INTRODUCTION
Originating, as its name implies, from the Campanian city of Atella, the fabulae Atellanae are often considered to be one of the few native dramatic traditions of ancient Italy, although they were probably influenced by the strong dramatic tradition of Magna Graecia and Sicily.Footnote 1 Originally performed in Oscan, they usually consisted of short comic plays with a small cast of stock characters, generally four (Maccus the stupid man, Bucco the brawler, Dossennus the cunning hunchback and Pappus the old man), easily identified by their characteristic masks.Footnote 2 Featuring possibly coarse and vivid language and portraying low-life situations, Atellan plays might have been introduced in Rome shortly after Atella fell within the Roman sphere of influence in 313 b.c.: now performed in Latin, Atellan farce quickly became a favourite of the public, and by the late third century b.c. it was already exerting a considerable influence on Plautine comedy.Footnote 3
Being short and light-hearted, Atellan plays were usually performed as an afterpiece (exodium) to tragedies,Footnote 4 and this may have been a reason why late antique grammarians occasionally compared them to Attic satyr plays.Footnote 5 Additionally, at the beginning of the first century b.c., a period of decline of the fabula palliata but also an era of experimentation with new forms of drama, some playwrights tried to revive Atellan farce, conferring a literary status on it.Footnote 6 Thus L. Pomponius of Bononia and Novius were credited with the creation of a new literary form of Atellana, although only 115 titles along with some 320 verses have survived, mostly preserved by grammarians interested in the linguistic features of the plays in question.Footnote 7 The title of one of the fabulae Atellanae written by Novius, Exodium, suggests that these more elaborate plays were nevertheless performed as exodia, probably consisting of short pieces as well. It is impossible to know to what extent these new literary creations differed from the traditional Atellana, but the extant fragments of Pomponius and Novius allow us an insight into the coarse humour of the genre. In the same period, even some members of the Roman aristocracy devoted their leisure not only to watching Atellan plays but also to writing them: the dictator Sulla is said to have composed, probably during his retirement in Capua, some σατυρικαὶ κωμῳδίαι in Latin, most likely Atellan plays (Nicolaus Damascenus apud Ath. Deipn. 261c = FGH 2.95, fr. 75 Jacoby).Footnote 8 We might have news of yet another Atellan playwright in the first half of the first century b.c.: a much-discussed passage from Varro's De lingua Latina reproduces a line from an otherwise unknown Aprissius, which might come from an Atellan play (Varro, Ling. 6.68 io bucco! :: quis me iubilat? :: uicinus tuus antiquus!).Footnote 9
In a letter written in 55 b.c. Cicero shows that Atellan farce was still performed in Rome (Cic. Fam. 7.1.3), although at the same time the genre started to suffer from the intense competition of mime, which by 46 b.c. was replacing the Atellana in exodia (Cic. Fam. 9.16.7). Mime was also undergoing a similar process to that experienced by Atellan farce a few decades earlier, as the mimographers Decimus Laberius and Publilius were attempting to raise it to the category of a literary genre; the popularity of mime would further increase to the point of dominating, together with the newly renovated form of pantomime, the Graeco-Roman stage in the centuries to come.Footnote 10 This was a slow development, however, since numerous sources clearly demonstrate the continuity of Atellan plays in the first century a.d., when new playwrights are documented: an anonymous writer executed by Caligula for an excessively ambiguous verse and a certain Mummius, of whom only three fragments have survived.Footnote 11 The latter is said to have revived the genre after a period of decline since the days of Pomponius and Novius; when Mummius lived is unknown, perhaps in the Age of Augustus, who, according to Frassinetti, might have tried to revive the genre as part of his restoration of Italic traditions, or perhaps later, under the Julio-Claudians, as Bardon preferred.Footnote 12 More importantly, many Atellana performances, both on public stages and in private houses, are still attested in the first century a.d., which shows the favour still enjoyed by the Oscum … ludicrum, leuissimae apud uulgum oblectationis, as Tacitus describes Atellan farce (Tac. Ann. 4.14).Footnote 13 That it was considered to be popular entertainment as opposed to higher drama is also to be inferred from Petronius’ Satyricon: Trimalchio, having recently bought a company of comic actors, confesses that he makes them perform Atellan farces nevertheless (Petron. Sat. 53.13); later, a slave boy recites the Aeneid but mistakenly mixes in some Atellan verses, much to the narrator's dismay (Petron. Sat. 68.4–5).Footnote 14
