Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/183

161 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 161 country which at this time was best suited to the music of dancing. The Gymnopaedia, the festival of " naked youths," one of the chief solemnities of the Spartans, was well calculated to encourage the love of gymnastic exercises and dances among the youth. The boys in these dances first imitated the movements of wrestling and the pancration; and then passed into the wild gestures of the worship of Bacchus *. There was also much jesting and merriment in these dances-f ; a fact which points to mimic representations in the style of the hyporcheme, especially as the establishment of dances and musical entertainments at the gymnopaedia is ascribed by Plutarch to the musicians, at the head of whom was Thaletas J. The Pyrrhic, or war-dance, was also formed by the musicians of this school, particularly by Thaletas. It was a favourite spectacle of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians ; and both these nations derived it from their ancestors, the former from the Curetes, the latter from the Dioscuri. It was accompanied by the flute, which could only have been the case after the music of the flute had been scientifically cultivated by the Greeks; although there was a legend that Athene herself played the war-dance upon the flute to the Dioscuri §. It was a natural transition from the simple war-dance to imitations of different modes of fighting, offensive and defensive, and to the regular representation of mock fights with several Pyrrhichists. According to Plato, the Pyrrhic dance was thus practised in Crete ; and Thaietas, in improving the national music of Crete, composed hyporchemes for the Pyrrhic dance. The rhythms which were chosen for the expression of the hurried and vehement movements of the combat were of course quick and changeable, as was usually the case in the hyporchematic poems; the names of some of the metrical feet have been derived from the rhythms employed in the Pyrrhic dance |. § 11. Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas are distinguished by the salient peculiarities which belong to inventive genius. But it is difficult to find any individual characteristics in the numerous masters who followed them between the 40th and 50th Olympiads. It may, however, be useful to mention some of their names, in order to give an idea of the zeal with which the Greek music was cultivated, after it had passed out of the hands of its first founders and improvers. The first name we will mention is Clonas, of Thebes, or Tegea, not were evidently different from the yuftvovruihiKh og%wn, which, according to the same Athenaeus, was the most solemn kind of lyric dance, and corresponded to the em- melt-ia among the dramatic dances. f Pollux iv. 14, 104. I Plutarch de Mus. 0. The ancient chronologists place the first introduction of the gymnopaedia somewhat earlier, viz. Olymp. 28. 4. (u. c. CG3.) § See Muller's Dorians, book iv.ch. 6. § 6 and 7. (OJ'jy), refers to the Pyrrhic dance. The latter ought probably to be considered ft resolved anapaest ; and so the |v«srt.»f fvifto; is removed to the anapaestic measure, M
 * These gymnopaedic dances, described by Athenaeus, xiv. p. 631, xv. p. G78,
 * Not only the Pyrrhic (oo), but also the proceleusmatic, or challenging, foot