As already noted, the ludi Plebeii, or People’s Games, were established in 221 by the plebeian leader Gaius Flaminius. The ludi Apollinares, the games of Apollo, followed in 208; the ludi Cereales, the games of Ceres, in 202; and in 194 the ludi Megalenses, held in honor of the Magna Mater in front of her new temple on the Palatine.
Antiquarians like Varro were fascinated by the origins of live performance. They posited archaic rituals in the countryside, with dances and crude verses. Italians, wrote Virgil on the back of antiquarian speculation, were
Professional dance companies were imported from Etruria, but (we are told) the Roman youths began to imitate them, adding obscene verses of their own composition. This blend of words, music and gesture was cleaned up and professionalized, and led to the presentation of written comedies, which were performed at the ludi. (The young amateurs maintained their tradition of ribald songs regardless.)
The first proper plays to appear at the Games were written by Livius Andronicus, a half-Greek who was sold into slavery when Rome captured Tarentum after the defeat of King Pyrrhus. He tutored his master’s son and wrote a translation into Latin of Homer’s Odyssey; Cicero thought it poor stuff, but it became a set text that hapless schoolboys had to learn by rote. Little of his work survives except for a few titles—farces inspired by Greek models such as “The Gambler” and “The Dagger.” His plots centered on rich young men’s love affairs with prostitutes (who invariably turned out to be wellborn) and clever slaves who ran rings around their masters. His more famous successors, Plautus (Latin for “flatfoot,” c. 254–184), a stage carpenter and sceneshifter from Umbria, and a young Carthaginian slave, Terence (195/185–159), used much the same kind of material.
Tragedies on Greek mythological themes (the adventures of Trojan heroes, for example) were also popular, as was an authentic Roman form, fabulae praetextae, poetic dramas about “documentary” or real-life subjects. These celebrated great moments in Republican history, such as the devotio of Decius Mus at Sentinum and Manlius’s duel with a Gallic chieftain.
Plays were presented in the open air, and the audience sat on the grass or on temporary bleachers in front of a wooden stage. They fulfilled a useful social function, for they appealed to all classes, each of which was allocated special seating. A Roman could look around the audience and see all Rome represented, from a senior senator to a slave who had been given some time off.
Conservative politicians felt that the performing arts were a decadent, Hellenic innovation and blocked all attempts to build a permanent theater with more convenient and comfortable facilities. At one point, a senatorial decree was passed banning the erection of seats for shows on the risible grounds that “mental relaxation should go together with the virility of a standing posture proper to the Roman nation.”
The atmosphere at the ludi could be rowdy. Terence was furious that noise and commotion made a play of his, in which he was acting, faiclass="underline"
When I first began to perform it, there was talk of a boxing match, and there were hopes of a tightrope walker, too. Slaves were arriving; there was a din, women were shouting—these things made me leave the stage before I’d reached the end.
When he revived the play, the first part went well, but then the performance was disrupted by the rumor of a gladiatorial show, a spectacle that was much in demand.
Fights to the death as public display were akin to human sacrifice. Their origin is uncertain; perhaps Rome borrowed them from funeral rites in Etruria (along with wild-animal hunts) or came across them in Campania. The killing of prisoners of war to mark the passing of great men was not unknown. Homer, that universal maker of classical precedents, reports that the grief-stricken Achilles “hacked to pieces with his bronze [sword]” twelve young Trojans at the pyre of his dead friend or lover, Patroclus.
However, physical combat was unusual. The first report we have of it dates from 264, the year that the First Punic War began. At the funeral of a former consul, Decimus Junius Brutus Pera, his sons presented three pairs of slaves, selected from a group of prisoners of war, who fought one another in the Forum Boarium. By 216, the number of fights in a single program had risen to twenty-two, and in 174 seventy-four men fought over a period of three days.
As we saw with drama, entertainment and religion marched hand in hand, and it was not for nothing that a gladiatorial show was called in Latin a munus—a service or gift to a man’s ancestors and to the gods. Until the first century, it always marked the death of a male relative, and was often staged in the Forum in a temporary arena. As violent death became an increasingly popular spectator sport, Romans offered a rational justification of its purpose. Gladiators were expected to act bravely and give up their lives with grace. They were an inspiring example of bravery, it was said, which citizens were to learn from and imitate. They were a metaphor for Rome’s martial spirit—in a word, for virtus.
Munera were regularly programmed in December, especially during the festival of Saturnalia. This prototype of Christmas was the celebration to end all celebrations, and was introduced in 217. It had about it more than a whiff of misrule. Whereas the ludi affirmed social class, the Saturnalia temporarily subverted it. For up to a week, beginning on December 17, the ordinary rules of social interaction were turned upside down. Slaves were excused from work, and their owners would serve them a meal (often actually prepared by the slaves). They were allowed to gamble. Even Cato gave his slaves an extra ration of wine. Citizens were not obliged to dress in togas and everyone wore the pileus, the felt bonnet denoting a slave’s manumission. Gifts were exchanged—wax candles and small pottery figurines, or sigillaria.
Rome’s frequent festivities certainly mitigated the pain of life, but to the slave and the jobless citizen or part-timer the city was a cramped, crowded, smelly, unhealthy habitat. The rich and powerful enjoyed a high level of comfort and ease, but wisely kept a weather eye on the discontents that surrounded them in every street, alley, or crossroads.
IF THERE WAS one man Cato could not stand, who was the epitome of the decadent Greekness of which he so passionately disapproved, it was the hero of Zama, the all-conquering Scipio Africanus. Cato devoted much of his time attempting to discredit him.
There was an annoying grandeur about Scipio. He came from an extremely distinguished patrician family with many consulships to its credit. As we have seen, his father and uncle had been distinguished generals. Since being given command of an army himself at the early age of twenty-five, he had never lost a battle or seen a Roman force defeated. When abroad on foreign commissions, he tended to give himself the airs and graces of a Hellenistic monarch. He did not have the patience or the moral flexibility to thrive in the noisy rivalry of the marketplace; the first-rate general was a third-rate politician.