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Home , Ancient Greek comedy

Backgrounds to English Lecture 14: Roman & 1 ➔Roman comedy & theatre 1

=Origin of and Roman festivals -Ludi Romani 1. Oldest of the official festivals 2. Held in September and honored Jupiter 3. Regular performance of comedy and began in 364 B.C.: improvisatory in nature and a considerable musical element (according to Livy's history of Rome). -Five others: Ludi Florales (April), Plebeii (November), Apollinares (July), Megalenses (April), Cereales (no particular season). -Less religious than the Greeks -Under the empire, these festivals afforded "bread and circuses" to the masses. -Performances at festivals paid for by the state. -A literary revolution a century later in 240 B.C.: a poet, was commissioned by the aediles (magistrates in charge of the games) to compose a regular drama for performance instead of the traditional musical , in order to mark the successful conclusion of the war against Carthage. Rather than create an original plot, Livius chose a Greek script, and we do not know whether it was comic or tragic for the celebration of the victory. -Importance of the commission of Livius: 1. Rome now makes a bid to be seen as not just a military power, but a cultural centre 2. This aspiration was engendered and fostered by the increased contact of Romans during the third century with the developed Hellenic culture of southern Italy and

=Roman theatre -Theatre of Pompey 1. Rome’s first stone theatre 2. Construction began around 61 B.C. and the theatre was dedicated in 55 B.C. 3. Prior to its construction, permanent stone had been forbidden. Pompey paid for this theatre to gain political popularity during his second consulship 4. Caesar used the theatre to celebrate the triumph over Pompey's forces in Africa. -Architecture of Roman theatre over against Greek 1. In Greek Orchestra was the circular space for choruses and actors, but in Rome it became a semicircular area because Roman plays usually lacked a true chorus 2. The Greek one was in a semi-circle shape while the Roman was in a full circle shape (amphitheaters - from the Greek “amphi” - on both sides) 3. Ampitheatres: 3.1. Gladiator contests, wild animal fights, venationes (animal slayings), and executions. 3.2. Not clear when and where the first amphitheatres were built. Record: temporary wooden amphitheatres built in the Forum Romanum for gladiatorial games from the 2nd Century B.C. onwards 3.3. Three main parts; the cavea (the seating area), the arena (the fighting area), and the vomitorium (the arched entrances both at the arena level and within the cavea). 3.4. Elevators below to bring up animals. 4. Roman Colosseum 4.1. It was commissioned around A.D. 70-72 by Emperor Vespasian as a gift to the Roman people. 4.2. In A.D. 80, Vespasian’s son Titus opened the Colosseum– officially known as the Flavian Amphitheater–with 100 days of games 4.3. After four centuries of active use, the magnificent arena fell into neglect, and up until the 18th century it was used as a source of building materials. 4.4. Considered greatest work of architecture and engineering 5. Circus Maximus 5.1. A chariot racetrack in Rome first constructed in the 6th century B.C. 5.2. Also used for other public events such as the Roman Games and gladiator fights 5.3. It measured 621m in length and 118m in width and could accommodate over 150,000 spectators. -Origin of terms: play (a literal translation of the word ludus, meaning recreation or play); auditorium (hearing place) -All actors in Roman plays were male slaves: Roman dress, wigs, mask, makeup - eventually no mask; chorus eventually abandoned -Admission to the Roman plays was free for citizens. Originally, women were barred from viewing and were only admitted to , but later, no such restrictions were imposed. =Roman Tragedy