References to public performances of fabulae Atellanae are also attested in the last decades of the first century a.d.: Juvenal alludes to Atellan plays still staged under Domitian as exodia, although not in Rome, where mime and pantomime had by then become the main form of entertainment, but in the Italian countryside.Footnote 15 By the second century a.d. the Atellana must have experienced a serious decline, since references to this sort of entertainment virtually disappear. Pliny the Younger, who frequently alludes to performances or recitations of New Comedy, mime and pantomime in banquets, never mentions Atellan farce.Footnote 16 Perhaps he felt that the Atellana did not reach the literary quality and the moral appeal of New Comedy and it is possible that it was relegated as a curiosity of an earlier era; the Historia Augusta reports that Hadrian always presented in banquets, according to circumstances, tragoedias, comoedias, Atellanas, sambucas, lectores, poetas (HA, Hadr. 26.4), but given the emperor's antiquarian tastes it is likely that the Atellan pieces alluded to in this passage are the literary plays of Pomponius and Novius rather than the vulgar non-literary plays that were once so beloved of the public. Similarly, in a letter to his teacher Fronto written in a.d. 143, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius explains that he spent many days studying theatrical plays, including the Nouianae Atellaniolae, ‘the short Atellan farces of Novius’; undoubtedly, the young prince was looking at them as a collection of texts of a bygone dramatic genre, full of linguistic curiosities, such as the Scipionis oratiunculae to which he also devoted his time (Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 2.8.3, page 29 van den Hout2). In doing so, Marcus Aurelius was following the advice of his teacher, who suggested that he should study the plays of Pomponius and Novius as part of his rhetorical training (Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 4.3.2, page 57 van den Hout2).Footnote 17 The Atellana continued to be studied at least in the second half of the second century a.d.: Apuleius’ familiarity with its stock characters in his Apology, where he calls his opponents Macci and Buccones (Apul. Apol. 81.4), most probably came from the study of literary plays rather than from attending stage performances.
In the third and fourth centuries a.d., however, references to Atellan plays occur mostly in the works of grammarians, whose vague remarks reveal a lack of direct knowledge of the genre, perhaps with the exception of the erudite Nonius Marcellus, who seems to have had at least a number of plays by Pomponius and Novius in his library.Footnote 18 When other authors mention Atellan farce, it is usually in connection with mime, which by then had already superseded it (Tert. De spect. 17.2; Arn. Adu. nat. 7.33; Jer. Ep. 52.2);Footnote 19 that this genre would eventually be forgotten and equated to mime is also suggested by some glossaries that define Atellana actors (Atellani) as mimes (CGL 5.441.49; 5.492.11; 5.563.3 Atellanus mimus theatralis; 5.342.11 Atellanus uel mimus histrio), as well as by the glossary of Ps.-Philoxenus (CGL 2.22.40–2 Atellani σκηνικοί, ἀρχαιολόγοι, βιολόγοι, the last two terms being technical denominations for specializations of mime).Footnote 20
Literary sources do not contribute much to our knowledge of individual actors: the only named Atellani are Datus, who dared mock the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina the Younger in front of Nero and was consequently exiled (Suet. Ner. 39), and Urbicus, mentioned by Juvenal (Juv. 6.71).Footnote 21 However, Livy's famous excursus on the origins of drama in Rome offers some extremely interesting remarks on the status of Atellani in his time (Livy 7.2); according to the historian, a major difference between the Atellana and other dramatic genres in Rome was that the former was staged from its beginnings by amateur actors from among the youth of Rome and that, consequently, since they were not tainted by professional performers, the Atellani were still in Livy's day the only actors who were not considered infames and thus were not excluded from service in the army nor were they removed from their tribe.Footnote 22 Reproduced by Valerius Maximus as well (Val. Max. 2.4.4), Livy's statement that the Atellani enjoyed some sort of special consideration stands in stark contrast to the situation of other stage performers, usually slaves or freedmen subjected to infamia.Footnote 23 Moreover, according to Festus, Atellana actors were the only performers allowed to keep their mask on after the show had ended so as to conceal their identity and preserve their honour (Festus, page 238 Lindsay).Footnote 24 In spite of this, it is clear, as will be shown below, that Atellana actors gradually became more professionalized and that by the first century a.d. some of the privileges that the Atellani had enjoyed seem to have disappeared.
