It is related of Aristides the Just that he danced at an entertainment given by Dionysius the Tyrant, and Plato, who was also a guest, probably confronted him in the set.
The "dance of the wine press," described by Longinus, was originally modest and proper, but seems to have become in the process of time—and probably by the stealthy participation of disguised prudes—a kind of can can.
In the high noon of human civilization— in the time of Pericles at Athens—dancing seems to have been regarded as a civilizing and refining amusement in which the gravest dignitaries and most renowned worthies joined with indubitable alacrity, if problematic advantage. Socrates himself—at an advanced age, too—was persuaded by the virtuous Aspasia to cut his caper with the rest of them.
Horace (Ode IX, Book I,) exhorts the youth not to despise the dance:
Nec dulcis amores
Sperne puer, neque tu choreas.
Which may be freely translated thus:
Boy, in Love's game don't miss a trick,
Nor be in the dance a walking stick.
In Ode IV, Book I, he says:
Jam Cytherea choros ducit, inminente Luna
Junctæque Nymphis Gratiæ decentes
Alterno terram quatiunt pede, etc
At moonrise, Venus and her joyous band
Of Nymphs and Graces leg it o'er the land