- today
Documentary, Ancient Greece, The Greatest Show on Earth Part 3: Romans
Category
๐
LearningTranscript
00:00In this series, I've looked at how theatre was first invented in ancient Athens, and at how it played a vital part in the lives of the ancient Greeks.
00:14I've also seen how it grew in scale and popularity, spreading throughout the Greek world and beyond.
00:21But in this episode, I want to look at what happened to theatre when the Romans arrived,
00:27when the era of Greek dominance and independence drew to a close.
00:32It's a story that is symbolised by a building that was constructed in Athens in the 2nd century AD,
00:39and which still looks proudly over the modern city.
00:46This magnificent theatre was paid for by one of Athens' richest citizens, an intellectual called Herodes Atticus,
00:54who had it carved out of the rock beneath the Acropolis at the heart of the very city where tragedy and comedy were born.
01:02Herodes Atticus built this theatre in memory of his recently deceased wife, Rogilla.
01:07It's not a bad way to say, I miss you.
01:10But although Herodes was Greek, and we're in Greece, this is not your typical Greek theatre.
01:15And that's because it was built when the Romans controlled Greece.
01:19And that Roman influence is very discernible in the way the 28-metre-high solid stone backdrop walls
01:25meet absolutely with the seating on either side.
01:28A very Roman conception of theatre, not a Greek one.
01:32And as a result, this theatre is the perfect symbol for what happened when the Romans took over Greece.
01:38They adopted Greek art, architecture and culture, and in doing so preserved the legacy of Greek theatre for us today.
01:46But they also adapted Greek theatre for their own very Roman ends.
01:51And the ways in which that process of adoption and adaptation took place
01:56give us a fascinating window into one of the most dynamic and monumental periods of ancient history,
02:02as the Romans turned the Mediterranean Sea into Mare Nostrum, their lake.
02:12In this episode, I want to look at the vital parts played by the Romans in the preservation of Greek drama
02:18and in the history of theatre.
02:20And I want to explore how this famous empire provides one of the crucial connections
02:25between our modern drama and the great plays of ancient Greece.
02:32And I want to explore how this is.
02:34And I want to explore how this is.
02:35Drama as we know it was invented in Athens in the 6th century BC.
02:52At the very same time, Athens created the world's first democracy, one man, one vote.
03:00And the two came together in an explosive mixture.
03:05Year after year in the theatre of Dionysus in Athens, the city put on tragic drama and comedy for an audience of citizens.
03:13Plays like Oedipus the King, the Persians, Antigone and the Bacchae told savage stories of murder, violence and incest drawn from myth and legend.
03:24While comedies like Birds and the Cistrata mocked daily life in Athens through bawdy humour, absurd fantasy and political satire.
03:33All of these plays were more than just stories.
03:35They unlocked issues of justice and loyalty, war and peace, vengeance and compassion.
03:41All issues the audience had to think about as active citizens in a democracy.
03:48For a century, theatre and democracy had helped to bring Athens to a peak of political and cultural dominance.
03:56But after 400 BC, defeat in war destroyed the city's power and independence.
04:02Democracy slowly gave way to autocratic kings like Alexander the Great.
04:07But despite this, theatre continued to prosper, spreading far and wide across the Greek world and throughout the empire built by Alexander.
04:17I'm on my way to a remote valley in Epirus in northwestern Greece to look at the part theatre played in this bigger, more autocratic world.
04:26For the classical Greeks, this was a harsh and inhospitable place at the northwestern frontiers of the Greek world.
04:33Thucydides went as far as to say that the people from here were barbarians.
04:38And yet at the same time, Aristotle claimed that the Hellenes, the Greeks, originated from this part of the world.
04:44In many ways, it was that curious ambiguity that was this place's main attraction.
04:51This is Dodoni, at the heart of the Epirus region.
05:00In ancient times, it was the site of a famous oracle.
05:03Greeks came here from all over to get answers to their problems from Olympian Zeus, king of the gods.
05:10One popular story was that oracular responses were divined by listening to the rustling of the leaves on the sacred tree.
05:17In other words, there was a series of bronze cauldrons around the tree that made sonorous noises.
05:23Now, this place was never as flash as other oracular sanctuaries like Delphi.
05:28That was until the early third century BC, when everything changed.
05:34The turning point was the death of Alexander the Great.
05:41His enormous empire fragmented, and much of Greece came under the control of warlords, autocrats, and kings.
05:48Dodoni was no exception, and it eventually came under the control of a man called Pyrrhus.
05:55These were more turbulent times, and you might expect theatre to suffer as a result, but the ruins here at Dodoni tell a different story.
06:12The spectacular theatre could hold at least 20,000 spectators.
06:17It was part of a huge building programme instigated by Pyrrhus, and was the centrepiece of a grand new annual festival.
06:25Pyrrhus was a classic warlord from the time following that of Alexander the Great, to whom he was related.
06:34He was not a democrat, he was an autocrat, the kind of guy who had his co-ruler murdered.
06:39But in building here at Dodoni this theatre and the athletic tracks, and setting up the competitions and festivals,
06:44Pyrrhus gave a concrete centre, not only for the new alliance that brought Epirus together,
06:50but also a concrete demonstration of his own personal power.
06:54The very architecture of this theatre, its retaining walls, looked like Hellenistic fortress towers.
07:01And by doing all this, Pyrrhus put Dodoni, Epirus, and himself on the map as players in the wider Greek world.
07:11Rather than taking a back seat in the rivalries and conflicts that beset Greece, theatre had become a tool in these power struggles.
07:20It was a symbol of power and prestige.
07:26But the plays that would have been performed at Dodoni and at other theatres throughout Greece
07:31were no longer the same democratically charged tragedies and satirical comedies with which theatre began.
07:38Instead, the stories that played out in these grand arenas were more down-to-earth affairs.
