Ancient Rome
Goes to the Movies
Encore Learning
Spring Semester 2018
Instructor
Ð
Tom Wukitsch
Table of Contents
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Page 2 |
Front matter |
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Page 40 |
A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum |
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Page 67 |
Scipio
Africanus Ð The Defeat of Hannibal |
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Page 80 |
Spartacus |
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Page 112 |
Julius
Caesar (Shakespeare) |
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Page 123 |
Antony
and Cleopatra (Shakespeare) |
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Page 139 |
Augustus |
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Page 161 |
Caligula |
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Page 174 |
Satyricon |
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Page 200 |
Gladiator |
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Page 216 |
Titus
(Andronicus) (Shakespeare) |
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Page 234 |
Appendix
A: a Wikipedia list of films set in ancient Rome |
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Page 237 |
Appendix
B: abbreviated Roman Timeline |
Syllabus
[Syllabus
word
origin: Neo-Latin: syllabus or syllabos, probably a
misreading (in manuscripts of Cicero) of Greek s’ttybos,
accusative plural of s’ttyba = a label for a papyrus roll
(Earliest known use:
1650Ð60)]
Ancient
Rome
in the Movies (History 303)
Ten two to three hour
sessions (depending on length of films)
Tuesdays, March 6 through May 8, each class starting at 12 noon.
Classes will be held in room 244 at George Mason University,
3401 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA
Some filmmakers got ancient Rome right. Some got it
wrong. Some didn't get it at all. Many films about
Rome tell us more about the biases of the times in which they
were made than about the times they claim to depict.
Some are "message" films, and some just carry forward the
message of the books on which they were based. There is
nothing in the historical account of Spartacus, for example,
that would lead us to accept the "Christian" message of the
Spartacus film epic or of the Howard Fast novel on which it is
based (nor, for that matter, is there any proletarian
internationalism that could explain the former Soviet
fascination with "Spartakiad")
Recent big budget films, made for theaters, tend to
get the background right, but they badly garble their
historical story lines. Lower budget theater films don't
even try for background accuracy much less for historical fact
-- "Sword of the Arena", a girl-gladiator flick, comes to mind
(although there were some documented female gladiators).
Television productions vary greatly in authenticity: the
History Channel, just one example, will buy and broadcast
almost any show that claims to be "historical", so some
History Channel content is completely bogus. Also,
television time is usually sold in small chunks, so instead of
getting an "in depth" 145 minute theater version of Rome, we
may only get the 60 minute television version -- minus, of
course, about 13 minutes for "messages from our
sponsors." The recent and ongoing Italian-made "Rome"
series falls into its own category: it's an in depth fictional
soft porn soap opera and has almost no accurate historical
content. (That doesn't mean it's not fun to watch, but
we won't, so watch it on your own time.) There are, of
course some good films on ancient Rome, and some of them have
unusual formats. "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to
the Forum", our first film, based on plays by ancient Rome's
best comedic playwright, fully captures the irreverence for
status and authority of the ancient Roman stage. Other
films will follow. Popcorn not provided.
Textbooks: No textbook will be needed for this
course. The usual handouts
will be provided for each unit. But if you really think
you must have a book, try one of these:
Big
Screen Rome, by Monica Silveira Cyrino, or
Imperial
Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture, by
Sandra B. Joshel et al., or,
Projecting
the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History, by Maria Wyke
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0304366420/103-6383802-1503804
For a few rambling general
introductory notes for this course, go to:
http://www.mmdtkw.org/ARMovIntroRamble.html
Course Units (one film per unit):
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Note
that some of the links below are from Wikipedia,
"the free |
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1. A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) |
A movie based on a
Broadway musical, which was based on three plays
that Plautus (ca. 200 bc), may be copied from the
Greek stage. The broad comedy of Zero Mostel
made the movie and the Broadway musical a success,
and he was also the force behind bringing other
previously blacklisted actors and staff into the
production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Funny_Thing_Happened_on_the_Way_to_ |
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2. Scipio
Africanus -- The Defeat of Hannibal (1937) 93 Minutes |
Made by
Mussolini's son in 1937, the year of the Italian
Trans-Libyan Highway
and Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, this film won the
Venice Film Festival prize for that year. It's
clearly a propaganda piece glorifying Italian
imperialism, but it is, nonetheless, surprisingly
accurate. Its climax is the Battle of Zama (in modern
Tunisia) in 202 BC, which ended the Second Punic War
between Rome and Carthage. |
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3. Spartacus
(1960) 198 Minutes |
A very fictitious
story of Rome's Third Servile War (73 - 70 BC), this
is the movie that really broke the Hollywood
blacklist. Kirk Douglas, producer as well as
star of the epic, brought in the blacklisted
screen-writer Dalton Trumbo and insisted that he be
credited with the authorship of the
screenplay. Trumbo drew his story from
Howard Fast's 1951 novel and, like fast, portrayed
Spartacus as a popular revolutionary. Many
scholars disagree saying that Spartacus was just a
wily escapee with no grand revolutionary
agenda. It's impossible to say who was
right: the
historical evidence is extremely sketchy.
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4. Julius
Caesar (1953) 121 Minutes |
Julius
Caesar is the name of the
production, but he dies early on. Shakespeare's
story is really about Marc Antony's destruction of
the liberatori
who had assassinated Caesar. This
film is recognized as one of Brando's greatest
performances, and it is acclaimed by Shakespeare specialists
as well as by the Hollywood crowd. Time period
covered is 44 and 43 BC.
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5. Antony and
Cleopatra (1974) |
Not Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Burton. It is an ITV television
production of Trevor Nunn's stage version performed
by London's Royal Shakespeare Company, which was
shown in the United States to great acclaim in
1975. Most critics agree that it's the best
mass media A and C ever produced. The time period is
from 41 BC through 29 BC, but the action is much
compressed by Shakespeare. http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/antony/ |
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6. Augustus
(2003) |
"....equal parts history lesson and
soap opera, and thoroughly engaging at all
levels". Peter O'toole is Augustus on
his deathbed and remembering/retelling his
life. The film is surprisingly accurate. Also,
surprisingly, the multiple flashback (and even
flashbacks within flashbacks) form holds the film
together. The only really jarring note is the
gratuitous inclusion of Jesus in the last words of
the film, supposedly spoken by the (ghost of?)
Augustus in what appears to be a parody of his Res
Gestae Divi Augusti (= Deeds of the Divine
Augustus). The movie covers the life of
Augustus from 45 BC until his death in 14 AD.
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7. Caligula
(1979, reworked several times, ours is essentially
the R rated 1981 version.) |
This is an attempt to
return to the Gore Vidal Caligula screenplay.
Penthouse Magazine operatives had inserted almost an
hour of gratuitous explicit sex and gore, which was
removed for this "R" rated (cleaned up) version of
the notorious Penthouse production. Caligula
was undoubtedly evil and perhaps insane, but most of
what we "know" about him was written byÓ historians"
in the pay of his enemies after his assassination,
and most of that is suspiciously similar to what had
been written about previous tyrants in the ancient
world. The action takes place between 31 AD
when Caligula was summoned to the Villa of Tiberius
in Capri and Caligula's death in 41 AD.
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8. Satyricon
(1969) |
Satyricon (Fellini
Satyricon) is a 1969 film by Federico Fellini
that is loosely based on the Petronius novel Satyricon,
a series of bawdy and satirical episodes written
during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in
imperial Rome. Many literature "experts" call
the Petronius work the world's first novel.
The original text survives only in large fragments,
and instead of trying to connect the fragments that
survived, Fellini presented the material in a series
of somewhat disjointed and dislocated scenes.
Petronius, usually identified with Petronius
Arbiter, is thought to have been Nero's "master of
the revels". The date of the "events" in the
Satyricon is unclear, but the work most likely dates
from Nero's reign 54 - 68 AD.
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9. Gladiator
(2000) |
A fiction set in the
reign of Commodus, the film, nonetheless, is very
good on Roman architecture, costume, life style, and
general ambiance -- good enough for the film to
become a staple of university ancient history and
archeology courses. The
history of Commodus, like that of Caligula 120
years before him, was written by historians in the
pay of his erstwhile enemies.
