Thespis is said to have introduced the use of a “prologue” and a “rhesis” (speech)—the former being probably the opening speech recited by thecoryphaeus, the latter the dialogue between him and the actor. It was a natural resultConstruction.of the introduction of the second actor that a secondrhesisshould likewise be added; and this tripartite division would be the earliest form of thetrilogy,—three sections of the same myth forming the beginning, middle and end of a singleThe Aeschylean trilogy.drama, marked off from one another by the choral songs. From this Aeschylus proceeded to the treatment of these several portions of a myth in three separate plays, connected together by their subject and by being performed in sequence on a single occasion. This is theAeschylean trilogy, of which we have only one extant example, theOresteia—as to which critics may differ whether Aeschylus adhered in it to his principle that the strength shouldlie in the middle—in other words, that the interest should centre in the second play. In any case, the symmetry of the trilogyThe tetralogy.was destroyed by the practice of performing after it a satyr-drama, probably as a rule, if not always, connected in subject with the trilogy, which thus became atetralogy, though this term, unlike the other, seems to be a purely technical expression invented by the learned.66Sophocles, a more conscious and probably a more self-critical artist than Aeschylus, may be assumed from the first to have elaborated his tragedies with greater care; and to this, as well as to his innovation of the third actor, which materially added to the fulness of the action, we may attribute his introduction of the custom of contending for the prize with single plays. It does not follow that he never produced connected trilogies, though we have no example of such by him or any later author; on the other hand, there is no proof that either he or any of his successors ever departed from the Aeschylean rule of producing three tragedies, followed by a satyr-drama, on the same day. This remained the third and last stage in the history of the constructionComplicated actions.of Attic tragedy. The tendency of its action towards complication was a natural progress, and is emphatically approved by Aristotle. This complication, in which Euripides excelled, led to his use of prologues, in which one of the characters opens the play by an exposition of the circumstances under which its action begins. This practice, though ridiculed by Aristophanes, was too convenient not to be adopted by the successors of Euripides, and Menander transferred it to comedy. As the dialogue increased in importance, so the dramatic significance of the chorus diminished. While in Aeschylus it mostly, and in Sophocles occasionally, takes part in the action, its songs could not but more and more approach the character of lyricalintermezzos; and this they openly assumed when Agathon began the practice of inserting choral songs (embolima) which had nothing to do with the action of the play. In the general contrivance of their actions it was only natural that, as compared with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should exhibit an advance in both freedom and ingenuity; but the palm, due to a treatment at once piously adhering to the substance of the ancient legends and original in an effective dramatic treatment of them, must be given to Sophocles. Euripides was, moreover, less skilful in untying complicated actions than in weaving them; hence his frequent resort67to the expedient of thedeus ex machina, which Sophocles employs only in his latest play.68
The other distinctions to be drawn between the dramatic qualities of the three great tragic masters must be mainly based upon a critical estimate of the individual genius of each. In the characters of their tragedies, AeschylusCharacters.and Sophocles avoided those lapses of dignity with which from one point of view Euripides has been charged by Aristophanes and other critics, but which, from another, connect themselves with his humanity. If his men and women are less heroic and statuesque, they are more like men and women. Aristotle objected to the later tragedians that, compared with the great masters, they were deficient in the drawing of character—by which he meant the lofty drawing of lofty character. InDiction.diction, the transition is even more manifest from the “helmeted phrases” of Aeschylus, who had Milton’s love of long words and sonorous proper names, to the play of Euripides’ “smooth and diligent tongue”; but to a sustained style even he remained essentially true, and it was reserved for his successors to introduce into tragedy the “low speech”—i.e.the conversational language—of comedy. Upon the whole, however, the Euripidean diction seems to have remained the standard of later tragedy, the flowery style of speech introduced by Agathon finding no permanent favour.
Finally, Aeschylus is said to have made certain reforms in tragic costume of which the object is self-evident—to have improved the mask, and to have invented thecothurnusImprovements in costume, &c.or buskin, upon which the actor was raised to loftier stature. Euripides was not afraid of rags and tatters; but the sarcasms of Aristophanes on this head seem feeble to those who are aware that they would apply toKing Learas well as toTelephus.
