‘Life is a stage.’
‘Skene ho bios’ is inscribed in Greek on a silver cup found at Boscoreale.1 The idea was similarly, and deeply, inscribed in the culture of Pompeii’s inhabitants, both in the suggestion that one performed one’s own life as if a character in a drama, and that individuals were spectators observing the world around them as theatre. In addition to their extensive participation in a wide range of theatrical entertainments, the residents of Pompeii created and experienced an astonishingly rich array of art and objects directly inspired by or heavily drawing upon what we have termed in Chapter 1 the lingua franca of Roman theatricalism. Moreover, theatricality – the explicit evocation of the domain of the theatre itself – often figured in the domestic environments of Pompeii as well, a topic we explore in detail in Chapter 5. Everywhere they encountered paintings, mosaics, carved reliefs and statues containing representations of subjects recognisably evocative of the theatre. Moreover, these images and objects were frequently dispersed within the visual systems of the house in such a way that occupants perceived them in a manner that drew upon their knowledge and experience of spectatorship within the theatre itself.
Studies of the history of theatre at Pompeii have tended to concentrate upon detailing the physical elements of performance, insofar as these can be plausibly identified, and upon citing and evaluating evidence for the brokerage of power between patrons and audience, or both. Meanwhile, an increasing number of studies of the Roman house, particularly those at Pompeii and Herculaneum, have recognised the importance of attending to patterns of movement, programmes of decor, bodily awareness, meaningful manipulation and juxtaposition of decor and vistas and the like.
Figure 9 Cup from Boscoreale, Louvre, Don Baron E. de Rothschild, 1895, In. No. BJ 1923.
Our objective is to carry each of these theatrical and domestic approaches over into its companion’s domain, offering first in this chapter an interpretation of the spatial, kinaesthetic and aesthetic aspects of the Pompeian theatre-going experience inspired in part by studies of the Roman house and then, in Chapter 5, a theatrically inflected reading of aspects of the Roman domestic domain. There we consider in particular how the house encouraged the viewers, most of whom had significant theatre-going experience, to enter into a state of imaginative engagement analogous to and informed by that induced in the theatre. Complementing and enabling this, our discussion of the theatre here will focus upon the manner in which spectators encountered an array of modes and degrees of ‘imaginative address’. As in other expressions of Roman spectatorship, including those taking place in the home, the pleasure of the occasion arose from the manner in which the viewer was dynamically drawn into a complicit sensual and cognitive involvement with the performance and its venue through the expressive media (actors, movement, sound, scenery, architectural embellishment) assembled, arrayed and activated before him.
In pursuit of the goal of exploring the relationship between modes of perception and experience in the theatrical and the domestic spheres, we need first to consider both the material conditions and activities characteristic of each. In the first section of this chapter we therefore wish to provide a detailed account and consequent interpretation of the surviving material evidence for the theatrical venues of the city, and for theatre practice within these. Our intention is to give the most complete account available of the architectural history of the Pompeian theatres in relation to the social and ideological significance of theatrical practice in the contexts of cultural and political changes at Pompeii, while also observing how the relationship of this Samnite town to both the Hellenistic culture of Magna Graecia and to Rome changed in response to evolving conditions.
Of course, the preservation of so much evidence at Pompeii is accidental. In using it to aid our understanding of Roman attitudes, it is important to bear in mind that, while Pompeii did participate in, and thus exemplifies to a significant degree, wider Roman practice, it was also a provincial community. Nevertheless, much invaluable, compelling and suggestive detail for the prevalence of theatricalism and theatricality in Roman life may be sifted from the legacy left at Pompeii. In order more fully to understand the nature of this abundant material, and by way of providing a larger context in which to assess it, we turn now to consider the nature of formal theatrical activity in Pompeii during the period relevant to our study.
Theatres at Pompeii; Roman Theatre Architecture
Shortly after theatrical performances had become formally instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens, some cities in the areas of southern Italy and Sicily colonised by the Greeks are believed to have acquired – initially temporary – theatre buildings to accommodate performances by native or travelling companies.2 In addition to the later evidence for Hellenistic performance provided by the architectural remains of the stone theatres, we have valuable information from a large number of vases, found in southern Italy and Sicily and dating from around 400 to 320 BC. These vases were earlier believed by scholars to depict a type of farce drama indigenous to southern Italy, the so-called phlyakes, but recent research has established that many of the vases are in fact directly influenced by Athenian drama and its staging; in several cases specific works can be reliably identified.3 Theatrical activity appears to have been widespread, and by the mid to late second century BC, several stone theatres had been built in Campania, including examples found at Sarno, Calles, Pietrabbondante, Nuceria, Capua and probably at Teanum Sidicinum. To the north, in Latium, there were also theatres such as those at Alba Fucens, Tusculum and Gabii, and probably at Praeneste and Tibur as well.4
Both the origin and chronological evolution of the architecture of the Large Theatre at Pompeii are greatly disputed by scholars, and a clear consensus has yet to emerge.5 Even the date of its construction is much debated, ranging from between the mid third to the early first century BC. Consequently, our discussion here must necessarily be speculative. It is possible to identify the theatre’s constituent elements and to give a broad outline of their alteration over time, but the precise sequence and dating of many of these is uncertain.
On balance, it seems likely that the earliest structure was built in the mid-second century. Occupying a site near the Stabian gate to the south of the town, like a number of theatre-temple complexes erected in the region during the period it was situated near a temple precinct – known today as the Triangular Forum – with which it was connected by a prominent staircase. This earliest theatre structure is thought to have resembled those built elsewhere in Magna Graecia and Sicily. Like those at Syracuse, Segesta and Tyndaris, it was initially of the paraskenia type shown in Figure 10: a building characterised by wings flanking the stage and projecting outward into the orchestra. There may have been a raised stage, in this first phase, but it is equally possible that performances took place upon the ground between the two paraskenia.6 The stage building itself was rectilinear, some twenty-five metres wide, probably having three doors facing the audience, as well as two small side doors providing access to the playing space from the paraskenia. Its façade may have been articulated with some structural enhancements and ornamentation such as columns, decorated doorways, engaged columns and pilasters.
