A History of Roman Literature. Harold North Fowler
two other doors, one at each side, led to the rooms for guests. At each end of the stage was a door, the one at the right leading to the forum, the other to the country or the harbor. Changes of scene were imperfectly made by changing parts of the decoration. In comedies, the background represented not a palace, but a private house or a street of houses.
In front of the stage was the semicircular orchestra or arena, in which distinguished persons had their seats. The orchestra and the cavea. This semicircle was flat and level. The front of the stage formed the diameter. From the curve of the orchestra rose the cavea, consisting of seats in semicircular rows, rising from the orchestra at an angle sufficient to enable those who sat in any row to see over those who sat in front of them. The theatre had no roof, but in the luxurious times of the empire, and even before the end of the republic, a covering of canvas or silk was stretched like a tent between the spectators and the sun.
In the early days of the Roman drama, the actors did not wear masks, but before the end of the republic masks were introduced. Masks and costumes. These were useful in the large theatres of the time, as they added to the volume of the actor’s voice, and since the expression of the actor’s face could be seen by only a small proportion of the spectators, little was lost by hiding it with a mask. The masks themselves were carefully made, and were appropriate to the different characters. The costumes were conventional, kings wearing long robes and holding sceptres in their left hands, all tragic actors wearing boots with thick soles to raise them above the stature of the chorus, and all comic actors wearing low shoes without heels. The actors were, as a rule at least, slaves, but the profits of the profession were so great that a successful actor can have had but little difficulty in buying his freedom.
In Roman tragedies, as in their Greek originals, the dialogue was carried on in simple metres, mostly trochaic and iambic, and a chorus of trained singers sang between the acts, but probably took little part in the action of the play. Dialogue and song. The songs of the chorus were composed in more elaborate metres than the dialogue, and were sung to the accompaniment of the flute. In Roman comedy there was no chorus, but parts of the play were sung as solos or duets. These were called cantica, while the dialogue parts of the comedy were called diverbia.
Plays were performed at Rome on various occasions when the people were to be entertained, and the ædiles and other officials and public men vied with each other in showing their wealth and in courting popularity. Brilliancy of dramatic performances. We must, therefore, imagine, that when a play was performed in the latter part of the republican period the actors, chorus, and supernumeraries were dressed in the richest and most gorgeous costumes, and everything possible was done to add to the spectacular effect of the performance, while the audience, excited by the scene and the action, lost no opportunity of cheering their favorite actors, or hissing those who failed to please.
CHAPTER II
COMEDY
Comedy imported—Plautus, about 254 to 184 BC—Plots of Roman comedies—Extant plays of Plautus—Degree of originality in Plautus—Statius Cæcilius, birth unknown, death about 165 BC—Other comic writers—Terence, about 190 to 159 BC—Plays of Terence—Plautus and Terence compared—Turpilius, died 103 BC—Fabula togata—Titinius, about 150 BC (?)—Titus Quinctius Atta, died 77 BC—Lucius Afranius, born about 150 BC—Fescennine verses—Fabulæ Atellanæ—Pomponius and Novius, about 90 BC—Mimes—Decimus Laberius and Publilius Syrus, about 50 BC
Comedy, like tragedy, was an imported product, not an original growth, at Rome. Comedy an imported product. There had, to be sure, been improvised dialogues of more or less dramatic nature even before Livius Andronicus, but these, about which a few words will be said later, have nothing to do with the origin of Roman comedy, which is an imitation of the new Attic comedy as it existed at Athens after the time of Alexander the Great, being at its best from about 320 to about 280 BC No plays of the new Attic comedy are preserved in the original Greek, but there are fragments which supplement the knowledge we derive from the Latin imitations. The poets of the new comedy, Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and others, avoided historical and political subjects and drew their comedies from private life, finding in petty intrigues, interesting situations, and unexpected complications, some compensation for the general meagreness of the plot. This kind of play was called at Rome fabula palliata because the actors wore the pallium, or Greek costume. Another kind of comedy, in which Roman characters and scenes were represented, though even in this kind of plays the plots were derived from Greek originals, was called fabula togata, because the actors wore the Roman toga. Of this latter kind of plays only a few fragments are preserved, and it seems never to have been so popular as the fabula palliata.
Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Pacuvius, all produced comedies at Rome, as did other writers of tragedies, but of these works only scanty fragments remain. Three writers, Plautus, Cæcilius, and Terence, devoted themselves exclusively to comedy, and it is from the extant plays of the eldest and the youngest of these, Plautus and Terence, that most of our knowledge of Roman comedy is derived.
Titus Maccius Plautus (Flatfoot) was born at Sarsina, a town of Umbria, about 254 BC T. Maccius Plautus. He went to Rome while still a boy, and seems to have earned so much as a servant or assistant of actors, that he was able to leave the city and engage in trade at some other place. His business venture was a failure; he lost his money, and returned to Rome, where he hired himself out to a miller, in whose service he was when he wrote his first three plays. His first appearance with a play was probably about 224 BC Further details of his life are unknown. He died in 184 BC, at the age of about seventy years. He was, therefore, a younger contemporary of Livius Andronicus and Nævius, but older than Ennius and Pacuvius.
Of the plays of Plautus twenty are extant, besides extensive fragments of another. His total production is said to have been one hundred and thirty plays, though some of these were probably wrongly ascribed to him. The plots of his plays, as of those of Terence, are usually founded upon a love affair between a young man of good family and a girl of low position and doubtful character. The plots and characters of Roman comedies. The young man is aided by his servant or a parasite, but his father is opposed to his having anything to do with the girl. The girl’s mother or mistress usually aids the lovers, but often has to be won over by money, which the young man and his servant have to get from his father. Sometimes the characters mentioned are duplicated, and we have two pairs of lovers, two irate fathers, two cunning slaves, etc. Other typical characters are the procurer, the parasite, the boastful soldier, and a few more, who help to bring about amusing situations, and serve as the butt of many jokes. In the end, the lovers are usually united, and the girl turns out to be of good birth, often the long-lost daughter of one of the older men in the play. Sometimes other plots are chosen, as in the Amphitruo, which is founded on the story that Jupiter, when he visited Alcmene, used to take the form of her husband Amphitryon, and the fun of the play is caused by the confusion between the real husband and the disguised god. In a few plays the plot is less decidedly a love plot, but, as a general rule, the Roman comedies had love stories for their foundation. There is, however, room for considerable variety, as may be seen by a brief sketch of the contents of the extant plays of Plautus.
The Amphitruo, bringing the “Father of gods and men” into comic confusion with a mortal, and under very suspicious circumstances at that, is a burlesque, full of rather broad fun and amusing situations, perhaps the most interesting of all Latin comedies. The extant plays of Plautus. In the Asinaria, the Casina, and the Mercator, father and son are rivals for the affection of the same girl. Of these three, the Casina is the worst in its indecency, while the other two lack interest. These plays, however, like all the comedies of Plautus, are full of animal spirits, plays on words, and clever dialogue. The Aulularia, or Pot of Gold, has a plot of little interest, but is famous for the brilliant and lifelike presentation of the chief character, the old miser Euclio. The Captivi, one of the best of the plays, has for its subject the friendship between a master and his slave. There are no female characters, and the