Many Egyptian influences can be found in the Greek dance. Some came by way of Crete, others through the Greek philosophers who went to Egypt to study. The philosopher Plato (c. 428–348/47 bc) was among them, and he became an influential dance theoretician. He distinguished dances that enhance the beauty of the body from awkward movements that imitate the convulsions of ugliness. The Apis cult dances of Egypt had their equivalent in the Cretan bull dance of about 1400 bc. It inspired the labyrinthine dances that, according to legends, Theseus brought to Athens on his return with the liberated youths and maidens.

Another dance form that originated in Crete and flourished in Greece was the pyrrhichē, a weapon dance. Practiced in Sparta as part of military training, it was a basis for the claim of the philosopher Socrates that the best dancer is also the best warrior. Other choral dances that came to Athens from Crete include two dedicated to Apollo and one in which naked boys simulated wrestling matches. Female characteristics were stressed in a stately and devout round dance in honour of the gods, performed by choruses of virgins.

Numerous vase paintings and sculptural reliefs offer proof of an ecstatic dance connected with the cult of Dionysus. It was celebrated with a “sacred madness” at the time of the autumnal grape harvest. In his drama Bacchae, Euripides (c. 480–406 bc) described the frenzy of Greek women, called bacchantes or maenads. In their dance for generation and regeneration, they frantically stamped the ground and whirled about in rhythmic convulsions. Such dances were manifestations of demoniacal possession characteristic of many primitive dances.

The Dionysian cult brought about Greek drama. After the women danced, the men followed in the disguise of lecherous satyrs. Gradually the priest, singing of the life, death, and return of Dionysus while his acolytes represented his words in dance and mime, became an actor. The scope of the dance slowly widened to incorporate subjects and heroes taken from the Homeric legends. A second actor and a chorus were added. In the lyric interludes between plays, dancers re-created the dramatic themes in movements adopted from the earlier ritual and bacchic dances. In the comedies, they danced the very popular kordax, a mask dance of uninhibited lasciviousness. In the tragedies, the chorus performed the emmeleia, a dignified dance with flute accompaniment.

These dances and plays were executed by skilled amateurs. At the end of the 5th century bc, however, there came into being a special class of show dancers, acrobats, and jugglers, the female members of which were evidently hetairai, members of a class of courtesans. No doubt influenced by Egyptian examples, they entertained guests at lavish banquets. The historian Xenophon (c. 430–c. 355 bc) in his Symposium tells of the praise Socrates lavished on a female dancer and a dancing boy at one such occasion, finally himself emulating their beautiful movements. Elsewhere, Xenophon describes a dance representing the union of the legendary heroine Ariadne with Dionysus, an early example of narrative dance.

Ancient Roman dance

There was a striking difference between the Etruscan and the Roman peoples in their approach to the dance. Little is known about the Etruscans, who populated the area north of Rome up to Florence and flourished between the 7th and 5th century bc. But it is apparent from their lavish tomb painting that dance played an important part in their enjoyment of life. Women were enthusiastic participants in Etruscan dancing; funerary chain dances were performed by groups of women, and lively, energetic couple dances are portrayed in Etruscan frescoes. They were performed without masks in public places and showed a distinct courting character.

Roman antagonism to dance seems to reflect a sober rationalism and realism. Nonetheless, Rome did not entirely evade the temptations of dance. Before about 200 bc, dances were evidently in the form of choral processions only. There were agricultural processions headed by priests, and weapon dances of the Salii, a congregation of the priests of Mars who walked around in a circle while rhythmically beating their shields. Dancing was an important part of Roman festivals—the celebrations of Lupercalia and Saturnalia featured wild group dances that were precursors of the later European carnival.

Later, Greek and Etruscan influences began to spread, though people who danced were considered suspicious, effeminate, and even dangerous by the Roman nobility. One public official did not believe his eyes when he watched dozens of the daughters and sons of well-respected Roman patricians and citizens enjoying themselves in a dancing school. About 150 bc all dancing schools were ordered closed, but the trend could not be stopped. And though dance may have been alien to the Roman’s inner nature, dancers and dancing teachers were increasingly brought from abroad in the following years. The statesman and scholar Cicero (106–43 bc) summed up the general opinion of the Romans when he stated that no man danced unless he was insane.

A form of dance that enjoyed great popularity with the Romans under the emperor Augustus (63 bc–ad 14) was the wordless, spectacular pantomime that rendered dramatic stories by means of stylized gestures. The performers, known as pantomimi, were at first considered more or less as interpreters of a foreign language, since they came from Greece. They refined their art until the two dancer-mimes Bathyllus and Pylades became the star performers of Augustan Rome. The stylized performance of the dancer, who wore a mask appropriate to the theme of his dance, was accompanied by musicians playing flutes, horns, and percussion instruments and a chorus that sang about the action between dance episodes.