Figure 10 Hypothetical reconstruction of the Lycurgan paraskenia Theatre of Dionysus at Athens.
The theatre at Pompeii had oblique paraskenia, angled into the orchestra, that both framed the place of performance and probably also enhanced the acoustics of the site. Between the seating and the paraskenia on either side were open-air entrances (parodoi)7 providing access into the orchestra for performers and audience and, for the latter, from there into the sloping, horseshoe-shaped auditorium (cavea), which was some fifty metres in diameter, and built up in part upon the natural hillside.
Vitruvius (5.7) notes that two types of performers appeared in such theatres: actors on the stage (scaenici), and the chorus within the orchestra (thymelici). The architectural evidence strongly suggests that here and in those other Campanian and Samnite theatres that have been located and examined (Sarno and Pietrabbondante dating from the early second century, and Teanum Sidicinum, Capua, Cales and Alba Fucens from somewhat later)8 performances were given in the Greek fashion: both upon the stage and in the orchestra. By contrast, in Latin sites only the stage was normally used for performance, while the orchestra was occupied by elite spectators (Vitruvius 5.6.2). This is an important point since the distinctive architecture of these Campanian and Samnite sites suggests a theatre culture subject primarily to Hellenistic rather than Italian influences.9
Instead of the high, narrow stage (logeion) and projecting wings that characterised the Greek-style paraskenia theatres of Campania and Samnium, the theatres in Latium, still evolving in the course of the first century BC, had a low, wide stage (pulpitum) with no projecting flanking structures. Their stages were closed in on either side by walls: versurae.10 The versurae often formed the sides of buildings – basilicae – that hemmed in the stage on either side. Often several storeys high, and perhaps used as reception spaces, the basilicae did not project forward towards the orchestra or cavea.
Once the format had fully evolved, Latin theatres had a scene building – the postscaenium – behind the stage whose façade, the scaenae frons, rose two or more storeys to match the level of the uppermost rim of the cavea opposite.11 The several structures (stage, basilicae, scene building and auditorium) tended to form an architecturally unified entity (Figure 11), with the stage linked to the cavea by vaulting (confornicationes) over the entrance passageways, aditus maximi, which afforded access to the orchestra and cavea. These vaults eventually had viewing platforms, tribunalia, placed upon them for the games’ patrons and possibly other particularly honoured guests. The creation of a partly or entirely free-standing, architecturally integrated structure may have arisen from (or at least been encouraged by) the concern that temporary wooden theatres, known to have been constructed at Rome for centuries, be made as weatherproof as possible. The format thus achieved was then carried forward into permanent structures when they were built.12
Figure 11 Roman theatre model with diagrammed components. 1 Postscaenium, 2 Scaenae frons, 3 Versura, 4 Portae hospitales, 5 Porta regia, 6 Pulpitum, 7 Frons Pulpitum. 8 Orchestra, 9 Scalaria, 10 Balteus, 11 Proedria, 12 Aditus Maximus, 13 Praecinctio, 14 Cuneus, 15 Tribunal, 16 Vomitoria, 17 Porticus in summa cavea, 18 Supports of the Velum.
In the city of Rome (and undoubtedly at provincial cities as well, including Pompeii), these wooden structures were put up for particular, usually established, annual holidays (ludi) and then dismantled. From at least the late fourth or early third century the theatre as an institution had become ever more firmly fixed and prominent in Roman society. Despite the increasing number of established occasions during which scenic games were customarily presented; however, the structures on which plays were staged continued for centuries to be temporary. The annual series of formal established games (ludi sollemnes) at Rome in which temporary stages figured were organised and sponsored by Roman state officials: primarily the aediles, although other officials – and eventually the emperors themselves – were also responsible for giving public entertainments from time to time; and the same provision by public officials, as we discuss later, persisted at Pompeii during the Imperial period.
Vitruvius (10. Praef. 4) noted that ‘every year the praetors and aediles must prepare the machinery for the spectacles’. In the Republican period, because the office of aedile was a relatively junior one, and the future electoral success of its holder in obtaining higher office depended in part upon the impression made upon the electorate by his one-year tenure of the post, there developed a profoundly competitive dynamic which placed a premium upon entertainment and spectacle, and could greatly reward euergetism – the generous expenditure of private wealth for public benefit which was expected of prominent individuals.13 Indeed, it is likely that the resistance the Roman Senate displayed over many decades to the construction of a permanent stone theatre structure was based quite as much upon their desire to reserve for themselves the option for such beneficial ‘showcasing’ of their largesse as it was upon moral or cultural reservations.14
Certainly prominent members of the Roman elite wished as far as possible to exercise broad control over taste and culture; in particular they tended (at least officially) to regard many of the defining elements of Hellenistic civilisation, amongst which the theatre, of course, was prominently included, with a degree of suspicion and unease, and wished to monitor and modulate their dissemination to the inhabitants of Rome.15 Despite this prudence, the yearly cycle of theatre-building was deliberately and conspicuously extravagant and wasteful. Consequently, the means through which such display could take place, including the right of elites to provide enduring and monumental public buildings to glorify their name and achievements, were subject to continuing negotiation and regulation.