THE EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
In dealing with Atellan farce, most attention, as is natural, has been devoted to the extant fragments and to information preserved by literary sources, but inscriptions concerning this sort of entertainment have largely been neglected.Footnote 25 Only F. Pezzella has recently attempted to collect some of the available epigraphic material in a broader study centred on ancient Atella and its inhabitants, whereas G.L. Gregori in a paper on the denominations of actors in Latin has focussed only on the epigraphic evidence from Rome.Footnote 26 However, attention to inscriptions has proved to be of great use in the study of other non-traditional dramatic genres, such as mime or pantomime, for which unfortunately no complete play or libretto has survived.Footnote 27 Epigraphic sources offer relevant information about these genres (for example geographical and chronological spread, artistic specialization and organization of the performers), and a similar approach might be adopted regarding the Atellana.Footnote 28 Nevertheless, the amount of epigraphic evidence for the Atellana is unfortunately much more limited than that for other genres, but it is still useful for our understanding of its development and for our knowledge of the status of the Atellani in the Imperial period. It must be noted, though, that, when dealing with epigraphic material concerning any sort of dramatic entertainment, we are faced with some limitations: inscriptions do not usually offer new readings to already known lines or even new fragments (with some lucky exceptions),Footnote 29 but they normally refer to performers or playwrights at the most, which still constitutes precious testimony for the theatrical culture of the period. Additionally, it is not always easy to identify Atellana actors, since some of the terms by which they were referred to were also used in other contexts as cognomina or as demonyms. That is the case of the term Atellanus, which is usually employed to indicate an Atellana performer but can also state someone's provenance from Atella (see TLL 2.1016.37–58). The word occurs on a marble slab from Rome, dated to the first half of the first century a.d. and now preserved in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Naples (CIL 6.26806 = ILS 5218 = EDR 141563; see fig. 1):Footnote 30
Fig. 1. Inscription of C. Statius Gemellus (image courtesy of the Ministerio della Cultura – Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli)
This funerary inscription, most probably from a columbarium, was set up for the Atellanus C. Statius Gemellus. The lack of any further information about the deceased makes it uncertain whether Gemellus was an actor of the Atellana or whether he simply came from Atella.Footnote 31 It is interesting to note that, although his patronymic is omitted, Gemellus was probably a freedman: the woman who erected the inscription, Villia Secunda, refers to Gemellus as her contubernalis, a term usually employed by slaves rather than by an uxor. If he were an Atellana actor, he could hardly have formed part of the freeborn Roman iuuentus mentioned by Livy but must have been a professional performer.Footnote 32
The word Atellanus may also appear on a Greek fragmentary stele dated to the second or third century a.d., found in Athens, near the Asklepieion and the Theatre of Dionysus, now preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (IG 22.2986):
Consisting of what appears to be a list of participants in some sort of dramatic festival, it was considered to belong to the same stele as IG 3.1280c, which also contains a list of names, including those of two κωμῳδοί, one ἀρχαιολόγος and two παρῳδοί, although this was later convincingly rejected by J. Robert and L. Robert.Footnote 33 In line 4, the inscription mentions what seems to be an Ἀτελλανός; it is possible that it is a personal nameFootnote 34 or perhaps an indication of provenance, but an allusion to an Atellana actor can safely be excluded on the grounds of the dating of the inscription and the setting in which it was found, in a Greek-speaking context where Atellan farces could hardly have been staged.Footnote 35
Luckily, other inscriptions offer fewer doubts in relation to possible associations with Atellan farce. Among these, there is a fragmentary marble slab from Labici, Latium, now unfortunately lost, although a squeeze was made before its disappearance. The text can be dated to the first or second century a.d. on palaeographic grounds (CIL 14.2771 = CLE 236 = EDR 158269; see fig. 2):Footnote 36
Fig. 2. Cast of the metrical inscription of an anonymous Atellanus (image courtesy of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum, EC0008094).