Commodus was named Caesar by his father, Marcus
Aurelius, at age 5 in 166 AD and was made co-Augustus ,
in 178 AD. He reigned
alone from his father's death in 180 AD
until 192 when he was assassinated -- he was not
killed in the arena as shown in the movie.
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10. Titus
(1999) |
Titus Andronicus, one
of Shakespeare's earliest plays, is certainly his
most violent. It was written, before
Shakespeare found his own more mellow style, for an
Elizabethan audience already inured to violent
"revenge plays" modeled after the nine Senecan
tragedies. Our movie is Julie Taymor's
production, in which she fearlessly shows all of
Shakespeare's violence. It
is set in the period of "military anarchy"
beginning with Maximus Thrax and ending with the
formation of the Tetrarchy by Diocletian
(235 - 285 AD) during the reign of a fictional
Emperor Saturninus. Shakespeare's
and Taymor's bloody story accurately reflects the
violence of that time. Something to
consider: Who commits the first violent act
that provokes revenge? Taymor had staged Titus in
New York in 1995 before her Lion King success and
returned to it for her first movie.
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Roman Movies -- Timeline
Films will be
discussed/viewed in the order listed, which corresponds
to their historical context.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way
to the Forum
Titus Maccius Plautus, generally referred to
simply as Plautus, was a playwright of Ancient Rome. He
is believed to have been born
in Sarsina (a city in Umbria) around 254 BC. His
comedies are among the earliest surviving intact works
in Latin literature.
To protect himself,
Plautus featured "Greek" characters and situations in
all of his comedies, and they, in fact, may have been
derived from earlier Greek works (a fine copying
tradition, which was played out again later, during the
Renaissance, when Shakespeare, among others, used the
plays of Plautus as sources for their own comedies). The
Broadway musical that preceded this movie was drawn from
three plays by Plautus (Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus, and
The Haunted House)
that ridicule three aspects of Roman Republic life: the braggart
warrior, the clever slave who outwits his masters, and
fear of ghosts. It wasn't very successful until Zero
Mostel took over the leading part of Pseudolus.
Scipio Africanus, The Defeat of
Hannibal
Publius Cornelius Scipio
Africanus Major (235 -- 183 BC) was a
general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the
Roman Republic. He was best known for defeating Hannibal
of Carthage, a feat that earned him the surname
Africanus, the nickname the Romans gave him for in
victories and as recognition as one of the finest
commanders in Roman military history.
Scipione l'africano, written by Carmine Gallone,
won the Mussolini Cup for the greatest Italian film at
the 1937 Venice
Film
Festival. Fascist
Italy's most spectacular costume epic, it celebrates
ancient Rome's conquests in Africa during the Second
Punic War. Produced during Italy's war against
Abyssinia, and heavily backed by Mussolini's government,
this was at the time the most expensive Italian film
ever made. Drawing upon Rome's imperial past to justify
Italy's expansionist present, Scipio Africanus piles
cinematic spectacle -- a cast of thousands, savage
battle scenes, and stunning recreations of Rome and
Carthage -- atop its ideological agenda.
Spartacus
Spartacus (ca. 120 BC -- ca. 70 BC, at
the end of the Third Servile War), according to Roman
historians, was a gladiator-slave who became the alleged
leader of an unsuccessful slave uprising against the
Roman Republic. Little
is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the Third
Servile War, and the historical accounts of the war that
have survived into modern times are sketchy and often
contradictory. However,
Spartacus'
struggle, often portrayed as the struggle of oppressed
people fighting for their freedom against a large
powerful State, has found new meaning for modern writers
since the 19th century. The
figure of Spartacus and his rebellion have become an
inspiration to many modern literary and political
writers, who have made the character of Spartacus an
ancient/modern folk hero.
Julius Caesar
(Shakespeare)
Gaius Julius Caesar (July 12 or July 13, 100 BC Ð March 15, 44 BC), often simply called Julius
Caesar, was a Roman military and political leader and one of the most
influential men in world
history. He played a
critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
Leading his legions across
the Rubicon, Caesar sparked civil
war in 49 BC that left him the undisputed
master of the Roman world. After assuming
control of the government, he began extensive reforms of
Roman society and government. He was
proclaimed dictator for life, and he heavily
centralized the bureaucracy of the Republic. This forced
the hand of a friend of Caesar, Marcus
Junius
Brutus, who then conspired with
others to murder the dictator and restore the Republic.
This
dramatic assassination occurred on the Ides of March (March 15th) in 44 BC and
led to another Roman civil war. In 42 BC, two years after
his assassination, the Roman
Senate officially sanctified him as
one of the Roman deities.
The film features a splendid
characterization of Marc Antony by a very young Marlon
Brando, who appears to have learned to speak clearly for
this roll.
Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
Marcus Antonius (c. 83
BCÐAugust 1, 30 BC), known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. He was an
important supporter of Gaius Julius
Caesar as a military commander and
administrator. After
Caesar's assassination, Antony allied with Gaius Julius
Caesar Octavian and Marcus
Aemilius
Lepidus to form an official triumvirate which modern scholars have
labeled the Second
Triumvirate. The Triumvirate broke up in
33 BC and the disagreement turned to civil war in
31 BC, in which Antony was
defeated by Octavian at the Battle
of
Actium and then at Alexandria. Antony committed suicide along with his lover, Queen
Cleopatra
VII of Egypt, in 30 BC.
Cleopatra VII (January 69
BCÐNovember 30, 30 BC) was a Hellenistic co-ruler of Egypt with her
father (Ptolemy
XII
Auletes), and with her
brothers/husbands Ptolemy
XIII and Ptolemy
XIV. Shea
consummated a liaison with Gaius Julius
Caesar that solidified her grip on
the throne, and, after Caesar's assassination, aligned
with Mark Antony, with whom she produced
twins. In all, Cleopatra had four children, one by Caesar (Caesarion) and three by Antony (Cleopatra
Selene, Alexander Helios, Ptolemy
Philadelphus). Her unions with her
brothers produced no children (it is possible that they
were never consummated).
In any case, they were not close. Her reign marks
the end of the Hellenistic and the beginning of the
Roman era in the eastern Mediterranean. After Antony's
rival and Caesar's legal heir, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (who later became the first
ÒPrincepsÓ, Augustus brought the might of Rome against Egypt, it is said
that Cleopatra took her own life on August 12, 30 BC, allegedly by means of an asp. Her legacy survives in the
form of numerous dramatizations of her story, including
William
Shakespeare's Antony and
Cleopatra and several modern films.
The BBC film we will see is
universally acknowledged to be the best Antony and
Cleopatra ever made.
Augustus (also Octavian) (September 23, 63 BCÐAugust 19, AD 14), known as Gaius Julius
Caesar Octavianus for the period of his life prior to 27
BC, was the first and among the most important of the Roman Emperors (although he never claimed
the title).
Although he preserved the
outward form of the Roman Republic, he ruled as an autocrat for 41 years, longer than
any subsequent Emperor; and his rule is the dividing
line between the Republic and the Roman Empire. He ended a century of civil wars and gave Rome an era of
peace, prosperity, and imperial greatness, known as the
Pax
Romana, or Roman peace,
which lasted for over 200 years.
Although somewhat
fictionalized, this film still is probably the most
accurate portrayal of Augustus ever filmed.
Caligula
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus (August 31, 12 Ð January 24, 41 AD), most commonly known as
Caligula (= "Little Boots"), was the third Roman Emperor and a member of the Julio-Claudian
dynasty, ruling from 37 to 41. Known for his extreme
extravagance, eccentricity, depravity and cruelty, he is
remembered as a despot. He was assassinated in 41 AD by several of his
own guards.
The Roman historian Suetonius referred to Caligula as a
"monster", and the surviving sources are universal in
their condemnation. One popular tale, often cited as an
example of his insanity and tyranny, is that Caligula
appointed his favorite horse, Incitatus, to a seat on the Senate and
attempted to appoint it to the position of consul. The story, however, owes
its unrelenting currency to its strangeness: it is based
on a single misunderstood near-contemporary reference,
in which Suetonius merely repeats an unattributed rumor
that Caligula was thinking about doing it (Suet.