Periods of Greek Comedy.—The history of Greek comedy is likewise that of an essentially Attic growth, although Sicilian comedy was earlier in date than her Attic sister or descendant. The former is represented by Epicharmus (fl. 500), and by the names of one or two other poets. It probably had a chorus, and, dealing as it did in a mixture of philosophical discourse, antithetical rhetoric and wild buffoonery, necessarily varied in style. His comedies were the earliest examples of the class distinguished asmotoriaefrom thestatariaeand themixtaeby their greater freedom and turbulence of movement. Though in some respects Sicilian comedy seems to have resembled the Middleratherthan the Old Attic comedy, its subjects sometimes, like those of the latter, coincided with the myths of tragedy, of which they were doubtless parodies. The so-called “mimes” of Sophron (fl. 430) were dramatic scenes from Sicilian everyday life, intended, not for the stage, but for recitation, and classed as “male” and “female” according to the sex of the characters.
Attic comedy is usually divided into three periods or species.
I.Old comedy, which dated from the complete establishment of democracy by Pericles, though a comedy directed against Themistocles is mentioned. The Megarean farcical entertainments had long spread in the rural districtsThe Old comedy.of Attica, and were now introduced into the city, where from about 460 onwards the “comus” became a matter of public concern. Cratinus (c. 450-422) and Crates (c. 449-425) first moulded these beginnings into the forms of Attic art. The final victory of Pericles and the democratic party may be reckoned from the ostracism of Thucydides (444); and so eagerly was the season of freedom employed by the comic poets that already four years afterwards a law—which, however, remained only a short time in force—limited their licence. Cratinus,69an exceedingly bold and broad satirist, apparently of conservative tendencies, was followed by Eupolis (446-after 415), every one of whose plays appears to have attacked some individual,70by Phrynichus, Plato and others; but the representative of old comedy in its fullest development is Aristophanes (c. 444-c. 380), a comic poet of unique and unsurpassed genius. Dignified by the acquisition of a chorus (more numerous—twenty-four to twelve or afterwards fifteen—though of a less costly kind thanAristophanes.the tragic) of masked actors, and of scenery and machinery, as well as by a corresponding literary elaboration and elegance of style, Old Attic comedy nevertheless remained true both to its origin and to the purposes of its introduction into the free imperial city. Its special season was at the festival of the Lenaea, when the Athenians could enjoy the fun against one another without espying strangers; but it was also performed at the Great Dionysia. It borrowed much from tragedy, but it retained the phallic abandonment of the old rural festivals, the licence of word and gesture, and the audacious directness of personal invective. These characteristics are not features peculiar to Aristophanes. He was twitted by some of the older comic poets with having degenerated from the full freedom of the art by a tendency to refinement, and he took credit to himself for having superseded the time-honouredcancanand the stale practical joking of his predecessors by a nobler kind of mirth. But in daring, as he likewise boasted, he had no peer; and the shafts of his wit, though dipped in wine-lees and at times feathered from very obscene fowl, flew at high game.71He has been accused of seeking to degrade what he ought to have recognized as good72; and it has been shown with complete success that he is not to be taken as an impartial or accurateauthority on Athenian history. But partisan as he was, he was also a genuine patriot; and his very political sympathies—which were conservative, like those of the comic poets in general, not only because it was the old families upon whom the expense of thechoregiain the main devolved—were such as have often stimulated the most effective political satire. Of the conservative quality of reverence he was, however, altogether devoid; and his love for Athens was that of the most free-spoken of sons. Flexible even in his religious notions, he was, in this as in other respects, ready to be educated by his times; and, like a true comic poet, he could be witty at the expense even of his friends, and, it might almost be said, of himself. In wealth of fancy73and in beauty of lyric melody, he has few peers among the great poets of all times.
