The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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But this preliminary stage of literary development was soon passed.
The epics and dramas of Livius were regarded by posterity, and
undoubtedly with perfect justice, as resembling the rigid statues
of Daedalus destitute of emotion or expression--curiosities rather
than works of art.
But in the following generation, now that the foundations were
once laid, there arose a lyric, epic, and dramatic art; and it is
of great importance, even in a historical point of view, to trace
this poetical development.
Drama
Theatre
Both as respects extent of production and influence over the public,
the drama stood at the head of the poetry thus developed in Rome. In
antiquity there was no permanent theatre with fixed admission-money;
in Greece as in Rome the drama made its appearance only as an element
in the annually-recurring or extraordinary amusements of the citizens.
Among the measures by which the government counteracted or imagined
that they counteracted that extension of the popular festivals which
they justly regarded with anxiety, they refused to permit the erection
of a stone building for a theatre.(10) Instead of this there was
erected for each festival a scaffolding of boards with a stage for
the actors (-proscaenium-, -pulpitum-) and a decorated background
(-scaena-); and in a semicircle in front of it was staked off the
space for the spectators (-cavea-), which was merely sloped without
steps or seats, so that, if the spectators had not chairs brought
along with them, they squatted, reclined, or stood.(11) The women
were probably separated at an early period, and were restricted to
the uppermost and worst places; otherwise there was no distinction of
places in law till 560, after which, as already mentioned,(12) the
lowest and best positions were reserved for the senators.
Audience
The audience was anything but genteel. The better classes, it is
true, did not keep aloof from the general recreations of the people;
the fathers of the city seem even to have been bound for decorum's
sake to appear on these occasions. But the very nature of a burgess
festival implied that, while slaves and probably foreigners also were
excluded, admittance free of charge was given to every burgess with
his wife and children;(13) and accordingly the body of spectators
cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at
public fireworks and -gratis- exhibitions. Naturally, therefore, the
proceedings were not too orderly; children cried, women talked and
shrieked, now and then a wench prepared to push her way to the stage;
the ushers had on these festivals anything but a holiday, and found
frequent occasion to confiscate a mantle or to ply the rod.
The introduction of the Greek drama increased the demands on the
dramatic staff, and there seems to have been no redundance in the
supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece
of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs. But this produced no
change in the position of the artist; the poet or, as he was at this
time called, the "writer," the actor, and the composer not only
belonged still, as formerly, to the class of workers for hire in
itself little esteemed,(14) but were still, as formerly, placed in
the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and subjected
to police maltreatment.(15) Of course all reputable persons kept
aloof from such an occupation. The manager of the company (-dominus
gregis-, -factionis-, also -choragus-), who was ordinarily also the
chief actor, was generally a freedman, and its members were ordinarily
his slaves; the composers, whose names have reached us, were all of
them non-free. The remuneration was not merely small--a -honorarium-
of 8000 sesterces (80 pounds) given to a dramatist is described
shortly after the close of this period as unusually high--but was,
moreover, only paid by the magistrates providing the festival, if the
piece was not a failure. With the payment the matter ended; poetical
competitions and honorary prizes, such as took place in Attica, were
not yet heard of in Rome--the Romans at this time appear to have
simply applauded or hissed as we now do, and to have brought forward
only a single piece for exhibition each day.(16) Under such
circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead
of receiving due honour was subjected to disgrace, the new national
theatre of the Romans could not present any development either
original or even at all artistic; and, while the noble rivalry of
the noblest Athenians had called into life the Attic drama, the Roman
drama taken as a whole could be nothing but a spoiled copy of its
predecessor, in which the only wonder is that it has been able to
display so much grace and wit in the details.
That only one piece was produced each day we infer from the fact,
that the spectators come from home at the beginning of the piece
(Poen. 10), and return home after its close (Epid. Pseud. Rud. Stich.
Truc. ap. fin.). They went, as these passages show, to the theatre
after the second breakfast, and were at home again for the midday
meal; the performance thus lasted, according to our reckoning, from
about noon till half-past two o'clock, and a piece of Plautus, with
music in the intervals between the acts, might probably occupy nearly
that length of time (comp. Horat. Ep. ii. i, 189). The passage, in
which Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 20) makes the spectators spend "whole days"
in the theatre, refers to the state of matters at a later period.
