In its most productive age, as well as in the times of its decline and
decay, the Roman drama exhibits the continued coexistence of native
forms by the side of those imported from Greece--either kind being
necessarily often subject to the influence of the other. Italy (with
Sicily) has ever been the native land of acting and of scenic
representation; and, though Roman dramatic literature at its height is
but a faint reflex of Greek examples, there is perhaps no branch of
Roman literary art more congenial than this to the soil whence it
sprang.
Origin of its native forms.
Saturae.
Istriones.
Mimi.
Atellanae.
Quick observation and apt improvisation have always been distinctive
features in the Italian character. Thus in the rural festivities of
Italy there developed from a very early period in lively intermixture
the elements of the dance, of jocular and abusive succession of song,
speech and dialogue, and of an assumption of character such as may be
witnessed in any ordinary dialogue carried on by southern Italians at
the present day. Not less indigenous was the invariable accompaniment of
the music of the flute (_tibia_). The occasions of these half
obligatory, half impromptu festivities were religious celebrations,
public or private--among the latter more especially weddings, which have
in all ages been provocative of demonstrative mirth. The so-called
_Fescennine_ verses (from Fescennium in southern Etruria, and very
possibly connected with _fascinum_ = _phallos_), which were afterwards
confined to weddings, and ultimately suggested an elaborate species of
artistic poetry, never merged into actual dramatic performances. In the
_saturae_, on the other hand--a name originally suggested by the
goatskins of the shepherds, but from primitive times connected with the
"fulness" of both performers and performance--there seems from the first
to have been a dramatic element; they were probably comic songs or
stories recited with gesticulation and the invariable flute
accompaniment. Introduced into the city, these entertainments received a
new impulse from the performances of the Etruscan players (_ludiones_)
who had been brought into Rome when scenic games (_ludi scenici_) were
introduced there in 364 B.C. for purposes of religious propitiation.
These _(h)istriones_, as they were called at Rome (_istri_ had been
their native name), who have had the privilege of transmitting their
appellation to the entire _histrionic_ art and its professors, were at
first only dancers and pantomimists in a city where their speech was
exotic. But their performances encouraged and developed those of other
players and mountebanks, so that after the establishment of the regular
drama at Rome on the Greek model, the _saturae_ came to be performed as
farcical after-pieces (_exodia_), until they gave way to other species.
Among these the _mimi_ were at Rome probably coeval in their beginnings
with the stage itself, where those who performed them were afterwards
known under the same name, possibly in the place of an older appellation
(_planipedes_, bare-footed, representatives of slaves and humble folk).
These loose farces, after being probably at first performed
independently, were then played as after-pieces, till in the imperial
period, when they reasserted their predominance, they were again
produced independently. At the close of the republican period the
_mimus_ found its way into literature, through D. Laberius, C. Matius
and Publilius Syrus, and was assimilated in both form and subjects to
other varieties of the comic drama--preserving, however, as its
distinctive feature, a preponderance of the mimic or gesticulatory
element. Together with the _pantomimus_ (see below) the _mimus_
continued to prevail in the days of the Empire, having transferred its
original grossness to its treatment of mythological subjects, with
which it dealt in accordance with the demands of a "lubrique and
adulterate age." As a matter of course, the _mimus_ freely borrowed from
other species, among which, so far as they were of native Italian
origin, the _Atellane fables_ (from Atella in Campania) call for special
mention. Very probably of Oscan origin, they began with delineations of
the life of small towns, in which dramatic and other satire has never
ceased to find a favourite subject. The principal personages in these
living sketches gradually assumed a fixed and conventional character,
which they retained even when, after the final overthrow of Campanian
independence (210), the _Atellanae_ had been transplanted to Rome. Here
the heavy father or husband (_pappus_), the ass-eared glutton
(_maccus_), the full-cheeked, voracious chatterbox (_bucco_), and the
wily sharper (_dorsenus_) became accepted comic types, and, with others
of a similar kind, were handed down, to reappear in the modern Italian
drama. In these characters lay the essence of the _Atellanae_: their
plots were extremely simple; the dialogue (perhaps interspersed with
songs in the Saturnian metre) was left to the performers to improvise.