07:46As Athens' power waned, its brightest star was the comedian Menander,
07:51whose universally acceptable and enjoyable situation comedy meant that he and his plays debunked Athens' decline
07:59and spread throughout the now much wider Greek world that went all the way into Asia
08:03and whose epicentres were now not in central Greece but in places like Alexandria in Egypt or Pergamon in Asia Minor.
08:12Indeed, what we have of Menander today has survived to us because it was written down on papyri in desert places like Egypt.
08:21Which is what makes it all so frustrating that today, despite his incredible popularity in the ancient world,
08:27we only have one complete surviving play of Menander.
08:31That is, until recently, because now we have enough bits and pieces of a second to put its plot back together.
08:39It was called The Woman of Samos.
08:43The woman of the title is a prostitute called Chrysis.
08:47She has been invited to live with her lover, Demaeus, and his son, Moshion, in Athens.
08:52But while Demaeus is away on business, Moshion gets the girl next door pregnant.
08:57When the child is born, he gives it to Chrysis to nurse, hoping to keep it a secret until a marriage can be arranged.
09:05But when Demaeus returns, a series of misunderstandings lead him to believe that his son and his courtesan have been having an affair.
09:14Comedy and carnage ensue, but eventually the play ends well with Moshion's wedding and the reconciliation of Demaeus and Chrysis.
09:23It's very much a domestic comedy, and a comedy of manners playing on stock characters.
09:28You've got the courtesan, who's actually very good-natured.
09:32You've got an angry old father, and the misguided young man, who's trying to get married, and, you know, the cook, the usual crowd.
09:43It's about a family. It's got a love story in it, of course.
09:46It's about a couple who are eventually going to get married one way or another.
09:50And I think it transfers very well culturally.
09:54It's a comedy of errors, and these always work, no matter where you are.
09:59Plays like this pulled in audiences from Afghanistan to Marseille throughout the wider Greek world and what had once been Alexander's empire.
10:08And nowhere were they more popular than in the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily.
10:13Rich, cultured, and powerful, these Greek settlements were the opposite of a colonial backwater.
10:19They were the equals of any Greek cities anywhere.
10:22They were a byword for luxury and style, and they adored theatre.
10:27One of the most enthusiastic was here, the city of Syracuse in Sicily.
10:34Syracusan patrons had invited the great Athenian dramatists Caescalus and Sophocles to perform their plays here,
10:40and Syracusan dramatists had written and produced plays back in Athens and even introduced their own native form of drama, Mime, to the great city.
10:48The success of theatre here in Sicily demonstrates the pulling power of Greek culture in the ancient world.
10:57Greek drama, architecture, vase painting, and sculpture were an intoxicating attraction.
11:03They were the height of sophistication.
11:06And in 282 BC, the wealth and culture of the Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily attracted the attention of a new power, Rome.
11:19It was at the Greek city of Taras, now Taranto, that the Romans first forced their way into the Greek landscape.
11:27The people of this city found themselves attacked from the sea by a Roman fleet.
11:32The Tarantines won this encounter, but we all know their luck wasn't going to last.
11:39Within little more than 250 years, Rome would be calling the Mediterranean, Mare Nostrum, our sea.
11:46The Tarantines knew it too.
11:49When Rome attacked, they sent out a call for help to their fellow Greeks.
11:54A call that reached the ears of the warlord Pyrrhus across the Adriatic in Dodoni.
12:01Dodoni had long been connected to the Greek colonies of southern Italy, one of which was Taras.
12:06And so it was in a fantastic position to know that things in the west were changing.
12:11And so when Rome attacked Taras, it's no surprise that Taras came here to Epirus and to Pyrrhus to ask for help.
12:18Pyrrhus, just a few years before, had failed in his campaigns to expand his empire east.
12:23This was his opportunity to head west.
12:31Pyrrhus sailed for Italy to check the upstart Romans with an army of 25,000 soldiers and 20 elephants.
12:39But the Romans fought much harder than he had expected. Even his victories cost thousands of lives.
12:47Another such victory, said Pyrrhus after one of them, and we shall be lost.
12:51In fact, one of Pyrrhus's greatest legacies is the term Pyrrhic victory. A victory won at too great a cost to be worthwhile.
13:01In the end, the attempts of Pyrrhus and the Greeks to withstand the Romans failed.
13:05And when Pyrrhus returned to Greece to expand his domains elsewhere, he was killed in a street fight and his empire collapsed like a house of cards.
13:15When news of Pyrrhus's death reached Taras in 272, the death of a commander Hannibal thought second only to Alexander the Great, the city capitulated.
13:25And it was the beginning of the end, by the end of the century, most of the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily were under Roman control.
13:32And when the Romans took Taras, they didn't just take its buildings, they took its people.
13:38And that, according to one source, included a playwright.
13:42Theatre was about to enter the Roman bloodstream.
13:47And it did so as part of a wider Roman desire for all things Greek.
13:56When we think of the Romans, we think of the grandeur of empire and the glory of Rome, which are expressed here in the Forum, the teeming centre of ancient Roman public life.
14:07But when Rome first conquered Taras, it had not yet become the centre of a mighty empire.
14:14It was a city-state, a republic, on the hunt for power and prestige.
14:23And one of the ways it could get it was by absorbing the cultural achievements of the conquered Greeks, including architecture, literature and, of course, drama.
14:34We've become so used today to seeing Rome as the eternal city, the imperial city, powerful, solid, undisputably in charge of all they survey.
14:43But, of course, we first need to dial ourselves back to the very origins of this place, to when it was a pugnacious republican city dominated by rival clans fighting to gain that supremacy and that power.
14:55Not far from the Roman Forum, in the Lago Argentina, 20 feet below the city streets of modern Rome, you can see how this upstart Roman Republic worked and how it responded when it brushed up against the Greeks, the cultural champions of the ancient world.
