Roman Tragedy, Introduction

Journal Prompt, 2-Apr Class

For this journal entry I'm asking you to submit brief suggestions for discussion, or questions that you'd like to see addressed — that's all!

Roman Tragedy: Guiding Question

This is a heads up for the journal prompt for the 9-Apr assignment, the Seneca Phaedra part 2 class. But it's also a guiding question for the Roman Tragedy unit as a whole. The question has to do with the following sentence quoted from the Brill's New Pauly reading linked to below:

On reading that, my own first reaction was, how's that even possible? It's tragedy, right? But then I thought, hmmm, maybe Brill's is onto something. . . .

So, what do you think Brill's New Pauly means when it says that "the content of Roman tragedy is not 'tragic' "? What assumptions seem to lie behind Brill's generalization? Does it seem a fair assessment?

Text Access, What to Read

PDFs accessed via Brightspace Course Site, "Content":

Brightspace > course site > Content

Brill's New Pauly on Roman Tragedy

Read the entire brills_new_pauly_tragedy PDF. (Baier, Thomas. "Tragedy." Brill’s New Pauly. Koninklijke Brill, 2010.)

Fragments of Early Roman Tragedy and History Drama

Read the indicated sections of the remains_of_old_latin_tragedy PDF. (Warmington, E. H. Remains of Old Latin II. Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Pacuvius and Accius. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.)

The following explains the "how" of this reading:

We're talking here about a collection of fragments, i.e., isolated quotations from ancient plays otherwise lost. On the LEFT will be the original LATIN (or Greek) TEXT, on the RIGHT will be the ENGLISH TRANSLATION. Arrows, brackets, and circles should guide you to the parts that matter and help you avoid parts that don't.

You asked are to read only the English on the right, and just the quotation part. Note that there is a lot of explanatory/contextualizing material provided. That includes:

• Comment/discussion by the translator
• Context containing the quoted passage in question

The quotations themselves (the actual passages from Latin tragedies) are in normal-size type, the other stuff, smaller. Obviously, the focus is on the quotations. But the explanatory material, though not always relevant to our purposes, can sometimes help. It's not, though, required reading.

Introduction to Rome

Rome and its empire are, it seems, much on people's minds these days. One TikToker's boyfriend confesses to thinking about them three times a day. Says he, "There's a lot to think about."

And so there is. One thing to think about is the fact that Roman culture, despite its many connections to Greek culture, was its own thing and needs to be treated as such — read on!

Historical

First, these are Romans, not Greeks. Their language was Latin, though educated Romans also knew Greek. Clearly, though, Roman interest in things Greek gained steam as a result of Roman conquests, third through first century BCE, in culturally Greek lands: southern Italy, Greece proper, the great kingdoms of the Hellenistic East. To quote the Roman poet Horace, "Captive Greece captivated its barbaric captor and brought civilization to Latin peasants" ("Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis | intulit agresti Latio," Epistles 2.1.156-157). At the same time, elements of Roman culture, things like Roman baths, gladiatorial entertainments, and Roman dining customs, spread to various provinces of the Empire.

Initially, the city, maybe better, village of Rome controlled only itself and surrounding territory. Eventually, though, Rome's empire grew to encompass virtually the entire world known to Mediterranean peoples. From Portugal to the Persian Gulf, from Britain to Egypt, Roman rule left its imprint on peoples and places that fell under its sway. All roads led to Rome, and by 212 CE, all free women and men residing within the Empire were made Roman citizens.

The idea of Rome as the Eternal City (urbs aeterna) has, over time, exerted considerable appeal, but we must not lose sight of historic developments that have a bearing on the evolution of Roman tragedy.