In course of time these plays assumed a literary form, being elaborated
as after-pieces by Lucius Pomponius of Bononia, Novius and other
authors; but under the Empire they were gradually absorbed in the
pantomimes.
Origin of the regular Roman drama.
The regular, as distinct from the popular, Roman drama, on the other
hand, was of foreign (i.e. Greek) origin; and its early history, at all
events, attaches itself to more or less fixed dates. It begins with the
year 240 B.C., when at the _ludi Romani_, held with unusual splendour
after the first Punic War, its victorious conclusion was, in accordance
with Macedonian precedent, celebrated by the first production of a
tragedy and a comedy on the Roman stage. The author of both, who
appeared in person as an actor, was Livius Andronicus (b. 278 or
earlier), a native of the Greek city of Tarentum, where the Dionysiac
festivals enjoyed high popularity. His models were, in tragedy, the
later Greek tragedians and their revisions of the three great Attic
masters; in comedy, we may feel sure, Menander and his school. Greek
examples continued to dominate the regular Roman drama during the whole
of its course, even when it resorted to native themes.
History of Roman tragedy.
Praetexta.
The main features of Roman tragedy admit of no doubt, although our
conclusions respecting its earlier progress are only derived from
analogy, from scattered notices, especially of the titles of plays, and
from such fragments--mostly very brief--as have come down to us. Of the
known titles of the tragedies of Livius Andronicus, six belong to the
Trojan cycle, and this preference consistently maintained itself among
the tragedians of the "Trojugenae"; next in popularity seem to have been
the myths of the house of Tantalus, of the Pelopidae and of the
Argonauts. The distinctions drawn by later Roman writers between the
styles of the tragic poets of the republican period must in general be
taken on trust. The Campanian Cn. Naevius (fl. from 236) wrote comedies
as well as tragedies, so that the rigorous separation observed among the
Greeks in the cultivation of the two dramatic species was at first
neglected at Rome. His realistic tendency, displayed in that fondness
for political allusions which brought upon him the vengeance of a noble
family (the Metelli) incapable of understanding a joke of this
description, might perhaps under more favourable circumstances have led
him more fully to develop a new tragic species invented by him. But the
_fabula praetexta_ or _praetextata_ (from the purple-bordered robe worn
by higher magistrates) was not destined to become the means of
emancipating the Roman serious drama from the control of Greek examples.
In design, it was national tragedy on historic subjects of patriotic
interest--which the Greeks had treated only in isolated instances; and
one might at first sight marvel why, after Naevius and his successors
had produced skilful examples of the species, it should have failed to
overshadow and outlast in popularity a tragedy telling the oft-told
foreign tales of Thebes and Mycenae, or even the pseudo-ancestral story
of Troy. But it should not be forgotten to how great an extent so-called
early Roman history consisted of the traditions of the _gentes_, and how
little the party-life of later republican Rome lent itself to a dramatic
treatment likely to be acceptable both to the nobility and to the
multitude. As for the emperors, the last licence they would have
permitted to the theatre was a free popular treatment of the national
history; if Augustus prohibited the publication of a tragedy by his
adoptive father on the subject of _Oedipus_, it was improbable that he
or his successors should have sanctioned the performance of plays
dealing with the earthly fortunes of Divus Julius himself, or with the
story of Marius, or that of the Gracchi, or any of the other tragic
themes of later republican or imperial history. The historic drama at
Rome thus had no opportunity for a vigorous life, even could tragedy
have severed its main course from the Greek literature of which it has
been well called a "free-hand copy." The _praetextae_ of which we know
chiefly treat--possibly here and there helped to form[80]--legends of a
hoary antiquity, or celebrate battles chronicled in family or public
records[81]; and in the end the species died a natural death.[82]
Ennius and his successors.