Cal. 55.3). Caligula is also
often alleged to have had incestuous relationships with his
sisters, most notably his younger sister Drusilla, but there is no credible
evidence to support such claims either. In short, the
surviving sources are filled with anecdotes of
Caligula's cruelty and insanity rather than an actual
account of his reign. This
makes any reconstruction of his time as Princeps nearly impossible.
There are several versions of
this film available, and the "R" rated version that we
will see is the closest to Gore Vidal's original
screenplay. The
"unrated" version has an additional hour or so or
extraneous perverted sex and violence, which was a
post-production addition by Larry Flint and the Penthouse
Magazine producers.
That's the version that we will not be seeing.
Fellini
Satyricon
Petronius (c. 27Ð66) was a Roman writer of the Neronian age; he was a noted satirist. He is identified with Gaius
Petronius Arbiter, but the manuscript text of the Satyricon calls him Titus Petronius. He is usually
thought to have been Nero's "Master of the Revels."
His sole surviving work, the
Satyricon (often
called
the earliest known novel) is an entertaining and earthy
tale that tells us nothing directly of his fortunes,
position, or even century. Some lines of Sidonius
Apollinaris refer to him and are often
taken to imply that he lived and wrote at Massilia (Marseille,
France). If, however, we accept the
identification of this author with the Petronius of Tacitus, Nero's courtier, we must
suppose either that Massilia was
his birthplace or, as is more likely, that Sidonius
refers to the novel itself and that its scene
was partly laid at Massilia.
The chief characters of the
story are evidently strangers in the towns of Southern Italy where we find them. Their Greek-sounding names (Encolpius,
Ascyltos, Giton, etc.) and literary training accord
with the characteristics of the old Greek
colonies in the 1st century (Magna Graecia). The high position among
Latin writers ascribed by Sidonius to Petronius, and the
mention of him by Macrobius beside Menander among the humorists, when
compared with the absolute silence of Quintilian, Juvenal and Martial, seem adverse to the opinion
that the Satyricon
was a work of the age of Nero. But Quintilian was concerned with writers who could
be turned to use in the education of an orator, nor does
it seem to have lain in Quintilian's personality to
appreciate the rollicking, scurrilous humor of the Satyricon of
Petronius. The silence of Juvenal and Martial may be
accidental or it is possible that a work so abnormal in
form and substance was more highly prized by later
generations than by the author's contemporaries.
Fellini Satyricon is a 1969 film by Federico Fellini. It is loosely based on the
Petronius novel, a series of bawdy and
satirical episodes written during the reign of the
emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome.
The original text survives only in large fragments, and,
instead of trying to connect and "patch up" the
fragments that survived,
Fellini decided to present the material in a series of
somewhat disjointed and dislocated scenes.
Gladiator
Maximus, an entirely
fictional character invented for the movie and a
supposed protŽgŽ and commander of the army of Marcus
Aurelius on the northern frontier, is,in the movie,
unjustly disgraced by Commodus. He is enslaved
and works his way up through the gladiatorial ranks and
back to Rome. There he eventually fights with and kills
Commodus in the Colosseum.
The story is complete fiction except for the names
of some of the major characters. But the
background incidents and ambiance are so good that the
film has become a staple of university Roman History and
Archeology courses.
Gladiator
supposedly takes place during the reign of Commodus (more
properly Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus), (180 -- December 31, 192 AD) the presumed
son of Marcus Aurelius Ð there were rumors of a gladiator
in the back room with Faustina Minora while old Marcus was
away fighting along the Danube.
Commodus
has been very badly treated by "history": all of the great
Roman era historians were in the pay of the "optimati"
while Commodus had been the darling of the "populares". Commodus ended
the wasteful wars along the Rhine frontier and brought
home the armies Ð and this was extremely unpopular with
the Senatorial "military-industrial complex" whose paid
historians later derided his reign and probably made up
most of what we "know" about his "disastrous" rule. In his own time,
he was undoubtedly the best-loved emperor excepting
perhaps Augustus.
Titus
Titus is a powerful 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, about the downfall of a Roman general. It was the first
film of the play (aside from TV productions). The film is
the directorial debut of Julie Taymor who co-produced and wrote
the screenplay.
There was no real Roman
Emperor named Saturninus, but during the long "period of
military chaos" (192 Ð 284 AD) between Commodus and
Diocletian there was a "fictional" "Saturninus" Ð
inserted mistakenly by the author(s) of the Historia Augusta
(or perhaps just misread) as "also ruled" during the
reign of Gallienus (260-268 AD). Saturninus
could actually have been a co-Consul with Gallienus.
The Tragedy of Titus
Andronicus may be Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. It depicts a fictional Roman general engaged in a cycle
of revenge with his enemy Tamora, the
Queen of the Goths. The play is by far
Shakespeare's bloodiest, taking its inspiration from Senecan Tragedy of Ancient Rome, the gory
theatre that was sung to bloodthirsty circus audiences
between gladiatorial combats.
Recommended,
but
not necessary, reading
Review
from: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2002.07.29
Reviewed by Kirk Ormand,
Oberlin College, kirk.ormand@oberlin.edu
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2002/2002-07-29.html
Imperial Projections:
Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture by Sandra Joshel,
Margaret Malamud, Donald T. McGuire,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001.
Pp. 299. ISBN
0-8018-6742-8. $45.00.
Contributors: William
Fitzgerald, Martin M. Winkler, Alison Futrell, Sandra R.
Joshel, Nicholas J. Cull, Margaret Malamud, Martha Malamud,
Maria Wyke, Donald T. McGuire, Jr.
Imperial Projections is a
terrific book. It successfully merges modern cultural
critique with sound classical scholarship, and does so in a
manner that is enjoyable to read and intellectually
challenging.
The premise of the book is
promising. The editors wish to explore the Rome that exists
in the American imagination and to articulate how we have
used Rome as a site of projection for modern cultural
conflicts and anxieties. All the essays are good, some are
outstanding, and the volume explores a wide range of
expressions of popular culture. Included here are the
grandiose Roman epic movies of the 50's and 60's, the
parodies of that form, the BBC's I, Claudius, a film by
Derek Jarman, and even the architectural wonders of Caesars
[sic] Palace in Las Vegas. Each author succeeds in analyzing
a modern artifact, while taking into account the various
modes of production that surround it, the public response to
it, and the social currents that inform that production and
response. This is cultural criticism at its best, providing
us with interesting readings of modern American culture,
while also exploring that oft-neglected topic, the form and
function of our relation to the classical world.
Should I stop there in my
praise I might be thought effusive.
And yet there is more to praise. The authors of the book
generally avoid jargon, and none explicitly refers to a body
of theory. Each essayist, however, demonstrates a sure
knowledge of modern critical approaches, and underlying the
various theses here one will find the theories of
intertextuality, queer theory, Marxist ideology, feminist
theory, and cinema studies. (Each contributor is well known
as a classicist, and the authors' competence here is also
evident, though the focus of the book is not on the ancient
world per se). In analyzing Spartacus, or the BBC's I,
Claudius, for example, Futrell and Joshel incorporate into
their readings a subtle and effective critique of gender
roles, and of the ways in which the domestic becomes a safe
site for the movies to explore political revolution. Wyke's
treatment of Jarman's Sebastiane is also an important
discussion of the eroticization of suffering, drawing on the
work of queer theorists. And so on. But none of the authors
spends time justifying the theoretical stances that they
take up; rather, their analyses stand on their own merits,
and the authors assume that the reader is smart enough to
follow along. This sure-footedness regarding issues of
gender, sexuality, social class, and critical theory is both
welcome and encouraging.
Beyond that, the book holds
together uncommonly well for a collection of essays on
diverse productions across a range of media. The authors
clearly know each other's essays and have gone to some pains
to cross-reference one another. There is some overlap of
treatment in a few of the pieces, but generally this ends up
being complementary. The book is attractively produced, with
a solid bibliography and thorough index.
In the paragraphs that
follow, I briefly summarize each of the essays that appear
in the volume. I have one or two quibbles with some of the
pieces, but these should in no way be seen to detract from
the importance of this book, or the enjoyment to be derived
from reading it.