The distinctive feature of Old, as compared with Middle comedy, is theparabasis, the speech in which the chorus, moving towards and facing the audience, addressed it in the name of the poet, often abandoning all reference to theThe parabasis.action of the play. The loss of theparabasiswas involved in the loss of the chorus, of which comedy was deprived in consequence of the general reduction of expenditure upon the comic drama, culminating in the law of the personally aggrieved dithyrambic poet Cinesias (396).74But with the downfall of the independence of Athenian public life, the ground had been cut from under the feet of its most characteristic representative. Already in 414, in the anxious time after the sailing of the Sicilian expedition, the law of Syracosius had prohibited the comic poets from making direct reference to current events; but theBirdshad taken their flight above the range of all regulations. The catastrophe of the city (405) was preceded by the temporary overthrow of the democracy (411), and was followed by the establishment of an oligarchical “tyranny” under Spartan protection; and, when liberty was restored (404), the citizens for a time addressed themselves to their new life in a soberer spirit, and continued (or passed) the law prohibiting the introduction by name of any individual as one of the personages of a play. The change to which comedy had to accommodate itself was one which cannot be defined by precise dates, yet it was not the less inevitable in its progress and results. Comedy, in her struggle for existence, now chiefly devoted herself to literary and social themes, such as the criticism of tragic poets,75and the literary craze of women’s rights,76and the transition to Middle comedy accomplished itself. Of the later plays of Aristophanes, three77are without aparabasis, and in the last of those preserved to us which properly belongs to Middle comedy78the chorus is quite insignificant.
II.Middle comedy, whose period extends over the remaining years of Athenian freedom (from about 400 to 338), thus differed in substance as well as in form from its predecessor. It is represented by the names of thirty-seven writersThe Middle Comedy.(more than double the number of poets attributed to Old comedy), among whom Eubulus, Antiphanes and Alexis are stated to have been pre-eminently fertile and successful. It was a comedy of manners as well as character, although its ridicule of particular classes of men tended to the creation of standing types, such as soldiers, parasites, courtesans, revellers, and—a favourite figure already drawn by Aristophanes79—the self-conceited cook. In style it necessarily inclined to become more easy and conversational and to substitute insinuation for invective; while in that branch which was devoted to the parodying of tragic myths its purpose may have been to criticize, but its effect must have been to degrade. This species of the comic art had found favour at Athens already before the close of the great civil war; its inventor was the Thasian Hegemon, whoseGigantomachiawas amusing the Athenians on the day when the news arrived of the Sicilian disaster.
III.New comedy, which is dated from the establishment of the Macedonian supremacy (338), is merely a further development of Middle, from which indeed it was not distinguished till the time of Hadrian. If its favourite types wereThe New Comedy.more numerous, including the captain (of mercenaries)—the original of a long line of comic favourites—the cunning slave, &c., they were probably also more conventional. New comedy appears to have first constituted love intrigues the main subject of dramatic actions. The most famous of the sixty-four writers said to have belonged to this period of comedy were Philemon (fl. from 330), Menander (342-329) and his contemporaryPhilemon and Menander.Diphilus. Of these authors we know something from fragments, but more from their Latin adapters Plautus and Terence. As comedians of character, they were limited by a range of types which left little room for originality of treatment; in the construction of their plots they were skillful rather than varied. In style, as well as to some extent in construction, Menander seems to have taken Euripides as his model, infusing into his comedy an element of moral and sentimental reflection, which refined if it did not enliven it.
New comedy, and with it Greek comedy proper, is regarded as having come to an end with Posidippus (fl. c. 280). Other comic writers of a later date are, however, mentioned, among them Rhinthon of Tarentum (fl. c. 300), whoseDecay of comedy.mixed compositions have been called by various names, among them by that of “phlyacographies” (fromphlyax, idle chatter). He was succeeded by Sopater, Sotades and others; but the dramatic element in these often obscene, but not perhaps altogether frivolous, travesties is not always clearly ascertainable. It is certain that Greek comedy gradually ceased to be productive; and though even in its original form it long continued to be acted in imperial Rome, these are phases of its history which may here be passed by.
