1. The Stage
Having many gods to worship, and many provinces to milk, Rome had many holidays, once solemn with religious pageantry, now gay with secular delight. In summer many of the poor fled from the humid heat to suburban or riverside taverns or groves, drinking, dining, dancing, and loving in the open air. Those who could afford it might go to the bathing resorts that lined the western coast, or sport with the rich on Baiae’s bay. In winter it was the ambition of every caste-conscious Roman to go south, if possible to Rhegium or Tarentum, and return with a coat of tan as a certificate of class. But those who stayed in Rome found entertainment plentiful and cheap. Recitations, lectures, concerts, mimes, plays, athletic contests, prize fights, horse races, chariot races, mortal combats of men with men or beasts, not-quite-sham naval battles on artificial lakes—never was a city more bountifully amused.
In the early Empire there were in the Roman year seventy-six festival days on which ludi were performed. Of these, fifty-five were ludi scenici, devoted to plays or mimes; twenty-two were games in the circus, the stadium, or the amphitheater. The number of ludi increased until by A.D. 354 they were presented on 175 days in the year.91 This meant no growth in the Roman drama; on the contrary, the drama decayed while the stage prospered. Original dramas were now written to be read rather than played; the theater contented itself with old Roman and Greek tragedies, old Roman comedies, and mimes. Stars dominated the stage and made huge fortunes. Aesopus the tragedian, after a life of assiduous extravagance, left 20,000,000 sesterces. Roscius the comic actor made 500,000 sesterces a year and became so rich that for several seasons he acted without pay—a scorn of money that made this ex-slave the lion of aristocratic gatherings. The games of the circus and the amphitheater absorbed the interest and coarsened the taste of the public, and the Roman drama died in the arena, another martyr to Roman holidays.
Through emphasis on acting and scenery rather than plot or thought, the drama gradually yielded the stage to mimes and pantomimes. The mime contained little dialogue, chose its themes from lowly life, and relied on character sketches presented with skillful mimicry. Freedom of speech, having disappeared from the assemblies and the Forum, survived for a moment in these brief farces, when a mime would risk his head to earn applause by a double-entendre aimed at an emperor or his favorites. Caligula had an actor burned alive in the amphitheater for such an allusion.92 On the day when the parsimonious Vespasian was buried a mime imitated the obsequies. During the procession the corpse sat up and asked how much this funeral was costing the state. “Ten million sesterces,” was the answer. “Give me 100,000,” said the imperial cadaver, “and throw me into the Tiber.”93 The mime alone admitted women as actors; and as these were thereby automatically classed as prostitutes, they had nothing to lose by obscenity. On special occasions like the Floralia the audience called upon these performers to remove every garment.94 Both sexes attended these performances, as in our time. Cicero found brides there, and they found him.
By suppressing speech altogether, and raising the theme to subjects from classic literature, the pantomime (“all mimicry”) was evolved out of the mime. There was a profit in foregoing language; the polyglot population of Rome, of which a considerable part could understand only the simplest Latin, followed the action better when unburdened with words. In 21 B.C. two actors, Pylades of Cilicia and Bathyllus of Alexandria, came to Rome and introduced the pantomime—already popular in the Hellenistic East—by performing one-act plays composed only of music, action, gesture, and dance. Tired of dramas in ancient and pompous verse, Rome welcomed the new art, thrilled to the grace and skill of the actors, enjoyed the gorgeousness of their costumes, the splendor or humor of their masks, the trained and dieted perfection of their figures, the Oriental expressiveness of their hands, their quick and versatile impersonation of diverse characters, their sensuous enactment of erotic scenes. Audiences divided into frantic cliques and claques in support of rival favorites; women of high station fell in love with the actors, and pursued them with gifts and embraces, until one literally lost his head over Domitian’s wife. The pantomime gradually drove all rivals but the mime from the Roman stage. The drama succumbed to the ballet.