15:13Today, when we look around Rome, we're seeing mostly imperial, we're seeing, you know, the eternal city.
15:22How would you sum up to someone what it was like to be in Rome during the republican era?
15:27If you can imagine a large mafia which doesn't use violence between the rival clans and is also the state and also has a clientelistic relationship like the mafia with the people low down.
15:45That sense of the power of the individual families, their competitiveness, their sense of personal honour, the ease of a front and the vast amount of fixing and the money that comes out of it.
15:58I think those things are all something that would strike a Greek visitor.
16:03For these Romans, the conquest of the Greek cities in Italy made Rome a city that mattered and incorporating aspects of Greek culture was a great way to show it.
16:14Are there elements of the Greek world and of Greek architectural styles and art that we can see within Roman buildings?
16:20Yes, things that aren't here anymore, the cults, the cult statues, things like that were very Greek.
16:26The orders, the Corinthian order, Doric order, Ionic order, but also if we can see over there, I don't know, they understand that Greek temples have to glint.
16:36They understand that they're made of white marble. You can see this local brown, rather crumbly stone, the Tufo.
16:42They understand that doesn't look like Greek temples. You look on the columns over there, just the remains, the white stuff, that's stucco.
16:49It looks rather like large amounts of chewing gum, but actually it's stucco, which is meant to clad this brown Tufo stone.
16:56And when you polish it, it shines. It's got little bits of ground-up mica and marble in it.
17:01And so it gives that effect that you would see if you went to Greece or Sicily and saw a full-on marble temple.
17:06So are these the Romans trying to compete with the extraordinary examples of Greek architecture,
17:11or is it to sort of show that they have somehow taken over the mantle and incorporated them and are better than?
17:19I think initially it's competition. I think they open their eyes to what can be done, what should be done.
17:26You want a proper city with proper houses for the gods, which properly commemorate your relationship with them.
17:32That's how you do it. As we pass later towards the end of the Republic, it becomes a discourse of dominance.
17:39It's about saying, we've taken it, we've conquered it, we've earned it, and now we're doing it bigger and better.
17:44And one of the things that gets inserted into that mix in the mid-third century is theatre, is Greek theatre and other Greek playwrights.
17:54What does theatre offer and why is it taken up?
17:57I think it offers something sophisticated, so there's clearly an appreciation that there's a superior culture which manifests in this way,
18:06in the sense that this is how a community ought to behave, it ought to have these sorts of ways of expressing itself.
18:13Very important in the Roman context, as in the Greek context, that these are plays staged at religious opportunities.
18:19And like this temple, the plays are another acquisition of empire.
18:25Some types of poetry and drama did already exist in the Roman world, including forms of farce, mime and religious performance.
18:34But soon after the capture of Taras, the Romans started staging plays.
18:40These plays were put on at religious festivals and relied heavily on Greek stories and the Greek style.
18:47The man who wrote them was called Lucius Livius Andronicus.
18:51Sadly, only fragments and titles of his work survive, but they paint an intriguing picture.
18:57Livius Andronicus was not a Roman, but probably a Greek, potentially a slave.
19:04And according to some sources, from the Greek city of Taras, the very city that the Romans had captured in battle.
19:10And yet, some of the greatest writers in Roman history call him the father of Latin literature.
19:17He began, it was said, by translating Greek texts into Latin for use in schools.
19:22And his own tragedies had the names Achilles, Ajax, the Trojan horse.
19:27And as the Roman poet Horace put it two centuries later,
19:30captured Greece, captured her uncouth conqueror, and brought the arts to rustic Latin.
19:37But it was never going to be such a straightforward story of Roman indebtedness to Greece.
19:43Livius Andronicus marks the very beginning of Roman engagement with Greece and Greek literature.
19:49And the key thing is that his plays are in Latin.
19:55Unlike other Mediterranean communities, the Romans didn't just import Greek theatre whole.
20:01They adapted elements of Greek drama, but they created their own new plays from scratch in Latin.
20:08Sadly, very little of what was written has survived, and what has is comedy.
20:15The first author whose plays survived to us in full is an ex-stagehand from Umbria called Plautus.
20:21Now, all his comedies are based on the Greek model, that of Menander.
20:25In 1968, a papyrus was found with a play of Menander on one side and a play of Plautus directly opposite.
20:31And all of Plautus's plays are set in Greece, usually in Athens, and there's lots of Greek borrowings into the Latin.
20:38But all of this is not because Plautus thought the Greeks and Greece were wonderful.
20:44It's because he thought they were funny.
20:46Plautus's comedy is full of ridicule for Greece.
20:53His plays are lewd and bawdy, and comedies like The Ghost show stupid Greek citizens being outwitted by their scheming slaves.
21:01In Plautus's play, The Ghost, Philolakes, is a no-good son who's having fun while his dad is away,
21:08and their slave Traneo is helping out, but when the dad suddenly returns, Philolakes panics,
21:14and it's up to Traneo to save the day.
21:17With his father out of town, Philolakes does what any young man would do and throws a house party.
21:24He has also borrowed money to free his favourite slave girl.
21:28The drinking is in full flow when his father returns, but Traneo moves fast.
21:33He locks the revellers in the house and tells Philolakes' father that the house is haunted.
21:39Through his quick thinking, he buys enough time for the revellers to escape
21:43and for the money Philolakes owes to be repaid.
21:48Now, that's a pretty similar plot to Menander's Woman of Samos, for example.
21:54Somebody leaves, things happen in their absence, and chaos ensues when they return.
21:59But what's different here is that it's now the Greeks who are the fools.
22:04It's the slave who saves the day.
22:07Plautus has completely turned the tables about who has the last laugh.