The religious origin of the Attic drama impresses itself upon all its most peculiar features. Theatrical performances were held at Athens only at fixed seasons in the early part of the year—at the Bacchic festivals of the countryResults of religious origin of Attic drama.Dionysia (vintage), the Lenaea (wine-press), probably at the Anthesteria, and above all, at the Great Dionysia, or the Dionysiapar excellence, at the end of March and beginning of April, when in her most glorious age Athens was crowded with visitors from the islands and cities of her federal empire. As a part of religious worship, the performances took place in a sacred locality—theLenaeumon the south-eastern declivity of the Acropolis, where the first wine-press (lenos) was said to have been set up, and where now an altar of Bacchus (thymele) formed the centre of the theatre. For the same reason the exhibitions claimed the attendance of the whole population, and room was therefore provided on a grand scale—according to the Platonic Socrates, for “more than 30,000” spectators (seeTheatre). The performances lasted all day, or were at least, in accordance with their festive character, extended to as great a length as possible. To their religious origin is likewise to be attributed the fact that they were treated as a matter of state concern. The expenses of the chorus, which in theory represented the people at large, were defrayed on behalf of the state by theliturgies(public services) of wealthy citizens, chosen in turn by the tribes to bechoragi(leaders,i.e.providers of the chorus), the duty of training being, of course, deputed by them to professional persons (chorodidascali). Publicly appointed and sworn judges decided between the merits of the dramas produced in competition with one another; the successful poet, performers and choragus were crowned with ivy, and the last-named was allowed at his own expense to consecrate a tripod in memory of his victory in the neighbourhood of the sacred Bacchic enclosure. Such a monument—one of the most graceful relics of ancient Athens—still stands in the place where it was erected, and recalls to posterity the victory of Lysicrates, achieved in the same year as that of Alexander on the Granicus. The dramatic exhibitions being a matter of religion and state, the entrance money (theoricum), which had been introduced toprevent overcrowding, was from the time of Pericles provided out of the public treasury. The whole population had a right to its Bacchic holiday; neither women, nor boys, nor slaves were excluded from theatrical spectacles at Athens.
The religious character of dramatic performances at Athens, and the circumstances under which they accordingly took place, likewise determined their externals of costume and scenery. The actor’s dress was originally the festiveCostume and scenery.Dionysian attire, of which it always retained the gay and variegated hues. The use of the mask, surmounted, high over the forehead, by an ample wig, was due to the actor’s appearing in the open air and at a distance from most of the spectators; the several species of mask were elaborated with great care, and adapted to the different types of theatrical character. Thecothurnus, or thick-soled boot, which further raised the height of the tragic actor (while the comedian wore a thin-soled boot), was likewise a relic of Bacchic costume. The scenery was, in the simplicity of its original conception, suited to open-air performances; but in course of time the art of scene-painting came to be highly cultivated, and movable scenes were contrived, together with machinery of the ambitious kind required by the Attic drama, whether for bringing gods down from heaven, or for raising mortals aloft.
On a stage and among surroundings thus conventional, it might seem as if little scope could have been left for the actor’s art. But, though the demands made upon the Attic actor differed in kind even from those made upon hisActors.Roman successor, and still more from those which the histrionic art has to meet in modern times, they were not the less rigorous. Mask and buskin might increase his stature, and the former might at once lend the appropriate expression to his appearance and the necessary resonance to his voice. But in declamation, dialogue and lyric passage, in gesticulation and movement, he had to avoid the least violation of the general harmony of the performance. Yet it is clear that the refinements of by-play must, from the nature of the case, have been impossible on the Attic stage; the gesticulation must have been broad and massive; the movement slow, and the grouping hard, in tragedy; and the weighty sameness of the recitation must have had an effect even more solemn and less varied than the half-chant which still lingers on the modern stage. Not more than three actors, as has been seen, appeared in any Attic tragedy. The actors were provided by the poet; perhaps the performer of the first parts (protagonist) was paid by the state. It was again a result of the religious origin of Attic dramatic performances and of the public importance attached to them, that the actor’s profession was held in high esteem. These artists were as a matter of course free Athenian citizens, often the dramatists themselves, and at times were employed in other branches of the public service. In later days, when tragedy had migrated to Alexandria, and when theatrical entertainments had spread over all the Hellenic world, the art of acting seems to have reached an unprecedented height, and to have taken an extraordinary hold of the public mind. Synods, or companies, of Dionysian artists abounded, who were in possession of various privileges, and in one instance at least (at Pergamum) of rich endowments. The most important of these was the Ionic company, established first in Teos, and afterwards in Lebedos, near Colophon, which is said to have lasted longer than many a famous state. We likewise hear of strolling companies performingin partibus. Thus it came to pass that the vitality of some of the masterpieces of the Greek drama is without a parallel in theatrical history; while Greek actors were undoubtedly among the principal and most effective agents of the spread of literary culture through a great part of the known world.
The theory and technical system of the drama exercised the critical powers both of dramatists, such as Sophocles, and of the greatest among Greek philosophers. If Plato touched the subject incidentally, Aristotle has in hisPoeticsWriters on the theory of the drama.(after 334) included an exposition of it, which, mutilated as it is, has formed the basis of all later systematic inquiries. The specialities of Greek tragic dramaturgy refer above all to the chorus; its general laws are those of the regular drama of all times. The theories of Aristotle and other earlier writers were elaborated by the Alexandrians, many of whom doubtless combined example with precept; they also devoted themselves to commentaries on the old masters, such as those in which Didymus (c. 30b.c.) abundantly excelled, and collected a vast amount of learning on dramatic composition in general, which was doomed to perish, with so many other treasures, in the flames kindled by religious fanaticism.