2. Roman Music
Such a triumph was made possible by the high development of music and the dance. Under the Republic dancing had been looked upon as disgraceful; the younger Scipio had compelled the closing of schools that taught music and dancing,95 and Cicero had remarked that “only a lunatic would dance when sober.”96 But the pantomimes made dancing a fashion, then a passion; nearly every private home, says Seneca, had a dancing platform, echoing to the feet of men and women; rich households now had a dancing master, as well as a chef and a philosopher, as part of their equipment. As practiced in Rome the dance involved the rhythmical movement of the hands and the upper body even more than of legs and feet. Women cultivated the art not only for its own attractiveness, but because it gave them flexibility and grace.
The Romans loved music only less than power, money, women, and blood. Like nearly everything else in Rome’s cultural life, her music came from Greece and had to fight its way against a conservatism that identified art with degeneration. In 115 B.C.. the censors had forbidden the playing of any instrument except the short Italian flute. A century later the elder Seneca still considered music unmanly; but meanwhile Varro had devoted a book to De Musica, and this treatise, together with its Greek sources, became the support of many Roman works on musical theory.97 Finally the rich and sensuous Greek modes and instruments won the day over Roman awkwardness and simplicity, and music became a regular element in the education of women, and frequently of men. By A.D. 50 it had captured all classes and sexes; men as well as women spent whole days in hearing, composing, or singing airs; at last even emperors climbed and descended scales, and the philosophic Hadrian, as well as the effeminate Nero, was proud of his skill on the lyre. Lyric poetry was intended to be sung with music, and music was seldom composed except for poetry; ancient music was subordinated to the verse, whereas with us the music tends to overwhelm the words. Choral music was popular and was frequently heard at weddings, games, religious ceremonies, and funerals. Horace was deeply moved by the sight and sound of youths and maidens singing his carmen saeculare. In such choruses all the voices sang the same note, though in different octaves; part singing was apparently unknown.
The basic instruments were the flute and the lyre. Our wind and string orchestras are still variations of these forms: the most heroic symphony is a judicious combination of puffing, plucking, scraping, and beating. The flute accompanied drama and was supposed to arouse emotion; the lyre attended song and was expected to elevate the soul. The flute was long, had many openings, and a greater range of expression than the modern instrument. The lyre and the cithara were like our harp, but took a greater variety of shapes. Among the Greeks they had been of modest size, but the Romans magnified them until Ammianus described citharas “as large as carriages”;98 in general the Roman instruments, like ours, improved upon earlier ones chiefly in sonorousness and size. The strings of the lyre were made of gut or sinew and numbered up to eighteen; they were plucked with a plectrum or with the fingers—which alone could execute the quicker runs. From Alexandria, early in the first century, came the hydraulic organ, with several registers, stops, and orders of pipes. Nero fell in love with it, and the calm Quintilian was impressed by its versatility and power.
Formal concerts were given, and musical contests played a part in some public games. Even modest dinners required a bit of music; Martial promises his guest at least a flute player;99 as for Trimalchio’s feast, the tables are wiped in rhythm with song. Caligula had an orchestra and a chorus on his pleasure boat. At the pantomimes symphoniae were performed—i.e., a chorus sang and danced to the accompaniment of an orchestra. Sometimes the actor would sing the solo parts, sometimes a professional singer (cantor) sang the words while the actor gestured or danced. It was not unheard of for a pantomime to be accompanied by 3000 singers and 3000 dancers.100 The orchestra was led by flutes, aided by lyres, cymbals, pipes, trumpets, “syringes,” and scabella—boards fastened to the players’ feet and capable of producing a pandemonium even more frightful than that of a modern orchestra at the height of its powers. Seneca mentions harmony in the playing of individuals,101 but there is no sign that ancient orchestras used harmony contrapuntally. The accompaniment was usually on a higher note than the song, but it did not, so far as we know, pursue a distinct sequence.
