Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Saltatio

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

SALTA'TIO (ὄρχησις, χόρευσις). A dancing, or a dance; under which term the inhabitants of ancient Greece and Italy designated four different kinds of exercises having little in common with one another, beyond the circumstance that the motions of the performers in all of them were accompanied and regulated by strains of music or a chorus of voices: viz.

1. Religious dances; consisting for the most part of slow and stately movements round the altar, without any violence of gesture or attempt at gymnastic dexterity, and more in the nature of a ceremonial accompanied by music, than what is implied by our term dance; consequently, amongst the Greeks and Romans freeborn citizens of both sexes and all ranks, even the highest, took a part in these exhibitions, without any disparagement to the gravity of their characters or dignity of position. Quint. i. 11. 18. Macrob. Sat. ii. 10. Serv. ad Virg. Bucol. v. 73.

II. Gymnastic or war dances; which served as a training for the field and a stimulus to military valour, like the dances of the South Sea Islanders and the Indians of North America. Amongst these are enumerated: —

1. Saltatio Corybantum. The Corybantian dance, more especially peculiar to the natives of Phrygia and Crete; which possessed a mixed character between the religious, military, and mimetic exhibitions, the performers being armed, and bounding about with wild and violent gestures while striking their shields and swords together, to imitate the noise made by the Corybantes, when endeavouring to stifle the cries of the infant Zeus, in the island of Crete. (Lucian, Salt. 8. Strabo, x. 3. 21.) It is supposed to be represented by the annexed figures (Saltatio/II.1.1), from a Greek bas-relief in the Vatican. The entire composition now remaining contains six figures, all in the same attitude as the pair here introduced; but as neither of the two outside one has a vis-à-vis, it is evident that the marble is only a fragment which originally formed part of a longer frieze, inluding a greater number of performers.

2. Saltatio Pyrrhica. The Pyrrhic dance; described and illustrated s. PYRRHICA.

3. Saltatio Saliorum. A dance performed by the Salii, or priests of Mars (Quint. i. 11. 18.), during the ceremony of carrying the sacred shields (ancilia) through the city of Rome. We have no representation of this performance; but it may be inferred from a passage of Seneca (Ep. 15.), that the motions exhibited by these priests resembled the act of leaping and jumping, more than graceful or measured steps, for he compares them to the stamping and jumping of fullers (saltus fullonius) upon the clothes they are engaged in cleaning, as explained and exhibited by the text and wood-cut at p. 304; but they evinced a considerable degree of muscular strength and agility.

4. Saltatio bellicrepa. A Roman dance of a military character, said to have been instituted by Romulus, in commemoration of the rape of the Sabines, and as a ceremonial for averting a similar calamity from his own people. Festus, s. v.

III. Mimetic dances; in which the performers represent certain events and actions by mere gesticulation and movements of the body, to a musical accompaniment, but without the aid of the voice, like the actors in a modern ballet. These exhibitions would in our day be classed under the name of acting in dumb show, for dancing, in our sense of the term, had no place in it, the performance consisting in expressive movements of the features, body, arms, and hands, rather than the feet. Macrob. Sat. ii. 7. Suet. Cal. Nero. 54. Tit. 7. Ov. A. Am. i. 595.

IV. Operatic dances; in the ordinary sense of the word as applied by ourselves; intended as an exhibition of grace, agility, and strength, in which the movements of the feet and body perform the essential part, without any direct attempt at mimetic representation, as exhibited by the annexed group (Saltatio/IV.1.1), from a fictile vase. Such performances were chiefly exhibited for the amusement of the guests at great banquets; and numerous representations of the persons who performed in them, both male and female, have been found amongst the paintings of Herculaneum and Pompeii, all showing the great degree of perfection to which the art of mere dancing was advanced by the ancient artistes.

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  Saltatio/II.1.1
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  Saltatio/IV.1.1