MONARCHIAL PERIOD: From the founding of the city (traditionally, 753 BCE) until about 512, Rome was ruled by kings

REPUBLICAN PERIOD: From about 512 until 44 BCE (the death of Julius Caesar), Rome was a republic (i.e., non-monarchy) of a basically oligarchic cast (i.e., characterized by rule by the elite few), though with democratic aspects (the people voted for officials and laws, but usually the vote was manipulated by the elite). Elected officials ("magistrates") and the Senate (senatus, "council of elders," largely made up of wealthy ex officials) administered the state; the People (populus) elected those officials and passed laws. It was during this period that Roman exposure to things Greek propelled the development of Roman literary culture.

PRINCIPATE: After a period of civil war and unsettled politics, a kind monarchy was imposed, with an emperor (princeps, imperator, Caesar, Augustus) ruling in collaboration (theoretically) with the Senate. That lasted from 27 BCE until the later third century CE. The early Principate saw the flowering of the kind of tragedy that Seneca wrote.

(With the accession of the emperor Diocletian, reigned 284-305 CE, comes full-on monarchical rule, the "dominate." Constantine's reign — 306-337 CE — saw the Empire's capital move east to Constantinople, present-day Istanbul. Constantine was the first Christian emperor, but all that lies beyond the purview of this course.)

Literary

The Romans at first seem not to have had their own, let's call it "developed" literature. But contact with, and then conquest of, Greek speaking lands rapidly spurred interest in Greek language, culture, etc. etc. The first author to write in Latin was originally no Roman at all but a Greek who ended up in Rome, one Livius Andronicus.*

* Livius is the Roman name he'll have got from a Roman patron; Andronicus (an-dro-NIGH-cus) is his original Greek name.

Livius Andronicus illustrates a pattern that, to one extent or another, underlies nearly all Roman Latin literature: that of adaptating, or drawing inspiration from, Greek models. Thus Livius wrote the first Latin epic poem, the Odyssia, which was a translation-adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. Livius also wrote tragedies and comedies that were likewise adaptations from the Greek. Successors to Livius — native Italians, though not all Romans — kept up the pattern. Among those writers, you'll be looking at Naevius and Accius. Later, that is, under the Empire, Seneca, an advisor to the emperor Nero, wrote adaptations of Greek tragedies and drew inspiration from Greek thought.

STILL, however much the Romans relied on Greek models (and their degree of reliance varied quite a bit), they made it all theirs. Thus their literature became, right from the start, a vehicle for expressing Roman values and ideas: virtue (virtus); loyalty to family, friends, and country (fidelitas, pietas); law and order (iustitia, ordo); and so on.

Roman Theater

Though Italy had various native (i.e., non-Greek) theatrical-dramatic traditions, for instance, Atellan farce, phlyax farce, and Fescennine verse, Roman theater and drama largely took the path they did on account of Greek influence. During the period of the Roman Republic and early Empire, the state, often under the direction of officials called aediles ("EE-dials"), would organize entertainments that included the staging of comedies, tragedies, and other types of drama. Particularly popular were mimes (plays featuring slapstick and burlesque, and performed by women and men without masks) and pantomimes (a solo, silent, masked performer, male or female, dances a mythological story with musical accompaniment). Performances would be scheduled for major religious/public festivals called ludi, literally, "games." (Rome did not have dramatic festivals like the Greater Dionysia in Athens.)

In similar fashion, ambitious politicians and wealthy individuals, whether to mark the passing of an important personage or to celebrate a military triumph, or just to win votes, would often sponsor popular entertainments called munera ("gifts"; singular munus). Gladiators and dramatic performance were a mainstay of these ludi and munera. Roman drama was NOT staged competitively, nor did Roman playwrights produce plays in groupings like our Athenian tetralogies. These earlier Roman playwrights were often themselves of non-Roman origin and were attached to important Romans as patrons. This is very different from the situation in 400s and 300s Athens.

