each other demurely and executing on tip-toe the graceful figures of the dance performed in honour of Artemis by the maidens of Caryae—the famous Caryatides! What these figures looked like is well known to us from ancient reliefs (cf. G. H. Chase, Loeb Collection of Arretine Pottery, Pl. III, No. 53, and the Albani relief in F. Weege, Der Tanz in der Antike, Fig. 52). Sculptural representations of the Caryatides in their statuesque poses, functioning as architectural supports, were so frequent that the name was extended to other similar figures just as it is now when it is applied to the Attic “Maidens” of the Erechtheum porch. and they do everything with the aid of the Muses, to the extent of going into battle to the accompaniment of flute and rhythm and well-timed step in marching; indeed, the first signal for battle is given to the Spartans by the flute. That is how they managed to conquer everybody, with music and rhythm to lead them.
10
Even now you may see their young men studying dancing quite as much as fighting under arms. When they have stopped sparring and exchanging blow for blow with each other, their contest ends in dancing, and a flute-player sits in the middle, playing them a tune and marking time with his foot, while they, following one another in line, perform figures of all sorts in rhythmic step, now those of war and presently those of the choral dance, that are dear to Dionysus and Aphrodite.
