The Pyrrhichios dance ("Pyrrhic dance"; Ancient Greek: πυρρίχιος) was the best known war dance of the Greeks. It was probably of Dorian origin and practiced at first solely as a training for war.
Plato (Leges, 815a) describes it as imitating by quick movements the ways in which blows and darts are to be avoided and also the modes in which an enemy is to be attacked. It was dance to the sound of the aulos; its time was quick and light, as is also shewn by the metric foot called pyrrhic.
It was described by Xenophon in his work the Anabasis. In that work he writes that at a festival was held in Trapezus to celebrate the arrival of his troops in the city.
Homer refers to Pyrrihios and describes how Achilles danced it around the burning funeral of Patroclos. The dance was loved in all of Greece and especially the Spartans considered it a kind of light war training and so they taught the dance to their children while still young.