serious
or tragic dance, Bathillus in the comic.

These also founded a kind of academies of dancing, which
produced several eminent artists, but none that ever equalled
themselves in performance or reputation. What history records
of them, and of their powers, as well as of that theatrical
pantomime dance, of which they were the introductors, in Rome,
would exceed belief, if it was not attested by such a number of
authors as leave no room to think it an imposition.

But as to dancing itself, either considered in a religious,
or in only an amusive light, it may be pronounced to have been
among the Romans, as old as Rome itself, and like that rude in
its beginnings, but to have received gradual improvement, as
fast as the other arts and sciences gained ground.

Processional dances were also much in vogue among that people.
They had especially an anniversary ceremony or procession,
called, from its pre-eminence, singly, POMPA, or the Pomp.

It was celebrated, in commemoration of a victory obtained over
the Latians, the news of which was said to have been brought by
Castor and Pollux, in person. This festival, was, at first,
consecrated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. But it was afterwards
made more general, and celebrated in honor of all the Gods. This
procession was in the month of September. It began at the temple
of _Jupiter Capitolinus_, proceeded to the _Forum Romanum_, from
thence to the _Velabrum_, and afterwards to the _Grand Circus_.
You have in Onuphrius Panvinius, the order of this procession at
large, of which the directors were the chief magistrates of the
city: the sons of the nobility leading the van. Those of the
Equestrian order, whose fathers were worth a hundred and fifty
thousand sesterces, followed on horseback. It would be here
foreign from my purpose to give the whole description of this
procession, and of those who composed it. It is sufficient to
observe, that processional dancing constituted a considerable
part of it. The Pirrhic dance, executed to a martial air, called
the _Proceleumaticus_, employed the men of arms. These were
followed by persons who danced and leaped, in the manner of
Satirs, some of them in the dress ascribed to _Silenus_,
attended by performers on instruments adapted to that character
of dance. These made the comic part of the procession, and the
persons representing Satirs, took care to divert the people by
leaps, by a display of agility, and by odd uncouth attitudes,