Anna Trostnikova. the Experience of Spectators at the Festivals In

The experience of spectators at the festivals in early imperial Ancient Rome. A case study of multisensory approach to spectatorship at the festival of the Saecular Games in 17 BC Anna Trostnikova Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre Royal Holloway University of London Declaration of Authorship 3 I, Anna Trostnikova, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 13 November 2018 Acknowledgements 5 I would like to thank the department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at the Royal Holloway, University of London and Crossland Research scholar- ship for providing space, funds and administrative support for this research. I am grateful to my attentive and supportive supervisors Professor Richard Alston and Professor David Wiles for their thorough guidance that greatly im- proved this thesis and helped forge a robust theoretical framework for it. I thank my examiners Professor Richard Beacham and Dr Benet Salway for their corrections and suggestions. I thank Sensory Studies in Antiquity net- work, especially Dr Eleanor Betts, Dr Emma-Jayne Graham, Dr Helen Slaney, and Dr Jeff Veitch for providing a common ground for testing ideas, which shaped this thesis, at the conferences and workshops, and for fruitful dis- cussions during these conferences. I thank Dr Christine Plastow for proof- reading this work. I thank Professor Dmitry Trubotchkin, Professor Nina Bra- ginskaya and Professor Alexander Kuznetsov for instilling interest in Roman spectacles into me during my undergraduate and postgraduate taught studies in Russia. I am deeply grateful to my family: Irina, Tatiana and Alexei Trost- nikovi for encouraging me during my studies, and to my late father Dr Mikhail Trostnikov, for inspiring me to pursue a career in Drama and Classics. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my husband Dr Dmitry V. Savostyanov, for making this work possible and supporting me in every step of my way. All mistakes and ommissions are my own. Abstract 7 This thesis is dedicated to the spectators’ experience at Ancient Ro- man festivals — in particular the Saecular Games of 17 BC. Spectatorship at the Roman festivals was an integral part of the cultural and social identity of Romans. However, the research concerning it is disparate and split between the academic fields of Classics and Drama. from histories of an undiffer- entiated Roman crowd towards the identities and experiences of individual spectators. Festivals have hitherto mainly been studied from the organisers’ point of view, and I shall shift the focus to the spectator. Through the lens of Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, the Games are considered as a theatrical event, uniting religious rituals and performances, centred on structured movement through the monumental city space of Rome. While monumental space is defined in Lefebvre’s terms as conceived space, the spectators’ experience is theorised as Lefebvre’s lived space and is accessed through the imaginative reconstruction of multisensory experiences of the Games — what the Games felt like — based on historical sources. The political implications of the Games, the spectators’ journey through monumental space of Rome, the timeline, the spectators’ collective and individual identities, their agency, and finally the aftermath of the Games, seen through the memories, are the major factors shaping the experience of the Games. The multisensory perspective makes it possible to reveal previously neglected details of the Games’ performance history, such as the chang- ing olfactory experience of the Games, the access and crowding conditions, and the visibility of rituals. This perspective demonstrates how the organisers’ plans and politics clashed with the spectators’ identities and justifies a holistic approach to the study of Ancient Rome’s festivals. Contents List of Figures 15 List of Tables 17 1 Why research the spectators’ experience 19 2 Methodology of research on spectators’ experiences 49 2.1 Who were the spectators of the Games: individuals and the collective ........................ 52 2.2 What spectators saw: the events of the Games ..... 73 2.3 How spectators saw the programme of the Games: time and space in the Saecular Games ............ 78 2.4 How spectators experienced the Games: individual and collective facets of the sensory experience of the Games 90 9 10 Contents 3 Sources on events, schedule, locations and spectators 97 3.1 How do we know about the Saecular Games: survey of sources. ........................... 98 3.2 Structure of the Acta .................... 104 3.3 Timeline ........................... 108 3.4 Locations of the Games’ events ............. 118 3.5 How many spectators were at the Saecular Games? .. 