8. Roman Drama
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.
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 theOrigin of its native forms.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-calledFescennineverses (from Fescennium in southern Etruria, and very possibly connected withfascinum=phallos), which were afterwards confined to weddings, and ultimately suggested an elaborate species of artistic poetry, never merged into actual dramatic performances.Saturae.In thesaturae, 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 364b.c.for purposesIstriones.of religious propitiation. These(h)istriones, as they were called at Rome (istrihad been their native name), who have had the privilege of transmitting their appellation to the entirehistrionicart 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, thesaturaecame to be performed as farcical after-pieces (exodia), until they gave way to other species. Among these themimiwere at RomeMimi.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 themimusfound 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 thepantomimus(see below) themimuscontinued to prevail in the days of the Empire, having transferred itsoriginal 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, themimusfreely borrowed from other species, among which, so far as they wereAtellanae.of native Italian origin, theAtellane 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), theAtellanaehad 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 asimilarkind, were handed down, to reappear in the modern Italian drama. In these characters lay the essence of theAtellanae: 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.
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 240b.c.,Origin of the regular Roman drama.when at theludi 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.
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—mostlyHistory of Roman tragedy.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 aPraetexta.new tragic species invented by him. But thefabula praetextaorpraetextata(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 thegentes, 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 ofOedipus, 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.” Thepraetextaeof which we know chiefly treat—possibly here and there helped to form80—legends of a hoary antiquity, or celebrate battles chronicled in family or public records81; and in the end the species died a natural death.82
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 literaryEnnius and his successors.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.83Of the other tragic writers of the republic several weredilettanti—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.
Tragedy continued to be cultivated under the earlier emperors; and one author, the famous and ill-fated L. Annaeus Seneca (4b.c.-a.d.65), left behind him a series of works which were to exercise a paramount influence upon theSeneca.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 oldmasters of Roman tragedy maintained themselves on the stage.
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 tragicCharacteristics of Roman tragedy.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.
In Roman comedy two different kinds—respectively calledpalliataandtogatafrom well-known names of dress—were distinguished,—the former treating Greek subjects and imitating Greek originals, the latter professing a nativeHistory of Roman comedy.character. Thepalliatasought 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 coarserPalliata.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. 250-150b.c.),palliataeceased 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 ofpalliataewere the tragic poets Andronicus, Naevius and Ennius, but they were alikePlautus.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 noTerence.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 thepalliatae, 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 calledcontamination.
Thetogatae, in the wider sense of the term, included all Roman plays of native origin—among the rest, thepraetextae, in contradistinction to which and to the transient species of thetrabeatae(from the dress of the knights)Togatae.the comedies dealing with the life of the lower classes were afterwards calledtabernariae(fromtaberna, a shop), a name suited by some of their extant titles,84while others point to the treatment of provincial scenes.85Thetogata, which was necessarily more realistic than thepalliata, and doubtless fresher as well as coarser in tone, flourished in Roman literature between 170 and 80b.c.In this species Titinius, all whose plays bear Latin titles and weretabernariae, 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 inventorRhinthonica, 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 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 earlyThe Roman theatre.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 (55b.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.
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 wasActors.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 apantomimuswas madepraefectus urbiby 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 theClytaemnestrawith 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 thecrepida, corresponding to thecothurnus, and a heavy toga, which in thepraetextahad 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 theclaqueis modelled on Roman precedent, typified by the standing conclusion “plaudite!” in the epilogues of thepalliatae.
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,Roscius and Aesopus.called after his emancipation Q. Roscius Gallus (d. c. 62b.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.