Joshel, Margaret Malamud,
and Wyke have written an eloquent introduction to the volume
in which they outline the major lines of representation of
the Roman Empire in American popular culture. Rome is a
virtual chameleon as a site of projection: at times Rome
represents a tyrannical empire populated by actors with
suspiciously upper-class British accents, doomed to be
overthrown by plucky Christians who all have American
accents. At other times Rome (especially the Republic) is
America, the forerunner of our notions of law and,
curiously, democracy. In still other venues Rome is
characterized by excess, either negatively, as when an
emperor (such as Nero) demonstrates moral failure through
sexual and economic profligacy, or positively, when Caesars
Palace becomes a celebration of that most American of
activities, going to the mall. We can identify with Rome, or
distance ourselves from it; in either case, Rome becomes a
safe space in which to explore anxieties about shifting
gender roles or sexual identities, or America's role as a
former colony of Great Britain, or as an emerging world
empire.
In "Oppositions, Anxieties,
and Ambiguities in the Toga Movie," William Fitzgerald
explores the persistent trope of Rome as a tyrannical empire
that is doomed to be replaced by Christianity. As Fitzgerald
argues, the movies of the 50's (especially Quo Vadis, and
Ben Hur) are careful to champion Christianity without
showing the Christians as actually subversive. The films
negotiate this bit of ideology by casting it in the domestic
sphere: the hero (played by an American) is converted after
falling in love with a Christian woman (played by a
European). Thus the rough American is domesticated at the
same time that the hero is able to turn away from the
flawed, decadent political power of public life at Rome.
Fitzgerald is also lucid on the ways in which these films
present erotic relations between men (in varying degrees of
latency) as an emotional driving force, often masked behind
a spectacle of violence.1
Martin Winkler draws a more
explicit connection between the films of the 50's and
contemporary politics, arguing that Quo Vadis and Ben Hur
figure the Roman empire as an
analogue to Nazi Germany. One of the more interesting
translations of this analogy has the Christians of ancient
Rome as the counterparts to the Jews persecuted by Hitler.
While Winkler comments on this oddity (64), he does not
quite theorize how it comes about in the American
imagination. Moreover, at times he seems to push his
evidence a bit far. Order and a desire for empire do not
necessarily connote the Nazis. Nonetheless, Winkler has a
good deal of interest to say about the iconography of the
Roman Eagle in Hollywood films, the depiction of Nero as
Antichrist, and Frank Capra's involvement in American Office
of War Information films of the 1940's.
Alison Futrell's piece,
"Seeing Red: Spartacus as Domestic Economist," is a model of
cultural analysis. She traces the history of the
representation of Spartacus' revolt, showing how the
historical event becomes a vehicle in turn for "natural
equality," nationalism, and eventually socialism in
subsequent retellings. She then shows how the famous movie
version reshapes the overt Marxist motivations of Howard
Fast's play by moving the political revolution to the sphere
of the family. Futrell points out that the movie is itself
embroiled in a somewhat quieter revolution, as the
employment and crediting of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was
an important step in dismantling the Hollywood blacklist.
This essay, like several others in the volume, also has
interesting insights into the ways in which the female lead
in these movies of Rome is used to assure the "natural"
superiority of its stirring hero.
A highlight of the volume,
Sandra Joshel's "I, Claudius: Projection and Imperial Soap
Opera," discusses the way in which the BBC's adaptation of
Robert Graves' novel takes on the form and function of a
soap opera. In contrast to the movies of Rome, this
small-screen series reduces every aspect of the Empire to
the imperial household, so that the decadence of Roman
government becomes a family drama. As in soaps, "... family
disintegration is repetitive, not cumulative" (143). And
most important, the real threat to an orderly society in
this domestic drama is a series of manipulative, greedy,
lascivious women. Not coincidentally, the series depicts
these women (especially Augustus' wife Livia) as pro-empire,
where the "good" men of the series are forced to accept the
empire against their desires for a return to the Republic.
And finally, Joshel argues that the American showing of this
drama had the particular effect of allowing us to see the
Romans as "not us," because they were, essentially, British.
Joshel is particularly strong on the way the medium of
television itself molded this production, and on the ways in
which Alistair Cooke and the reviewers shaped public
response to it.
Nicholas Cull's analysis of
the British camp comedies of ancient Rome does a nice job of
tracing the roots of this particular genre, in this case to
British military humor. There is less critique in this essay
than in other pieces in the volume, as a good deal of space
is devoted to simply describing the jokes and parodies in
Carry On, Cleo, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum, and Up Pompeii. Some of the most interesting material
here is Cull's discussion of the way the "camp" was used to
explore anxieties about sex and sexuality in the 60's. A
closing argument makes the point that the kind of "camp"
used by these movies is only possible in an era of relative
"innocence and repression" (184). What seemed cheeky in the
60's is pretty tame today, and that makes it difficult to
camp things up in quite the same way.
In "Brooklyn on the Tiber:
Roman Comedy on Broadway and in Film," Margaret Malamud
gives an extended treatment of A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum. Malamud explores the way that the works of
Plautus (themselves derivative of a Greek tradition) were
appropriated and recast for the Broadway stage production by
Jewish comics who had cut their teeth in the "Borscht Belt."
This Rome is a place where the comic tradition of the clever
slave becomes a venue for exploring Jewish-American
identification and assimilation. In the movie version of A
Funny Thing, however, the story takes on a different tone,
as Richard Lester wanted to criticize both the Hollywood
film industry and what he understood as the socially unjust
world of ancient Rome. He was limited in his ability to do
so, however, by producer Melvin Frank. The result is an odd
mix of gritty realism (a Rome populated by slaves in rags
surrounded by rotting vegetables) and vaudevillian humor.
Martha Malamud writes a
cogent essay about Colleen McCullough's series of novels on
ancient Rome in "Serial Romans." Most interesting here is
the observation that these novels are essentially
conservative: bloodlines determine social class, and
correctly so; women are weak and subordinate; homosexuality
is an identity and an indication of moral degeneration;
eastern characters are effeminate and luxurious; and so on.
Malamud is also instructive on the way in which McCullough
infantilizes her characters, producing upper class Romans
who are all Id. Finally, the essay critiques the marketing
of the novels themselves, and the ways in which the novels
re-make Roman history into a supermarket Romance.2
One of the more
sophisticated readings of the volume is Maria Wyke's
discussion of Derek Jarman's 1976 film Sebastiane, "Shared
Sexualities." Wyke traces the historical representation of
Saint Sebastian, exploring the process by which his
suffering is increasingly seen as erotic and particularly
representative of gay male experience and pleasure. She then
critiques Jarman's film, relating it both to this history
and to underground gay male pornographic films (some with a
vague classical setting) of the 50's and 60's. In Jarman's
film Rome becomes a trope for homosexual liberation, rather
than homosexuality being a sign of Roman decadence and
decline. In creating this representation, however, Jarman
focuses not on the interior of the imperial court, but on
"barren barracks life on the edges of empire" (230). As such
the film re-made both our understanding of homosexuality and
of ancient Rome. (Again particularly interesting are the
contemporary critics' attempts to direct and control the
potential viewers of the film.) A brilliant, densely argued
close to the essay discusses the "potential erotic ecstasy
of self-renunciation" (245) of the film in light of our
post-Foucauldian understanding of homosexual identity.
The volume closes with a
lighthearted, and somewhat light, piece on the history and
architecture of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, by Margaret
Malamud and Donald McGuire. It is clear that the authors
have spared no expense to research their topic, and this is
in keeping with the theme of the Palace. This is the Rome of
Commerce with a capital C, where luxury and power are
celebrated as part of the American vision of "extravagant
consumption" (262). As with some of the camp films of the
same era, Caesars Palace succeeds (to the extent that it
does) because of a kind of willful ignorance, a willingness on the part of the
consumer to wink, nudge, and roll her eyes.
In sum, Rome has never been
just Rome; and the Empire in particular has been a backdrop
against which modern America works out its sense of
identity. Imperial Projections goes a long way towards
articulating the relation between modern America and ancient
Rome, and towards theorizing the many subtexts that inform
that relation.
Notes:
1. I missed
reference here to Eve Sedgwick, 1985. Between Men: English
Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia
University Press.