Q. Ennius (239-168), the favourite poet of the great families, was
qualified by his Tarentine education, which taught the Oscan youth the
Greek as well as the Latin tongue (so that he boasted "three souls"), to
become the literary exponent of the Hellenizing tendencies of his age of
Roman society. Nearly half of the extant names of his tragedies belong
to the Trojan cycle; and Euripides was clearly his favourite source and
model. M. Pacuvius (b. c. 229), like Ennius subject from his youth up to
the influences of Greek civilization, and the first Roman dramatist who
devoted himself exclusively to the tragic drama, was the least fertile
of the chief Roman tragedians, but was regarded by the ancients as
indisputably superior to Ennius. He again was generally (though not
uniformly) held to have been surpassed by L. Accius (b. 170), a learned
scholar and prolific dramatist, of whose plays 50 titles and a very
large number of fragments have been preserved. The plays of the
last-named three poets maintained themselves on the stage till the close
of the republic; and Accius was quoted by the emperor Tiberius.[83] Of
the other tragic writers of the republic several were _dilettanti_--such
as the great orator and eminent politician C. Julius Strabo; the
cultivated officer Q. Tullius Cicero, who made an attempt, disapproved
by his illustrious brother, to introduce the satyr-drama into the Roman
theatre; L. Cornelius Balbus, a Caesarean partisan; and finally C.
Julius Caesar himself.
Seneca.
Tragedy continued to be cultivated under the earlier emperors; and one
author, the famous and ill-fated L. Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65),
left behind him a series of works which were to exercise a paramount
influence upon the beginnings of modern tragedy. In accordance with the
character of their author's prose-work, they exhibit a strong
predominance of the rhetorical element, and an artificiality of style
far removed from that of the poets Sophocles and Euripides, from whom
Seneca derived his themes. Yet he is interesting, not only by these
devices and by a "sensational" choice of themes, but also by a quickness
of treatment which we may call "modern," a quality not easily resisted
in a dramatist. The metrification of his plays is very strict, and they
were doubtless intended for recitation, whether or not also designed for
the stage. A few tragic poets are mentioned after Seneca, till about the
reign of Domitian (81-96) the list comes to an end. The close of Roman
tragic literature is obscurer than its beginning; and, while there are
traces of tragic performances at Rome as late as even the 6th century,
we are ignorant how long the works of the old masters of Roman tragedy
maintained themselves on the stage.
Characteristics of Roman tragedy.
It would obviously be an error to draw from the plays of Seneca
conclusions as to the method and style of the earlier writers. In
general, however, no important changes seem to have occurred in the
progress of Roman tragic composition. The later Greek plays remained, so
far as can be gathered, the models in treatment; and, inasmuch as at
Rome the several plays were performed singly, there was every inducement
to make their action as full and complicated as possible. The
dialogue-scenes (_diverbia_) appear to have been largely interspersed
with musical passages (_cantica_); but the effect of the latter must
have suffered from the barbarous custom of having the songs sung by a
boy, placed in front of the flute-player (_cantor_), while the actor
accompanied them with gesticulations. The chorus (unlike the Greek)
stood on the stage itself and seems occasionally at least to have taken
part in the action. But the whole of the musical element can hardly have
attained to so full a development as among the Greeks. The divisions of
the action appear at first to have been three; from the addition of
prologue and epilogue may have arisen the invention (probably due in
tragedy to Varro) of the fixed number of five acts. In style, such
influence as the genius of Roman literature could exercise must have
been in the direction of the rhetorical and the pathetic; a superfluity
of energy on the one hand, and a defect of poetic richness on the other,
can hardly have failed to characterize these, as they did all the other
productions of early Roman poetry.
History of Roman comedy.
Palliata.
Plautus.
Terence.