Most likely a funerary inscription, it contains the remains of a metrical text, probably in hexameters. H. Dessau suggested in CIL the following reconstruction:
Given the state of the inscription, any reconstruction should be treated with caution (for instance CLE line 5 [- - - ips]ẹ caestata can[ebat - - -], line 6 [- - -] comica Atella[nica - - -]), but it is clear that it refers to a stage artist who performed in Atellan farces. Whether he was an actor, a playwright or rather an accompanying musician, as is perhaps suggested in line 4 by musicis, is unknown, but the inscription serves as a reminder of the importance of music in the Atellana at least in the Imperial era.Footnote 37
Apart from the term Atellanus, Atellana actors could also be referred to by the character that they usually played. Some inscriptions also attest to this habit, although a cautious approach is again needed. The most relevant inscription is another marble slab, dated to the first century a.d., discovered in the catacombs of SS Gordianus and Epimachus in Rome, where it had been reused, and now set in the walls of the portico of Santa Maria in Trastevere (CIL 6.10105 = ILS 5219 = CLE 823 = EDR 108850; see fig. 3):Footnote 38
Fig. 3. Epitaph of the Maccus M. Annaeus Longinus (image courtesy of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Segreteria parrocchiale).
This funerary inscription marked the resting place of two individuals, M. Annaeus Longinus and C. Gavius Primigenius. It is uncertain how the latter, a seven-year-old child, is related to the former; Primigenius, to whom the elegiac couplet in lines 5–6 is addressed, may have been fostered by Longinus, who perhaps had married the child's mother. What is relevant to us, however, is that Longinus is referred to as Maccus, that is, an Atellana actor specializing in playing this well-known character. Interestingly, his patronymic indicates that Longinus was freeborn, which made Gregori suggest that he was one of the amateur actors alluded to by Livy. However, although a significant number of stage performers in ancient Rome were certainly slaves or freedmen, the epigraphic material shows that freeborn professional actors were not exceptionally rare.Footnote 39 In addition to this, the tribe to which Longinus belonged, the Esquiline, also suggests a professional rather than an amateur theatrical involvement. In spite of being the least attested of the urban tribes, with only about ten known individuals ascribed to it, five members of the Esquiline tribe were clearly associated with the stage: Longinus himself, the patron of a mime-actress (CIL 6.10107), an actor tertiarum partium (CIL 6.10103), a manu[ductor (?)] scaenae Latinae (AE 1926, 51) and a singer (CIL 6.10097). Mommsen therefore suggested that the Esquiline was the tribe to which actors and other individuals with dishonourable professions marked by infamia were displaced.Footnote 40 If so, Longinus can hardly have been an amateur actor; he may rather have been a professional performer, and this possibility is perhaps also suggested by the fact that the inscription explicitly states that he was a Maccus, something improbable if he were an amateur artist, but understandable if that were his profession. The situation described by Livy must consequently have changed in the first century a.d., revealing an increasing professionalization of Atellan farce possibly owing to the evolution of the genre from a sort of improvised occasional entertainment to more complex and frequently represented plays, a change perhaps induced by the innovations presented by the literary Atellana. This process probably had already taken place at least by the reign of Tiberius, who expelled the histriones from Italy because of the excesses of Atellana actors (Tac. Ann. 4.14); the measure must have been aimed at professional actors, as the word histrio implies, rather than at amateur performers.
