Before all else, however, it behoves her to enjoy the favour of Mnemosyne and her daughter Polymnia, and she endeavours to remember everything. Like Calchas in Homer, the dancer must know “what is, and what shall be, and was of old,”Iliad, I, 70. so thoroughly that nothing will escape him, but his memory of it all will be prompt. To be sure, it professes in the main to be a science of imitation and portrayal, of revealing what is in the mind and making intelligible what is obscure. What Thucydides said of Pericles in praising the man would also be the highest possible commendation of a dancer, “to know what is meet and express it;”Thucydides, IT, 60. and by expressing I mean the intelligibility of his postures. But his whole accoutrement for the work is ancient story, as I have said, and the prompt recollection and graceful presentation of it.
