The chief occupation and the aim of dancing, as I have said, is impersonating, which is cultivated in the same way by the rhetoricians, particularly those who recite these pieces that they call “exercises”; for in their case also there is nothing which we commend more highly than their accommodating themselves to the roles which they assume, so that what they say is not inappropriate to the princes or tyrant-slayers or poor people or farmers whom they introduce, but in each of these what is individual and distinctive is presented.
In that connection I should like to tell you something that was said by another barbarian. Noticing that the dancer had five masks ready—the drama had that number of acts—since he saw but the one dancer, he enquired who were to dance and act the other roles, and when he learned that the dancer himself was to act and dance them all, he said; “I did not realise, my friend, that though you have only this one body, you have many souls.”