2. Reference
could have been made here to two standard works on popular
"women's" fiction: Janice Radway, 1984. Reading the Romance:
Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press. Leslie Rabine, 1985.
"Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises,"
Feminist Studies 11: 39-60.
"Scholia Reviews" ns 16
(2007) 27.
Monica Silveira Cyrino, Big Screen Rome
Oxford: Blackwell, 2005
Pp. xiv + 274
ISBN 1-4051-1684-6. UK£19.99
Reviewer: Suzanne Sharland,
Classics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 7/11/07
Since film courses that focus
on screen representations of Classical antiquity seem to be
becoming such a staple of Classical Civilisation programmes
everywhere, Monica Silveira CyrinoÕs "Big Screen Rome" comes
as a welcome and timely addition to the growing store of
secondary literature in this rapidly expanding area of
Classical studies. Well-organised and appropriately
illustrated, CyrinoÕs lively contribution suggests itself as
a suitable textbook to prescribe for such courses. This is
not to say, however, that there are no problems with the
work. As the title implies, CyrinoÕs book concentrates on
the Roman side of things and excludes the Greek portion of
Classically themed films -- recent films such as Wolfgang
PetersenÕs "Troy" (2004) and Oliver StoneÕs "Alexander"
(2004) are noteworthy omissions dictated by the studyÕs
exclusively Roman bias.[[1]] Even
within the Roman film universe, the work is far from
exhaustive; Cyrino focuses on a relatively small selection
of films in the book. These, she explains, are the films she
has tried and tested in her own film course at the
University of New Mexico (p. 3). Unfortunately, the
restrictions of the academic year mean that every lecturer
or course co-ordinator designing a film studies module has
inevitably to decide what to include and what to leave out.
Nevertheless "Big Screen Rome" treats all the major and most
famous Classically themed films of yesteryear and provides a
solid, useful starting point for the Classics in the Movies
student, who should be encouraged to build upon the basic
information imparted by the study.
What gives CyrinoÕs work such
potential as a textbook is the meticulously organised manner
in which information about a number of Classically themed
films is imparted. Indeed, it is clear that it is precisely
as a textbook that CyrinoÕs book has been composed. Every
chapter deals with just one film, thus avoiding unnecessary
confusion, although there is some discussion of previous
versions or direct predecessors of the film in question.
Within each chapter the same structured organizational
approach is taken. Cyrino arranges each chapter under a
number of headings that are always the same and in the same
order. This predictability makes the book easy to use. For
example, on the first page of each chapter, one finds
important information about the filmÕs production studio,
director, screenplay, cast and so on. This provides a useful
reference point to turn to if one has, for example,
forgotten the name of an actor or the year in which a film
was released. Cyrino follows this, in each case, with an
equally useful ÔPlot OutlineÕ, which is detailed summary of
the plot of each film. Cyrino anticipates that this will
help students and lecturers place significant scenes and
clear up confusion about the sequence of the narrative (p.
5). Cynics may comment that the plot summary will be of
great help to those incorrigible students who, as incredible
as it may seem, have failed to watch the film itself.
Next in every chapter comes a
section entitled ÔAncient BackgroundÕ which describes the
ancient sources or the historical background that inspired
the film. In these sections, Cyrino usually delves into some
recorded history of ancient Rome, concerning which the
modern films can be extraordinarily cavalier. The exception
to the historical approach is in Chapter 6 (pp. 159-75), on
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1966),
where the ÔAncient BackgroundÕ section focuses instead on
the background to Roman comedy, the genre on which this
purely imaginary film is based. The section ÔBackground to
the FilmÕ in each case discusses the more recent background
to the movie, with, as Cyrino explains, Ôan examination of
other appropriations, literary or figurative, of the story
or its major characters since antiquity, and in particular
the use of the story or characters in other media such as
novels, stage plays, and other cinematic versionsÕ (p. 5).
This section explains, in addition, the manner in which the
film project came to be assigned to a particular director
and provides a brief summary of the particular directorÕs
career (p. 5). CyrinoÕs credentials as a film buff and her
impressively broad knowledge of Hollywood (after all, she
grew up in the neighbourhood)[[2]] enable her to impart
interesting and often very revealing information about other
films on non-Classical themes made by the directors in
question.
The next section, ÔMaking the
MovieÕ, in each case highlights the actual production of the
film under discussion, frequently involving intrigues,
struggles, and expenses of such proportions that they rival
the epic itself. This section also examines technical issues
such as Ôthe development of the screenplay, directorial
decisions about the shooting location and casting of actors,
the filmÕs artistic design, musical score, exceptional
set-piece scenes, special effects and new cinematic
technologiesÕ (p. 5). The final major section, ÔThemes and
InterpretationsÕ, provides in each case an in-depth analysis
of the major themes of the film, as well as situating the
movie in the broader social, political, and cultural context
of the time of its production and release. Cyrino evaluates
each filmÕs degree of critical and commercial success, and
she also looks for reasons for this. Each chapter concludes
with a potentially useful list of ÔCore IssuesÕ (take note,
students!), a set of important themes and issues that Cyrino
has identified as arising out of each film. One can almost
see already the garishly coloured highlighter pens coming
out to underline or otherwise mutilate these questions,
helpfully posed in point-form.
Many of the films Cyrino
discusses tell us more about the attitudes and trends in
American society than about the ancient world. Cyrino is
particularly good at contextualising each movie in the
American society of the particular era in which it was made.
She examines perceptively the degree to which each film she
analyses captures its "Zeitgeist", and her book as a whole
is set out chronologically so as to follow the evolution of
the Ôswords and sandalsÕ epic from its heyday in the early
1950s to its sudden resurrection with the success of
Gladiator in the year 2000. "Big Screen Rome" in effect
tracks the changes in American political, religious, sexual,
and cultural attitudes during the second half of the
twentieth century. CyrinoÕs first three chapters treat three
religious-themed American epics from the 1950s, "Quo Vadis"
(1951), "The Robe" (1953), and "Ben-Hur" (1959). As Cyrino
remarks (p. 3), these post-War religious epics all inherit
as well as perpetuate similar mythologies about Rome. Their
presentations of gender, race, and class are limited by the
prejudices of that era. One of the problems faced by the
lecturer today is how to make these pious films, which
sometimes look like walking Christmas cards, accessible to
the contemporary secularly-minded and often agnostic
student. Yet it is important that students are familiar with
this sub-genre of epic film in order for them to appreciate
the subsequent parodies of it, in films like "Monty PythonÕs
Life of Brian" (1979). On the political front, Cyrino takes
care to situate these films within the tense cultural and
political climate of the United States during the Cold War
period, another scenario that is entirely foreign to the
modern eighteen- to twenty-year-old student. The next two
chapters examine secular films about Rome made during the
early 1960s, "Spartacus" (1960) and "Cleopatra" (1963). Few
film courses about the ancient world would ignore these two
highly significant movies. Cyrino follows this with three
chapters treating comedies, "A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum" (1966), "Monty PythonÕs Life of Brian"
(1979), and Mel BrooksÕ "History of the World, Part 1: The
Roman Empire Sequence" (1981). Cyrino finishes off with a
very well-written chapter on
"Gladiator" (2000), the film which launched the return of
the Classically themed epic film.
In her introduction (pp.
1-6), Cyrino observes that there is both an attraction to
the power and spectacle of Rome, as well as a simultaneous
abhorrence felt towards what are perceived as the excesses
of this ancient civilisation: ÔContemporary audiences
readily relate to and even define themselves by the
on-screen portrayal of the ancient Romans whose provocative
combination of dignity and decadence both fascinates and
disturbsÕ (pp. 1f.). Traditionally, however, American
audiences do not seem to have been encouraged to identify
themselves with the Romans. In the movies on the ancient
world, until fairly recently, the American actors (or actors
with American accents) never played the evil, oppressive
Romans, but rather appeared as slaves, Christians, and other
innocent victims of RomeÕs abuse of power. According to the
Hollywood Ôlinguistic paradigmÕ, actors with British accents
that were ÔposhÕ-sounding to American audiences played the
evil, corrupt and oppressive Romans. This all changed, as
Cyrino observes (p. 232), with "Gladiator" (2000), when
Australian Russell Crowe adopted a gruff but refined English
accent (ÔRoyal Shakespeare Company two pints after lunchÕ)
in order to play the hero Maximus. However, the villain
Commodus, played by American Joaquin Phoenix, also adopted
an accent that veers occasionally into Cockney (Ô . . . busy
likkle bee . . . Õ). On AmericaÕs shoulders, it seems, the
mantle of Rome rests uneasily. Issues of power and empire
suggested by the paradigm of ancient Rome have never been
more significant for contemporary society, and to the rest
of the world today, America is clearly Rome. Only certain
recent films, however, have made a direct link between the
ancient Roman empire and its most striking contemporary
parallel.[[3]] By treating mostly
earlier American-made movies,[[4]] however, which subscribe
to the conventional paradigm, Cyrino has narrowed our
perspective of ancient Rome.
