Laudator Temporis Acti

Simon Goldhill, Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; rpt. 2003), p. 83:

How you walk is a repeated topic of commentary by Lucian. You should hope to 'walk like a man' (which is linked to a body bronzed by the sun, a masculine glint in the eye, an alert appearance).⁸² You don't want to walk 'with an unsteady shimmy' (which is linked to a floppy neck, a woman's glance, a soft voice, the smell of perfume, scratching your head with one finger, and carefully coiffed curls).⁸³ The figure of Blame in one of Lucian's divine comedies attacks even the god Dionysus for his 'walk': 'you all know how female and girly he is in his nature ... '⁸⁴ In particular, however, it is philosophers who seem to have a specially noticeable style of walking (which you may think harder to spot these days around the university or on the street). Thrasycles' walk is 'orderly' (eye-brows high, fierce gaze, elegant turn out);⁸⁵ Diogenes' walk matches his intense expression.⁸⁶ The uncultured book-buyer is mocked for imitating the walk of a philosopher;⁸⁷ and a string of philosophers are immediately distinctive because of their gait. The longest description of what 'the walk' should be like is this:

I saw them walking in an orderly fashion, decently dressed, always in thought, masculine, mostly with close-cropped hair nothing degenerate, none of that hyper-indifference which marks the simply mad Cynic, but of middling constitution, which everyone says is best.⁸⁸

⁸² 41.9.
⁸³ 41.11.
⁸⁴ 52.4.
⁸⁵ 25.54.
⁸⁶ 27.10.
⁸⁷ 31.21.
⁸⁸ 70.18.

See also Jan Bremer, "Walking, Standing and Sitting in Ancient Greek Culture," in Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, edd., A Cultural History of Gesture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 15-35 (at 16-23).