I wish now to depict for you in words what a good dancer should be like in mind and in body. To be sure, I have already mentioned most of his mental qualities. I hold, you know, that he should be retentive of memory, gifted, intelligent, keenly inventive, and above all successful in doing the right thing at the right time; besides, he should be able to judge poetry, to select the best songs and melodies, and to reject worthless compositions.
What I propose to unveil now is his body, which will conform to the canon of Polyclitus. It must be neither very tall and inordinately lanky, nor short and dwarfish in build, but exactly the right measure, without being either fat, which would be fatal to any illusion, or excessively thin; for that would suggest skeletons and corpses.
