Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Saltatrix

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'TRIX (ὀρχήστρια). A dancing girl; a class of women common in ancient Greece and Italy, as now in the East, of indifferent morals but considerable personal beauty, who hired themselves out to dance at great banquets and entertainments for the amusement of the guests. (Cic. Pis. 8. Ammian. xiv. 6. 19. Macrob. Sat. ii. 10.) Females of this description are frequently represented in the Pompeian paintings, from one of which the annexed figure (Saltatrix/1.1) is copied; mostly furnished with a large and transparent piece of drapery, which is sometimes wrapped in graceful folds round the person, sometimes, as in the example, allowed to expand itself as a partial veil, and at others entirely removed from the figure, and carried floating in the air, so as to leave the body altogether exposed to the gaze of the spectators, — a scandal which is not to be ascribed to the caprice of the artist, but which, at least under the corruptions of the Imperial age, was actually practised. Tertull. de Spectac. p. 269.

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  Saltatrix/1.1