Comedy
In the dramatic world comedy greatly preponderated over tragedy; the
spectators knit their brows, when instead of the expected comedy a
tragedy began. Thus it happened that, while this period exhibits
poets who devoted themselves specially to comedy, such as Plautus
and Caecilius, it presents none who cultivated tragedy alone; and
among the dramas of this epoch known to us by name there occur three
comedies for one tragedy. Of course the Roman comic poets, or rather
translators, laid hands in the first instance on the pieces which had
possession of the Hellenic stage at the time; and thus they found
themselves exclusively(17) confined to the range of the newer Attic
comedy, and chiefly to its best-known poets, Philemon of Soli in
Cilicia (394?-492) and Menander of Athens (412-462). This comedy came
to be of so great importance as regards the development not only of
Roman literature, but even of the nation at large, that even history
has reason to pause and consider it.
Character of the Newer Attic Comedy
The pieces are of tiresome monotony. Almost without exception the
plot turns on helping a young man, at the expense either of his father
or of some -leno-, to obtain possession of a sweetheart of undoubted
charms and of very doubtful morals. The path to success in love
regularly lies through some sort of pecuniary fraud; and the crafty
servant, who provides the needful sum and performs the requisite
swindling while the lover is mourning over his amatory and pecuniary
distresses, is the real mainspring of the piece. There is no want of
the due accompaniment of reflections on the joys and sorrows of love,
of tearful parting scenes, of lovers who in the anguish of their
hearts threaten to do themselves a mischief; love or rather amorous
intrigue was, as the old critics of art say, the very life-breath of
the Menandrian poetry. Marriage forms, at least with Menander, the
inevitable finale; on which occasion, for the greater edification
and satisfaction of the spectators, the virtue of the heroine usually
comes forth almost if not wholly untarnished, and the heroine herself
proves to be the lost daughter of some rich man and so in every
respect an eligible match. Along with these love-pieces we find
others of a pathetic kind. Among the comedies of Plautus, for
instance, the -Rudens- turns on a shipwreck and the right of asylum;
while the -Trinummus- and the -Captivi- contain no amatory intrigue,
but depict the generous devotedness of the friend to his friend and
of the slave to his master. Persons and situations recur down to the
very details like patterns on a carpet; we never get rid of the asides
of unseen listeners, of knocking at the house-doors, and of slaves
scouring the streets on some errand or other. The standing masks,
of which there was a certain fixed number--viz., eight masks for old
men, and seven for servants--from which alone in ordinary cases at
least the poet had to make his choice, further favoured a stock-model
treatment. Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical
element in the older comedy--the chorus--and confined itself from the
first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the
political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical
elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or
really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing
occupation for the intellect, not only through their subject-matter
--in which respect the newer comedy was distinguished from the old as
much by the greater intrinsic emptiness as by the greater outward
complication of the plot--but more especially through their execution
in detail, in which the point and polish of the conversation more
particularly formed the triumph of the poet and the delight of the
audience. Complications and confusions of one person with another,
which very readily allowed scope for extravagant, often licentious,
practical jokes--as in the -Casina-, which winds up in genuine
Falstaffian style with the retiring of the two bridegrooms and of the
soldier dressed up as bride--jests, drolleries, and riddles, which in
fact for want of real conversation furnished the staple materials of
entertainment at the Attic table of the period, fill up a large
portion of these comedies. The authors of them wrote not like Eupolis
and Aristophanes for a great nation, but rather for a cultivated
society which spent its time, like other clever circles whose
cleverness finds little fit scope for action, in guessing riddles and
playing at charades. They give us, therefore, no picture of their
times; of the great historical and intellectual movements of the age
no trace appears in these comedies, and we need to recall, in order
to realize, the fact that Philemon and Menander were really
contemporaries of Alexander and Aristotle. But they give us a
picture, equally elegant and faithful, of that refined Attic society
beyond the circles of which comedy never travels. Even in the dim
Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the
original is not wholly obliterated; and more especially in the pieces
which are imitated from Menander, the most talented of these poets,
the life which the poet saw and shared is delicately reflected not so
much in its aberrations and distortions as in its amiable every day
course. The friendly domestic relations between father and daughter,
husband and wife, master and servant, with their love-affairs and
other little critical incidents, are portrayed with so broad a
truthfulness, that even now they do not miss their effect: the
servants' feast, for instance, with which the -Stichus- concludes is,
in the limited range of its relations and the harmony of the two
lovers and the one sweetheart, of unsurpassed gracefulness in its
kind. The elegant grisettes, who make their appearance perfumed and
adorned, with their hair fashionably dressed and in variegated, gold-
embroidered, sweeping robes, or even perform their toilette on the
stage, are very effective. In their train come the procuresses,
sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the
-Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as
Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and
comrades ready with their help. There is great abundance and variety
of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere
and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent
accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the
jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her
mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less
prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who
here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant-
world--the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant
tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page--forms
a transition to the very numerous professional parts. A standing
figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for
permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the
guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances,
to let the potsherds be flung at his head. This was at that time a
formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction
which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for
his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite
parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how
to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a
professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to
the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a
model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very
distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under
Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the
stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest,
mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly,
the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the
superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of
Plautus. The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its
last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation
of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from
inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches to
the really poetical. It is a significant circumstance that, in the
parts illustrative of character to which we have just referred,
the psychological truth is in great part represented by abstract
development of the conception; the miser here collects the parings of
his nails and laments the tears which he sheds as a waste of water.
