Book 14
27
Among the Syracusans there was a kind of dance called the Chitoneas, sacred to Diana, and it is a peculiar kind of dance, accompanied with the flute. There was also an Ionian kind of dance practised at drinking parties. They also practised the dance called ἀγγελικὴ at their drinking parties. And there is another kind of dance called the Burning of the World, which Menippus the Cynic mentions in his Banquet. There are also some dances of a ridiculous character:—the Igdis, the Mactrismus, the Apocinus, and the Sobas; and besides these, the Morphasmus, and the Owl, and the Lion, and the Pouring out of Meal, and the Abolition of Debt, and the Elements, and the Pyrrhic dance. And they also lanced to the accompaniment of the flute a dance which they called the Dance of the Master of the Ship, and the Platter Dance.
27
The figures used in dances are the Xiphismus, the Calathismus, the Callabides, the Scops, and the Scopeuma. And the Scops was a figure intended to represent people looking out from a distance, making an arch over their brows with their hand so as to shade their eyes. And it is mentioned by Aeschylus in his Spectators:— And all these old σκωπεύματα of yours. And Eupolis, in his Flatterers, mentions the Callabides, when he says— He walks as though he were dancing the Callabides.