There are other inscriptions possibly alluding to the remaining roles of Atellan farce, although they are more problematic. A graffito from a Pompeian house (CIL 4.10041a, Reg. II, ins. 2) bears the following text:
The word, written in the vocative case, alludes to a Dossennus, perhaps a nickname based on the familiar character from Atellan plays, as the CIL suggests, or perhaps it is simply a cognomen referring to a physical trait of its bearer.Footnote 41 In fact, the only inscription that can safely be attributed to an Atellana actor that specialized in portraying the Dossennus has been transmitted by Seneca the Younger, who preserved the first line of an interesting epitaph (Sen. Ep. 89.7):
sapientia est quam Graeci ‘sophian’ uocant. hoc uerbo Romani quoque utebantur, sicut philosophia nunc quoque utuntur, quod et togatae tibi antiquae probabunt et inscriptus Dossenni monumento titulus:
The line, a senarius, must have been the first verse of a metrical epitaph from Rome dated at the latest to the beginning of the first century a.d.Footnote 42 In the poem, the deceased (or perhaps the tomb itself) addresses the passer-by with a fitting adaptation of a well-known commonplace in funerary poems; instead of being asked to read the titulus, the traveller is requested to read the ‘wise words of a Dossennus’, which would have been inscribed below, most likely an invitation to enjoy life.Footnote 43 The poem might have contained other allusions to the profession of this anonymous actor, but, if that were the case, they were unfortunately omitted by Seneca.
Regarding another typical character from the fabulae Atellanae, the Bucco, in 1749 a group of fifteen plaster theatrical masks was found in Pompeii, in what has been considered to be a workshop where these stage props were produced, although it is unclear whether they were intended for the stage or for decorative purposes.Footnote 44 The masks, which were perhaps made as templates for the artisans in the workshop or to be shown to potential customers, belong to different dramatic genres: two of them are clearly pantomime masks, as their closed mouths show, while others have been ascribed to tragedy and comedy.Footnote 45 However, two of the masks bear a carved inscription on their mouth: one of them has the enigmatic text AIAO written on it, while the other one (see fig. 4) displays the word BVCO, which must refer to the Bucco in the Atellana.Footnote 46 Two other uninscribed masks but very similar to the latter clearly portray the same character;Footnote 47 and a third mask, again without an identifying inscription but featuring a grotesque face with a large nose, wide-open eyes and mouth and wrinkled skin, may depict the Pappus or perhaps the Dossennus.Footnote 48 This exceptional find, unique in many ways, may attest to the continuity of Atellan farces in Pompeii in the first century a.d., which is not surprising given its Oscan origins and its close proximity to the city of Atella.
Fig. 4. Bucco mask with didascalic inscription on its mouth (image courtesy of the Ministerio della Cultura – Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli).
A graffito from another Pompeian house might also refer to the
Bucco(CIL 4.4720, reg. VII, ins. 7):
As in the aforementioned graffito of a Dossennus, this too could be an insult or the nickname of someone known as a ‘brawler’, perhaps taken from the homonymous character of Atellan comedy. There is a similar case from Sousse (Hadrumetum) in North Africa, on a marble slab dated to the late first or second century a.d., found in the necropolis of the city and preserved in situ (CIL 8.22922 = ILTun 160):
This funerary inscription was erected by Egnatia Donata to her seventeen-year-old son Q. Pescennius Fuscus, who is described as a Bucco. Again, it is not clear whether Bucco is here a nickname or, as CIL is inclined to think, an indication of Fuscus’ profession. Bucco is certainly attested as a cognomen in North Africa for individuals who were clearly not stage artists, as in an inscription from Thugga mentioning the duumuir L. Manilius Bucco.Footnote 49 As in the epitaph of the Atellanus C. Statius Gemellus, there is unfortunately no other element which makes it possible to conclude that Q. Pescennius Fuscus was an Atellana actor; if that were the case, it would be the first document regarding Atellan farces outside Italy.