22:14The fact that the Romans were watching plays about Greeks and were laughing at Greeks
22:19has given scholars an interesting insight into both the ambitions and boundaries of Roman society.
22:24You have a situation where you have ostensibly Greek characters living in Athens,
22:31expressing the ambition to Greek it up or live like Greeks.
22:35And one of the things that that is reflecting is the Roman obsession with Greek luxury
22:41as a form of wish fulfilment.
22:43So it reflects the way that also that Roman society is becoming more Greek and more luxurious.
22:50This is an idealised form of Hellenism.
22:53And it's also some ways a very comic form of Hellenism that is about as Greek as, say, the version of Germany and France
23:02in Allo Allo is either French or German.
23:04But it's interesting, isn't it, what Greeks are not in Roman comedies.
23:08So Greeks are not sort of dynamic, macho, sort of heroic figures, are they?
23:11They're generally sort of foppish, aristocratic, sort of rather clueless figures.
23:17And there is obviously more general freedom allowed to the poet in the characterisation
23:22if they're dealing with Greek characters and you can have relationships that you don't have in Rome.
23:28You can have slaves doing things that they would not be allowed in Rome.
23:33One of the things about comedy is set in ancient Athens, Aristophanes, is that it pokes very bitter,
23:38very pointed fun at Athenians sitting in the audience.
23:42Could the Romans laugh at themselves in the same way that we understand the Greeks to have been laughing at themselves?
23:48You do get references to Romans in Roman comedy.
23:51So, for example, this line where a character is said to be smellier than a group of Roman rowers.
23:56So, yeah, you do get this mockery of Romans, but it's always displaced into the mouths of non-Romans mocking Romans for being barbarians.
24:05As the Romans took over the domestic form of comedy, there is no direct political jokes as we have in Greek old comedy,
24:13where politicians are more or less directly named and portrayed.
24:17One of Plautus' great contemporaries and predecessors, Nivius, actually ended up getting banged up in prison under a libel law.
24:25Right.
24:26Specifically for having made jokes at the family of the Metelli, and therefore the type of humour about families or individuals that Aristophanes was able to indulge in,
24:39is very much impossible for a comic writer such as Plautus.
24:44Mocking political leaders on the stage had been fine in Athens because it was a way of keeping the democracy in check.
24:53But Rome was ruled by powerful aristocrats, and mocking them would have been a difficult and dangerous game.
25:01For the authorities in Rome, controlling the story was paramount, and this helped to give birth to a new kind of drama,
25:09a drama that is reflected in the spectacular monuments to Roman history that still litter the city.
25:15One of the most famous structures of this kind comes from the time of the Roman Empire.
25:20It's called Trajan's Column.
25:22This is one of the most famous landmarks in Rome today, known because of the way it tells a visual historical narrative spiralling up the columns,
25:31that of Emperor Trajan's military campaigns.
25:34But this interest in telling stories, historical narrative, goes right back to the roots of Roman culture.
25:40And in the third century BC, the Romans actually created their own form of drama that mixed tragedy with reality,
25:47with historical narrative, telling the stories of some of their most famous adventurers.
25:52The Romans had adapted tragedy into what would become a new theatrical genre, the history play.
26:03And one such play commemorated a man who played an important role in the subjugation of Greece.
26:10In the second century BC, the Romans set about conquering the Greek mainland.
26:15And in 168 BC, Lucius Aemilius Paulus won an epic victory.
26:20This spectacular 18th century painting shows him returning to Rome and showing off his Greek prisoners in a lavish triumph ceremony.
26:28But the commemorations didn't end there.
26:32As part of his victory triumph following the subjugation of the Greeks, Aemilius Paulus commissioned a historical narrative drama.
26:39And its title was Paulus, and it told the story of Paulus's triumphant campaign.
26:45He clearly agreed with the Roman maxim that virtue deserves praise.
26:50And was it any good? Well, the problem is, we've only got four lines surviving.
26:55One describes, we think, the march of the Romans to Olympus.
27:03Another is a snatch of prayer before a battle.
27:06The third is a line about spears flying.
27:09And the fourth quotes an unlucky Roman calling for help.
27:13And that's it.
27:15We can tell that the author Pacuvius' Latin is both elegant and educated.
27:21But if his other plays are any guide, it's likely that this one ended not with a question for the audience to consider or a moral dilemma for them to wrestle with,
27:30but with a sense of a world restored from disorder.
27:34A triumph.
27:36This kind of play was very different from Greek tragedy, but the development of this new drama is one of Roman theatre's greatest legacies.
27:45Part of the problem in Greece, in Athens, when they're experimenting with tragedy at the beginning of the fifth century,
27:52is that actually these history plays can be a bit too close to the bone.
27:57So there's an example of a playwright who actually gets fined because of doing a tragedy on recent history and getting it wrong.
28:05He makes the audience feel terrible about how they didn't help out their allies and they don't like it.
28:10So they fine it and that play is never performed again.
28:14With the Romans, I think there's something slightly different going on with it.
28:19They really want to commemorate their victories.
28:22And actually by doing this culturally, this is part of conquest that you're saying,
28:28look, look what we've done, we've got this, this is our genre and we're celebrating our own victories through it.
28:35You have to think about the performances in the context of all the other performances that are going on.
28:40Triumphal processions, maybe gladiatorial spectacles where you're literally bringing everything to Rome to show off about your conquest.
28:50And this is really an extension of them.
28:56By 150 BC, Roman theatre had come of age in the service of Rome's governing elite.
29:02It had its own political dynamic and purpose.
29:06And it included writers who have entered the canon of Western literature.
29:11Writers like Plautus, and even more so, Terence.
29:15Terence is a classic case.
29:17He was a foreigner, brought to Rome as a slave from Carthage, Rome's deadliest enemy,
29:23and yet went on to become a famous writer of Roman comedy that were performed on temporary stages all over the city.