Virtuosi were plentiful and minor performers abounded. Talent converged from all provinces upon the center of the world’s gold, while the institution of slavery permitted the training of choruses and orchestras on a large but inexpensive scale. Many rich establishments had their own musicians, and sent the most promising to famous teachers for advanced instruction. Some became citharoedi and gave concerts in which they sang and played the lyre; some specialized in singing, usually composing their own songs; some gave concerts on the organ or the flute like Cannus, who boasted, in the style of Beethoven, that his music could alleviate sorrow, increase joy, elevate piety, and fan the flame of love.102 These professionals went on extended concert tours throughout the Empire, earning plaudits, fees, public monuments, and infatuations; some, says Juvenal, sold their love for an added honorarium.103 Women fought for the plectra with which famous players had touched the strings, and offered sacrifice at the altars for the victory of their musical favorites in the Neronian and Capitoline games. We can faintly picture the imposing scene when musicians and poets from all the realm competed before great throngs, and the breathless winners received the crown of oak leaves from the emperor’s hands.
We do not know enough of Roman music to describe its quality. Apparently it was louder, fuller, wilder than the Greek; a weird Oriental quality had entered it from Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria. Old men mourned that recent composers were abandoning the restraint and dignity of the classic style, and were disordering the soul and nerves of youth with extravagant airs and noisy instruments. Certainly no people ever loved music more. The songs of the stage were caught up by a lively and volatile populace and rang through the streets and windows of Rome; the complex airs of the pantomimes were so fondly remembered that devotees could tell from the first notes of a strain to what play and scene it belonged. Rome made no real contribution to music, except perhaps through the better organization of performers into larger groups. But it honored music with exuberant usage and resilient response; it gathered the musical heritage of the ancient world into its temples, theaters, and homes; and when it passed it left to the Church the instruments and elements of the music that moves and deepens us today.
3. The Games
Now that war seemed banished, the great games were the most exciting event of the Roman year. They took place chiefly in celebration of religious festivals—of the Great Mother, of Ceres, of Flora, of Apollo, of Augustus; they might be the “Plebeian Games” to appease the plebs, or “Roman Games” in honor of the city and its goddess Roma; they might be offered in connection with triumphs, candidacies, elections, or imperial birthdays; they might, like the ludi saeculares, commemorate some cycle in Roman history. Like the games of Achilles in honor of Patroclus, those of Italy had originally been offered as a sacrifice to dead men. At the funeral of Brutus Pera in 264 B.C. his sons gave a “spectacle” of three duels; at the funeral of Marcus Lepidus in 216 B.C.. twenty-two combats were fought; and in 174 B.C.. Titus Flaminius celebrated his father’s death with gladiatorial games in which seventy-four men fought.
The simplest public games were athletic contests, usually held in a stadium. The performers, mostly professionals and aliens, ran foot races, threw the discus, wrestled, and boxed. The Roman public, accustomed to sanguinary gladiatorial exhibitions, only mildly favored athletics, but relished the prize fights in which massive Greeks fought almost to the death with gloves reinforced at the knuckles with an iron band three quarters of an inch thick. The gentle Virgil describes a milder pugilistic feast in almost modern terms:
Then the son of Anchises brought out hide gloves of equal weight, and bound the hands of the antagonists. . . . Each took his stand, poised on tiptoe and raising one arm. . . . Drawing their heads back from the blows they spar, hand against hand. They aim many hard blows, wildly pummeling each other’s sides and chests, ears and brows and cheeks, making the air resound with their strokes. . . . Entellus puts forth his right; Dares slips aside in a nimble dodge. . . . Entellus furiously drives Dares headlong over the arena, redoubling his blows, now with the right hand, now with the left. . . . Then Aeneas put an end to the fray, Dares’ mates led him to the ships with his knees shaking, his head swaying from side to side, his mouth spitting teeth and blood.104