More than any other element of the theatre, it was the highly decorated façade of the scaenae frons that most reflected the competitive ethos of elite behaviour. In the course of the first century BC, the tendency towards the presentation of ever more sumptuous games was accompanied by the erection of increasingly elaborate temporary stages, with particular emphasis placed upon the embellishment of the stage façade. What emerged as the canonical format for the Roman scaenae frons was an articulated and highly decorated façade, populated by statues – a feature, Klar points out, ‘entirely absent from the Hellenistic skene’. She argues that the Roman scaenae frons was closely associated with the triumphs of successful generals who, in giving their votive games, erected theatres where some of the spoils of conquest could be displayed, and decorated their façades with impressive display architecture and statuary. The evolution of the scaenae frons at Rome, Klar concludes, was ‘driven by social and political forces unique to the Roman Republican period [and]… developed to display plundered statuary as a demonstration of military prowess’.16
For Klar, the culmination of this tradition was the theatre built in 58 BC by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. This most extravagant stage façade – also representing the first ancient record of the architecture of the scaenae frons – was described by Pliny (Nat. Hist., 36.113–115) as having a façade of three storeys, decorated with some 360 columns and 3,000 statues. Pliny also mentions other sumptuous scenic elements, including gold cloth, scene paintings and other decor, subsequently taken from the theatre (which lasted only a month) and reused in Scaurus’ villa at Tusculum.
At Rome, and probably at other Latin towns as well, theatre took place formally as part of games given to honour the gods, both at fixed annual occasions and on various extraordinary occasions such as triumphs, funerals and celebrations. Although religious observance provided the occasion for theatre, political patronage underwrote it, and both plays and performances could at times convey sharply pointed and highly emotive political commentary.17 However, it is also the case at Rome that the central focus of theatrical activity seems to have been upon providing popular festive pleasures for citizens.18
In the Hellenistic world, in whose theatrical culture Pompeii and other communities in Campania were deeply immersed, theatre was a long-established, deeply respected and revered tradition. Up until the early years of the first century BC, Pompeian attitudes towards theatre may have owed less to Roman than to Hellenistic influences. Lauter proposes that Samnite towns such as Pompeii ‘adopted, as a whole, the theatre of Magna Graecia … because with them the inner process of Hellenisation had progressed further than it had in the case of the Latin communities who for a long period had been in a more culturally circumscribed condition’.19
Theatre at Pompeii After Sulla
Following its support of the rebellion against Rome in the Social War, Pompeii was besieged in 89 BC, taken in 87 by Sulla and subsequently garrisoned. Although its indigenous inhabitants were granted Roman citizenship, a large number – probably 4–5,000 – of Sulla’s veterans were settled there,20 and in roughly 80 BC the town was established as a Roman colony: the Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum. Under Sulla’s nephew Publius Cornelius, it acquired a new constitution. This instituted a ruling assembly, the Ordo Decurionum. Latin became the official language, gradually replacing the native Oscan as the normal language of daily life, although Greek was still widely used.
The Romanisation of Pompeii in the course of the first century BC can clearly be observed in the changes made to its theatre architecture. Shortly after the colony was established, the stage building of the Large Theatre was remodelled, acquiring the layout characteristic of theatre structures in Latium. In fact, Pompeii is probably the earliest surviving example of the iconic ‘Roman’ theatre design that would later be widely distributed in the Imperial age. The changes made to it at the time of Sulla are evidence of a revolutionary change in theatre typology, predating the construction of a permanent theatre at Rome itself, which did not occur until 55 BC. The diameter of the cavea was increased by approximately ten metres to some sixty-two metres. The width of the scene building was commensurately increased, by removing the paraskenia, to thirty-five metres. A stage, some three quarters of a metre high, was backed by a rectilinear stage building, with its façade, the scaenae frons, articulated with a design of rectilinear and curved niches, probably decorated with columns and pedestals (columnatio), and framing three doors. In addition, at each end of the stage where the paraskenia had been, there were doors into the stage building, enabling performers to exit from one side of the stage and cross, unseen by the audience, behind the scene building to enter from the other side. The five doors that had previously been located at the rear of this building (the postscaenium) were reduced to a single, central doorway.
In Greek theatre practice, the orchestra had traditionally been reserved for the chorus, an aesthetic entity functioning within the dramatic performance, and which was broadly associated with the citizen population, and by extension with the idea of the city state (polis) itself. In the post-Sullan theatre at Pompeii, by contrast, the orchestra came to be used primarily as a place for seating and displaying members of the governmental and religious elites of the colony, giving them a good view of the low stage, which perhaps now became the exclusive site of dramatic performances.
At about this time, a circular basin, with a diameter of over seven metres and three quarters of a metre in depth, was constructed beneath the orchestra. It was but the first of some six basins to be constructed in the orchestra over the life of the theatre.21 The function of these is greatly disputed: they may have been used as a source of perfumed water to be sprayed out over the audience, such as that described by Seneca (Epist. Mor. 95.15; Nat. Quaest. 2.9.2), or for fountains or various types of aquatic display.22 If so, it suggests that seating patterns in the theatre must have altered from occasion to occasion depending on the nature of the display to be mounted. The orchestra had a semicircular rim of four broad, low steps, used for special reserved seating – subsellia.
The open-air parodoi (characteristic of the Hellenistic theatres) were now vaulted over, joining the stage and scene building with the cavea. Access into orchestra, subsellia and, via narrow steps, lower areas of the auditorium, was now through these covered entrance corridors, the aditus maximi. These corridors giving access to the lower cavea could also be reached by a large staircase from the Triangular Forum, located to the west above and behind the Large Theatre, descending along the southern side of the Theatre between it and the adjacent quadriporticus.
Because the idea and practice of Hellenistic theatre were so profoundly embedded in the town, the alteration of the structure into one of the earliest known examples of what scholars have argued would become an iconic Latin format – in effect creating a Latin theatre where previously a Hellenistic one had been – represents a highly public and deeply symbolic transformation of one of the fundamental institutions of Pompeian life. Further significant changes were to follow.
Around 80 BC, or a little later, an amphitheatre was erected (the earliest example of its type) near the Sarno gate at the east edge of the city walls, with a seating capacity of around 24,000.
