Bacchic' dances and the like, which (the dancers allege) are a 'representation' of drunken persons they call Nymphs and Pans and Sileni and Satyrs, and which are performed during 'purifications' and 'initiations', are something of a problem: taken as a group, they cannot be termed either 'dances of peace' or 'dances of war', and indeed they resist all attempts to label them.