Sadly, no epigraphic evidence has survived of the fourth Atellan character, the Pappus. Other inscriptions simply refer to exodiarii, that is, stage performers who acted in exodia, the afterpieces in which Atellan farce was still represented in the first century a.d., in spite of strong competition from mime. None the less, since exodia could also have consisted of mime, music, dance or other similar exhibitions, it is impossible to determine with any certainty whether an exodiarius was an Atellanus or another sort of stage artist. A now-lost stone block, dated to the late first or second century a.d. and found in Beja (Pax Iulia) in Portugal mentions one such exodiarius (CIL 2.65; see fig. 5):
Fig. 5. Epitaph of the exodiarius Patricius (from do Cenáculo, n. 50).
Apart from the problems that the inscription presents (the only existing drawing records an unintelligible IXODIN̂PIVS for line 3 which was rightly corrected to exodiarius),Footnote 50 there is no indication of the kind of show in which Patricius appeared, other than it being performed as an afterpiece. The other two epigraphic attestations of exodiarii are too long to be reproduced here, but any association with Atellan farce can definitely be excluded. One of them is a funerary inscription dated to the second quarter of the second century a.d. and dedicated to Ursus, a pilicrepus or juggler, who used to perform in the Baths of Trajan, Agrippa, Titus and Nero in Rome (CIL 6.9797); in this text in senarii, Ursus humbly confesses to being the exodiarius of his former master, the three-times consul M. Annius Verus, grandfather of Marcus Aurelius; it is probable that the term exodiarius is used in the inscription as a joke, stating that Ursus was merely a second-rate juggler when compared to his patron. The other inscription mentioning an exodiarius is a complex epigraph dated to the beginning of the third century a.d., recording a theatrical show organized and performed in Rome by a group of uigiles and sailors from the fleet at Misenum (CIL 6.1064): many of the participants, most of whom are mime-actors, are described by their artistic specialization, whereas only one is said to be an exodiarius, although, given the late date of the inscription, it is highly unlikely that he was an Atellana actor.Footnote 51
The epigraphic evidence for Atellana performers is, as can be seen, scarce and uncertain, but a surprising addition to this short corpus, which records not an actor but a playwright, has been made recently. It is the left half of a marble plaque dating approximately from the reign of Augustus. Most probably found in Cuma, in the mid twentieth century it was still walled in the medieval castle of Castellammare di Stabia, although it is now lost (EDR 179613; see fig. 6):Footnote 52
Fig. 6. Inscription of Cn. Lucceius (from Puglia, n. 54; image courtesy of Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Università Cattolica).
Its first editor, St. Adamo Muscettola, considered that the Cn. Lucceius to whom this funerary inscription was dedicated was a member of the Capuan elite, most probably one of the two Cn. Lucceii, father and son, who were elected as praetores of the city and restored the local temple of Demeter (CIL 10.3685 and also CIL 10.3686), although, as M. Martins Magalhâes noted, the nomen is also attested elsewhere in Campania and in the Italian peninsula.Footnote 53 Nevertheless, in the inscription, Cn. Lucceius is not celebrated for his civic involvement in his hometown but for his literary talent, being called a poeta, a playwright, in both line 2 and line 5 (cf. Suet. Cal. 27 for an Atellan playwright referred to as Atellanae poeta). As E. Puglia notes, there seems to be in line 2 after poeta an erasure of four or five letters, which is also suggested by the word poeta being in an off-centre position.Footnote 54 It is impossible to know what the erased word was; perhaps the carver mistakenly engraved the first word of line 3 after poeta and then corrected it. Lines 3–4 specifically address the literary achievements of Cn. Lucceius, as he is explicitly compared with Pomponius. The meaning of line 3 is unfortunately uncertain owing to the loss of the right half of the slab; Adamo Muscettola suggested that the two verses should be reconstructed as follows:
The interpretation of Adamo Muscettola, according to whom the poem alludes to Cn. Lucceius’ participation in some sort of dramatic competition in which he would have obtained second place with an Atellan play and the first place with some exodia, is not without difficulties. The existence of fabulae palmares is attested nowhere else; as the editor herself admits, the only close parallel is some ludi palmares referring to athletic or gladiatorial games documented in an inscription from Beneventum.Footnote 55 Moreover, the abbreviation Ate(llanis), implicitly suggested by Adamo Muscettola and accepted by Martins Magalhâes, is unmotivated given that the carver had no lack of space, and it also seems strange that in the epitaph of an Atellan playwright one would abbreviate precisely such an important word. S. Monda, who also noted the strangeness of the abbreviation Ate(llanis), proposed that the problem presented by palm[aribus] should be solved with palm[am habet (?)].Footnote 56 However, more recently E. Puglia correctly identified lines 3–4 as two senarii, so there is no need to suppose that ATE is an abbreviated word, but the preposition a followed by the personal pronoun te:
