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The Dancing Girls of Cadiz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

A. T. Fear
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Extract

Cadiz's main claim to fame in antiquity was its situation at thes end of the known world and its temple to Hercules which was visited by many famous personalities of antiquity; however, perhaps surprisingly, given Seneca and Pliny's insistence on the sobriety of the Spanish character, Cadiz had another well known attraction, its dancing girls, leading to Martial dubbing the town ‘Laughing Cadiz’, ‘Iocosae Gades’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , April 1991 , pp. 75 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

NOTES

1. Horace, , Odes 2.2.11Google Scholar; Juvenal, 10.1–2.

2. For a visit by Julius Caesar, see Suetonius, , Div. Iul. 7Google Scholar, and for a complete survey of the temple, see Bellido, A. Garcia y, ‘Hercules Gaditanus’, AeA 36 (1963), 70ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Seneca, , Controv. l. pr. 16Google Scholar; Pliny, , Ep. 2.13Google Scholar.

4. Martial, 1.61.9.

5. Strabo, 2.3.4–5 and Cary, M. and Warmington, E. H., The Ancient Explorers (London, 2nd ed. 1963), pp. 123–8Google Scholar.

6. Juvenal, 11.168–9.

7. Martial, 6.71.1–2: ‘edere lascivos ad Baetica crusmata gestus et Gaditanis ludere docta modis.’

8. Martial, 6.71.6: ‘he sold her as a slave and now buys her back as his mistress.’ Although this shows he took her as a lover there is no need to assume any more permanent relationship.

9. Martial, 1.41.12: ‘de Gadibus improbus magister.’

10. Pliny, , Ep. 1.15.3Google Scholar.

11. Martial, 5.78.26–30.

12. Martial, 14.204, entitled ‘Puella Gaditana’: ‘she would have made Hippolytus masturbate.’ This ability to arouse the paragon of chastity, Hippolytus, is a common trope in Roman erotic poetry: cf. Ovid, , Amores 2.4.29ffGoogle Scholar. and Corpus Priapeum 19.

13. Martial, 14.203: ‘tam tremulum crisat, tarn blandum prurit.’

14. Martial, 5.78.26–28: ‘vibrabunt sine fine prurientes, lascivos docili tremore lumbos.’

15. Hobin, T., Belly Dancing (London, 1982), p. 57Google Scholar.

16. Juvenal, 11.163–4: ‘and to applause the knowing girls drop to the ground with trembling buttocks’ (‘plausuque probatae ad terrain tremulo descendant clune puellae’).

17. Statius, , Silvae 1.6.71Google Scholar: ‘cymbala tinnulaeque Gades.’

18. Martial, 11.16.4.

19. Buonaventura, W., Belly Dancing (London, 1983), pp. 122–3Google Scholar: Hobin, T., Belly Dancing (London, 1982), p. 64Google Scholar.

20. Juvenal, 11.174: ‘Let him enjoy those obscene songs…’ (‘Ille fruatur vocibus obscaenis …’).

21. Martial, 3.63.6: ‘qui movet in varios bracchia volsa modos.’

22. Martial, 3.63.5: ‘cantica qui Nili, qui Gaditana susurrat.’

23. Juvenal, 11.162–3: ‘Perhaps you expect they will begin to sing wanton Gaditane songs in chorus’ (‘Forsitan exspectes, ut Gaditana [cantica] incipiant pruire choro’).

24. Juvenal, 11.171–2: ‘audiat ille testarum crepitus cum verbis’ (‘let him listen to the rattle of the castanets and their songs’).

25. Daremberg-Saglio, , Dictionnaire des Antiquites (Paris, 1877), 4.2.1106, fig. 6142Google Scholar.

26. On the other hand the use of the veil, a common modern feature, is less clearly attested. However, a statuette of a veiled dancer wearing a diaphanous robe has been found at Alexandria (Thompson, D. Burr, ‘A Bronze Dancer from Alexandria’, AJA. 54 [1950], 371ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar), so it was used at least on occasions in antiquity.

27. Juvenal, 11.168–9.

28. The hetaera Thryallis strips before belly dancing in Alciphron, , Letters of the Hetaerae 14Google Scholar. Given she is mentioned in a similar context in Letter 13, this might not just be amateur performance. For naked belly dancing in the Middle East, see Flaubert, G., Flaubert in Egypt (tr. Steegmuller, F., London, 1972), p. 121Google Scholar.

29. Corpus Priapeum 19: ‘Telethusa… who without any covering robe, thrusts out and moves her buttocks higher and higher and will flaut before you her quivering loin’ (‘Telethusa… quae clunem tunica tegente nulla extans altius altiusque motat, crissabit tibi fiuctante lumbo’).

30. Roman Women (London, 1962), p. 274Google Scholar. The bottom half of a leather ‘bikini’ has been found in Roman London (Marsden, P., Roman London [London, 1980], p. 63 and illustr. p. 65Google Scholar) opening the intriguing possibility that the citizens of Roman London as well as Rome enjoyed the services of the ‘Gaditanae’.

31. Martial, 6.71; 8.51.

32. Corpus Priapeum 19.

33. Corpus Priapeum 40.

34. See Parker, W. H., Priapea: Poems for a Phallic God (London, 1989), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

35. Corpus Priapeum 27: ‘Deliciae populi, magno notissima circo, Quintia, vibratas docta movere nates, cymbala cum crotalis, pruriginis arma, Priapo ponit et adducta tympana pulsa manu…’ (‘The people's darling and great circus star, Quintia, skilled at wiggling her quivering rump, dedicates to Priapus her lascivious arms, her cymbals and castanets, along with the tambourines she struck by hand…’).

36. CIL 5.6134: ‘quam tulerat tellus pulcherrima Tarsis.’

37. If ‘Tarsis’ is Gades, perhaps Claudia Tarsis (CIL 6.9068) and Gavina Tarsis (CIL 6.3500) were also ‘Gaditanae’.

38. CIL 6.30430.2.

39. CIL 6.9013.

40. ‘Iocosae Gades’, BRAH 129 (1951), 97Google Scholar.

41. See Avienus, , Or. Mar. 269Google Scholar; Valerius Maximus, 8.13.4; Silius Italicus, 5.339.

42. The most famous example is the opening lines of Virgil's Copa.

43. The Garland of Philip, ed. Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar, Automedon 1: τὴν ἀπὸ ' Ασίης ὀρχησίδα, τὴν κακοτέχνοιν σχήμασιν ἐξ ἁπαλῶν κινυμένην ὀνύχων αἰνέω.

44. ‘id est, speras forsitan, quod incipiant saltare delicatae ac pulchrae puellae Syriae, quoniam de Syris et Afris Gades condita est.’

45. For example, Schulten, A., Tartessos (Madrid, 2nd ed. 1945), pp. 238–9Google Scholar.

46. op cit., above.

47. Gatherings from Spain (London, 1861), p. 327Google Scholar.

48. Handbook for Travellers in Spain (London, 3rd ed. 1855), Vol. 1, p. 103Google Scholar.