Entertainment

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Entertainment

Leisure Activities. A great variety of leisure activities occupied the free time of Romans from every class of society. Men, women, boys, and girls enjoyed social activities ranging from playing simple board games to viewing competitive spectacles (spectacula) in the arena. Leisure time was most often spent in daily trips to public baths and attending theatrical productions and other large public spectacles in the circus or amphitheater. Competitors in public spectacles were almost exclusively slaves, freedmen, or foreigners. Roman citizens did not feel it was proper for citizens to appear in public spectacles.

The Baths. Since most Romans did not have bathing facilities in their homes, public bathing became the usual method of maintaining personal hygiene. Bath complexes, which came to be called thermae during the reign of Augustus, were either state-funded or run by private companies. Although bathing was originally a practical activity for keeping clean, eventually public bathing became a popular social activity among all classes and both sexes. By the fourth century C.E. there were approximately one thousand public baths in the city of Rome itself. Almost every town in Italy and the Roman Empire had at least one public bathing facility. Bath establishments not only housed rooms for bathing, but some large and well-appointed complexes also included areas for exercise, swimming, massage, hair removal, and reading.

Various Temperatures. A complete bathing regimen involved passing through several rooms whose temperatures varied. A bather left his or her clothing in the dressing room, or apodyterium. The caldarium, or hot room, was the first room of the baths visited after disrobing. The heat of the caldarium was maintained by hot air piped into hollow spaces built into the walls and under the floors. The caldarium also contained tubs filled and kept hot with water from a furnace. The temperature of the next room, the tepidarium, was lower than that of the caldarium. The coolest room in the sequence was the frigidarium. Thermae some-times also included a sweat room called either a laconicum or sudatorium. The warmer rooms were often outfitted with cold plunge pools to allow the bathers to cool themselves periodically during their bathing activities. People who took exercise before bathing used a curved, hand-held scraper called a strigil to remove the dirt, sweat, and oil from their bodies before entering the baths.

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Bath Complexes. The style and sophistication of a bath complex depended upon the region and era in which the baths were built. Pompeii and other Campanian towns show baths from the late Republic and early Empire differing in size and technical design. Baths from this region and era typically had an exercise court called a palaestra, which functioned as the main entrance to the facility. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa built the first of the imperial bath complexes at Rome, which were begun around 25 B.C.E., and required the building of the Aqua virgo, an aqueduct meant to supply these baths with the necessary huge quantity of water.

Grand Scale. Several emperors from Nero to Constantine built lavishly decorated baths on a grand scale. In addition to the usual bathing rooms, grand Imperial thermae had palaestrae, libraries, fountains, and various other rooms flanking the courtyards to satisfy different functions. The plans of Imperial thermae were usually symmetrical, which suggests that men and women had separate, yet comparable, facilities. Marble was featured prominently in the decoration of Imperial thermae, as were statuary and mosaics. Clearly, during the Empire, public bathing had developed into a popular leisure activity far beyond its basic purpose of cleansing the body. Bathers enjoyed not only splendid bathing facilities but also many other recreational activities of both physical and social varieties.

Spectator Events. Romans enjoyed many varied spectator events throughout the Republic and Empire, and the reiteration of the architectural settings for these events around the Roman world shows their widespread popularity. The three types of buildings used by the Romans for sporting events were the circus, stadium, and amphitheater. While the Roman circus and stadium were derived from the Greek stadium, the amphitheater was an entirely Roman creation.

Circus Games. The circus was designed specifically for chariot races. Romans viewed races of chariots drawn by either two or four horses (bigae and quadrigae, respectively). Its shape was long and narrow, and had one curved and one rectangular end. Spectators sat in rows of seats built along both long sides and around the curved end of the circus. The first rows of the spectators’ seats were reserved for senators and equites (knights), which was a tradition honored in the theater as well. Unlike the theater, however, men and women were free to mingle at the circus. The races began at the starting gates (carceres) built at the rectangular end of the track. The chariots raced along and around a long narrow island called a spina where counters were located to indicate the number of laps each chariot had completed. Four teams distinguished by colored tunics (red, blue, green, and white) competed, and some spectators engaged in betting while others participated in activi-ties characteristic of loyal fans. Rivalries between factions were common and are known to have led to mischief.

Circuses and Games. Although several different circuses are known to have existed at Rome, the oldest and most prominent was the Circus Maximus. Tradition tells us that Romulus founded the Circus Maximus in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills. In addition to chariot races, a great variety of contests were produced in the Circus. The Ludi circenses, or Circus Games, included different types of races, gladiatorial combat, staged animal hunts called venationes, and other sorts of athletic contests. Besides the Ludi romani (Roman Games) held in September, and the Ludi plebei (Plebeian Games) held in November, circus games could be decreed throughout the year to celebrate military triumphs and the dedications of new buildings.