Still more exciting were the races at the Circus Maximus. On two successive days forty-four races were run, some of horses and jockeys, some of light two-wheeled chariots drawn by two, three, or four horses abreast. The cost was met by rival stables owned by rich men; the jockeys, drivers, and chariots of each stable were costumed or painted in distinctive colors-white, green, red, or blue; and all Rome, as the time for these contests approached, divided into factions named from these colors, and particularly the red and the green. At home, in school, at lectures, in the forums, half the talk was about favorite jockeys and charioteers; their pictures were everywhere, their victories were announced in the Acta Diurna; some of them made great fortunes, some had statues raised to them in public squares. On the appointed day 180,000 men and women moved in festive colors to the enormous hippodrome. Enthusiasm rose to a mania. Excited partisans smelled the dung of the animals to assure themselves that the horses of their favorite drivers had been properly fed.105 The spectators passed by the shops and brothels that lined the outer walls; they filed through hundreds of entrances and sorted themselves with the sweat of anxiety into the great horseshoe of seats. Vendors sold them cushions, for the seats were mostly of hard wood, and the program would last all day. Senators and other dignitaries had special seats of marble, ornamented with bronze. Behind the imperial box was a suite of luxurious rooms, where the emperor and his family might eat, drink, rest, bathe, and sleep. Gambling was feverish, and fortunes passed from hand to hand as the day advanced. From openings under the stands emerged the horses, the jockeys and drivers, and the chariots; and each faction shook the stands with applause as its favorite color appeared. The charioteers, mostly slaves, wore bright tunics and shining helmets; in one hand was a whip, and in their belts a knife to cut, in accident, the traces tied to their waists. Along the middle of the elliptical arena ran the spina (“thorn,” “spine”), an island a thousand feet long, adorned with statues and obelisks; at one end were the metae (“measures”), circular pillars that served as goals. The usual length of a chariot race was seven circuits, about five miles. The test of skill lay in making the turns at the goals as swiftly and sharply as safety would allow; collisions were frequent there, and men, chariots, and animals mingled in fascinating tragedy. As the horses or chariots clattered to the final post the hypnotized audience rose like a swelling sea, gesticulated, waved handkerchiefs, shouted and prayed, groaned and cursed, or exulted in almost supernatural ecstasy. The applause that greeted the winner could be heard far beyond the limits of the city.
The most stupendous of all the spectacles offered at Roman celebrations was the sham naval battle. The first large naumachia was given by Caesar in a basin excavated for the purpose on the outskirts of the city. Augustus marked the dedication of his temple to Mars the Avenger by presenting 3000 fighters in a replica of the battle of Salamis on an artificial lake 1800 by 1200 feet. Claudius, as already noted, celebrated the completion of the Fucine tunnel with a conflict of triremes and quadriremes involving 19,000 men. They fought with a disappointing courtesy, and soldiers had to be sent among them to ensure a proper shedding of blood.106 At the dedication of the Colosseum Titus had its arena flooded, and reproduced that battle of the Corinthians and Corcyreans which had brought on the Peloponnesian War. The combatants in these engagements were war captives or condemned criminals. They butchered one another until one side or the other was killed off; the victors, if they had cut bravely, might be granted freedom.
The games reached their climax in the contests of animals and gladiators in the amphitheater—after Vespasian, in the Colosseum. The arena was an immense wooden floor strewn with sand; parts of this floor could be lowered and then quickly raised with a change of scene; and at brief notice the whole floor could be covered with water. Large chambers beneath it held the animals, machines, and men scheduled for the program of the day. Just above the arena’s guard wall was a podium or marble terrace on whose ornate seats sat senators, priests, and high officials; above this was the suggestum, a high loge where the emperor and empress sat on thrones of ivory and gold, surrounded by their family and retinue. Behind this aristocratic circle sat the equestrian order, in twenty tiers of seats. A lofty intervening wall, decorated with statuary, separated the upper orders from the lower classes in the stands above. Any free person, male or female, could come, and apparently no admission was charged. The crowd took advantage of the emperor’s presence, here and at the circus, to shout its wishes to him—for the pardon of a prisoner or a fallen fighter, the emancipation of a courageous slave, the appearance of favorite gladiators, or some minor reform. From the topmost wall awnings could be unrolled to the arena railing to shade such parts of the assemblage as might suffer from the sun. Here and there fountains threw up jets of scented water to cool the air. When noon came most of the spectators hurried below to eat lunch; concessionaires were on hand to sell them food and sweets and drinks. On occasion the entire multitude might be fed by the order and bounty of the emperor, or dainties and presents might be scattered among the scrambling crowd. If, as sometimes occurred, contests were presented at night, a circle of lights could be lowered over the arena and the spectators. Bands of musicians performed in the interludes and accompanied the crises of the combats with exciting crescendo strains.
