On the eve of sacred
festivals, the young people were accustomed to assemble, sometimes
before the church door, sometimes in the choir or nave of the church,
and dance and sing hymns in honor of the saint whose festival it was.
Easter Sunday, especially, was so celebrated; and rituals of a
comparatively modern date contain the order in which it is appointed
that the dances are to be performed, and the words of the hymns to the
music of which the youthful devotees flung up their pious heels But I
digress.

In Plato's time the Greeks held that dancing awakened and preserved in
the soul--as I do not doubt that it does--the sentiment of harmony and
proportion; and in accordance with this idea Simonides, with a happy
knack at epigram, defined dances as "poems in dumb show."

In his _Republic_ Plato classifies the Grecian dances as domestic,
designed for relaxation and amusement, military, to promote strength and
activity in battle; and religious, to accompany the sacred songs at
pious festivals. To the last class belongs the dance which Theseus is
said to have instituted on his return from Crete, after having abated
the Minotaur nuisance. At the head of a noble band of youth, this public
spirited reformer of abuses himself executed his dance. Theseus as a
dancing-master does not much fire the imagination, it is true, but the
incident has its value and purpose in this dissertation. Theseus called
his dance _Geranos_, or the "Crane," because its figures resembled those
described by that fowl aflight; and Plutarch fancied he discovered in it
a meaning which one does not so readily discover in Plutarch's
explanation.

It is certain that, in the time of Anacreon[A], the Greeks loved the
dance. That poet, with frequent repetition, felicitates himself that age
has not deprived him of his skill in it. In Ode LIII, he declares that
in the dance he renews his youth

When I behold the festive train
Of dancing youth, I'm young again

And let me, while the wild and young
Trip the mazy dance along
Fling my heap of years away
And be as wild, as young as they

--_Moore_

[Footnote A: It may be noted here that the popular conception of this
poet as a frivolous sensualist is unsustained by evidence and repudiated
by all having knowledge of the matter. Although love and wine were his
constant themes, there is good ground for the belief that he wrote of
them with greater _ab