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But the Gymnopædica resembles the dance which by the ancients used to be called Anapale; for all the boys dance naked, performing some kind of movement in regular time, and with gestures of the hand like those used by wrestlers: so that the dancers exhibit a sort of spectacle akin to the palestra and to the pancratium, moving their feet in regular time. And the different modes of dancing it are called the Oschophoricus,1 and the Bacchic, so that this kind of dance, too, has some reference to Bacchus. But Aristoxenus says that the ancients, after they had exercised themselves in the Gymnopædica, turned to the Pyrrhic dance before they entered the theatre: and the Pyrrhic dance is also called the Cheironomia. But the Hyporchematic dance is that in which the chorus dances while singing. Accordingly Bacchylides says—
There's no room now for sitting down,
There's no room for delay.
And Pindar says—
The Lacedæmonian troop of maidens fair.
And the Lacedæmonians dance this dance in Pindar. And the Hyporchematica is a dance of men and women. Now the best modes are those which combine dancing with the singing; and they are these-the Prosodiacal, the Apostolical (which last is also called (παρθένιος), and others of the same kind. And some danced to the hymn and some did not; and some danced in accompaniment to hymns to Venus and Bacchus, and to the Pæan, dancing at one time and resting at another. And [p. 1008] among the barbarians as well as among the Greeks there are respectable dances and also indecorous ones. Now the Cordax among the Greeks is an indecorous dance, but the Emmelea is a respectable one: as is among the Arcadians the Cidaris, and among the Sicyonians the Aleter; and it is called Aleter also in Ithaca, as Aristoxenus relates in the first book of his History of Sicyon. And this appears enough to say at present on the subject of dances.

1 From θ̓́σχη,, a vine-branch with grapes on it, and φέρω, to bear.

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