Exotic Animals. Exotic animals were displayed as early as 275 B.C.E., when Marcus Curius Dentatus brought to Rome elephants taken from Pyrrhus in southern Italy. In subsequent years triumphant Roman generals displayed animals captured from the lands they conquered, and thus continued a tradition of displaying exotic animals as part of their war booty. The venatio first included simply capturing or killing the animals in a staged “hunt.” If the animals were not to be killed, then they were sometimes kept and trained to perform tricks. By the end of the Republic, Romans had come to expect truly exotic animals to appear in public spectacles sponsored by Roman magistrates. When Marcus Caelius Rufus was aedile in 50 B.C.E., he asked his friend Cicero (who was governor of Cilicia at the time) to send him panthers to use in the spectacles he intended to produce at Rome. As aedile, it was important for Caelius to impress the voters sufficiently to earn and keep their support. Apparently, however, Cicero did not easily fulfill Caelius’s request, as he is scolded in a letter from Caelius that is preserved along with the corpus of Cicero’s own letters (Epistulae adfamiliares 8.9).

Athletic Contests. The stadium held various athletic contests, of which foot races were most frequently featured. The stadium was similar in shape to the circus, but it was shorter and had no spina. Several stadia were built in Rome, and seem to have been a feature of some Imperial bath complexes. The best example is the Stadium of Domitian, whose system of entrances and exits allowed the building to handle large crowds of spectators efficiently. The general shape of Domitian’s stadium has been preserved by the modern-day Piazza Navona, which was developed directly on top of it.

Fan-Clubs and Riots. The ancients could be as fanatical about their spectator sports as modern Americans are about baseball and football. Romans formed associations that were the ancient equivalent of our fan clubs. The rivalries between different associations sometimes led to trouble, as Tacitus attests in the Annales, his history of the Julio-Claudian era of Imperial Rome (14.17). In 59 C.E. the rival factions of Pompeii and Nuceria created a riot in the amphitheater at Pompeii. The disruption and hysteria of the riot were severe enough to warrant punishment from Rome: the Pompeiians were forbidden to have any such public gathering for the next ten years, and all the associations had to be dissolved.

Amphitheaters and Gladiatorial Games. By far the most widely recognized arena associated with Roman spectator sports was the Flavian Amphitheater, which we now call the Colosseum. Although the Colosseum is the largest and most grand of Roman amphitheaters, it is not the oldest. The amphitheater at Pompeii is the oldest known amphitheater, and dates at least to the time of Sulla (circa 80 B.C.E.). The amphitheater was invented specifically to view gladiatorial combat, and seems to have its origins in Etruria and Samnite Campania, where such games existed in pre-Roman times. There, modestly scaled fights to the death were staged to honor their dead. This practice originally involved combatants who were either slaves or criminals. The fight probably took place at the burial site, and seems always to have been associated with religious ritual. Tertullian, a Christian author writing in the late second or early third century C.E., criticized the development of such games (De spectaculis 12).

Growth of Popularity. During the Roman Republic, gladiatorial games were not normally produced as part of the traditional public games (ludi) sponsored by Roman magistrates. Rather, private individuals produced gladiatorial spectacles in honor of a deceased relative (munera). As these games became more frequently and grandly produced, gladiatorial schools were established in Rome and Campania to train the numbers of gladiators necessary to fulfill the increasing demand. While gladiatorial spectacles were produced during the Republic as part of the funeral rites in honor of important citizens, during the Empire such games became popular spectator activities produced by the state for the purpose of mass entertainment. The construction of the Colosseum during the reigns of the Flavian emperors illustrates the prominent place that bloody spectacles came to hold in Roman leisure time pursuits.

The Flavian Amphitheater. The so-called Colosseum, begun by the emperor Vespasian and finished by his sons Titus and Domitian, could accommodate approximately fifty thousand spectators in three seating sections and one standing room section at the top. The Colosseum is said to have had an awning that could be spread and retracted by means of rigging worked by sailors. A complicated system of doors, corridors, and staircases made the facility more efficiently filled and emptied of its audience. The floor of the arena was made of wood and covered a network of animal cages and elevators used to raise beasts to floor level. Fine-grained sand covered the arena floor to absorb blood shed from combatants and animals. The term “arena” comes from the Latin word harena, for the sand used on the stage-level floor.

Types of Gladiators. In the early history of gladiatorial games, combatants were slaves or criminals condemned to death by fighting one another. However, the gladiators of the late Republic and the Empire could be either involuntary participants (slaves, condemned criminals, or war captives) or individuals who voluntarily bound themselves by oath. Gladiators trained in schools (also called ludi)under the direction of a lanista, who was often a former gladiator. Some slaves who trained and fought as gladiators earned their freedom and then continued to compete for high fees. Four types of gladiators existed: the Murmillo wore a Gallic helmet with a metal fish as a crest, and was heavily armed with an oblong shield and short sword; the Samnite was also heavily armed with Samnite-type weapons and a visored helmet; the Retiarius was lightly armed and fought with a net and trident; and the Thracian fought with a round shield and curved scimitar. Not all combatants, how-

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ever, were trained gladiators. People condemned to the beasts were often left without weapons or any other form of protection against the wild animals.