At about the same time, a small, roofed theatre, an odeion, was also constructed adjacent to the Large Theatre.
An inscription (CIL X 844) records that the Odeion was built by the duumviri Gaius Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius in execution of a decree by the Ordo Decurionum awarding them the contract. Although the provision was thus clearly a political act by the magistrates of the new colony, it may in fact have been entirely financed by the two individuals as conspicuous acts of patronage. They were also responsible for the construction of the amphitheatre, which a reference in a second inscription (CIL X 852) explicitly notes they did at their own expense ‘for the honour of the colony’.23 Both of these new structures are likely to have reflected the priorities of the town’s new government and new Roman inhabitants, and as such constitute a political statement of sorts. Zanker considers that ‘more than any other of the colonists’ innovations, the amphitheatre altered the cultural climate in the town’.24
The Odeion seated approximately 1,300 spectators. This is based upon the survey and computer modelling research sponsored by the British Academy and undertaken in 2008–9 by Martin Blazeby for King’s Visualisation Lab. It represented a significant adaptation of a type of Hellenistic building, a bouleuterion, which had long been used in Greek communities for pubic meetings and assemblies. However, now it was possibly co-opted by Sulla’s veterans for their own use, while at the same time (and in contrast to the traditional use of bouleuteria) intended as a place of public entertainment. Such dual-purpose use of the Odeion may have characterised the early decades of its existence; later, after a remodelling and redecoration in the Augustan era, it may have been reserved entirely for theatrical entertainments.25
Figure 12 The Amphitheatre at Pompeii.
Its scenic elements included a raised stage probably a little over a metre high; a flat stage façade (scaenae frons) broken by five doors;26 two flanking paraskenia each having a door opening onto the stage from the side; and a rectilinear stage building (postscaenium). When first excavated, traces of Second Style painting were discovered as part of the decorative scheme of the flat stage façade (and indeed a few of these could still be seen in the survey undertaken by Blazeby in 2008), an intriguing fact which we return to later.27 In Chapter 7 we discuss the possible relationship between the large skenographic painting that adorns the atrium at the Villa of Oplontis (which we have deployed here on the stage façade of the Odeion) and stage architecture.
As in the Large Theatre, four low, broad, semicircular steps bordered the circumference of the Odeion’s orchestra.28 The honorary seats, known as bisellia, that were placed upon them were considered ‘indispensable as a symbol of power’ for public officials in Roman-type administrations.29 At Pompeii, members of the governing senate, the Ordo Decurionum, were each allocated a double-sized, cushioned bisellium for use in the Large Theatre or Odeion, as is attested by the discovery of several of these in the area of the theatre in the excavations of 1769.30
In addition, by special decree the Ordo could honour with a bisellium other prominent members of the community, such as wealthy freedmen serving as augustales – members of the prestigious cult responsible for maintaining worship of the deified emperors.31 The award of a bisellium was considered such a distinction that it could be numbered amongst the lifetime achievements recorded upon an individual’s funerary monument.32 Indeed, Zanker33 notes that the loss of such privileges could drive a man to suicide while, at the other extreme, M. Nonius Balbus – the most prominent citizen of Herculaneum – continued to be honoured with a seat in the theatre even after his death.
Figure 13a Odeion at Pompeii, hypothetical reconstruction by Niccolini, Vol. 4.
It is important to note that despite the traditional reservations and ambivalence routinely voiced by Roman moralists about the potentially dangerous influence of the theatre, official (and popular) culture clearly placed enormous importance on the prestige of being visibly honoured before the community in its theatrical venues. This context and attitude help to explain the frequency with which Roman houses and villas contained the kind of highly theatricalised decor that we consider in subsequent chapters. Importing such references into the domestic sphere, often with the connection to theatre practice explicitly stressed, was evidently a practice that members of the Roman elite readily embraced as appropriate to their social and political standing.
Figure 13b, c, d. Reconstruction of the Odeion.
For decades following Pompeii’s ill-fated support for the uprising against Rome, the colony’s leadership must have been dominated by the leaders of the new settlers who would have brought with them cultural – including theatrical – customs and expectations markedly different from those to which over several centuries Pompeii’s natives had become accustomed. As late as 62 BC,34 legal distinctions appear to have been in place between ‘townsfolk’ (municipes) and ‘colonists’ (colonei). In the granting of Roman citizenship, the confiscation and redistribution of land to veterans, the displacement of the Oscan language by Latin, the building of the amphitheatre and the fundamental refashioning of the Large Theatre, we can perceive a far-ranging – and perhaps at times turbulent – process of cultural reorientation through coercion, persuasion and self-interested adaptation.
Figure 14a Pompeii Odeion, existing state.
Figure 14b Pompeii Odeion, reconstruction (audience view).
In a great many aspects of Pompeian life, including, as we will consider, the architecture, decor and customs that characterised domestic practice, the theatre was one of the major areas in which relationships between Roman, Italian and Hellenistic cultures were negotiated and displayed. Theatre had for centuries been a defining component of Greek culture. But, as we detail below, during the late Republic, and at a quickening pace under the Augustan Principate, the idea of theatre had also become deeply incorporated into the ideological and cultural expressions of Roman political and social life. Acquiring a Latin-style theatre – and preferably an amphitheatre as well – was a major expression of participation in the new world order of Roman domination.35 Theatres and amphitheatres were compelling symbols of the prestige and power of Rome, and in time came to function as impressive manifestations of the official ideology that justified, gave meaning to, and secured public support for the operation of the Principate. In light of this, it is not surprising that the evocation of theatricality is so prevalent in Roman domestic decor. Demonstrating that both patrons and guests were knowledgeable about theatre was a sign of their erudition and culture; but, more than this, it showed that they were complicit in the increased espousal and exploitation of theatre in the culture and ideology of the Augustan Principate.