29:29The most famous is right behind me here on the Palatine in front of the Temple of Magna Marta.
29:34Now, Terence used Greek models for his comedies, but his Latin was so pure, so sophisticated,
29:39that in later generations he became the textbook from which to learn the language.
29:44One person said he's good morals, good taste, good Latin, as Terence has.
29:49So this is no longer Roman comedy borrowing, begging, stealing Greek models.
29:55This is Roman comedy standing on its own two feet, confident in its own Roman-ness, its Romanitas.
30:06This Roman confidence was evident when Roman soldiers returned to Athens many years later in 87 BC to put down a revolt.
30:15The general leading the Roman forces was called Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
30:20He laid siege to Athens, and despite the city's impressive cultural reputation, he showed no mercy.
30:27He used wood from sacred groves, he plundered temples, and when Athens finally fell,
30:32the slaughter was said to be so great that the streets were flowing with blood.
30:38Sulla was not just the man who had captured Athens for Rome.
30:44He was also the epitome of a breed of Roman who was fully immersed in Greek culture, yet not overawed by it.
30:52When he captured Athens, he is said to have quoted one of Athens' own playwright's lines right back at them.
30:58It was a line from Aristophanes' play The Frogs.
31:02First learn to row before you can steer.
31:05And in that one line, Sulla had brilliantly taken two of Athens' most treasured accomplishments in all of history,
31:12the theatre and their supremacy at sea with the fleet,
31:15and combined them into one of history's perhaps most sarcastic put-downs.
31:20The Athenians were forced to eat their own humble pie. Ouch.
31:29The Romans had succeeded in making drama their own,
31:32but it didn't play the same role or have the same status that it had had in Greece.
31:37I want to find out more about the differences between these two societies,
31:42and I think that the different designs of their theatres could be a good place to start.
31:47The ancient Greek world was littered with monumental theatres, many of which survive to this day,
31:52evidence of Greek architectural skill and ambition.
31:56To harness and contain the emotional power of their plays,
32:00the Greeks had developed very special places for performance.
32:04Their theatres were open spaces, easy to get into and out of,
32:08and usually with views over the stage to the landscape beyond.
32:13They were part of the landscape, and part of the community, both religious and political.
32:19This theatre at Epidaurus is probably the most perfect example to survive.
32:23Even today, visitors here respond.
32:28There's something I notice every time I come to this theatre,
32:31and that's whatever nationality, whatever language, whether you're a show-off or a recluse,
32:36everyone is drawn to the very centre of the stage.
32:41Now, partly I think that's to do with the visual sightlines of the theatre all meeting here,
32:45and the perfect acoustics which make this such an extraordinary experience,
32:49but I think there is an honesty and a nakedness to the design of the Greek theatre and its stage,
32:57that allows the audience to empathise more easily with the performers.
33:03And as a result, the very design of the Greek theatre builds on what all the religious rituals
33:09that happened beforehand were trying to do,
33:11to eliminate the gap between them in the audience and us on the stage,
33:15to create not two different entities, but one body.
33:19This same design was used all over the Greek world.
33:27But in Rome, theatres were very different indeed.
33:31To begin with, there was no permanent accepted venue.
33:34Terence and other writers had to perform their plays on temporary stages,
33:38in places like the Forum or in a Sanctuary or here in the Circus Maximus,
33:42more usually used for chariot races.
33:45Reconstructions by modern scholars following ancient depictions,
33:49like that in the House of Livia in Rome,
33:51revealed that these structures could be very lavish indeed.
33:55But I want to know what their temporary nature tells us
33:59about the role of theatre in Roman society.
34:04You can see temporariness as a form of popular control.
34:07The Senate pays for the dramatic festival every year.
34:11Somebody pays to have the stage put up.
34:14If it isn't there permanently, one of the threats is,
34:18well, if you do not behave yourselves, it won't be here next year.
34:22One other way in which you can measure the value of theatre,
34:25of theatrical production in Rome,
34:26is to think about the status of actors.
34:28In the Greek world, they're relatively high status,
34:30and we know that there's this guild of actors,
34:32the artists of Dionysus.
34:34In the Roman world, they're infamers.
34:36They're the lowest of the low.
34:38That's kind of basically what being an infamist means.
34:40Don't we also get these very strange arguments
34:42about the morally corrupting nature of sitting down at the theatre?
34:45Yeah, yeah.
34:46What was the morally corrupt aspect of sitting down?
34:48The argument was that I think the Greeks conducted their assemblies
34:52while sitting down, and the Romans didn't,
34:55and so you were more virtuous and strong.
34:57The funny thing is that the Greek word for civil strife, stasis,
35:00seems to be associated with ideas of standing up,
35:03whereas the Roman word for civil strife, sedition,
35:05is actually connected with ideas of sitting down,
35:07and therefore sitting in the theatre might be a dubious
35:10and morally damaging activity.
35:12Roman theatres reflect the aristocratic nature of Roman society,
35:18and unlike Greek theatres, which encouraged the audience
35:21to explore their emotions, they betray a sense of social unease.
35:26Eventually, permanent theatres were constructed in Rome,
35:31but these too were different from the Greek style.
35:34As the Roman Republic grew,
35:38it fell into the hands of rival politician warlords,
35:41men like Sulla, the subjugator of Athens,
35:44and Pompey, Julius Caesar and Augustus.
35:47And the competition between these men helped to drive the construction
35:52of permanent theatres in Rome.
35:54In 55 BC, while Julius Caesar was raiding in Britain,
35:58his rival Pompey the Great dedicated the first purpose-built theatre in Rome.
36:03It still exists, but as a ghost in the Roman street plan.
36:08So, Ed, where are we now?
36:09We are in the heart of medieval Rome,
36:12and the great thing about medieval street plans
36:14is they exploit pre-existing structures,
36:18and they fossilise the previous urban texture.
