g.
Perhaps the best value of the incident consists in the evidence it
supplies that dancing was not forbidden--save possibly by divine
injunction--to the higher classes of Jews, for unless we are to suppose
the dancing of David to have been the mere clumsy capering of a loutish
mood (a theory which our respect for royalty, even when divested of its
imposing externals, forbids us to entertain) we are bound to assume
previous instruction and practice in the art. We have, moreover, the
Roman example of the daughter of Herodias, whose dancing before Herod
was so admirably performed that she was suitably rewarded with a
testimonial of her step father's esteem. To these examples many more
might be added, showing by cumulative evidence that among the ancient
people whose religion was good enough for us to adopt and improve,
dancing was a polite and proper accomplishment, although not always
decorously executed on seasonable occasion.

V

ENTER A TROUPE OF ANCIENTS, DANCING

The nearly oldest authentic human records now decipherable are the
cuneiform inscriptions from the archives of Assurbanipal, translated by
the late George Smith, of the British Museum, and in them we find
abundant reference to the dance, but must content ourselves with a
single one.

The kings of Arabia who against my agreement,
sinned, whom in the midst of battle alive I had captured
in hand, to make that Bitrichiti Heavy burdens I
caused them to carry and I caused them to take
building its brick work with dancing and
music with joy and shouting from the found
ation to its roof I built

A Mesopotamian king, who had the genius to conceive the dazzling idea of
communicating with the readers of this distant generation by taking
impressions of carpet tacks on cubes of unbaked clay is surely entitled
to a certain veneration, and when he associates dancing with such
commendable actions as making porters of his royal captives it is not
becoming in us meaner mortals to set up a contrary opinion. Indeed
nothing can be more certain than that the art of dancing was not
regarded by the ancients generally in the light of a frivolous
accomplishment, nor its practice a thing wherewith to shoo away a
tedious hour. In their minds it evidently had a certain dignity and
elevation, so much so that they associated it with their ideas
(tolerably correct ones, on the whole) of art, harmony, beauty, truth
and