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The Homeric picture must have been repeated innumerable times since it was first limned, whenever and wherever there has been a gathering of men and maids on a village green, dancing in a circle, with a couple of high-leaping lads in the centre inciting all to quicken the rhythm of the whirling dance. Many an Elizabethan village must have realised such a scene; and for all the artifice of the stage, with its paint and footlights, does it not hold something of the antique tradition in the picture often seen, of a circle of dancing girls enclosing two wildly turning “stars”? Is it impossibly un-Hellenic to presume that the “Two tumblers, in the midst, were whirling round” in pirouettes? At least it may be considered—a presumption!

Far later in Hellenic days we have a gracious picture of the Dance in Theocritus’ eighteenth Idyll, “The Bridal of Helen,” which reads delightfully in Calverley’s translation:

“Whilom in Lacedæmon tripped many a maiden fair

To gold-pressed Menelaus’ halls with hyacinths in her hair,