36:21And where we are right now, we're in the Theatre of Pompey.
36:26So, the curvature of this entire street here
36:29is following the line of the Theatre of Pompey?
36:31It's following the internal line of the Theatre of Pompey.
36:33So, if you imagine the edge of the orchestra,
36:35this is the curve of the orchestra.
36:36So, this is the stage, right here?
36:38You'll be looking at the stage.
36:40The good thing about the height of this building
36:42is it allows you to imagine really well the height of the stage.
36:45The enormous, highly sculpted, elaborate stage facade.
36:53And on this side, this is the beginning of the spectator seating?
36:57This is the curve of the seats, yes.
36:59So, we would imagine, pretty much from where we are,
37:01the seats running up, up and up and up.
37:04But again, look at the size of that thing, the scale, the elevation.
37:07It gives you an idea of what a monster this thing was.
37:10It was a cauldron of sound and noise, atmosphere.
37:15Pompey's monster marked a new epoch for theatre.
37:18This reconstruction, based on the work of the architect,
37:21Luigi Canina, reveals its scale and ambition.
37:25It could hold up to 40,000 spectators,
37:27even more than Greek theatres like Epidaurus.
37:30And it was a very different kind of building.
37:33It was completely enclosed.
37:35Behind the 100-metre stage rose a lavishly decorated scene building
37:40three storeys high.
37:42And the whole thing was part of a walled complex,
37:45which included a park and a new building for the Senate.
37:48I mean, this was an unmistakable and unmissable marker on the city plan of Rome, wasn't it?
37:55It's the biggest thing that's been built in the city up to this point ever.
37:58Staking ownership and dominance over the entire place.
38:01Yep.
38:02Yeah, it's a fantastically daring piece of victory building.
38:07This kind of theatre design reflected the hierarchical nature of the Roman world.
38:16A world that soon went from being a republic to being an empire.
38:20This theatre, the Theatre of Marcellus, was built by an emperor, the Emperor Augustus.
38:25It's a structure that still evokes a sense of power, order and control.
38:30Where you had once enjoyed theatre in a public open space, this was a permanently enclosed building.
38:42And unlike Greek theatres, where people arrived altogether at this theatre,
38:46people entered through a large number of separate narrow entrances,
38:50because Roman leaders had a fear of large crowds.
38:53After that, stairways took you into different levels of the theatre,
38:58which were assigned to people of different social classes.
39:01Senators in the best seats, and the plebs at the top.
39:07In the Greek world, theatre was an inherently open and socially risky process.
39:12But here in the Roman world, a risk just isn't part of the calculation.
39:16This became the archetypal model for Roman theatre spreading out across the Mediterranean.
39:22It didn't just keep people in order in their seats.
39:25The stuff that was being put on the stage was also increasingly anodyne as well.
39:30And at the end of the day, that was all due to the man who was responsible for pretty much everything we can see here.
39:35The Emperor Augustus, and his plan for peace and harmony.
39:41Augustus' reign as Emperor marked the start of an unprecedented period of stability in Rome.
39:51And this ordered, harmonious climate would ultimately give birth to a new kind of drama.
39:57Long ago, the Greek poets had spoken of an age of gold, an age of peace and harmony.
40:06And now, after the long and vicious years of civil war that had torn the Roman world in two,
40:13Augustus promised a new age of peace.
40:17His poets sang of it, and most importantly, he celebrated it here in marble, at the altar of peace.
40:30It's called the Ara Parkis Augustae, the altar of Augustan peace.
40:36It is perhaps the most spectacular example of Roman sculpture in the world.
40:41And it all has a political message.
40:44It's an altar on which sacrifices would be made to the goddess of peace.
40:49The garlands around it indicate the prosperity which will hopefully result.
40:55On the end walls, mythological scenes depict the new golden age which will come with Augustus' peace.
41:02And on the sides, we meet the people who have brought it all about.
41:06Augustus and his entourage, not forgetting the Roman people.
41:11The whole building mirrors the content of Roman plays, a combination of history and mythology,
41:17with a heavy dose of propaganda.
41:20Peace had never much been worshipped in Rome before this,
41:23but now Augustus put it at the very heart of his message for Rome and for her empire.
41:28And the delicate subtlety of the carving on this building belies the brick-in-the-face message it contained.
41:36This was to be a world of peace, but also a world in which every element,
41:41every part of Rome's empire was united, united under the power of Rome.
41:48This was to be a place and a world unlike any that had been seen before.
41:54This united, pacified world gave birth to a new kind of play,
42:01one that could cross linguistic and cultural boundaries.
42:05It was called pantomime.
42:07But it was not pantomime as we know it.
42:10Augustan pantomimes were mythically fraught episodes communicated through mute dancing.
42:17All the action was handled by a solo dancer performing all the parts, changing masks as he went on.
42:24Hence the word panto every mime apart.
42:27Alessandra Zanobi is both a scholar and a dancer.
42:33I think the closest, maybe, comparison we can make is with the Kata Kali dance,
42:40which is this Indian dance drama, in a way.
42:43I think it's the thing which comes closest to ancient pantomime,
42:48even if the two traditions are so different, you know.
42:52But this combination of story, words, gestures, movement,
42:57it's something so special that not even opera, maybe, could be compared.
43:02The story, there is a story sometimes, but the story is really inferred just from the movements.
43:09So we're talking about the dancer would be mute, but there would be a storyteller alongside, is that right?
43:17Basically the dancer was mute, he wore a mask, a beautiful mask with a closed mouth,
43:23and he would be backed by a choir or a singer, or were singing the words of the story.
43:32And then a large orchestra usually used to accompany the dance.
43:37So you can imagine the impact must have been really powerful.
43:40It's quite a spectacle.