Theatre provided Augustus and his successors with a means of mass communication, able to advance within remote regions and diverse communities the ideas and programmes of the new regime. It was one of the major media through which Augustus ‘filled the hearts and eyes of the Roman people with most magnificent spectacles’.36 At the same time, theatre gave both the general population and the town’s leading citizens a vital means of expressing the imperial project in terms of local values and opinions. The theatre building itself – its monumental quality and the nature and sumptuousness of its decor – became an iconic structure signalling the community’s espousal of imperial values. Augustus’ own example, ‘surpassing all his predecessors in the frequency, variety and magnificence of his spectacle entertainments’ (Suet. Aug. 43.1), offered strong encouragement to the regions to use their theatres to showcase the glories of the Empire, augmented in many cases by direct and indirect material support. This in turn reflected, underscored and also extended the increased cultural importance that theatre and official entertainments acquired under the early Principate. Throughout the Roman world many hundreds of theatres were built or, as at Pompeii, renovated.
Figure 15a Pompeii Odeion, existing state.
Figure 15b Pompeii Odeion, reconstruction (side view).
The often-close association of games and entertainments with the emperor and his cult was dramatically extended as statues or paintings of Augustus and his family (and in due course their successors) were dedicated at provincial theatres before the assembled citizenry and installed permanently upon the scaenae frons.37 This would represent a logical extension and appropriation by the Principate of the Republican practice of employing the façade to showcase the military prowess and achievements of particular individuals. From the moment the first imperial portrait was mounted over the stage, to see a play at Pompeii was also to watch, and become part of, the pageantry of imperial power. Under imperial patronage and encouragement, theatre, which earlier Roman traditionalists had viewed with suspicion or even disdain, became culturally naturalised.
Increasingly, aspects of Roman theatrical practice helped to erode the lines demarcating Greek and Roman culture, becoming less morally problematic for conservative members of the Roman elite in the process. The issue by no means ceased to exist. As we discuss later, the example of Nero’s fate as a ‘stage-playing emperor’ (Pliny Paneg. 46.4), condemned by traditionalists for ‘prostituting himself by vile singing upon an alien stage’ (Juvenal 8.224–25), demonstrated that earlier resentments and moral constraints, though latent, could still be potent. But even these could not reverse the long process of cultural synthesis and integration.
The case of Norbanus Sorex, a mime actor who played ‘the second role’, may illustrate something of the complexity of social and cultural assimilation in Pompeii in the post-Sullan era. A bronze portrait survives of Sorex, from the south wall of the portico of the Temple of Isis, bearing a Latin inscription that translates as: ‘C Norbanus Sorex, Second [Mime] Actor, Magistrate of the Suburban District of Augustus Felix, given this place by decree of the Decurionate’.38 Sorex was probably a descendant (possibly the grandson) of a man by the same name whom Plutarch lists, together with the actors Roscius and Metrobius, as Sulla’s closest intimates. The inscription indicates that Sorex was appointed Vicomagister – one of a number of locally selected officials responsible within their neighbourhood for making sacrifices and organising local entertainments at the Compitalia festival – an honour that allowed him to wear, by concession, the toga praetexta, normally the prerogative of leading magistrates.39 A second herm was located in the rich and exquisite Eumachia building in the Forum, with its statues of Concordia and Pietas,40 and a third in a shrine to Isis at the sanctuary of Diana at Nemi.
These biographical traces suggest how the popularity of a comic theatre entertainer could be converted into the currency of political office and commemorated by monuments at prestigious, public cult sites. It also hints that the successful, conspicuous display of oneself in the theatre, if exploited astutely, could encourage the enhancement of one’s social and political standing. Finally, the achievements of Sorex reveal that an actor with ties to Rome might benefit from Pompeii’s more Hellenistic attitude towards stage performers, accruing social status and political influence rather than, as would normally have been the case in Rome, incurring the stigma of infamia.
In Pompeii and its environs, because of the area’s extensive assimilation of Hellenistic culture, which long pre-dated the advent of Roman power and influence, the situation and issues were indeed different than at Rome. On the one hand, as in the example of the changes to the design and deployment of the Large Theatre, the process evidently involved the exchange of Greek staging and scenic conventions for those that were characteristic of Roman practice. This was a highly visible – indeed monumental – expression of Pompeii’s incorporation into the Roman cultural and political sphere. However, the Hellenistic legacy and influence remained pervasive and must certainly have been evident in local theatrical practice. Certainly, as we note below, the Greek-inspired sacred Agon established at Naples by Augustus – the Sebasta – which lasted for centuries, and the prominence of the touring companies under the auspices of the international guild of the ‘Artists of Dionysus’ (and probably contracted from local collegia), make this likely.
While noting these different cultural conditions attaining in the Naples region, it is also important to emphasise that at Rome itself, aspects of Roman theatrical practice increasingly helped to erode the lines demarcating Greek and Roman culture. Rome drew into itself influences from throughout its far-flung empire, including most immediately the absorption into the concept of ‘Roman’ of elements of the established culture of the inhabitants and civic societies of the Italian peninsula (as well as from the ‘Greek’ east). Consequently, for us to seek or suggest strict lines of demarcation would be misguided. For Pompeii to become Romanised under such circumstances was also to remain, to a significant degree, Hellenistic: what is involved is likely to have been a marked shift of emphasis, rather than a wholesale change. Certainly, in the specific case of theatrical art, Greek comedy and tragedy continued to enjoy high regard and official esteem at Rome, and figured prominently in such ‘prestige’ events as the inauguration of Pompey’s theatre in 55 BC, and Augustus’ Sacred Games of 17 BC.41
It seems altogether likely that theatrical activity at Pompeii, like that at Rome itself, was culturally hybrid or, to put it somewhat differently, the theatre was a venue and institution in which the confluence of the ‘three cultures’ – Hellenistic, Samnite and Roman – would have been constantly evident both in theatrical practice and in the audiences’ perception and evaluation. As we discuss later, certain forms of Oscan drama, as well as Greek works, continued to be performed at Rome for centuries; their persistence at Pompeii seems certain.