In the earlier period (ca. 240-55 BCE), Roman acting troupes would typically set up wooden stages in public spaces like the Roman Forum, often with other forms of entertainment (notably, gladiators) competing for the attention of the audience. In 55 BCE, the politician and general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great") built the first permanent theater in Rome, the Theater of Pompey. Under the Empire and in cities from Spain to Syria, and France to North Africa, large and magnificently appointed outdoor theaters (we call them "theaters," not "amphitheaters") were built. These last could accommodate thousands of spectators and often boasted architecturally lavish stage backdrops. They would be multi-purpose spaces, suitable for dramatic/musical/rhetorical performances, gladiator shows, political meetings, you name it!

The performers of staged Roman comedy and tragedy would, like their Greek counterparts, regularly perform masked. They were normally all men, though see the exceptions, above, offered by mime and pantomime. Performed tragedy and comedy involved mostly the speaking of dialogue in poetic meter, but performers would also sing, as would choruses. One of the functions of choruses in Roman drama eventually became that of marking the divisions between acts.

Drama clearly had become popular among Romans, but their attitudes to theater and to acting were different from those of the Greeks. At Athens, successful performers, including actors, enjoyed considerable prestige. So, for instance, the playwright, director, and (early on in his career) actor Sophocles was elected to the office of stratēgos, "general," a signal honor for him (though we're told that he wasn't much good as a general). In the 300s BCE, the tragic actor Aeschines was an influential politician. Rome, however, considered the acting profession to be disreputable, beneath the dignity of a citizen. Thus a late Roman source pronounces "those who have gone on stage for the purpose of performing in a play or to recite" to be infames, "infamous," that is, bereft of civil rights (Digesta 3.2.1, Julian). The same applied to sex workers, pimps, and gladiators. And yet, actors and gladiators could achieve considerable fame and fortune, so much so that senators and even emperors sometimes took to the stage or even to the gladiatorial arena. So, for instance, the emperor Nero (ruled 37-68 CE) regularly gave public voice recitals and, in so doing, scandalized polite Roman society.

The same did not, however, apply to the composition of drama. Thus it was okay for Imperial-era senators like Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) and Curiatius Maternus (late first century CE) to write tragedies, which they did. It is not known if the tragedies of Seneca and contemporaries of his class were ever staged, or if they were, how they were staged, and before what sort of public. But, as C.J. Herington has brilliantly shown, early Imperial tragedy as exemplified by Seneca's plays is eminently performable and was quite plausibly experienced in live delivery stressing dramatic and rhetorical aspects.

Roman Tragedy

Subgenres

We'll talk more in class about qualitative differences between Roman and Greek tragedy; here I provide a very sketchy intro to Roman examples of same.

Roman tragedy came in two, basic varieties:

FABULA CREPIDATA, or "play wearing the Greek boot," i.e., employing plots from Greek myth and probably adapting a Greek original.

FABULA PRAETEXTA, or "play wearing the fringed toga of a Roman high official," i.e., taking its plot from Roman history, whether remote or recent.

Style and Rhetoric

Unlike its fifth-century BCE Greek counterpart, Roman tragedy was heavily influenced by the rhetorical tradition, that is, by the education in public speaking that elite men and some women received during the period of Roman domination of the Mediterranean. In the Republican period, those influences, along with others stemming from archaic Italic religious and legal formulas, produced language that was often striking in its sound, its rhythm, and its structure of thought. Consider the relentless thrumming of the "m" sound (alliteration) in the following line from Accius' Atreus:

Maior mihi moles, maius miscendumst malum.

"More moil for me! A bigger bane to brew."
(Say it with a deep, boomy voice: Remains of Old Latin II, pp. 382-383.)

One of the chief features of Roman tragic rhetoric, as of Greco-Roman rhetoric generally, was the sententia (in Greek, gnōmē), an often highly compact verbal package meant to deliver a knock-down punch — I sometimes refer to them as "notable quotables," as some of them became familiar sayings.

The most famous of those sententiae concerns a figure much loved by Roman tragedy, the tyrant king. Thus from the same play as the previous quotation comes the following, spoken by that play's tyrant protagonist, Atreus:

Oderint dum metuant.

"Let them hate so long as they fear."
(Say it with an arrogant sneer, maybe while twisting your mustache: Remains of Old Latin II, pp. 382-383.)

