by Simonides of Amorgos is where he says that some women may be compared
to apes, and then gives a very rude description of their persons. This
subservience to the eye can also be observed in the appreciation of
monkeys and dancing horses, already mentioned, the latter forming a
humorous exhibition, as the animals were trained with a view to amuse.
We have marks of the same optical tendencies in the appreciation of
antics and contortions of the body, either as representing personal
deformity, or as a kind of puzzling and disorderly action. A little
contemporary story related by Herodotus shows that these pantomimic
performances were now becoming fashionable in Athens. Cleisthenes,
tyrant of Sicyon, was even at this date so much in favour of competitive
examinations, that he determined to give his daughter to the most
proficient and accomplished man. On the appointed day the suitors came
to the examination from every quarter, for the fair Agariste was heiress
to great possessions. Among them was one Hippocleides, an Athenian, who
proved himself far superior to all the rest in music and dissertation.
Afterwards, when the trial was over, desiring to indulge his feelings of
triumph and show his skill, he called for a piper, and then for a table,
upon which he danced, finishing up by standing on his head and kicking
his legs about. Cleisthenes, who was apparently one of the "old school,"
and did not appreciate the manners and customs of young Athens, was much
offended by this undignified performance of his would-be son-in-law, and
when he at last saw him standing on his head, could no longer contain
himself, but cried out, "Son of Tisander, thou hast danced away thy
marriage." To which the other replied with characteristic unconcern:
"It's all the same to Hippocleides,"--an expression which became
proverbial. In this story we see the new conception of humour, though
of a rude kind, coming into collision with the old philosophic contests
of ingenuity, which it was destined to survive if not to supersede.