Theatre at Pompeii in the Augustan Age
We turn again to the architectural development of the Large Theatre at Pompeii, to explore further the manner in which modifications in the Augustan period and later may be seen to reflect evolving cultural and political influences. Later, in Chapters 5 and 9, we discuss in detail the manner in which evocations of actual theatrical architecture may be discerned in a variety of surviving domestic paintings. The physical theatres at Pompeii were themselves both a prominent focal point within the urban landscape itself, while also serving as the most obvious and concrete emblem and expression of a culture permeated and significantly shaped by theatricality and theatricalism.
Following the substantial remodelling after the establishment of the Sullan colony, the Theatre was again modified in 2/1 BC during another period of major cultural change and Romanisation following the establishment of the Augustan Principate. This occurred in the context of new families settling at Pompeii, possibly42 pro-Augustan immigrants drawn from elsewhere in Campania, deliberately introduced to help ensure the town was ‘on-message’ with the ideals and ideology of the new regime.
At this time large inscriptions, each over six metres long, were prominently placed at both entrances to the Large Theatre and upon the façade of its stage building. From the two that survive, we learn that ‘Marcus Holconius Rufus and Marcus Holconius Celer built, at their own expense, the crypta, tribunalia and cavea’.43 In another inscription, we may even have the name of the architect responsible for the work: ‘Marcus Artorius Primus, freedman of Marcus, architect’ (CIL X 841).
The crypta was a covered passageway running along the upper circumference of the cavea, with doorways opening into a wide aisle (praecinctio) from which citizens could filter down into the six stairways that gave access to the main body of the cavea.
The cavea was divided, by these stairways, into five wedge-shaped sections (cunei), each having eighteen rows of seats. The crypta was entered either by means of an external staircase rising from ground level at the front of the Theatre to the east, or from several entrances accessed from the higher ground above the Theatre, including an entrance near the Temple of Isis, and two from the Triangular Forum.
The vaulting of the crypta supported a further uppermost section of seats (summa cavea) possibly reserved for slaves, women and non-citizens.44 There were probably four rows of seating created for this purpose, bringing the total seating capacity of the Theatre up to around 5,000. The crypta and praecinctio together produced an emphatic visual and physical barrier separating these high-perched seats from those of the citizens, below. Roman authors occasionally refer to the perceived difference in taste and refinement between those occupying the upper and lower divisions of the cavea.45
Figure 16 Plan of the ‘Theatre District’ of Pompeii. 1 The Large Theatre, 2 The Temple of Isis, 3 The Samnite Palaestra, 4 The Triangular Forum, 5 The Doric Temple, 6 The Porticus Post Scaenam, 7 The Odeion, 8 The Temple of Jupiter Meilichios.
With the introduction of the crypta, the orchestra-level entrances through which spectators had previously entered could now be reserved for the elite members of the audience seated within the orchestra or on the four broad rows of the subsellia bordering its circumference. These changes even more strongly demarcated social distinctions that, under the lex Iulia theatralis instituted by Augustus c. 20–17 BC, must already have been visible in the theatre. The law laid out in minute detail the seating arrangements to be enforced at the presentation of theatrical entertainments, including the requirement that citizens don togas for the occasion.46 In fact, like other provincial towns, Pompeii may already have specified by local statute the allocation of seats to various social groups at public games.47 Prior to the more comprehensive regulations of the new law, Augustus had been moved to introduce legislation in 26 BC, which according to Suetonius (Aug. 44.1) required that every public show, in any city or town, must reserve the first row of seats for senators, in part because he was shocked by an incident at Puteoli, across the Bay of Naples from Pompeii, in which a visiting Roman senator had not been offered a seat when attending the local games. Tokens found at Pompeii may indicate how these seating regulations were administered in practice, as they are believed to indicate the particular seat the holder should occupy.48 By placing themselves within the compass of the cavea, spectators were required to view their own position in relation to the whole social and political hierarchy of Pompeian – as well as Roman – society visibly laid out around them.
Figure 17a Large Theatre, Pompeii, showing subsellia (foreground), the cavea, the crypta and the area for seating at the top of the theatre, the summa cavea (top left).
Figure 17b Entrance to the Large Theatre’s crypta (left) and seating in the summa cavea (centre) from the Triangular Forum (right).
The structural addition of the crypta facilitated the provision of a protective awning or system of awnings, the vela, stretched out over the cavea. This offered both shelter from the sun, as well as additional scenic splendour through the colourful designs painted or embroidered upon it, which created a pleasing effect as the sunlight played through its red, yellow and purple colours (Lucretius De. Re. Nat. 4.75–83). The vela were such a crowd-pleaser that, as surviving announcements for games written upon walls at Pompeii attest, when a performance was to employ one, the news featured prominently in advance publicity.49
Figure 18a Large Theatre, Pompeii, eastern aditus maximus, showing stairs to the tribunalium (left), main access to the orchestra (centre) and a secondary passage to seats in the lower cavea (right).
The two Holconii’s renovation of the theatre included replacing portions of the limestone seating with marble, the probable decoration of the scaenae frons in marble facing and the provision of a variety of ornamentation.50 They were themselves honoured with statues, probably placed in the stage façade, suggestively juxtaposing the iconography of local political and economic power with that of the imperial cult.
