aise Him with
the timbrel and the _dance_."

Aristotle speaks of Mimetic dances three hundred years before the
Augustan era. He also says that dancers want neither poetry or music, as
by the assistance of measure and cadence only they can imitate human
manners, actions, and passions.

Again, "Homer, describing the employment of the Delian priestesses, or
Nuns, of the order of St. Apollo of Delos, that they were great adepts
in the Art of Mimicry, and that part of the entertainment which they
afforded to the numerous people of different nations; who formed their
congregations was, as the poet expresses it, from their _being skilled
to imitate the voices and the pulsation or measure of all nations, and
so exactly was their song adapted that every man would think he himself
was singing_."

Homer also mentions a dance invented for Ariadne. In the midst of the
dancers, there were two dancers who sang the adventures of Daedalus,
supplementing their singing by gestures, and explaining in Pantomime the
subject of the whole performance.

The Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks was a sort of military Pantomime. The
Greeks had several kinds of Pyrrhic dances, the names of which varied
with the character of the performance.

The Hyplomachia imitated a fight with shields.
The Skiamachia was a battle with shadows,
The Monomachia was an imitation of single combat.

Some of the Mimetic dances common to both Greeks and Romans were The
Loves of Adonis and Venus, the Exploits of Ajax, the Adventures of
Apollo, the Rape of Ganymede, the Loves of Jupiter and Danae, the Birth
of Jupiter, Hector, the Rape of Europa, the Labours of Hercules,
Hercules Mad, the Graces, Saturn devouring his Children, the Cybele in
honour of Cybele, the Cyclops, the Sorrows of Niobe, the Tragic End of
Semele, the Wars of the Titans, the Judgment of Paris, Daphne pursued by
Apollo, the Bucolic Dance, and the Dance of Flowers.

CHAPTER V.

Thespis--The Progress of Tragedy and Comedy--Aeschylus--The
Epopee--Homer--Sophocles--Euripides--Grecian Mimes--The First Athenian
Theatre--Scenery and Effects.

When Thespis first pointed out the tragic path, and when (as Horace
tells us in his Odes) that "The inventor of the Art carried his vagrant
players on a cart," by his introduction of a new personage, who relieved
the chorus, or troop of singers, by reciting some part of a well-known
history, or fable, which gave time for the chorus to rest. All tha