ROPE-DANCER, (sebanobates), a person who walks, leaps, dances, and performs several other feats, upon a small rope or wire.
The ancients had their rope-dancers as well as we. These had four several ways of exercising their art: The first vaulted, or turned round the rope like a wheel round its axis, and there hung by the heels or neck. The second flew or slid from above, resting on their stomach, with the arms and legs extended. The third ran along a rope stretched in a right line or up and down. Lastly, the fourth not only walked on the rope, but made surprising leaps and turns thereon. They had likewise the cremnobates or orobates; that is, people who walked on the brinks of precipices. Nay more, Suetonius in Gaius, c. 6. Seneca in his 85th Epistle, and Pliny, lib. viii. c. 2. make mention of elephants, that were taught to walk on the rope.