The reorganisation of the theatre’s seating provided members of the Ordo Decurionum a platform for displaying their prominence. As earlier within the Odeion, henceforth in the Large Theatre they also enjoyed prestigious places on four new, broad, shallow steps around the perimeter of the orchestra reserved for priests, officials and other notables. As the inscriptions attest, the architects working under the direction of the Holconii made a further important architectural innovation in the structure of the Large Theatre in this period. As we noted, shortly after the veterans of Sulla had settled at Pompeii, the aditus maximi entrances affording access into the theatre by way of the orchestra had vaults erected over them. Now two platforms for seating, tribunalia, were placed upon these, accessed by separate staircases leading away and up from the passageways (aditus maximi) before these opened into the orchestra. These platforms, reserved for the patrons and sponsors of individual games and visiting dignitaries, provided prominent positions for viewing, and, more importantly, being viewed, almost as if displayed upon a triumphal arch. Tribunalia were also provided in the Odeion at about the same time, accessed by stairs positioned so that officials ascending to the tribunalia first entered upon the stage itself.51
Figure 18b Large Theatre, Pompeii, western aditus maximus and tribunalium, above.
The Augustan innovations significantly enhanced the visual impact of the Large Theatre. It became more opulent, acquiring statues, dedications and an ornamental façade as a piece of performative display architecture; while the spectators themselves, through the spatial organisation of the structure, became in effect part of the mise-en-scène, self-consciously participating in and celebrating imperial and social power at Pompeii.
This remodelling of the theatre reflected the architectural format of the three recently constructed permanent theatres at Rome, and in particular was probably intended to evoke the one honouring Augustus’ nephew Marcellus, which was dedicated by the Emperor, probably in 13 BC – a decade after his death. A statue commemorating Marcellus, inscribed to him as ‘Patron’,52 stood in Pompeii’s Triangular Forum, adjacent to the Large Theatre.
The theatre’s own patron M. Holconius Rufus (Figure 19), at the time of his comprehensive restructuring and decoration of the theatre, had been elected duumvir four times, and highest office of quinquennial duumvir once.53 He also served, probably by election at a public assembly, as priest of Augustus. In February of 2 BC, the Princeps had been proclaimed Pater Patriae by popular demand as he entered the Theatre of Marcellus or of Pompey in Rome. Augustus regarded this as the supreme achievement of his life, and the enactment of the event probably owed as much to skilful stage management as to a spontaneous effusion of public sentiment.54 It occurred barely a month before Rufus was himself elected to his fourth term as duumvir at Pompeii, and an acknowledgement of Augustus’ new and greatest honour was inscribed, probably shortly thereafter, upon the refurbished theatre: ‘To the imperator Caesar Augustus, father of the country, imperator for the fourteenth time, consul for the thirteenth time, pontifex maximus, with the tribunician power for the twenty-second time’ (CIL X 842).
Figure 19 Statue of Holconius Rufus, Naples Museum, Inv. No. 6233.
At the same time (2 BC), a second monument was placed in the theatre: a statue erected and ‘dedicated in accordance with a decree of the Ordo Decurionum to M. Holconius Rufus, son of Marcus, four times duumvir, quinquennial duumvir, military tribune by the choice of the people, priest of Augustus’ (CIL X 837). As D’Arms observed,55 ‘the simultaneous honouring of Augustus and Holconius cannot be fortuitous, for the two texts are purposely, and suggestively, parallel: they link Augustus – commander, benefactor, and father of all Italy – with his local analogue: M. Holconius Rufus, chief magistrate, benefactor, and protector of Pompeii’. Holconius’ contributions towards the Romanisation of the symbolically charged Large Theatre may have given his contemporaries visible confirmation, in monumental form, that after the long period of conflict and compromise following Pompeii’s participation in the Social Wars, a degree of cultural and political harmony and stability had been achieved.
After his benefaction, Rufus received a further honour, the highest that Pompeii, or any Roman town, could bestow: the title of ‘patron of the colony’.56 The role, which enabled a town’s most distinguished citizen to represent it in its relations with Rome and to secure imperial support for the town, was a fitting one for Rufus, whose theatrical patronage seems deliberately fashioned to suggest imperial analogies likely to please the Princeps, while enhancing his own dignity and prestige.
At some point following his refurbishment of the Large Theatre, and after he had been elected to a fifth term as duumvir and a second one as quinquennalis, Holconius Rufus was given a second monument, possibly a curule chair, marked by a dedicatory inscription in bronze,57 at the very bottom of the lower (ima) cavea directly opposite the stage. Such an honorific chair will have evoked the curule chair of Augustus placed in the Theatre of Marcellus (Suet. Aug. 43.5). Its position immediately above the four wide rows bordering the orchestra where Pompeii’s elite normally sat may have somewhat ‘upstaged’ them, while, situated at the base of the cavea, it may have conveyed the idea that Rufus was a ‘man of the people’. It recorded his additional terms of office and his new role as patron of the colony.
Rufus was indisputably the leading citizen of Pompeii in the middle and late Augustan era, and arguably the single most successful and distinguished politician in the town’s history. He was also honoured by the Emperor, with the title of tribunus militum a populo – a rank awarded under the Augustan regime to particularly distinguished provincial citizens, nominated by their local populace. The rank, despite its title, does not appear to have required actual military service; rather it was another example of Augustus’ concern to co-opt ‘a proper supply of men of respectable standing’ (Suet. Aug. 46) from provincial Italy to encourage and consolidate support for the Principate.58 Augustus’ lex Iulia theatralis ensured that those holding it had the coveted right when visiting Rome to occupy privileged seats in the theatre alongside those reserved for members of the equestrian order.