The simplest event in the amphitheater was an exhibition of exotic animals. Gathered from all the known world, elephants, lions, tigers, crocodiles, hippopotami, lynxes, apes, panthers, bears, boars, wolves, giraffes, ostriches, stags, leopards, antelopes, and rare birds were kept in the zoological gardens of emperors and rich men, and were trained to skillful exploits or merry pranks; apes were taught to ride dogs, drive chariots, or act in plays; bulls let boys dance on their backs; sea lions were conditioned to bark in answer to their individual names; elephants danced to cymbals struck by other elephants, or they walked a rope, or sat down to table, or wrote Greek or Latin letters. Animals might be merely paraded in bright or humorous costumes; usually, however, they were made to fight one another, or with men, or they were hunted to death with arrows and javelins. In one day, under Nero, 400 tigers fought with bulls and elephants; on another day, under Caligula, 400 bears were slain; at the dedication of the Colosseum 5000 animals died.107 If the animals wished to compromise they were stung to combat by lashes, darts, and hot irons. Claudius made a division of the Praetorian Guard fight panthers; Nero made them fight 400 bears and 300 lions.108
Combats of a bull with a man, long popular in Crete and Thessaly, were introduced into Rome by Caesar and were a frequent spectacle in the amphitheater.109 Condemned criminals, sometimes dressed in skins to resemble animals, were thrown to beasts made ravenous for the occasion; death in such cases came with all possible agony, and wounds were so deep that physicians used such men to study internal anatomy. All the world knows the story of Androcles, the runaway slave; captured, he was flung into the arena with a lion; but this lion, we are told, remembered that Androcles had once drawn a thorn from its paw, and refused to injure him. Androcles was pardoned, and made a living by exhibiting his civilized lion in taverns.110 The condemned man was sometimes required to play in no make-believe way some famous tragic role: he might represent Medea’s rival, and be garbed in a handsome robe that would suddenly burst into flame and consume him; he might be burned to death on a pyre as Heracles; he might (if we may believe Tertullian) be publicly castrated as Atys; he might play Mucius Scaevola and hold his hand over burning coals until it was shriveled up; he might be Icarus and fall from the sky into no merciful ocean but a crowd of wild beasts; he might be Pasiphaë, and bear the embraces of a bull. One victim was dressed as Orpheus; he was sent with his lyre into an arena set as a pleasant grove of trees and brooks; suddenly hungry animals emerged from recesses and tore him to pieces.111 Laureolus, a robber, was crucified in the arena for the amusement of the populace; but as he took too long in dying, a bear was brought in and was persuaded to eat him, piece by piece, as he hung upon the cross. Martial describes the spectacle with fascination and approval.112
The supreme events were the combats of armed men, in duels or en masse. The contestants were war captives, condemned criminals, or disobedient slaves. The right of victors to slaughter their prisoners was generally accepted throughout antiquity, and the Romans thought themselves generous in giving captives a chance for their lives in the arena. Men convicted of capital crimes were brought to Rome from all parts of the Empire, were sent to gladiatorial schools, and soon appeared in the games. If they fought with exceptional bravery they might win immediate freedom; if they merely survived they had to fight again and again as holidays recurred; if they lasted three years they were released into slavery; if then they satisfied their masters for two years they were freed. Crimes entailing condemnation to a gladiatorial career were limited to murder, robbery, arson, sacrilege, and mutiny, but sedulous governors responsive to imperial needs might override these restrictions if the arena ran short of men.113 Even knights and senators might be sentenced to fight as gladiators, and sometimes a passion for applause led members of the equestrian order to offer themselves as volunteers. Not a few men, under the lure of adventure and danger, enlisted in the gladiatorial schools.