142 3.6 Spectators groups and identities in the Acta ....... 143 4 Movement and journeys of the Saecular Games 147 4.1 Introduction ......................... 147 4.2 Movement at the Games in practice and theory ..... 152 4.3 Early days: preparing the Games and encountering spectators ............................ 153 4.4 Preparatory rituals’ practicalities: organisers managing crowd flow ......................... 161 4.5 Spectators’ movement at time of preparatory rituals .. 164 Contents 11 4.6 Preparatory rituals through the lenses of spatial and movement theories ........................ 166 4.7 Official Games: journeys through monumental space — practice ........................... 171 4.8 Official Games: journeys through monumental space — theory ............................ 174 4.9 Journeys of the honorary Games ............. 182 5 Individuals and collective audiences at the Games 185 5.1 Introduction ......................... 185 5.2 Augustus’ road to supreme power: the political context of Saecular Games ..................... 187 5.3 Leges Iuliae: reforms at the heart of the Saecular Games’ organisation and ideology ................. 192 5.3.1 Moral laws and the caelibes ............ 194 5.3.2 The Lex Iulia theatralis and performance of identities ......................... 199 5.4 Agency ........................... 202 6 Multisensory experience of the Games 207 12 Contents 6.1 Introduction ......................... 207 6.2 Timeline: ambiguity and endurance ........... 209 6.3 Space: order, confusion, familiarity, monumentality ... 219 6.4 Individuation and agency ................. 225 7 The Saecular Games: memory and reception 227 7.1 The Acta as monument .................. 228 7.2 Architecture and memory ................. 231 7.3 Other ways to remember the Games ........... 239 8 Conclusions 241 Bibliography 249 Note on abbreviations • Abbreviations from the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd revised edition) are used for the references to the ancient authors’ works in this thesis. • The Acta ludorum saecularium are cited according to the edition of Schnegg-Köhler (2002). • The RIC is Roman Imperial Coinage; revised edition of vol. 1, C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson (1984). • The AE is L’Année Epigraphique, journal on epigraphy published by Presses Universitaires de France. 13 List of Figures 1 Inscription fragments known to date ........... 100 2 Areas used for the Saecular Games ........... 120 3 Areas of night rituals .................... 128 4 Games hub area ...................... 136 5 Procession routes ..................... 177 15 List of Tables 1 Timeline of the Games ................... 110 2 Buildings and places from the Acta ............ 141 17 Chapter 1 Introduction: why research the spectators’ experience In contemporary popular culture the Ancient Roman empire is rep- resented as a civilisation of spectacles and festivals. The luxurious excesses of the staging and view of spectacular shows, the vicari- ous enjoyment of violence and killing in the gladiatorial games and wild–beast hunts, and private participation in frivolous but vastly ex- pensive and orgiastic banquets are characteristic of the depiction of Rome in popular culture. Such excesses are shorthand for the moral degradation that supposedly befell Rome in the first centuries of imperial rule. The church fathers and early Christian writers condemned traditional Roman entertainments.1 The literary men of the first cen- 1The books specifically written to prove the sinfulness of watching games and participating in spectacles are Tert. De Spect. and Novat. De Spect. One of the most graphical descriptions of one Christian’s experience of games and moral corruption they incur is in August. Conf. 6.8 19 20 Chapter 1 tury AD worried that games were too frivolous as pursuits for the sev- eri homines of the later first century. For example, Seneca criticises games for their unnecessary cruelty and negative impact on a philoso- pher’s ability to contemplate;2 Horace satirises poor taste and the lazi- ness of people attending theatrical performances;3 and later Juvenal famously remarks that people are more interested in games than in politics and policies.4 Arguably, this moral disdain for Roman entertainments has persisted and dominated their reception in the modern era. Hollywood films and television series, comic books, and even popular history and children’s books often follow this line of didactical representation of Roman life.5 From the popular Quo vadis (1954) and Ben-Hur (1959) to fairly recent Pompei (2014) and Ben-Hur remakes in 2016, through Gladiator (2000), Spartacus (2010), I, Claudius (1976) and Caligula (1979), major themes of Hollywood films

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