Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/382

370 "In the most ancient religious usages dancing, and next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than song. In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods and the champions, was assigned to the dancers, grave and merry. . . . The 'leapers' (salii) were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods."

So, too, Guhl and Koner write:—

"Public games were, from the earliest times, connected with religious acts, the Roman custom tallying in this respect with the Greek. Such games were promised to the gods to gain their favor, and afterward carried out as a sign of gratitude for their assistance."

Congruous with this statement is that of Posnett, who, after quoting an early prayer to Mars, says—

"This primitive hymn clearly combined the sacred dance. . . with the responsive chant; and the prominence of the former suggests how readily the processional or stationary hymn might grow into a little drama symbolizing the supposed actions of the deity worshiped."

Here we see a parallelism to the triumphal reception of David and Saul, and are shown that the worship of the hero-god is a repetition of the applause given to a conqueror when alive in celebration of his achievements: the priests and people doing in the last case that which the courtiers and people did in the first. Moreover in Rome, as in Greece, there eventually arose, out of the sacred performances of music, secular performances—a cultivation of music as a pleasure-giving art. Says Inge—

"In republican days a Roman would have been ashamed to own himself a skilled musician. . . . Scipio Æmilianus delivered a scathing invective in the senate against schools of music and dancing at one of which he had even seen the son of a Roman magistrate."

But in the days of the Cæsars musical culture had become part of a liberal education; and we have, in illustration, the familiar remembrance of Nero as a violinist. At the same time "trained choirs of slaves were employed to sing and play to the guests at dinner, or for the delectation of their master alone."

On tracing further the evolution of these originally twin professions, we come upon the fact that while, after their separation, the one became almost wholly secularized, the other long continued its ecclesiastical connections and differentiated into its secular forms at a later date. Why dancing ceased to be a part of religious worship, while music did not, we may readily see. In the first place dancing being inarticulate, is not capable of expressing those various ideas and feelings which music, joining with words, is able to do. As originally used it was expressive of joy, alike in presence of the living hero and in the supposed presence of his