Such schools had existed in Rome as early as 105 B.C.. Under the Empire there were four of them there, several more in Italy, and one in Alexandria. Rich men, in Caesar’s day, had their own schools for preparing slaves to be gladiators. They used the graduates as bodyguards in peace and as aides in war, hired them out to fight at private banquets, and lent them to the games. On entering a professional gladiatorial school many a novice took an oath “to suffer himself to be whipped with rods, burned with fire, and killed with steel.”114 Training and discipline were rigorous; diet was supervised by physicians, who prescribed barley to develop muscle; violation of rules was punished by scourging, branding, and confinement in chains. Not all of these candidates for death were discontented with their lot. Some were elated with victories and thought of their prowess rather than their peril; some complained that they were not allowed to fight often enough;115 such men hated Tiberius for giving so few games. They had the stimulus and consolation of fame; their names were daubed by admirers upon public walls; women fell in love with them, poets sang of them, painters portrayed them, sculptors carved for posterity their iron biceps and terrifying frowns. Many, however, were despondent at their imprisonment, their brutalizing routine, and their brief expectation of life. Several committed suicide; one by stuffing his throat with a sponge used to clean privies, another by inserting his head between the spokes of a moving wheel, several by hara-kiri in the arena.116
On the eve of their combat they were given a rich banquet. The rougher ones ate and drank heartily; others took sad leave of their wives and children; those who were Christians joined in a last agapé, or “supper of love.” The next morning they entered the arena in festal dress and paraded from one end of it to the other. They were usually armed with swords, or spears, or knives, and armored with bronze helmets, shields, shoulderplates, breastplates, and greaves. They were classified according to their weapons: retiarii, who entangled their opponents with nets and dispatched them with daggers; secutores, skilled in pursuit with shield and sword; laqueatores, slingshooters; dimachae, with a short sword in each hand; essedarii, who fought in chariots; bestiarii, who contended with beasts. Besides these enterprises the gladiators engaged in duels, in pairs or in groups. If a dueler in a single combat was seriously wounded, the provider of the games asked the spectators for their will; they held thumbs up—or waved handkerchiefs—as signs of mercy, or turned thumbs down (pollice verso) to signify that the victor was to kill the defeated forthwith.117 Any combatant who betrayed a reluctance to die aroused the resentment of the people and was prodded to bravery by hot irons.118 Richer slaughter was furnished by mass battles in which thousands of men fought with desperate ferocity. In the eight spectacles given by Augustus 10,000 men took part in such wholesale conflicts. Attendants in the garb of Charon probed the fallen with sharp rods to see if they were feigning death, and killed such actors with mallet blows on the head. Other attendants, dressed like Mercury, dragged the bodies away with hooks, while Moorish slaves gathered up the bloodied ground in shovels and spread fresh sand for the next death.
Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war. Juvenal, who denounced everything else, left the games unscathed; the younger Pliny, a highly civilized man, praised Trajan for providing spectacles that impel men “to noble wounds and the scorn of death”;119 and Tacitus reflected that the blood spilled in the arena was in any case vilis sanguis—the “cheap gore” of common men.120 Cicero was revolted by the slaughter; “what entertainment,” he asks, “can possibly arise, to a refined and humanized spirit, from seeing a noble beast struck to the heart by its merciless hunter, or one of our own weak species cruelly mangled by an animal of far greater strength?” But, he added, “when guilty men are compelled to fight, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye.”121 Seneca, dropping in at the games during the noon recess, when most of the assemblage had left for luncheon, was shocked to see hundreds of criminals driven into the arena to amuse the remaining audience with their blood.
I come home more greedy, more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings. By chance I attended a midday exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation . . . whereby men’s eyes may have respite from the slaughter of their fellow men. But it was quite the contrary. . . . These noon fighters are sent out with no armor of any kind; they are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. . . . In the morning they throw men to the lions; at noon they throw them to the spectators. The crowd demands that the victor who has slain his opponent shall face the man who will slay him in turn; and the last conqueror is reserved for another butchering. . . . This sort of thing goes on while the stands are nearly empty. . . . Man, a sacred thing to man, is killed for sport and merriment.122