Theatrical Productions. Throughout the Republic and Empire, Roman audiences enjoyed a variety of theatrical presentations including comedies and tragedies modeled on Greek sources, as well as mime, pantomime, and farcical plays called Atellanae that were native to the Italian town of Atella. Even though Romans viewed comedy and tragedy from at least the second century B.C.E., the first permanent theater at Rome was not built until 55 B.C.E. The popular comic dramas were often disdainfully viewed as “low-brow,” and actors were typically considered socially inferior. Furthermore, many Romans were initially skeptical about constructing a permanent building where the Roman masses might gather and potentially create trouble. Nevertheless, shortly after Gaius Pompeius Magnus (Pompey) dedicated his theatre in the Campus Martius in 55 B.C.E., two other theaters were constructed in the same vicinity; the theater of Balbus and the theater of Marcellus. Clearly by the end of the Republic, theatrical entertainment had become a popular and permanent leisure time pursuit. In fact, theaters begin to appear with great frequency throughout northern and central Italy during the Augustan era. The Greek cities of southern Italy and Sicily had permanent theaters from a much earlier time, since dramatic productions were long viewed by the audiences in those places. Pompeii, for example, enjoyed a stone theater as early as the second century B.C.E., and it is assumed that the Pompeiians also viewed their gladiatorial games in the theater until they built an amphitheater in the first century B.C.E. Throughout the Empire, every Roman town included a theater among its public buildings, and many of these facilities can still be seen today.

Comedy and Tragedy. The Romans adopted (and adapted) Greek models in writing comedy and tragedy. In the earliest stages of Latin language drama, the plays were probably little more than translations of the Greek originals. Performances took place during the day, out of doors on temporary wooden stages until the construction of Pompey’s theater. A legal reform in 194 B.C.E. reserved the best seats for senators, which indicates that from at least this time seating was arranged as part of the temporary theater facility. Dramatic performances were part of the religious festivals such as the Ludi romani and the Ludi plebeii that also included spectator sporting events. The production of these events was the responsibility of the aediles, who depended upon the success of their festivals to ensure political support from the Roman people. Latin dramas were presented with the actors wearing Greek costumes, and most likely also wearing the masks always associated with Greek drama. Women did not perform in comedy and tragedy; thus, all actors were male. Musical accompaniment seems to have always been a feature of Roman dramas.

Open-Air Distractions. Before Rome had permanent theaters, drama was performed in the open. The lack of a physical structure within which to perform left the audience and the cast prone to distraction. In spite of the success of his comedies, Terence had to compete with other kinds of performances for the attention of his audience. In the prologues to his play Hecyra, the producer informs the audience that the first two productions of the play were ruined by the distractions of other performances, including gladiatorial contests, and he is trying to introduce the play at Rome for the third time.

Other Theatrical Genres. In addition to comedy and tragedy, Romans enjoyed viewing several other dramatic forms of which mime, pantomime, and Atellane farce are the most significant. The participants in these presentations could be either male or female. Atellane farce(Atellana) is a native Italian genre whose name comes from the Campanian town of Atella. Like Greek and Roman comedy, these farcical presentations utilized stock characters and themes. The setting was typically a small Italian town, and the drama satirized country life in crude language. Originally presented in the Oscan dialect, the Atellanae eventually became a Latin language drama, and was sometimes performed after the presentation of a tragedy.

Mime. Originally a Greek art form, mimetic performance found its way to Rome by the second century

B.C.E. and became firmly established in theatrical festivals throughout the Republic and Empire. Mimes worked either solo or in troupes and “told” the plot of their dramas through imitative movements and sounds. They wore costumes but apparently did not use masks in their performances of scenes from daily life, mythology, and assorted improbable themes. The nature of such drama was often farcical and indecent, yet very popular among Roman audiences.

Pantomime. Like mime, pantomime relied upon gestures to reveal a story, yet pantomime also involved conventional dances associated with specific themes. Dancers of pantomime worked solo to the accompaniment of music, a chorus, and sometimes an assistant who might have narrated the performance. The dancer wore a loose fitting costume to allow free movement, and a mask with closed lips, as no sounds were uttered by the pantomime. A change of mask indicated a change of character when necessary. The themes presented in pantomime were taken from mythology and history, and they could often be erotic in nature. While pantomime was introduced to Rome rather late compared to comedy and tragedy, 22 B.C.E., the profession of pantomime was a lucrative one, though considered to be of low moral character by Roman standards. By the second century C.E. pantomime had become preferred to comedy and tragedy.