Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/226

 and it is very likely that the Roman Nuptial Dance, which portrayed the most secret actions of marriage had its origin in the Greek cordax. The craze for dancing became so menacing under Tiberius that the Senate was compelled to run the dancers and dancing masters out of Rome but the evil had become so deep rooted that the very precautions by which society was to be safeguarded served to inflame the passion for the dance and indulgence became so general and so public that great scandal resulted. Domitian, who was by no means straight laced, found it necessary to expel from the Senate those members who danced in public. The people imitated the nobles, and, as fast as the dancers were expelled, others from the highest and lowest ranks of society took their places, and there soon came to be no distinction, in this matter, between the noblest names of the patricians and the vilest rabble from the Suburra. There is no comparison between the age of Cicero and that of Domitian. “One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer,” says Cicero, Pro Murena, and adds: ‘‘a man cannot dance unless he is drunk or insane.”

Probably the most realistic description of the cordax, conventional, of course, is to be found in Merejkovski’s “Death of the Gods.” The passage occurs in chapter vi. I have permitted myself the liberty of Rh