ius that the Senate was
compelled to run the dancers and dancing masters out of Rome but the evil
had become so deep rooted that the very precautions by which society was
to be safeguarded served to inflame the passion for the dance and
indulgence became so general and so public that great scandal resulted.
Domitian, who was by no means straight laced, found it necessary to expel
from the Senate those members who danced in public. The people imitated
the nobles, and, as fast as the dancers were expelled, others from the
highest and lowest ranks of society took their places, and there soon
came to be no distinction, in this matter, between the noblest names of
the patricians and the vilest rabble from the Suburra. There is no
comparison between the age of Cicero and that of Domitian. "One could do
a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer," says Cicero, Pro
Murena, and adds: "a man cannot dance unless he is drunk or insane."

Probably the most realistic description of the cordax, conventional, of
course, is to be found in Merejkovski's "Death of the Gods." The passage
occurs in chapter vi. I have permitted myself the liberty of supplying
the omissions and euphemisms in Trench's otherwise excellent and spirited
version of the novel. "At this moment hoarse sounds like the roarings of
some subterranean monster came from the market square. They were the
notes, now plaintive, now lively, of a hydraulic organ. At the entrance
to a showman's travelling booth, a blind Christian slave, for four obols
a day, was pumping up the water which produced this extraordinary
harmony. Agamemnon dragged his companions into the booth, a great tent
with blue awnings sprinkled with silver stars. A lantern lighted a
black-board on which the order of the program was chalked up in Syriac
and Greek. It was stifling within, redolent of garlic and lamp oil soot.
In addition to the organ, there struck up the wailing of two harsh
flutes, and an Ethopian, rolling the whites of his eyes, thrummed upon an
Arab drum. A dancer was skipping and throwing somersaults on a
tightrope, clapping his hands to the time of the music, and singing a
popular song:

Hue, huc, convenite nunc
Spatalocinaedi!
Pedem tendite
Cursum addite

"This starveling snub-nosed dancer was old, repulsive, and nastily gay.
Drops of sweat mixed with paint were trickling from his shaven for