In Roman comedy two different kinds--respectively called _palliata_ and
_togata_ from well-known names of dress--were distinguished,--the former
treating Greek subjects and imitating Greek originals, the latter
professing a native character. The _palliata_ sought its originals
especially in New Attic comedy; and its authors, as they advanced in
refinement of style, became more and more dependent upon their models,
and unwilling to gratify the coarser tastes of the public by local
allusions or gross seasonings. But that kind of comedy which shrinks
from the rude breath of popular applause usually has in the end to give
way to less squeamish rivals; and thus, after the species had been
cultivated for about a century (c. 250-150 B.C.), _palliatae_ ceased to
be composed except for the amusement of select circles, though the works
of the most successful authors, Plautus and Terence, kept the stage even
after the establishment of the empire. Among the earlier writers of
_palliatae_ were the tragic poets Andronicus, Naevius and Ennius, but
they were alike surpassed by T. Maccius Plautus (254-184), nearly all of
whose comedies esteemed genuine by Varro--not less than 20 in
number--have been preserved, though twelve of them were not known to the
modern world before 1429. He was exclusively a comic poet, and, though
he borrowed his plots from the Greeks--from Diphilus and Philemon
apparently in preference to the more refined Menander--there was in him
a genuinely national as well as a genuinely popular element. Of the
extent of his originality it is impossible to judge; probably it lies in
his elaboration of types of character and the comic turns of his
dialogue rather than in his plots. Modern comedy is indebted to him in
all these points; and, in consequence of this fact, as well as of the
attention his text has for linguistic reasons received from scholarship
both ancient and modern, his merits have met with quite their full share
of recognition. Caecilius Statius (an Insubrian brought to Rome as a
captive c. 200) stands midway between Plautus and Terence, but no plays
of his remain. P. Terentius Afer (c. 185-159) was, as his cognomen
implies, a native of Carthage, of whose conqueror he enjoyed the
patronage. His six extant comedies seem to be tolerably close renderings
of their Greek originals, nearly all of which were plays of Menander. It
was the good fortune of the works of Terence to be preserved in an
exceptionally large number of MSS. in the monastic libraries of the
middle ages, and thus (as will be seen) to become a main link between
the ancient and the Christian drama. As a dramatist he is distinguished
by correctness of style rather than by variety in his plots or vivacity
in his characters; his chief merit--and at the same time the quality
which has rendered him so suitable for modern imitation--is to be sought
in the polite ease of his dialogue. In general, the main features of the
_palliatae_, which were divided into five acts, are those of the New
Comedy of Athens, like which they had no chorus; for purposes of
explanation from author to audience the prologue sufficed; the Roman
versions were probably terser than their originals, which they often
altered by the process called _contamination_.
Togatae.
The _togatae_, in the wider sense of the term, included all Roman plays
of native origin--among the rest, the _praetextae_, in contradistinction
to which and to the transient species of the _trabeatae_ (from the dress
of the knights) the comedies dealing with the life of the lower classes
were afterwards called _tabernariae_ (from _taberna_, a shop), a name
suited by some of their extant titles,[84] while others point to the
treatment of provincial scenes.[85] The _togata_, which was necessarily
more realistic than the _palliata_, and doubtless fresher as well as
coarser in tone, flourished in Roman literature between 170 and 80 B.C.
In this species Titinius, all whose plays bear Latin titles and were
_tabernariae_, was succeeded by the more refined L. Afranius, who,
though still choosing natural subjects, seems to have treated them in
the spirit of Menander. His plays continued to be performed under the
empire, though with an admixture of elements derived from that lower
species, the pantomime, to which they also were in the end to succumb.
The Romans likewise adopted the burlesque kind of comedy called from its
inventor _Rhinthonica_, and by other names (see above). But with them,
the general course of the drama, which with the Greeks lost itself in
the sand, could not fail to be merged into the flood.
The Roman theatre.