In just three words the Latin sums up the entire philosophy of the tyrant.

Seneca, a master of rhetoric generally, was a peerless practitioner of the sententia in his tragic poetry.

Comments on Readings

Roman Tragic Fragments ("Early Roman Tragedy," in Remains of Old Latin 2).

The first Roman tragic playwright from whom we have complete plays is Seneca, from the Imperial period. On the other hand, we know a fair amount about tragedy under the Republic. Though we only have quotations ("fragments") of varying length, several of them, striking in style and sentiment, give us a decent idea of what early Roman tragedy was about, including its themes. In reading those fragments, what themes do you see emerge? Keep in mind that the parts I want you to read are, as per above, just the quotations, in normal size print, on the right-hand (odd-numbered) pages.

Naevius Clastidium

This reading from Naevius (ca. 265-190 BCE) consists of a single line from a otherwise lost play, the Clastidium. Performed in 195 BCE (?), it described Marcus Claudius Marcellus's victory while fighting the Gallic chieftain, Viridomarus, in single combat in 222 BCE. To honor Marcellus, the Roman state granted him the privilege of dedicating Viridomarus' arms and armor to the god, Jupiter Feretrius. The items thus dedicated were referred to as the spolia opīma, the "choice spoils"; we say that Marcellus was honored with the spolia opīma.

This play illustrates fabula praetexta, a play on a Roman historical subject — here, very recent history. Naevius also wrote crepidatae (tragedies adapted from the Greek), comedies, epic, and satires ("satire" here with an "i," the ancestor of what we know as "satire").

Accius

Accius (170-ca. 95 BCE) provides our richest source of tragedy (none complete) from the Roman Republican period. Above all, he took Euripides as his model, though also Sophocles and Aeschylus. The ancients pronounced him a disertissimus poeta, a "poet of the highest eloquence." Do you detect a rhetorical element in what remains of his stuff?

Accius: Atreus

Much of the Accius material you'll read comes from his Atreus, the basic outlines to which story you'll find under the Oresteia study guide ("Feast of Thyestes"). That will, of course, be a fabula crepidata, a play on a subject drawn from Greek myth.

NOTE THAT from Accius' Atreus comes a line, "Let them hate so long as they fear!" (frag. 168, p. 383), that seems to have inspired entire passages of Seneca's Thyestes, based on the same myth, and Pseudo-Seneca's Octavia, which, like Accius' Atreus and Seneca's Thyestes, treats the theme of the tyrant and his anger. HOW, THEN, DO THESE ROMAN TREATMENTS OF TYRANNY (that includes the other plays that we'll soon be reading) DIFFER FROM THOSE OF GREEK PLAYS LIKE SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS THE KING?

Accius: Brutus

This is a praetexta, a play on a Roman historical subject, here, the Rape of Lucretia, a likely legendary event from Rome's early history, with tragic resonances and political implications. For according legend, that sexual crime precipitated the revolution leading to the overthrow of the Roman kings and their replacement by republican (non-royal) rule.

The story itself is hopelessly complicated, with multiple persons related to one another and even carrying the same name. Ahem. . . .

Tarquin the Proud, king of Rome, is fighting a war, but is made to worry that he'll lose power. His sons (all Tarquins), plus his nephew Tarquin Collatinus, wonder if their wives back home are being faithful, so they go check. Sextus Tarquin (the king's son), accompanying Tarquin Collatinus, conceives a fierce passion for his cousin's wife Lucretia, whom he rapes. Lucius Junius Brutus (another nephew of the king), who up to this point has been playing the part of a speechless simpleton (Brutus means "brute" or "mute"), along with Tarquin Collatinus and and Publius Valerius, hear of the rape and visit Lucretia. She kills herself in their presence, thereby demonstrating her virtue. But her last wish is that her husband and friends avenge her. After overthrowing the arrogant king Tarquin, Brutus and Collatinus become the first consuls of Rome.