The town erected a statue of Rufus, possibly at first placed in the Forum; if so, after the earthquake of AD 62, it was moved to a location at one of the main intersections of the town, adjacent to the Stabian baths. Its inscription was virtually identical to that marking his seat of honour in the theatre.59 Rufus poses in the full regalia of a military commander, holding a spear in an appropriately imperious stance. Because there is no evidence that Rufus ever undertook military service, the statue may comprise a conflation of actual and emblematic elements; evoking the man wrought up into his role by means of symbolic, fictive imagery. The statue’s elaborately figured breastplate extended the association to both imperial and divine imagery, since as Zanker60 points out, it was probably inspired by the famous statue of Mars Ultor located in the god’s temple in the Forum of Augustus, which had been dedicated and celebrated with magnificent games in 2 BC – the same period when Rufus completed his work on the Large Theatre at Pompeii.61
The Theatre at Herculaneum
At neighbouring Herculaneum, the theatre was constructed during the Augustan period, and substantially redecorated in the time of Claudius. It remains unexcavated, but as far as can be determined from studies – the first of which were made shortly after its discovery in the eighteenth century, when it was comprehensively plundered – its configuration closely conformed to the orthodox format of the Latin theatre-type.62
The structure, which accommodated between 2,000 and 2,500 spectators, was architecturally unified; the cavea joined to the scaenae by large rectangular structures – the versurae – located at either side of and framing the stage. The façade of the scaenae frons was faced with patterned slabs of coloured marble and columns of giallo antico, cipollino and africano. Running around the circumference of the orchestra were three wide steps: subsellia reserved for members of the Ordo Decurionum. Tribunalia to either side of the cavea overlooked the stage and orchestra areas, and adjacent to them were statues honouring Appius Claudius Pulcher, Roman Consul of 38 BC,63 and the praetor and proconsul M. Nonius Balbus, Herculaneum’s most distinguished citizen, patron, and public official.64
The upper rim of the cavea was embellished with six paired, gilded bronze equestrian statues, each pair flanking one of three shrines (sacella), as well as several oversized bronze standing statues. These included Claudius, with others honouring Tiberius, Antonia Minor, Claudius’ mother and two citizens: the freedmen Marcus Calatorius and L. Mammius Maximus who had served as an Augustalis at the time of Claudius and built a covered market for the town. There was a bronze statue of Maximus’ relative, L. Annius Mammianus Rufus, a quinquennial duumvir who built or restored the theatre. The structure’s exterior comprised two orders each with nineteen arches, decorated with plaster and Fourth Style painting. A porticus post scaenam extended behind the stage building.65
The Post-Augustan Theatre
At Pompeii, the evidence indicates that the scaenae frons of the Large Theatre may have undergone further, post-Augustan remodelling.
Its final form was clad in marble and the central door set within a hemicycle flanked by two rectilinear doors.66 Whether this occurred after or, as new research undertaken by our colleague Drew Baker suggested, before the earthquake of 62 AD is not yet certain. The evidence suggests that the façade had at least two types of marble attached by clamps – the plugs and holes clearly visible – to the brickwork; and at places the concrete bedding retains the image of these slabs, having been pressed against it, consistent in size with the extant remains. Although it has been argued that the brickwork itself suggests a date after 62, in fact there are other brick-based monuments at Pompeii predating the earthquake.
Figure 20 Theatre at Herculaneum, physical model omitting statuary.
The façade is now almost entirely bereft of its presumably sumptuous marble decoration; only a very few fragments remain. In addition, the floor of the orchestra (which was probably expensive and prestigious polychromatic marble) has been removed, as well as most of the travertine seats in the cavea. This suggests either that the site was comprehensively looted in modern times; in antiquity after the eruption; or possibly had been denuded before the eruption. The plan published in 1782 by Jean-Claude Richard, the Abbé of Saint-Non – based upon his earlier visit’s study of the site – shows the area of the scaenae frons, stage, orchestra and cavea still almost entirely buried.67
The excavation had commenced in the 1760s.68 Subsequently no mention in any records or accounts suggests that substantial remains of marble slabs or other decorative elements were found or removed. There are only scant fragments of the marble entablature, pediments and cornice that would have adorned the façade, and no remains of columns. This is remarkable. To have stripped the site so completely and ‘cleanly’ in antiquity following the eruption would have been extraordinarily difficult given the depth of the volcanic deposit that accumulated in the large void of the theatre. It would in effect have had to become an opencast mine of considerable depth, and the Saint-Non plan, suggesting an undisturbed site, strongly argues against this. It shows only some exposure of the crypta and a small portion of the scaenae frons itself, which would not have enabled sufficient space to strip the site of all its marble cladding, decorative elements, seating and the orchestral pavement.
Figure 21 Engraving of the Theatre at Herculaneum section and elevation by Francesco Piranesi, 1783, pl. 4.
Figure 22 Large Theatre, Pompeii.
Figure 23 Large Theatre, Pompeii, detail of hypothetical reconstruction of the final format of the stage and scaenae frons superimposed onto site photograph.
There is scholarly consensus that the theatre had been severely damaged by the earthquake of 62, and was at least in part still ruinous at the time of the eruption. This was true of other major buildings at Pompeii; the Temple of Isis, for example, was rebuilt ‘from the foundations’ (CIL X 846), and other temples and civic structures were awaiting repairs some sixteen years after the earthquake. Baker’s hypothesis is that following the earthquake the marble was deliberately and methodically removed, most plausibly for use elsewhere in the city, and at the time of the eruption the – now semi-derelict – theatre was still awaiting a new and comprehensive refurbishment. In the meantime, both the amphitheatre and the Odeion were functional, as well as the theatre at neighbouring Herculaneum. The focus at Pompeii on post-earthquake reconstruction and renovation would have been upon the restoration of major commercial and civil buildings, including those located around the Forum. Even the Temple of Venus, the town’s patron goddess, had not yet been repaired by AD 79.
Figure 24a Large Theatre, Pompeii, hypothetical reconstruction of the final format of the stage and scaenae frons (frontal).
Figure 24b Large Theatre, Pompeii, hypothetical reconstruction of the final format of the stage and scaenae frons (side).