-None survive from the early period, and only one playwright from the later period: Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5 or 4 B.C. – A. D. 65) -Seneca: nine extant tragedies, five adapted from . His popularity declined, suicide in A.D. 65 -Characteristics of Roman Tragedy 1. 5 acts/episodes divided by choral odes 2. Elaborate speeches, soliloquies, asides, confidants 3. Characters dominated by a single passion which drives them to doom (ex: obsessiveness or revenge) 4. Interest in supernatural and human connections -Tragedy never did quite succeed at Rome either as an entertainment or as a literary form. -Roman tragedy had never realised its potential: 1. Subject matter: Greek tragedy was founded on myth, but most myths would have been unlikely to engage a Roman audience emotionally; a number of them clearly struck them as strange or even distasteful. For instance, the sexual issues in Oedipus were unacceptable to the magistrates who commissioned the plays, and a discreet censorship was in operation. 2. The issue of sympathy with the tragic concept: 2.1. In Roman society, the virtue of excellence in performance and achievement was the defining characteristic of a man. 2.2.. The individual was so much less than the corporate entity of the Roman state in that one exercised one's virtue on behalf of the populus Romanus (Roman people). So a suffering hero would have seemed to a Roman merely self-centred, and not a team player. 2.3. What the Romans admired was success, not failure, survival, not death. 2.4. The tragic Iliad in and the optimistic Aeneid in Rome: Achilles as much as Hector is a tragic figure, but Aeneas and his Trojans win through with the help of fate. That is what the Romans expected of their role models. 2.5. The Romans cannot appreciate the sort of heroic failure we encounter on the Greek tragic stage.

=Roman comedy -Roman as a spectacular society: drama, entertainments 1. Rome was a spectacular society: a society of performance and public display. 2. Rome as the public world of politics, religion, entertainment and the expression of identity. 3. Entertainment was essential to daily life: theaters, amphitheaters, circuses, and public baths. -Instead of tragedy, Romans focused on comedy -Two most important comedy playwrights: and -Two types of Plays: 1. Fabula Togata – based on broadly farcical situations and physical humor; also includes gladiators and chariot races 2. Fabula Palliata – translations of Greek New Comedy: “comedy wearing a little Greek cloak” -Greek influence 1. The plays are in some sense translated from the plays of Greek New Comedy. 2. The characters and settings are Greek. But they often tell us more about Roman perceptions of Greeks than about Greeks themselves 3. Both PIautus and Terence developed and adapted their models, and hybridised them with native Italian dramatic forms to produce this very Roman Republican genre. There are some passages which constitute near-translations of Greek lines, while others are free invention. -Greek

1. Beginning of ancient Greek comedy in 5th Century B.C. through the works of . It is sometimes called Aristophanic comedy, after its most famous exponent. 2. Characterized by an exuberant and high-spirited of public persons and affairs; outspoken political criticism and comment on literary and philosophical topics. 3. The parabasis, in which the chorus addresses the audience on the topics of the day and hurls scurrilous criticism at prominent citizens 4. Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War signaled the end of Old Comedy, because a sense of disillusionment with the heroes and gods who had played a prominent role in Old Comedy became marked. -Greek New Comedy

1. It is from about 320 B.C. 2. A mildly satiric view of contemporary Athenian society in its familiar and domestic aspects. 3. Unlike Old Comedy, New Comedy features fictional average citizens and has no supernatural or heroic overtones. 4. The chorus, the representative of forces larger than life, recedes in importance and becomes a small band of musicians and dancers who periodically provide light entertainment. 5. The plays commonly deal with the conventionalized situation of thwarted lovers and contain such stock characters as the cunning slave, the wily merchant, the boastful soldier, and the cruel father. 6. New Comedy reflects the disillusioned spirit and moral ambiguity of the bourgeois class of this period. - (342 - 292 B.C.) 1. Supreme poet of Greek New Comedy: introduced the New Comedy about 320 B.C. 2. Most of his plays are lost except Dyscolus (“The Grouch”), large parts of Perikeiromenē (“The Shorn Girl”), Epitrepontes (“The Arbitration”), and (“The Girl from Samos”). 3. His plays are known through the translation of Plautus and Terence.

-Roman comedy in a nutshell 1. Greek originals 2. Stock Characters 3. Situational 4. Non-political (though some allusions) 5. : witty, cerebral form of dramatic comedy that depicts and often satirizes the manners and affectations of a contemporary society =Plautus (254-184 B.C.)

