Note 100: — XXV.—MUSIC AND DANCING. (Wall-Cases 54-56.)

Greek women sometimes danced in private among themselves, especially on the occasion of some domestic festival.100 It is with this kind of dancing that we should probably associate the terracotta figurines (fig. 255). They illustrate the important part played by the arms and the drapery in ancient dancing, which was largely mimetic. Ovid notes that supple arms are one of the principal qualifications for a good dancer.101 This tradition was undoubtedly inherited from Greek dancing, for (religious rites apart) the Romans regarded the art as an unseemly one, so much so that Cicero remarked "that practically no one except a madman danced when sober."102