The end of Roman dramatic literature was dilettantism and criticism; the
end of the Roman drama was spectacle and show, buffoonery and sensual
allurement. It was for this that the theatre had passed through all its
early troubles, when the political puritanism of the old school had
upheld the martial games of the circus against the enervating influence
of the stage. In those days the guardians of Roman virtue had sought to
diminish the attractions of the theatre by insisting upon its remaining
as uncomfortable as possible; but as was usual at Rome, the privileges
of the upper orders were at last extended to the population at large,
though a separation of classes continued to be characteristic of a Roman
audience. The first permanent theatre erected at Rome was that of Cn.
Pompeius (55 B.C.), which contained nearly 18,000 seats; but even of
this the portion allotted to the performers (_scaena_) was of wood; nor
was it till the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 22) that, after being burnt
down, the edifice was rebuilt in stone.
Actors.
Though a species of amateur literary censorship, introduced by Pompeius,
became customary in the Augustan age, in general the drama's laws at
Rome were given by the drama's patrons--in other words, the production
of plays was a matter of private speculation. The exhibitions were
contracted for with the officials charged with the superintendence of
public amusements (_curatores ludorum_); the actors were slaves trained
for the art, mostly natives of southern Italy or Greece. Many of them
rose to reputation and wealth, purchased their freedom, and themselves
became directors of companies; but, though Sulla might make a knight of
Roscius, and Caesar and his friends defy ancient prejudice, the stigma
of civil disability (_infamia_) was not removed from the profession,
which in the great days of the Attic drama had been held in honour at
Athens. But, on the whole, the social treatment of actors was easy in
the days of the early empire; senators and knights actually appeared on
the stage; Nero sang on it; and a _pantomimus_ was made _praefectus
urbi_ by Elagabalus.
The actor's art was carried on at Rome under conditions differing in
other respects from those of the Greek theatre. The Romans loved a full
stage, and from the later period of the republic liked to see it crowded
with supernumeraries. This accorded with their military instincts, and
with the general grossness of their tastes, which led them in the
theatre as well as in the circus to delight in spectacle and tumult, and
to applaud Pompeius when he furnished forth the return of Agamemnon in
the _Clytaemnestra_ with a grand total of 600 heavily-laden mules. On
the other hand, the actors stood nearer to the spectators in the Roman
theatre than in the Greek, the stage (_pulpitum_) not being separated
from the first rows of the audience by an orchestra occupied by the
chorus; and this led in earlier times to the absence of masks, diversely
coloured wigs serving to distinguish the age of the characters. Roscius,
however, is said (because of an obliquity of vision which disfigured his
countenance) to have introduced the use of masks; and the retrograde
innovation, though disapproved of, maintained itself. The tragic actors
wore the _crepida_, corresponding to the _cothurnus_, and a heavy toga,
which in the _praetexta_ had the purple border giving its name to the
species. The conventional costumes of the various kinds of comedy are
likewise indicated by their names. The comparative nearness of the
actors to the spectators encouraged the growth of that close criticism
of acting which has always been dear to an Italian public, and which in
ancient days manifested itself at Rome in all the ways familiar to
modern audiences. Where there is criticism, devices are apt to spring up
for anticipating or directing it; and the evil institution of the
_claque_ is modelled on Roman precedent, typified by the standing
conclusion "plaudite!" in the epilogues of the _palliatae_.
Roscius and Aesopus.
In fine, though the art of acting at Rome must have originally formed
itself on Greek example and precept, it was doubtless elaborated with a
care unknown to the greatest Attic artists. Its most famous
representatives were Gallus, called after his emancipation Q. Roscius
Gallus (d. c. 62 B.C.), who, like the great "English Roscius," excelled
equally in tragedy and comedy, and his younger contemporary Clodius
Aesopus, a Greek by birth, likewise eminent in both branches of his art,
though in tragedy more particularly. Both these great actors are said to
have been constant hearers of the great orator Hortensius; and Roscius
wrote a treatise on the relations between oratory and acting. In the
influence of oratory upon the drama are perhaps to be sought the chief
among the nobler features of Roman tragedy to which a native origin may
be fairly ascribed.