But the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character,
and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this newer
comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a
whole. Everything distinctively Greek was expiring: fatherland,
national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment
were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted;
and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market,
and the brothel. It is no matter of wonder and hardly a matter of
blame, that poetry, which is destined to shed a glory over human
existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the
Menandrian comedy presents to us. It is at the same time very
remarkable that the poetry of this period, wherever it was able to
turn away in some degree from the corrupt Attic life without falling
into scholastic imitation, immediately gathers strength and freshness
from the ideal. In the only remnant of the mock-heroic comedy of this
period--the -Amphitruo- of Plautus--there breathes throughout a purer
and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the
contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony,
the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly
slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the
comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst
thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this
task of turning the myths into irony was innocent and poetical, as
compared with that of the ordinary comedy depicting the Attic life of
the period. No special accusation may be brought from a historico-
moral point of view against the poets, nor ought it to be made matter
of individual reproach to any particular poet that he occupies the
level of his epoch: comedy was not the cause, but the effect of the
corruption that prevailed in the national life. But it is necessary,
more especially with a view to judge correctly the influence of these
comedies on the life of the Roman people, to point out the abyss which
yawned beneath all that polish and elegance. The coarsenesses and
obscenities, which Menander indeed in some measure avoided, but of
which there is no lack in the other poets, are the least part of the
evil. Features far worse are, the dreadful desolation of life in
which the only oases are lovemaking and intoxication; the fearfully
prosaic atmosphere, in which anything resembling enthusiasm is to be
found only among the sharpers whose heads have been turned by their
own swindling, and who prosecute the trade of cheating with some sort
of zeal; and above all that immoral morality, with which the pieces of
Menander in particular are garnished. Vice is chastised, virtue is
rewarded, and any peccadilloes are covered by conversion at or after
marriage. There are pieces, such as the -Trinummus- of Plautus and
several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves
possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow
deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue wherever possible,
with lovers equally favoured and making love in company; moral
commonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound. A finale of
reconciliation such as that of the -Bacchides-, where the swindling
sons and the swindled fathers by way of a good winding up all go to
carouse together in the brothel, presents a corruption of morals
thoroughly worthy of Kotzebue.
Roman Comedy
Its Hellenism a Necessary Result of the Law
Such were the foundations, and such the elements which shaped the
growth, of Roman comedy. Originality was in its case excluded not
merely by want of aesthetic freedom, but in the first instance,
probably, by its subjection to police control. Among the considerable
number of Latin comedies of this sort which are known to us, there is
not one that did not announce itself as an imitation of a definite
Greek model; the title was only complete when the names of the Greek
piece and of its author were also given, and if, as occasionally
happened, the "novelty" of a piece was disputed, the question was
merely whether it had been previously translated. Comedy laid the
scene of its plot abroad not only frequently, but regularly and under
the pressure of necessity; and that species of art derived its special
name (-fabula palliata-) from the fact, that the scene was laid away
from Rome, usually in Athens, and thai the -dramatis personae- were
Greeks or at any rate not Romans. The foreign costume is strictly
carried out even in detail, especially in those things in which the
uncultivated Roman was distinctly sensible of the contrast, Thus the
names of Rome and the Romans are avoided, and, where they are referred
to, they are called in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like
manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever
so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a
strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius
and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this
strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy
was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic
considerations. The transference of such social relations, as are
uniformly delineated in the new Attic comedy, to the Rome of the
Hannibalic period would have been a direct outrage on its civic order
and morality. But, as the dramatic spectacles at this period were
regularly given by the aediles and praetors who were entirely
dependent on the senate, and even extraordinary festivals, funeral
games for instance, could not take place without permission of the
government; and as the Roman police, moreover, was not in the habit
of standing on ceremony in any case, and least of all in dealing with
the comedians; the reason is self-evident why this comedy, even after
it was admitted as one of the Roman national amusements, might still
bring no Roman upon the stage, and remained as it were banished to
foreign lands.