-Born at Sarsina in Umbria (254 B.C.), recently conquered area -Native speech probably Umbrian, not Latin -Went to Rome and earned living in theatrical work -Invested his savings in an overseas trading venture, but lost everything. -Went to work in a flour-mill and, while working, he composed his first three plays, produced after 215 B.C. -Success allowed him to devote the rest of his life to dramatic composition. -130 plays attributed to Plautus, but 21 have survived in the manuscript tradition

=Terence: Publius Terentius Afer (185 or 195 -159 B.C.) -Born at Carthage about the date of Plautus' death in 185 B.C., or 195 -In childhood he was brought to Rome and became the slave of one Terentius Lucanus, who, moved by his talent and bodily grace, gave him an excellent education in both Latin and Greek, later bestowing on him freedom and his own name. -Terence went to Caecilius to show his work Andria, The great man was at dinner and, unimpressed by his shabbily-dressed visitor, bade him sit on a stool beside the dining-couch and read his manuscript. After a few lines, CaeciIius stopped him, made him join his repast, and later listened to the rest of the play with lively admiration. -Wrote only six plays, all of which survive: Andria (The Girl of Andros), Hecyra (The Mother-in-law), Heautontimoroumenos (The Self- Punishment), Eunuchus (The Eunuch), Phormio, Adelphi (or Adelphoe; The Brothers) -He then journeyed to Greece and Asia Minor, wishing to study and to collect plays of Menander, but died on the way home at the age of twenty-six or little more. Some attributed his death to grief because certain new comedies that he had written were lost at sea. =Plautus’s 3 debts

-the 3 debts: Greek New Comedy; Andronicus and Naevius; Atellanes -He adapted more or less creatively from Greek originals and followed in the tradition of Greek New Comedy 1. The plays are usually set in or near Athens 2. All of Plautus' characters pretend to be Greek (fabulae palliatae) and act, talk, and think as Romans, who considered the Greeks effeminate and degenerate. 3. A cunning talker is compared to (Pseudolus) 4. The Parthenon is mentioned, but as “Minerva's citadel” (Bacchides) 5. The whole morality in most plays is utterly non-Roman. “This is what we are allowed to do in Athens,” Stichus explains. -Andronicus and Naevius for the method of translation -Atellanes for crude popular clowning and wealth of gesticulation. 1. The Satura: Originally a medley of songs and amusing stories, sung and recited to music with dance and 2. The Fescennine verses: crude lampoons 3. The Atellane : genuine dramatic quality, a plot, a great deal of gesture, and much indecency.

=Terence’s all six plays are adaptations of Greek originals.

=Plautus’s originality -Roman allusions, Latin dialogue, witty -Techniques: 1. 2. Songs (musical comedy): Plautus as the first writer of musical comedy. Songs may have made up as much as 40% of each play, some of dialogue also chanted or recited to flute 3. Stychomythia – dialogue with short lines, like a tennis match -Coincidences: Fortuna reigns supreme over all comic plots. While the efforts of the slaves provide the playwrights with the material for action, the final solution almost invariably depends on lucky coincidence

=Terence originality -Based on Greek originals, he uses more complex plots: all but one (Hecyra) employ the double plot (two love affairs involve two young men, two girls, and two fathers, who are often contrasted). -Taking the story of the original in its details, it nevertheless changed the tone and import of the whole =Plautus versus Terence -Language 1. Plautus: at first difficult for modern readers, archaic, colloquial, spectacular, magnificent 2. Terence: a perfection of correct expression, lightness, clarity, elegance, language of refined society: his plays became school texts from antiquity onwards. “lovers' quarrels are the strengthening of love” (Andria) “I am a man: anything that touches man is my business” (Heautontimoroumenos) “there is no saying of our day that has not been said before” (Eunuchus) -Style of comedy 1. Plautus: broad comedy or 2. Terence: ; downright jokes are far less frequent in Terence than in Plautus -Purely entertaining or moralizing 1. Plautus: mentioned that “See how slipshod is Plautus as he hurries across the boards. He is eager to drop the cash into his purse, and then he cares nothing whether his play tumbles or stands upright.” We can but suppose that he neither knew nor cared what a drama is, and was concerned with nothing save to amuse an audience 2. Terence: moralizing in relation to human nature -Terence was less popular than Plautus. -The immense majority of Romans did not appreciate good art, particularly such subtle, unforced art as Terence. They preferred Plautus, or gross mimes, tight-rope dancers, gladiators