THE ORIGINS OF ROMAN THEATRE

 The theatre flourished in ancient rome for about 800 years, during both the republic and the empire.

LIVY (TITUS LIVIUS)

 Convinced that Rome had reach a state of moral decay by his time , he both to present examples
of rome’s superior morality in the years when he built his empire and to explain how moral decline set in.

GAIUS SULPICIUS PETICUS AND GAIUS LICINUS STOLO

 When gaius sulpicius peticus and gaius licinus stolo were consuls there was a plague. For that reason
nothing worth recording happened, except that for the third time since the city had been founded there
was a lectisternium to pacify the gods.
 Their minds overcome by superstition included even the theatrical games among the rites they established
in order to appease the god’s anger.

LECTISTERNIUM

 A religious ritual a which couches, one for each of the major gods were covered with cloth and the gods
were offered a banquet.

PACIFY THE GODS

 Roman religion held that disasters such as plague occurred because the gods were angry, usually
because a religious ritual had not been performed properly.

GAMES IN THE CIRCUS

 Circus means the circus maxima.

 A huge track surrounded by grandstand in the centre of rome.

SATURAE

 Satura means “stuffed full” as in satura lanx, a plate loaded down with food.
 It is unknown what if any relation there is between these dramatic saturae and the later non dramatic
poetric genre of satira (satire) .

WRITTEN SONGS

 Livy almost certainly refers to the text of the songs here not to musical notes. Although romans borrowed
from the greeks a system of musical notation most music appears to have been learned orally.

TIBIA

 a woodwind instrument made up of two pipes.

 Produced a piercing, buzz like tone.
 Two pipes could play either unison or with separate pitches and rhythms.
 The standard accompanying instrument for all roman theatrical performances and it also played an
essential role in roman religious life.
 In rome the player of tibia (tibicen) composed the melodies to go along with the playwright’s words
LIVIUS ANDRONICUS

 He presented the first adaptations of greek tradegies and comedies on the roman stage
 He is recorded to have been a freed slave from the the greek city of tarentum in southern italy.
 He performed the canticum
 Then the practice began whereby someone else sang while the actor gestured and only the deverbium
were left to the actor’s own voices.
 When this mode of drama was causing plays to develop beyond just laughter and scattered jokes and
acting had little by little changed into a professional skill the youth left the performances of plays to
professional actor.
 That was origin of the pieces later called exodia and joined especially to atellan plays.
 The actors in atellan plays are not remove from their tribes and they can serve in the army.

ATELLAN PLAYS

 Short farcical plays with stock characters

 Originally came to atella
 Used an exodia after other play they were improvised based on a script.
 Oscans- ethnically related to the romans who inhabited atella and the area around it.
 The theatrical games had become the site of intense political rivalry as politicians tried to win popular
support through ever more elaborate theatrical productions
 It was a Livy’s lifetime that the first permanent stone theatre in the city of rome was built; the massive and
incredibly opulent theatre of pompey.
 Rome changed from a republic to an empire under the rule of one man
 The political competition ceased but extravagant theatrical performances continued as emperors used
them to keep the goodwill of their subjects.

ROMAN THEATER FORMS

 Titus Livius – simply rendered as “Livy” in English – was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history
of Rome and the Roman people. According to him, Roman Theater evolves in five stages:
 Dances to flute music
 Obscene improvisational verse and dances to flute music
 Medleys of dances to flute music
 Comedies with story lines and sections of lyric poetry to be sung
 Comedies with story lines and song, with additional –often comedic- performance
 Livy described a form called Atellan Farce , performed by Phlyakes. It draws a type of lewd mime that
contains a lot of buffoonish comedy and rude jokes.
 Etruscan Practice of Versus Fescenni are very obscene poems. When combined with music and dancing, it
produces a form called Fabula Saturae, performed by actors / singers / dancerscalled Histriones.
 In late 3rd century and early 2nd century a new kind of comedy appears called Fabula Palliata. They
were in Latin but it featured Greek characters in a Greek setting. But there were original plays yet
weren’t actually loved by the people, like Fabula Praetexta. It involves Roman plays Romans.