As Puglia suggests, the second-person pronoun te implies that Cn. Lucceius is addressing someone who can be no one but Pomponius himself, who therefore appears in the vocative case and not in the genitive. Considering the missing endings of both verses, Puglia proposed the following reconstruction of the text:
If Puglia's reconstruction is right, and I believe it is a plausible one, the poem not only mentions Pomponius but also addresses him directly and establishes a comparison between him and Lucceius, who is modestly set in a second place, but not in exodia, for which Lucceius must have written something different from the fabulae Atellanae of Pomponius.Footnote 57 The distinction between fabulae Atellanae and exodia, as if they were two different genres, is puzzling. Did Lucceius write two types of plays, perhaps literary Atellana in the style of Pomponius and a subgenre of fabulae Atellanae (non-literary Atellana?), which would only be performed in exodia, as Monda and Puglia suggest? When literary sources allude to Atellan plays being performed in exodia, they do not specify whether they are referring to the literary or to the non-literary version of the genre; nevertheless, there is nothing to suggest that the plays of Pomponius or Novius were performed as the main dramatic entertainment. On the contrary, the diminutive used by Marcus Aurelius when referring to the Nouianae Atellaniolae might indicate that they were rather short and therefore fit for exodia, unless the diminutive is used here just to convey a sense of informality (Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 2.8.3, page 29 van den Hout2). Could it be possible, then, that Atellan plays written during the Age of Augustus were longer than their late Republican counterparts and therefore could be staged independently of other sorts of dramatic plays, and not always as an afterpiece? If that were the case, the inscription of Cn. Lucceius could be another proof of the existence of an ‘imperial Atellana’ distinct from that of Pomponius and Novius.Footnote 58 On the other hand, the exodia in which Lucceius also excelled may have consisted of crude non-literary Atellan plays, which must have had a script of some sort (since Lucceius must have written something, even if it were just an outline of a play), but also not conforming to the literary standards that Pomponius set for his plays: perhaps in prose instead of a metrical text, and shorter than literary plays. In this respect, it might be useful to adduce a similar case offered by mime, in which two variants coexisted: the metrical literary mimes of Laberius and Publilius, on the one hand, and non-literary scripts such as the so-called Charition and Moicheutria, on the other, which were written in prose without any literary pretension in a second-century papyrus from Oxyrhynchus.Footnote 59 In the light of the inscription of Lucceius, it is therefore likely that at the beginning of the first century a.d. the Atellana could be performed both as the main play in its literary form (in some contexts at least) and as an exodium in its original cruder version, and that some authors such as Lucceius could write both types of Atellana.
Regardless of how the distinction between Pomponian fabulae Atellanae and exodia may be interpreted, the reference to exodia seems to imply that at least this sort of plays was intended to be represented on stage, which might seem surprising considering the social status of their author, if Cn. Lucceius is indeed to be identified with one of the Cn. Lucceii from Capua. However, writing dramatic texts as a divertissement had been a well-established practice among Roman aristocrats for a long time and would continue to be so into the Imperial era, as the examples not only of Sulla but also of Caesar, Augustus, Seneca and Pliny the Younger (just to mention a few) illustrate.Footnote 60 An interesting second-century funerary inscription from Aeclanum tells us of M. Pomponius Bassulus, a duumuir who as a pastime translated some Menandrean comedies into Latin and also wrote new ones (CIL 9.1164 = ILS 2953 = CLE 97).Footnote 61 Certainly most of these plays were never written to be performed in a theatre, but some of them could have been staged, such as the mimes of the eques Laberius, who certainly did not depend on his writings for a living. That Cn. Lucceius, a member of the Capuan elite, chose to write Atellan farces might be regarded as a conscious assertion of a deeply rooted Atellana tradition in the region, as the Bucco mask from Pompeii shows, but it also testifies to the interest for this genre in the Early Imperial era.