Political Neutrality
The compilers were still more decidedly prohibited from naming any
living person in terms either of praise or censure, as well as from
any captious allusion to the circumstances of the times. In the whole
repertory of the Plautine and post-Plautine comedy, there is not,
so far as we know, matter for a single action of damages. In like
manner--if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests--we meet
hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives
which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would
have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the
unfortunate Capuans and Atellans (18) and, what is remarkable, various
sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.(19)
In general no references to the events or circumstances of the
present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are,
congratulations on the course of the war(20) or on the peaceful times;
general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money,
against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the
too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting
forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for
payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once--in the
-Curculio- --a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman
market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and
but little likely to cause offence(21) But even in the midst of such
patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely
in order, the poet interrupts himself;
-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam
Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-
and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more
tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.(22) The oldest
Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable
exception. Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies,
the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to
circumstances and persons in Rome. Among other liberties he not only
ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against
the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need
not have been ashamed:
-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-
As he himself says,
-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-
he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put
dangerous questions, such as:
-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-
which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as:
-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-
But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage-
invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate
them at all. Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies,
and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and
recantation in other comedies. These quarrels, apparently, drove
him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his
example--one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire
whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius.
Thus the result was accomplished--not much less unique of its kind
than the conquest of Hannibal--that, during an epoch of the most
feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly
destitute of political tinge.
Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy
Persons and Situations
But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by
custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without
reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the
sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his
position in free Rome.(23) The degree of success in individual
instances was of course determined by the quality of the original
which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but
amidst all their individual variety the whole stock of translations
must have agreed in certain leading features, inasmuch as all the
comedies were adapted to similar conditions of exhibition and a
similar audience. The treatment of the whole as well as of the
details was uniformly in the highest degree free; and it was necessary
that it should be so. While the original pieces were performed in
presence of that society which they copied, and in this very fact
lay their principal charm, the Roman audience of this period was so
different from the Attic, that it was not even in a position rightly
to understand that foreign world. The Roman comprehended neither
the grace and kindliness, nor the sentimentalism and the whitened
emptiness of the domestic life of the Hellenes. The slave-world was
utterly different; the Roman slave was a piece of household furniture,
the Attic slave was a servant. Where marriages of slaves occur or a
master carries on a kindly conversation with his slave, the Roman
translators ask their audience not to take offence at such things
which are usual in Athens;(24) and, when at a later period comedies
began to be written in Roman costume, the part of the crafty servant
had to be rejected, because the Roman public did not tolerate slaves
of this sort overlooking and controlling their masters. The
professional figures and those illustrative of character, which were
sketched more broadly and farcically, bore the process of transference
better than the polished figures of every-day life; but even of those
delineations the Roman editor had to lay aside several--and these
probably the very finest and most original, such as the Thais, the
match-maker, the moon-conjuress, and the mendicant priest of Menander
--and to keep chiefly to those foreign trades, with which the Greek
luxury of the table, already very generally diffused in Rome, had made
his audience familiar. If the professional cook and the jester in the
comedy of Plautus are delineated with so striking vividness and so
much relish, the explanation lies in the fact, that Greek cooks had
even at that time daily offered their services in the Roman market,
and that Cato found it necessary even to instruct his steward not to
keep a jester. In like manner the translator could make no use of a
very large portion of the elegant Attic conversation in his originals.
The Roman citizen or farmer stood in much the same relation to
the refined revelry and debauchery of Athens, as the German of a
provincial town to the mysteries of the Palais Royal. A science of
cookery, in the strict sense, never entered into his thoughts; the
dinner-parties no doubt continued to be very numerous in the Roman
imitation, but everywhere the plain Roman roast pork predominated
over the variety of baked meats and the refined sauces and dishes of
fish. Of the riddles and drinking songs, of the Greek rhetoric and
philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet
only a stray trace now and then in the Roman adaptation.