ACTING TROUPES
  In 207 b.c.e., Livius Andronicus oversaw the establishment of the first performers' union in Rome, called
the Collegium Scribarum Histrionumque, or the Association of Theatrical Authors and Actors.
 The legal status of actors has been a subject of much debate among scholars. They may have been slaves
owned by the company manager, foreigners, freedmen, or even freeborn Romans. At any rate, in the
later Republic and Roman Empire, all stage performers, along with gladiators and workers in the sex
industry, were deprived of civil rights and designated by the term infamia, which indicated legal
disenfranchisement.

MOST NOTABLE ROMAN PLAYWRIGHTS

Titus Maccius Plautus (/ˈplɔːtəs/; c. 254 – 184 BC)

 Plautus is a highly successful, comic playwright in late third-century and early second-century Rome. He
was one of the greatest roman playwrights and dramatists and therefore loved and esteemed by his
people. He is the first to make Greek New Comedy a truly Roman genre. 130 plays attributed to him
but actually, a lot of writers tried to pass their plays off as him. A first century BCE scholar determined
that 20 plays are his and all of it survived.

Early works: Persa (The Persian) Curculio (The Weevil)

Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy) Trinummus (Threepence) Epidicus

Miles Gloriosus (The Truculentus (The Ferocious Menaechmi (The Menaechmus

Swaggering Soldier) Fellow) Brothers)

Stichus (200 BCE) Date/period unknown: Mercator (The Businessman)

Pseudolus (191 BCE) Amphitruo Mostellaria (The Haunted House)

Later works: Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses) Poenulius (The Punic Chappie)

Bacchides (The Bacchis Sisters) Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) Rudens (The Rope)

Casina Captivi (The Prisoners)

 These works are adaptations of 4th century BCE Greek New, plays with some Latin Comedy additions
such as mime and bawdy jokes. The plots of Plautus’ plays are stretched to implausibility so as to
heighten their comedy. His plays continued to be popular after his death and they were performed in
Rome for another century or so.

Publius Terentius Afer (/ˈtɛrəns/; 185 – 159 BC)

 Terence was a famous playwright of North African descent in the Roman Republic. He was brought to
Rome as a slave by Roman senators who educated him and freed him because of his talent.
 Terence was more inferior to Plautus. His plays were more refined than Plautus due to the fact that his
comedies were not as graphic or violent. Despite his early demise, Terence wrote six separate plays that
have each survived to this day. Production notices for his plays provide approximate dates:

Andria - 166 BC

Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) - 165 BC

Heauton Timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor) - 163 BC

Eunuchus (The Eunuch) - 161 BC

Phormio - 161 BC

Adelphi (The Brothers) - 160 BC.

 After his sixth play, Terence left Athens to travel and write better plays but unfortunately, he died
at the sea.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (/ˈsɛnɪkə/; 4 BC – AD 65)

 Seneca, also known as “Seneca the Younger”, is a Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist of
the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a small boy, he moved to Rome, where he was trained in
rhetoric and Stoic and neo-Pythagorean philosophy.
 Seneca's findings were often related to his personal life. Although various aspects were involved,
Seneca did not actually write from an autobiographical point of view. Instead, he created a
character that he used to represent himself.
 It is unclear whether Seneca’s tragedies (shorter than the old Attic dramas, but split into five acts
not three, and often displaying a distinct lack of concern for the physical requirements of the
stage) were written for performance or for private recitation only.

Major Works: “Agamemnon”

“Medea” “Oedipus”

“Phaedra” “Apocolocyntosis”

“Hercules Furens” (“The Mad Hercules”) “Thyestes”

“Troades” (“The Trojan Women”) “Phoenissae” (“The Phoenician Women”)

 Seneca is well known for his scenes of violence and horror (deliberately avoided in the ancient Greek
tradition). His fascination with magic, death and the supernatural would be imitated, many centuries later,
by many Elizabethan playwrights. Another of Seneca’s innovations is his use of soliloquies and asides,
which would also prove integral to the evolution of Renaissance drama.