43:41Yeah, a big spectacle.
43:43So obviously using gesture and dance, it makes pantomime a very universal medium.
43:49Yeah.
43:50To what extent really was it a universal medium,
43:52and to what extent was it so popular in Augustan, Rome and beyond, because it was a universal medium?
43:58Yes, I think that, yes, this is a very good point.
44:02I mean, it was so popular, and I think that Augustus in a way supported it,
44:08because it could cross linguistic boundaries and ethnic boundaries as well.
44:17And so it embodied, in a way, Augustus' ideology of a world, pacified and united under his reign.
44:29Pantomime was something that could be enjoyed by everyone,
44:32and as a result it was a fantastic symbol for the Augustan cultural programme.
44:37Uniformity for all.
44:39It's also a sign of a shift away from serious drama towards mass entertainment.
44:46In ancient Rome, theatre had always had to compete directly with other entertainment spectacles like gladiatorial combats.
44:53The playwright Terence complained that on one occasion half the audience left when they heard that a rope dancer was performing next door.
45:00Now, in the age of empire, lavish public entertainments were used to augment the power and status of the emperors,
45:08and the desire for this kind of spectacle increased.
45:11Over time, new amphitheatres like the Colosseum would not only dwarf even Pompey's great theatre,
45:28but would also be dedicated to real, not stage, violence,
45:33bloodily performed before audiences of up to 50,000 at a time.
45:38With spectacles like this to see, performances of plays would dwindle,
45:42and drama would become more of a writer's medium.
45:45But not before Latin drama had one last hurrah in the reign of the Emperor Nero.
45:52Nero today is not remembered for many good things, but from our perspective he was not only a Hellenophile,
46:01a man who'd visited Greece, competed in the Olympic Games, he was also a lover of the arts.
46:06Cultural life during his reign was thought to be extremely important and flourished.
46:11Indeed, it's Nero's time that sees one of the last real flowerings of Latin literature.
46:17These included a number of plays written by Nero's tutor, Seneca.
46:24Seneca wrote nine tragedies which retold stories from Greek myth.
46:30Thaestes was one of Seneca's Greek-style tragedies,
46:34and comparing it to an original Greek tragedy gives us a fascinating insight
46:38into just how far drama had come, and into the differences between the two great cultures of Greece and Rome.
46:47The twin brothers, Atreus and Thaestes, are rivals for the throne of Mycenae.
46:52Thaestes has been banished after seducing Atreus' wife,
46:56and Atreus, thrown into a violent rage, concocts a cruel and bloody revenge.
47:01He lures Thaestes back to the kingdom with false promises of peace.
47:05Then he brutally sacrifices Thaestes' children.
47:09With his own hands, he cuts the body into parts, severs the broad shoulders at the trunk,
47:14heartlessly strips off the flesh and severs the bones.
47:18His terrible vengeance culminates with him feeding Thaestes his dead children for dinner.
47:24With Seneca, what you get is a lot more rhetoric.
47:31So you'll get longer speeches, and this is part of the argument
47:34that perhaps these were actually recited rather than performed.
47:39Some of these descriptions, particularly messenger speeches,
47:43where you're reporting something that took place off stage,
47:46some of these are very graphic.
47:48So I'll read you a little bit, which is from the messenger speech in the play,
47:53and this is where Atreus is sacrificing his nephews.
47:58Torn from the still living breasts, the vitals quiver.
48:03The lungs still breathe, and the fluttering heart still beats.
48:08But he handles the organs, and inquires the fates,
48:12and notes the markings of the still warm entrails.
48:16And to what extent do you think that sense of gore responded to the types of things
48:22that Romans would see about them on a fairly daily basis?
48:25I think you have had this cultural shift,
48:27and I think if we think about spectacles like gladiatorial shows
48:31and understand this as entertainment,
48:35then that really perhaps helps us to understand what's going on with these descriptions.
48:41The plain fact of the matter is that however influential Seneca's plays may have been,
48:49they were probably rarely performed.
48:51And that meant their influence was confined to the written page.
48:55They'd lost that sense of mass participation and political dynamism
48:59that accompanied theatre back at its very inception.
49:02And that raises a fundamental question.
49:05In this brave new world, what happened to drama and theatre back in its birthplace,
49:11in Greece, in Athens?
49:13Particularly now that power was held not in the hands of the many,
49:17but in the hands of one man.
49:22Back in Greece, theatre had remained part of public life.
49:26But there are signs that drama now faced competition from Roman spectacular entertainments.
49:33This is Argos, a classic middle-of-the-road ancient Greek city-state.
49:38But the impressive Greek theatre here was given some very Roman renovations.
49:46This place vies for the title of the biggest theatre in Greece.
49:50What we're seeing is not just the centre section.
49:52There would have actually been seats going all the way round to the sides,
49:55making this a space for 20,000 people.
49:59And it made it the kind of opportunity that the Romans were just never going to pass up on.
50:03And by God, they didn't.
50:04But the best thing they did is over here.
50:08The Romans didn't just use Greek theatres for drama,
50:11but also for gladiatorial combat.
50:14And that led to problems, because here in the first reserved row,
50:17where all the religious officials sat,
50:19gladiators kept falling over and dying on them.
50:21So the Romans came up with a solution.
50:24And here it is.
50:25These large potholes that run all the way along the front row
50:28were used for large wooden posts, along which could be strung nets.
50:33And these nets would keep out not only dying gladiators,
50:36but also the wild beasts that the Romans brought onto the stage.
50:40And if you've ever seen a bullfight, you'll know how necessary these nets are.
50:44Frankly, I think I'd prefer a seat a couple of rows back.
50:48Now, the man responsible for all of this was the Emperor Hadrian.
50:53And he came to Greece in the 120s and not only built an enormous aqueduct that was able to then bring water to this perpetually dry city,
51:01but as a result, he was able to build the massive bars behind me, and of course, this theatre here as well.
