Once more, to take a modern example which may well reflect traditional usage; among the Noṣairis, a Semitic tribe inhabiting the mountainous country to the south of the Orontes, and among whom many ancient customs are preserved, a festival called the feast of St Barbe is observed. At this feast the young men and women, after candles have been lighted, dance round the festival board, which is covered with food of various kinds, singing and shouting[155]. Apparently there is little religious significance in this now; but it is safe to say that at some time of its history this dance constituted an act of honour to the saint, or a predecessor.
We have been unable to find any further instances of this type of sacred dance among Semitic peoples, nor yet among the Egyptians.
III
Among the Greeks the dance round a sacred object must have been very usual, judging from representations of it which have been found in Cyprus. Thus, a votive offering made of clay, found near the villages of Katydata-Linu and now in the Cyprus Museum, is a very interesting example; it consists of three bearded men dancing round another, who is also bearded and who accompanies the dance on a Pan’s-pipe. Aphrodite was the chief goddess worshipped in the locality. The workmanship is very rough and belongs, according to Ohnefalsch-Richter, to the 6th century B.C. One of the dancing figures is lost, but the three were originally clearly represented as dancing round the one in the centre with hands joined. “It shows a dance-group such as was so often formed at festivals of the gods by Aryans and Semites, Greeks and Hebrews[156].” Somewhat similar to this is another group (cxxxv. 6) of three women holding hands and dancing round another who is playing a Pan’s-pipe. Another represents, as Ohnefalsch-Richter says, an Olympian dance (cxxxii. 3); in this case seven women are dancing round in a circle; the arms of each clasp the neighbour on either side round the waist. An example of the sexes dancing together is cxxxv. 6; this is of terra-cotta from Leukosia[157]; six figures are dancing in a semi-circle, two are playing the tympanum; they are alternately men and women (cp. the quotation from the Iliad given above: “Young men and comely damsels were dancing, that clasped each other by the wrist”). Again, a vessel of stone, which Ohnefalsch-Richter believes to have been a vessel for incense, forms a group of three women dancing in a circle with joined hands. It resembles many similar vessels found in the Artemis-Kybele temenos at Achna, in Cyprus, as well as in Artemis-Kybele groves; they are not found elsewhere; all represent three women, roughly formed in the “Egyptian style,” and seem to have been a common cult-object in the worship of Artemis-Kybele[158].
Two examples representing a dance round a sacred tree may be mentioned. One is very roughly made of clay; three women holding hands are dancing round it (cxxxv. 4). In this case the representation is formed on a golden ring, from Mycenae; it is evidently intended to be a dance round a sacred tree. This kind of sacred dance, says Ohnefalsch-Richter, often occurs on Graeco-Phoenician bronze vases[159].
Finally, just a word may be said of the ceremony called the ἀμφιδρόμια, “the running round”; this was a purificatory rite for new-born infants[160]. The child was carried at a running pace round the domestic hearth, the idea being, presumably, that the proximity of the fire acted as a lustration; this does not, however, explain the running round for which there must have been some special reason; is it possible that the idea here was that the current of air, produced by the quick running round, which played upon the child, also had a purifying effect? Air was one of the means of lustration; the combination of fire and air would have afforded all that could be desired[161].
While this rite cannot be described as magical, it is not, strictly speaking, religious; it seems to be in a sphere between the two; at the same time, judging from certain Roman rites to which we turn now, the ἀμφιδρόμια at any rate approaches the border-line of religion.
IV
The type of sacred dance which we are considering does not seem to have been in vogue among the Romans excepting in the form of the circumambulatory procession; and although the word “dance” can only in an extended sense be applied to a procession, yet, as we have seen (pp. 5 f.), this is justified. The Romans worshipped their gods with sacrifice and prayer; the two, so far as is known, were invariably combined. But
on important occasions, and for particular reasons, these were performed in the course of a procession or circuit round some object—land, city, army, or instruments, such as arms and trumpets—or, again, the whole Roman people, if supposed to be in need of ‘purification’ from some evil influence; in this extended form the ritual was called lustratio; and this ceremonial was perhaps the most characteristic, not only of the Roman, but of all ancient Italian forms of worship[162].