Vestiges of ancient manners and customs, discoverable in modern Italy and Sicily / By the Rev. John James Blunt.

  • Blunt, John J. (John James), 1794-1855.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of ancient manners and customs, discoverable in modern Italy and Sicily / By the Rev. John James Blunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by action, they can display character, ‘and sentiment, and subject ;’ (Aristot. Poet. sub wnit.) ; or whether, as Suidas and other writers affirm, it was the invention of Pylades and Bathillus, in the reign of Augustus; (Tac. Annal. i. 54); certain it is, that it was pur- sued in Italy under the emperors with so much avidity, that the factions and feuds it created could not be composed in any other manner than by its total abolition. (Sweton. Nero. 16.) The nature of it was the same as that of the ballet now exhibited on the stage of that country, and from thence adopted into our own; a drama in dumb show, in which the plot, characters, and catastrophe were de- veloped by gesticulation and dancing, with- out the assistance of language as an inter- preter. Thus Nero, at a time when he was labouring under a severe disease, made a vow, that if he should recover he would dance the story of Turnus in Virgil. (Sueton. Nero. 54.) Indeed, the vast variety of action which the