51:07Now, Hadrian's family was Italian, but had been living in Spain for a long time,
51:11and yet he was a lover of all things Greek.
51:13He had a beard. He liked Greek philosophy.
51:16He had a Greek lover called Antinous.
51:18And it was here in this theatre that he established a cult in his honour.
51:29Today, we remember Hadrian for the Great Wall that he constructed in Britain,
51:33but it's his classical enthusiasm that is his greatest legacy.
51:37And nowhere benefited more than Athens, the city which had given birth to theatre half a millennium before.
51:44Hadrian's aim was to restore Athens to what he saw as its ancient cultural glory.
51:51He even managed to finish their gigantic temple of Olympian Zeus started nearly 600 years before.
51:59Hadrian pulled out all the stops for Athens.
52:02That went from building temples like this to intervening in the olive oil trade
52:07to laying down the water pipe system that Athens, in part, still depends on today.
52:12Not for nothing was Hadrian given the title Grykulus, the Greekling.
52:21Hadrian also made improvements to the theatre of Dionysus.
52:24Whereas his predecessors had staged gladiator fights in the theatre,
52:28building a wall in front of the seats to separate the action from the spectators,
52:33Hadrian attempted to reinforce its dramatic origins by adding an elegant frieze to the stage building.
52:40A little later, a new theatre was constructed by the tutor of Hadrian's children, Herodes Atticus.
52:47Today, this theatre of Herodes Atticus is at the very epicentre of modern Greek drama in Athens.
52:59I last saw a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night here in Greek.
53:02And plays put on this stage inherit a fascinating tradition
53:06that stretches back over two and a half thousand years.
53:10From the great tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
53:13and the sparky comedy of Aristophanes and Menander,
53:17the plays still speak to the ongoing issues that occupy human society.
53:21And it would be nice to think that when this theatre was built,
53:25it ushered in a whole new era of new tragedies and new playwrights,
53:30a new golden age.
53:33But sadly, it was not to be.
53:40There was no new golden age of theatre.
53:43And perhaps that was inevitable.
53:46The riches showered on Athens were the direct product of Hadrian's patronage.
53:53When he died, it all began to dry up.
53:56And in the end, his interest was fundamentally a literary one.
54:00A love of all those brilliant writers of the past golden age.
54:07So it's no surprise that Hadrian's most spectacular monument here now
54:11is not a temple or a theatre, but a library.
54:15This is the business end.
54:19This is where the books are kept.
54:21These alcoves once held wooden bookcases for the papyrus scrolls,
54:27not just of poetry, philosophy or state archives, but also plays and comedies.
54:32And with this repository of knowledge, the Library of Hadrian here in Athens
54:37was set to rival the Great Library of Alexandria
54:41and become the intellectual focus for the Mediterranean.
54:44It was perhaps the most luxurious public building in Athens,
54:53with gilded ceilings, marble columns imported from Turkey
54:56and elegant pools and gardens in the courtyard.
54:59Revered, the great works of Greek literature may have been by the Romans,
55:06but that reverence came intertwined with a Roman treatment of Greece,
55:13a bit like a theme park, a place to go and play at being Greek
55:18and use those great works of literature for debate practice
55:23or just entertainment.
55:24Unlike with any theme park, there came a time when you went home
55:27and the Romans became fully Roman again.
55:30And yet, it was because of that curious mix of reverence,
55:36make-believe and a little bit of tackiness
55:39that the tragedies and comedies of ancient Greece survive for us today.
55:48I'm returning to what has become my home from home,
55:52the British School at Athens.
55:54It's the nerve centre of British archaeology in Greece
55:57and it was here I decided not just to study ancient Greece,
56:00but to make it into my career.
56:04And one of the reasons for my decision
56:06was my fascination with the plays to be found on its shelves.
56:11For more than two millennia,
56:13it's thanks to the innumerable anonymous hands
56:16writing on I don't know how many different types of paper
56:19in locations littered across the globe
56:22that we still have surviving in our hands today
56:25these plays, these extraordinary examples of human creativity.
56:31And yet, it's not until you take the words off the page
56:35and put them on the stage
56:37that you realise not only the incredible emotional impact
56:39and innovation that theatre represented in the ancient world,
56:42but also how crucial theatre was
56:45to the story of the Greek and Roman empires.
56:56Ancient Greek drama began as an astonishing innovation
57:00in a revolutionary world.
57:02It guided and shaped democracy in Athens
57:06and became extraordinarily popular
57:08throughout the Greek world and beyond.
57:12And when the Romans arrived,
57:14Greek theatre wasn't lost.
57:16It was adopted and adapted for the new Roman world,
57:19but most importantly, it was preserved.
57:22The influence of Menander and of Roman playwrights
57:27like Plautus and Terence
57:28can be seen in the works of Shakespeare,
57:30Ben Johnson and Oscar Wilde,
57:32not to mention in modern dramas, romantic comedies and in sitcoms.
57:37But more than that,
57:38we still stage epic performances of the original plays themselves,
57:42a truly astonishing outcome
57:44when we consider that the oldest surviving ancient Greek drama
57:47is now two and a half thousand years old.
57:51These plays still speak to us today.
57:54They reveal the fundamental contradictions, emotions and possibilities
58:00that are represented in human existence.
58:04And that for me means
58:06that they're going to be around with us for a long time to come.
58:17Join the Open University as we explore the connections
58:22between Greek theatre and modern day democracy.
58:25Go to bbc.co.uk slash ancient Greece
58:28and follow the links to the Open University's free learning website.
58:41Stay with us here on BBC4,
58:42we're exploring another 20th century battlefield
58:44with Dan and Peter Snow, next.
Recommended
1:00
|
Up next
49:32