The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8

the archives of Assurbanipal, translated by the late George Smith, of the British Museum, and

abia who agains

e midst of battle

that Bitrichiti

carry and I cau

brick work wi

and shouting

its roo

he whole) of art, harmony, beauty, truth and religion With them, dancing bore a relation to walking and the ordinary movements of the limbs similar to that which poetry bears to prose, and as our own Emerson-himself something of an ancient-defines poetry as the piety of the intellect, so Homer would doubtless have defined dancing as the devotion of the body if he had had the unspeakable advantage of a training in the Emerson school of epigram. Such a view of it is natural to the unsophisticated pagan mind, and to all minds of clean, wholesome, and simple understanding. It is only the intellect that has been subjected to the strain of overwrought religious enthusiasm of the more sombre sort that can discern a lurking devil in the dance, or anything but an exhil

ble for them to enjoy art or literature when the subject is natural, the treatment free and joyous. The ingenuity that can discover an indelicate provocative in the waltz will have no difficulty in snouting out all manner of uncleanlmess in Shakspeare, Chaucer, Boccacio-nay, even

fore the church door, sometimes in the choir or nave of the church, and dance and sing hymns in honor of the saint whose festival it was. Easter Sunday, especially, was so celebrated; and rituals of a comparat

not doubt that it does-the sentiment of harmony and proportion; and in accordance with t

have instituted on his return from Crete, after having abated the Minotaur nuisance. At the head of a noble band of youth, this public spirited reformer of abuses himself executed his dance. Theseus as a dancing-master does not much fire the imagination, it is true, but the inciden

poet, with frequent repetition, felicitates himself that age has not deprived him

old the fe

youth, I'm

while the wi

mazy da

heap of y

wild, as y

oo

, which seems to

se verging

nto the v

hales the

winged from e

dances the

ing through h

I

t impaired his relish for, nor his powe

y fading y

uaff the br

s any str

the flush of

idst the

to wind the

hou see this

g on the Bac

my fading y

d's prime hat

Silenus s

s borrowed

n mid the

y follies

I

s that he had an extraordinary talent for music and dancing. Epaminondas accomplishing h

ds partook of the character of pantomime, and represented the most picturesque events and passages in the popular religion. Religious knowledge is happily n

entertainment given by Dionysius the Tyrant, and Plato,

est and proper, but seems to have become in the process of time-and prob

refining amusement in which the gravest dignitaries and most renowned worthies joined with indubitable alacrity, if problematic

,) exhorts the youth n

ulcis

r, neque t

freely tran

s game don't

e dance a wa

, Book I,

choros ducit,

ymphis Grat

ram quatiun

Venus and h

Graces leg i

Augustus, and referring to which an old commentator says "We may judge with how much tenderness Horac

areat pulch

t? modus

alium sit requ

e day fore

e wine jug'

riests we'll

rs for the da

f the Eternal City on the absence of the solemn consequential and egotistic orator from their festivals and merry makings whence his shining talents would have been so many several justifications for his forcible extrusion. No doubt his eminence procured him many invitations to balls of the period, and some of these he probably felt constrained to accept,