In CyrinoÕs selection there
are not enough recent films under discussion, and thus the
entire focus of her book is on early material which, one
anticipates, will eventually largely be replaced by later
portrayals of the ancient world. Much of the more recent
film material has been about Greece rather than about Rome.
But even on the Roman side of things there have been many
made-for-television spectacles (admittedly mostly British)
that merit attention. These television series have often
been less flashy but more historically accurate than the
Hollywood blockbusters, and in the past I have found it
useful to have students compare small and large screen
presentations of the same historical figure. The nature of a
television series allows the scriptwriters to go into
greater detail on minor background issues that of necessity
are swept under the carpet in the Hollywood blockbuster. If,
for example, the 1963 Cleopatra film had been a television
series as opposed to a lengthy movie, there may have been a
chance to show aspects of Mark AntonyÕs early career and his
relationship to Julius Caesar that had to be edited out of
the film version and which may have helped explain some of
his later behaviour.[[5]] Cyrino
has severely limited her choice of films by being strictly
ÔBig ScreenÕ and ÔRomeÕ (and almost exclusively American).
While a post-modernist
analysis of the multi-layered meanings of the films and
their reflections on antiquity may be instructive, on a more
practical level, as Cyrino herself suggests (p. 2), we need
to question why we teach these films at all in the context
of the Classics classroom. What bothers me, however, is that
on the whole CyrinoÕs attitude towards the films she has
selected (clearly her favourites) is more approving than
critical. While there is nothing wrong with enjoying the
spectacles, often it is necessary to focus on the moviesÕ
faults rather than their good points in order to enable our
students to learn something about the ancient world from
them. Do these films as artistic representations make any
attempt at historical accuracy? To what extent could
inaccuracies in these movies cause confusion or
misconceptions in the minds of some of our students? How
far-fetched must a film be before it loses any relevance to
a study of the ancient world?[[6]]
While it is true that most of our impressions of the ancient
world are mediated by some previous representation, that
there is no modern representation of antiquity that can be
truly objective, and that all films about the ancient world
are really about the modern one, it would be hard to justify
giving up all attempts at historical accuracy in films that
are, after all, promoted as historical Ôperiod piecesÕ.
Historical accuracy is what the lay
person always wants to know about: I think it would
be condescending and dismissive to suggest that the ordinary
film-going public does not care about this. By failing to
tackle the thorny question of historical accuracy head-on,
"Big Screen Rome" ultimately is unable to raise itself out
of the limited level of a class textbook to the status of a
more rewarding and abiding contribution to scholarship.
When it comes to the visual
recreation of the movie set, it has been observed,
historical accuracy resides in the details of that
recreation.[[7]] What I miss in
CyrinoÕs book is a discussion of the historical anachronisms
of each film, some of which are petty, others irritating,
and still others dangerously misleading. I am not overly
concerned about such legendary alleged slip-ups as the
automobile in the arena or the wristwatch on the arm of a
Roman soldier, amusing as these
things may be to spot. Somewhat more insidious, however, is
JudahÕs elderly servant Simonides (EstherÕs father) bumbling
about in "Ben-Hur" with a "yarmulke" (skullcap) on his head
centuries before this became the practice in Jewish
communities.[[8]] Again, JudahÕs
experience as a slave has him rowing a galley as a dire form
of punishment, while in practice being an oarsman was a
highly paid and respected profession. In battle, after all,
it was better to depend on free men rather than on slaves.[[9]] In "Cleopatra" (1963),
Cleopatra and Antony sit upright to eat their banquet on the
queenÕs boat afloat on the River Cydnus. They look
ridiculous: why arenÕt they reclining? CyrinoÕs book could
have been made more useful if she had compiled a list of
these anomalies. Even the minor infringements are worth
noting, so that these can be brought to the studentsÕ
attention.
A more serious dilemma, in my
view, is whether Spartacus dies on a cross, as in Stanley
KubrickÕs movie, or in battle, as Plutarch tells us.[[10]] At a push, an anonymous
Spartacus could indeed have been among his numerous
followers crucified between Capua and Rome as a reprisal for
antiquityÕs most successful slave uprising, but this is not
what Plutarch says. As Classicists and Ancient Historians we
need to ask why sometimes deliberate alterations to
historical events and phenomena are made in modern films
about the ancient world, and what effect this has on our
studentsÕ understanding of the ancient world. Having
Spartacus die on the cross,[[11]]
for example, is useful in dramatic terms, as it gives Kirk
Douglas a Christ-like profile and a chance to have some
dialogue with Jean Simmons, but knowledge of the ancient
world reveals that dying in battle as a warrior and not on
the cross like a slave would be the path that Spartacus
himself (and any other ancient with an ounce of
self-respect) would undoubtedly have preferred. It is
important that we use the opportunities for discussion
afforded by the filmsÕ inaccuracies to engage with our
students, and to introduce them to the real challenges of
the ancient world, in which the issues of right and wrong
were not always as clear-cut as in a Hollywood movie.
NOTES
[[1]] With the release of
"300" (2007), a dramatisation of the battle of Thermopylae,
might it not soon be time for a companion volume entitled
"Big Screen Greece"?
[[2]] See ÔAcknowledgmentsÕ,
p. viii.
[[3]] According to Lou
Marinoff, ÔAmerica is Rome reincarnate. Like the Roman empire, the American empire is vastly
powerful and unfathomably corrupt. Like Rome, America
imposes her civilisation upon an ungrateful world. Like
Rome, America needs bread, circuses and
philosopher-statesmen to forestall and yet to hasten her
demiseÕ ("The PhilosopherÕs Magazine", Summer 1998 -- I owe
this reference to Susan Haskins.) "Gladiator" (2000), prior
to the disaster of 9/11 and all the propaganda that has
followed it its wake, was in my view a high point in the
United StatesÕ cultural biography at which point America
could look at herself and admit that she was Rome.
[[4]] An exception to this
is, of course, "Monty PythonÕs Life of Brian" (1979), which
Cyrino ably treats in her seventh chapter (pp. 176-93).
[[5]] Cyrino notes this
problem with the editing of BurtonÕs portrayal of Mark
Antony at p. 145. However, she dismisses the 1999 BBC
mini-series "Cleopatra" as ÔfeebleÕ (p. 151). An excellent
example of a recent mini-series, perhaps too recent for
CyrinoÕs book, to be fair, is the series "Rome" created by
John Milius, William J. Macdonald, and Bruno Heller (London:
BBC & HBO, 2006).
[[6]] Kathleen Coleman,
herself an academic consultant to the movie "Gladiator"
(2000), raises many questions regarding the issue of
historical accuracy and the role of the academic consultant
in her chapter ÔThe Pedant Goes to Hollywood: The Role of
the Academic ConsultantÕ in Martin M. Winkler (ed.),
"Gladiator: Film and History" (Oxford 2004) 45-52. She
concludes (p. 52) that historical accuracy need not be
sacrificed to artistic sensibility provided that there is a
sophisticated working relationship between the academic
consultant and the filmmakers.
[[7]] Coleman [6] 49 observes
that while scholars are often accused of being too focused
on the minutiae, which may be a problem for an academic
consultant working on a film set, nevertheless, it should be
remembered that Ôdetail is the repository of authenticityÕ.