CONCLUSIONS
Epigraphic documents regarding the Atellana are certainly far from numerous and in many cases they are also difficult to identify. Apart from the initial line of the epitaph of a Dossennus cited by Seneca, only four inscriptions can be safely associated with the fabulae Atellanae: those of the Maccus M. Annaeus Longinus (fig. 3 above) and the playwright Cn. Lucceius (fig. 6 above), the anonymous funerary inscription from Labici (fig. 2 above) and the Bucco mask from Pompeii (fig. 4 above). Other documents, such as the epitaph of the Atellanus C. Statius Gemellus (fig. 1 above) and that of Q. Pescennius Fuscus Bucco, should be regarded with caution, since it is not possible to determine with any certainty whether they were stage performers or if the terms Atellanus or Bucco should rather be considered a demonym and an agnomen, respectively. Moreover, considering as Atellana actors the few exodiarii attested in inscriptions is equally problematic, given the relatively late date of some of these texts and the wide range of shows that the term exodium could encompass. In spite of this, the study of these inscriptions can also show some tendencies with regard to Atellana plays and actors. The epitaph of Longinus suggests that by the first century a.d. there were already professional Atellani, a development perhaps induced by the advance of the literary Atellana, which might have required trained artists for it to be staged, as opposed to the simpler non-literary Atellan farces once easily performed by amateur actors. The inscription of Cn. Lucceius and the reference to music in the inscription from Labico might also attest to the evolution of the genre into more complex and longer plays in the Imperial era. Furthermore, the epitaph of Cn. Lucceius confirms that fabulae Atellanae were still written and staged in the first century a.d., at least in Rome and in Campania, even as a literary pastime.Footnote 62
On the other hand, the very scarcity of references to the Atellan plays in the epigraphic material might be indicative of the limited success of this sort of entertainment in the Imperial era as opposed to other theatrical genres. Although it is true that relying on quantitative data is not always advisable when dealing with inscriptions because of the randomness involved in the preservation and discovery of the epigraphic material, it is remarkable that so little evidence has survived for the fabulae Atellanae in comparison with the amount of inscriptions available for mime and pantomime, the two direct competitors of Atellan farce in the Imperial period: Rome alone has furnished no fewer than twenty-five inscriptions for mime-actors and eighteen for pantomimes.Footnote 63 The paucity of epigraphic documents confirms that the Atellana could not withstand the rise of mime and pantomime, and the lack of references beyond the second century a.d. suggests its disappearance as a living theatrical tradition, with literary Atellan plays perhaps only being studied and appreciated for their antiquarian value. It is also telling that there is no evidence of Atellana actors belonging to the familia Caesaris, the slaves and freedmen of the imperial household; this suggests that the Atellana actors owned by the domus Augusti must have been significantly fewer than other stage performers.Footnote 64
Additionally, the lack of inscriptions from outside Italy must also pose the question whether the Atellana was actually represented in the provinces or if it was instead staged only in central Italy. The only documents that might indicate the presence of Atellani in the western provinces, the inscriptions of Q. Pescennius Fuscus Bucco and the exodiarius Patricius (fig. 5 above), are too uncertain to be taken into account: Bucco in the first might have been just a nickname, while Patricius could have been a mime-actor. Perhaps the study of iconographic sources regarding Atellana could throw more light on this issue, but this is also not without risks: it is tempting to associate some grotesque masks found in Crete and in the Rhine area with Atellan comedy, the latter perhaps related to the presence of military encampments where Italic soldiers could have brought this form of entertainment with them,Footnote 65 but the lack of any didascalic inscriptions that help us identify them as Atellana masks makes any attribution to this genre extremely bold.
Open access