9. Downfall of the Classical Drama
The ignoble end of the Roman—and with it of the ancient classical—drama has been already foreshadowed. The elements of dance and song, never integrally united with the dialogue in Roman tragedy, were now altogether separated from it. While it became customary simply to recite tragedies to the small audiences who continued (or, as a matter of courtesy, affected) to appreciate them, thepantomimuscommended itself to the heterogeneous multitudes of the Roman theatre and to an effetePantomimus.upper class by confining the performance of the actor to gesticulation and dancing, a chorus singing the accompanying text. The species was developed with extraordinary success already under Augustus by Pylades and Bathyllus; and so popular were these entertainments that even eminent poets, such as Lucan (d.a.d.65), wrote the librettos for thesefabulae salticae(ballets), of which the subjects were generally mythological, only now and then historical, and chiefly of an amorous kind. A single masked performer was able to enchant admiring crowds by the art of gesticulation and movement only. In what direction this art tended, when suiting itself to the most abnormal demands of a recklessly sensual age, may be gathered from the remark of one of the last pagan historians of the empire, that the introduction of pantomimes was a sign of the general moral decay of the world which began with theMimus.beginning of the monarchy. Comedy more easily lost itself in the cognate form of themimus, which survived all other kinds of comic entertainments because of its more audacious immorality and open obscenity. Women took part in these performances, by means of which, as late as the 6th century, amimaacquired a celebrity which ultimately raised her to the imperial throne, and perhaps occasioned the removal of a disability which would have rendered her marriage with Justinian impossible.
Meanwhile, the regular drama had lingered on, enjoying in all its forms imperial patronage in the days of the literary revival under Hadrian (117-138); but the perennial taste for the spectacles of the amphitheatre, whichThe drama and the Christian Church.was as strong at Byzantium as it was at Rome, and which reached its climax in the days of Constantine the Great (306-337), under whom the reaction set in, determined the downfall of the dramatic art. It was not absolutely extinguished even by the irruptions of the northern barbarians; but a bitter adversary had by this time risen into power. The whole authority of the Christian Church had, without usually caring to distinguish between the nobler and the looser elements in the drama, involved all its manifestations in a consistent condemnation (as in Tertullian’sDe spectaculis, 200 c.), comprehended them all in an uncompromising anathema. When the faith of that Church was acknowledged as the religion of the Roman empire, the doom of the theatre was sealed. It died hard, however, both in the capitals and in many of the provincial centres of East and West alike. At Rome the last mention ofspectaculaas still in existence seems to date from the sway of the East-Goths under Theodoric and his successor, in the earlier half of the 6th century. In the capital and provinces of the Eastern empire the decline and fall of the stage cannot be similarly traced; but its end is authoritatively assigned to the period of Saracen invasions which began with the Omayyad dynasty in the 7th century.
It cannot be pretended that the doom which thus slowly and gradually overtook the Roman theatre was undeserved. The remnants of the literary drama had long been overshadowed by entertainments such as both earlier and later Roman emperors—Domitian and Trajan as well as Galerius and Constantine—had found themselves constrained to prohibit in the interests of public morality and order, by the bloody spectacles of the amphitheatre and by the maddening excitement of the circus. The art of acting had sunk into pandering to the lewd or frivolous itch of eye and ear; its professors had, in the words of a most judicious modern historian, become “a danger to the peace of householders, as well as to the peace of the streets”; and the theatre had contributed its utmost to the demoralization of a world. The attitude taken up by the Christian Church towards the stage was in general as unavoidable as its particular expressions were at times heated by fanaticism or distorted by ignorance. Had she not visited with her condemnation a wilderness of decay, she could not herself have become—what she little dreamt of becoming—the nursing mother of the new birth of an art which seemed incapable of regeneration.
Though already in the 4th centuryscenicihad been excluded from the benefit of Christian sacraments, and excommunication had been extended to those who visited theatres instead of churches on Sundays and holidays, while the clergySurvival of the mimes.were absolutely prohibited from entering a theatre, and though similar enactments had followed at later dates—yet the entertainments of the condemned profession had never been entirely suppressed, and had even occasionally received imperial patronage. The legislation on the subject in theCodex Theodosianus(accepted by both empires in the earlier part of the 5th century) shows a measure of tolerance indicating a conviction that the theatrical profession could not be suppressed. Gradually, however, as they lost all footing in the centres of civic life, themimesand their fellows became a wandering fraternity, who doubtless appeared at festivals when their services were required, and vanished again into the depths of the obscurity which has ever covered that mysterious existence—the strollers’ life. It was thus that these strange intermediaries of civilization carried down such traditions as survived of the acting drama of pagan antiquity into the succeeding ages.
(Article continued in Volume 8 Slice 7.)