[[8]] Covering the head
before God is very ancient practice in Judaism, but any form
of head-covering is acceptable
in terms of Jewish law. A wide variety of head-coverings has been worn by Jewish men from
ancient times to the present, and many regional differences
used to exist. It seems that the "yarmulke" as we know it
dates from Medieval times. The word is Yiddish and the
practice of wearing this cap probably comes from Poland. It
has even been suggested that Ôthe so-called Jewish garb of
Poland, including even the ÔjarmulkaÕ (undercap), is simply
the old Polish costume which the Jews retained after the
Poles had adopted the German form of dressÕ
(JewishEncyclopedia.com - COSTUME, p. 20; accessed on
11/5/07).
[[9]] Ancient warship designs
required that each oarsman be responsible for one oar, and
therefore rowing was a skilled job, performed by trained
personnel. J.G. Landels in his work "Engineering in the
Ancient World" (London 1980) notes that however well
designed a warship may have been, Ôit was only one half of a
partnership, the other being a
fit, well trained crew whose morale was highÕ (p. 149).
Where slaves were used on ancient galleys, they were
apparently freed and trained first. Later designs, however,
required three to seven men handling one oar, so individual
skill mattered less, and from about the sixteenth century
A.D., European powers started using condemned criminals and
prisoners-of-war to man their galleys. From there the
commonplace of a condemned Ôgalley slaveÕ made its way into
literature, and what eventually became a literary tradition
seems to have influenced the portrayal of "Ben-Hur".
[[10]] Plutarch
"Life of Crassus" 11.6-7. Plutarch (id. 8.3) also
suggests that Spartacus the Thracian was in fact not born
into slavery at all, as in the movie, but was enslaved
through capture. I think that this is significant; the
attitudes instilled in Spartacus by his free birth may
explain the indomitable spirit that enabled him to lead the
slave rebellion in the first place. It is not accidental
that the Roman slave-owning classes preferred the home-born
slave, the "verna", to formerly free individuals captured in
warfare.
|
TKW note: the
reference to Spartacus as a ÒThracianÓ does not
necessarily mean that he was from geographic Thrace
(i.e. that he was from southeastern Bulgaria
-Northern
Thrace, northeastern Greece
- Western
Thrace, or the European part of Turkey
- Eastern
Thrace). He, in
fact, merely may have been a gladiator designated as
a ÒThraexÓ, one who was armored in the Thracian
manner and was trained to fight with Thracian style
weapons. |
[[11]] As far as I can tell,
this is an innovation of the screenplay. Both the novel on
which the film is loosely based, Howard FastÕs "Spartacus"
(London 1952), as well as Arthur KoestlerÕs "The Gladiators"
(London
1939), have Spartacus dying in battle.
0101RomeFilmIntro .doc
Some Introductory Notes
for the Rome-Movies Course
Although the US
political system is a conscious copy of the Roman Republic, it
is the Empire that fascinates us.
Throughout history, peaks of
Roman Empire interest seem to be co-temporal with empire
building: e.g.,
Shakespeare's tremendously successful Roman plays during the
Elizabethan era and modern fascination during the US "(sole)
Imperial superpower" age.
(Cf., the sword and sandal flicks of the post WW2
period). There
are comparable German, Russian, and Italian examples.
Strictly speaking (and why
not?), in Hollywood, ancient Religious Ð often biblical or
ersatz biblical -- stuff is made into "Sword and Sandal
movies". Movies
with a non-religious Roman setting are "Toga movies".
Almost always, lessons are
being taught Ð authors and movie producers are trying to
teach the audience. There
is often a great difference between the intended lesson and
what is "received" by the audience, and "reception", of
course, is time sensitive (see below).
Definitions:
Film Ð what people with
pretensions of "culture" go to see at small "art" theaters
in northwest Washington.
Movie -- what the rest of us
go to see at multiplex theaters in the burbs.
Flick Ð what they usually
show in places where you can also get a beer -- like your TV
room.
Cinema Ð
what they do in France and at the "Cinema and Draft House" at
the corner of Glebe and Fillmore in Arlington VA (the latter
of which is a better place.)
Two other words that you
often hear in "film as literature" courses are "reception"
and "gaze". There
is great controversy about what these words mean and how
they should be used. My
simplistic definitions are as follows:
Reception refers to how material is
taken in by a member or members of the audience Ð it is
passive, although there is (usually) an active element,
which is how the audience member processes the material,
i.e., how the material is stirred into what the person
already believes of knows.
(The French "deconstruction" fad took this element to
the extreme, saying that what the author might have intended
the audience to take away had lost its relevance as soon as
the author's words (or producer's product) were offered: the only thing
that mattered was how the audience processed the
information. This
fad, remarkably, held sway throughout the West for a while,
but we are now said to be in the "post-deconstructionism"
phase. This is
all, of course, just specialist jargon.)
Gaze (sometimes "look") is
what the author or producer is trying to attract, to the
story as a whole and to particular aspects of the story. Gaze is much more
active than reception:
the audience has to look rather than just see.
Both reception and gaze are,
of course, modified by time.
The time between when the story is written down and
when it becomes available to a particular audience changes
both reception and gaze.
With our material, this happens several times:
First, when the event
happens (or when the story is made up) and the original
recording of the event takes place. This is not always
as easy to define as it might
seem. Some
examples with our material are: the comedic situations in A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum, which appear to be Roman but
were actually derived from earlier Greek stock situations
and the "horrors and sex" in the Caligula story, which
appear to be derived from historical accounts of Caligula's
reign, but are really derived from pre-existing stock
descriptions of ancient tyranny: nothing in what
comes down to us about Caligula from the ancient
"historians" has any necessary relationship to what he
actually did, but what we can be sure about is that he was
immensely unpopular with the successors in whose employ were
the "historians". Nonetheless,
it makes for a titillating story so it's repeated down
through the ages.
Later intermediate
retellings change the "lesson". In our material, three of the films (Julius
Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus) are based on
explicit retellings by Shakespeare, who had lessons of his
own to add. All of the stories in all three films were
reworked by European Renaissance "humanists" (i.e.,
people Ð almost invariably men -- who rediscovered the
"classic" Roman stories and rewrote them into Ciceronian
Latin or their own vernaculars, their avowed purpose being
to find "human" exemplars to replace the biblical exemplars
of the earlier "scholastics".)
It's worth noting here that Shakespeare got his Roman
histories (Julius
Caesar and Antony
and Cleopatra, but not Titus Andronicus)
from Sir Thomas North's 1579 English translation of
Plutarch's Parallel Lives, and that North would have been
working from Latin text(s) as rendered by Italian or French
humanists.
Recent productions (i.e., 20th/21st
century) have their own added lessons to teach.
The 1937 Scipio film was a
glorification of Italian fascist imperialism, which had been
expanding in Libya ("Tripolitania" and "Cyrenaica") since
Mussolini's accession and which, a few months after Scipio's premier
would lead to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. The intended
Italian audience reveled in the idea of imperial expansion. Seventy years
later we look on it with revulsion: the "reception"
has changed, undoubtedly because of current "political
correctness".
The post WW2 Hollywood epics
(both Biblical and Roman) were based on 19th
century Protestant "novelizations". Quo Vadis, The Robe, and The Ten Commandments were
clearly "religious message" films, and, not incidentally,
had post-war anti-war messages. They are outside
the scope of this course even though the first two were
definitely "Roman". Ben Hur, which we
will not see, was also blatantly religious, but that's not
why we won't be seeing it.
The choice was between Spartacus and Ben Hur, and the
former has more lessons to teach both about Rome and about
the societies that made the movies. (We will see the
eight-minute chariot race scene from Ben Hur, however,
(twice): it's
too iconic and exciting to miss.) The Spartacus film
also has Christian resonance, first because of the initial
explicit tie-in to Christianity provided by the off-screen
narrator and then because of how the Christian West reacts
to crucifixion, not to mention the subtext of supposed
Christian virtues that run through the whole film. (The narrator's
opening "Christian" remarks are not nearly as jarring to the
educated ear as are the remarks Ð supposedly the words of
Augustus in a reference to his Res Gestae brag
sheet Ð at the end of the 2003 Italian Augustus TV film
that refer to the birth of "Jesus of Nazareth" in the 23rd
year of his reign.
