Note 96 — Chapter IV · OF MASTURBATION
Reading edition
Do not miss, reader, the motive of this dance, with their buttocks wriggling the girls finally sunk to the ground, reclining on their backs, ready for the amorous contest. Different from this was the Lacedæmonian dance * ** * ** when the girls in their leaps touched their buttocks with their heels. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata, 82:
“Naked I dance, and beat my buttocks with my heels.” Pollux, IV., ch. 24: “As to the * ** * **, this was a Laconian dance. There were prizes competed for, not only amongst the young men, but also amongst the young girls; the essence of these dances was to jump and touch the buttocks with the heels. The jumps were counted and credited to the dancers. They rose to a thousand in the ** *** * ! !”
Yet more difficult was that kind of dance which was called ****, in which the feet had to touch the shoulders. Pollux, ibid.: “The **** were dances for women: they had to throw their feet higher than their shoulders.”
This kind of dance is not unknown in more modern times. J. C. Scaliger, Poetica, book I., p. 651: “To this day the Spaniards touch the occiput and other parts of the body with their feet.”