The Caligula movie was
the result of several different visions (some of them
clearly perverted) working at cross-purposes. The version we
will see is the least perverted (R Ð rated with Gore Vidal's
name back on the label).
We'll talk about but not see the other versions.
Fellini's Satyricon, based on
the surviving fragmentary Satyricon of
Petronius Arbiter, Nero's supposed "master of the revels",
was produced to draw parallels between Dolce Vita 1960s
Italy and Nero's Rome.
It's pretty tame by today's standards. What could Fellini
have wrought today? (Something
to think about: were the Satyricons of Petronius and Fellini
about satire or Satyrs?)
Gladiator is yet another big sword and
sandal blockbuster. The
story is pure fiction except for the names of some of the
main characters. It
gets an "F" for historical accuracy, but the background
material Ð costumes, ambiance, architecture, and the feel of
the colosseum are very accurate. When Gladiator first lit
the silver screen, several movie critics said that it was
too violent and bloody, but we "Romanists" know (don't we?)
that the movies wasn't nearly bloody and violent enough to
accurately depict the Colosseum and Roman society.
Our final film will be Titus, Julie
Taymore's fairly accurate rendering of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Andronicus).
This was Shakespeare's most violent play, and Ms. Taymore
doesn't cringe from reflecting Shakespeare. Shakespeare
scholars say that he was inspired by the "revenge dramas" of
Seneca, nine "plays" intended to be
read rather than performed that were written in blank verse
by the Roman
Stoic
philosopher Seneca
in the 1st century
AD. Rediscovered by Italian humanists in the mid-16th
century, they became the models for the revival of tragedy
on the Renaissance
stage. The two great, but very different, dramatic
traditions of the age -- French Neoclassical
tragedy and Elizabethan
tragedy -- both drew inspiration from Seneca. There are certainly
"modernisms" throughout the film, but they are clearly both
intentional and to the point.
Taymore is better known for her design, direction, staging of "The Lion King" (which, in
fact, has some elements that could easily have been drawn
from Shakespeare Ð see Macbeth.) ShakespeareÕs Titus Andronicus
is, of course, fiction and does not portray any known
persons or incidents in ancient Rome. However, it does
reflect the way life and politics worked in the higher
reaches of Rome during the Òcrisis of the third centuryÓ
(235 Ð 284 AD). C.f.,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/thirdcenturycrisis_article_01.shtml .
0103Chariot Racing.doc
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia.
Article at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_racing
Chariot Racing
Chariot racing was one of the
most popular ancient Greek and Roman sports.
Early chariot racing
The chariot race at the
funeral games of Patroclus
It is unknown exactly when
chariot racing began, but it may have been as old as
chariots themselves. It is known from artistic evidence on
pottery that the sport existed in the Mycenaean world, but
the first literary reference to a chariot race is the one
described by Homer in Book 23 of the Iliad, at the funeral
games of Patroclus. The participants in this race were
Diomedes, Eumelus, Antilochus, Menelaus, and Meriones. The race, which was one lap around the stump
of a tree, was won by Diomedes, who received a slave woman
and a cauldron as his prize. A chariot race was
also said to be the event that founded the Olympic Games; according to one legend, King
Oenomaus challenged his daughter's suitors to a race, but
was defeated by Pelops, who founded the Games in honour of
his victory.
The Olympic Games
In the Olympics, as well as
the other Panhellenic Games, there were both four-horse (tethrippon) and
two-horse (synoris)
chariot races, which were essentially the same aside from
the number of horses. The chariot
racing event was first added to the Olympics in 680
BC (but was not, in reality, the founding event). The race
was begun by a procession into the hippodrome, while a
herald announced the names of the drivers and owners. The
hippodrome at Olympia was about 600 yards long and 300 yards
wide, and up to 60 chariots could race at one time (though
in practise the number was probably much lower). It was
located beneath a hill, which provided standing room for
possibly as many as 10 000 spectators. A race consisted of
twelve laps around the hippodrome, with sharp turns around
the posts at either end. Various mechanical devices were
used, including the starting gates (hyspleges, sing. hysplex) which were lowered to start the
race. According to Pausanias these were invented by the
architect Kleoitas, and staggered so that the chariots on
the outside began the race earlier than those on the inside.
The race did not actually begin properly until the final
gate was opened, at which point each chariot would be
more-or-less lined up alongside each other, although the
ones that had started on the outside would have been
travelling faster than the ones in the middle. Other
mechanical devices known as the "eagle" and the "dolphin"
were raised to signify that the race had begun, and were
lowered as the race went on to signify the number of laps
remaining. These were probably bronze carvings of those
animals, set up on posts at starting line.
§ A chariot race at the
ancient Olympic Games
Unlike the other Olympic
events, charioteers did not perform in the nude (see nudity
in sports), probably for safety reasons because of the dust
kicked up by the horses and chariots, and the likelihood of
bloody crashes. The chariots themselves were modified war
chariots, essentially wooden carts with two wheels and an
open back, although chariots were by this time no longer
used in battle. The charioteer's feet were held in place,
but the cart rested on the axle, so the ride must have been
bumpy to say the least. The most exciting part of the
chariot race, at least for the spectators, was the turns at
the ends of the hippodrome. These turns were extremely
violent and often deadly. If a chariot had not already been
knocked over by an opponent before the turn, it might be
overturned or crushed (along with the horses and driver) by
the other chariots as they went around the post.
Deliberately running into an opponent to cause him to crash
was technically illegal, but nothing could be done about it
(at Patroclus' funeral games, Antilochus in fact causes
Menelaus to crash in this way), and crashes were likely to
happen by accident anyway.
The chariot race was not as
prestigious as the stadion
(the foot race), but it was more important than other
equestrian events such as racing on horseback, which were
dropped from the Olympic Games
very early on. In Mycenaean times the driver and owner would
have been the same person, and therefore the winning driver
received the prize. However, by the time of the Panhellenic
Games, the owners usually had slaves who did the actual
driving, and it was the owner who was awarded the prize.
Arsecilas, the king of Cyrene, won the chariot race at the
Pythian Games in 462 BC, when
his slave driver was the only one to finish the race. In 416
BC the Athenian general Alcibiades had seven chariots in the
race, one of which won; obviously he could not have been
racing all seven chariots himself. Philip II of Macedon also
won an Olympic chariot race in an attempt to prove he was
not a barbarian, though if he had driven the chariot himself
he would likely have been considered even lower than a
barbarian. This rule also meant that women could technically
win the race, despite the fact that women were not allowed
to participate in or even watch the Games. This happened
rarely, but a notable example is the Spartan Cynisca,
daughter of Agesilaus II, who won the chariot race twice.
Chariot racing was also an
event at other games in the Greek world, and was the most
important event at the Panathenaic Games in Athens. At these
games, the winner of the four-horse chariot race was given
140 amphorae of olive oil, an extremely expensive prize, as
this was more oil than an athlete would ever need in his
career. Most of it was probably sold to other athletes.
There was another form of chariot racing at the Panathenaic
Games, known as the apobotai
or the anabotai.
This involved jumping out of the chariot and running
alongside for some distance (the anabotai); the apobotai apparently
also including jumping back into the chariot after running
alongside it. In these races there was a second driver who
held the reins while the first driver jumped out, but of
course neither of these were considered the winner.
Roman chariot racing
The Romans probably borrowed
chariot racing from the Etruscans, who themselves borrowed
it from the Greeks, but the Romans were also influenced
directly by the Greeks especially after they conquered
mainland Greece in 146 BC.
In Rome the main centre of
chariot racing was the Circus Maximus in the valley between
Palatine Hill and Aventine Hill, which could seat 150 000
people. The Circus probably dated back to the time of the
Etruscans, but it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar around 50 BC
so that it had a length of about 600 metres and a width of
about 225 metres. One end of the track was more open than
the other, as this was where the chariots lined up to begin
the race. The Romans used a series of gates known as carceres, an
equivalent to the Greek hysplex. These were
staggered in the same way as the hysplex, but they
were slightly different because Roman
racing tracks also had a median (the spina) in the
centre of the track. The starting positions had to be lined
up on one side of the spina,
rather than across the entire track as they were in Greece.
When the chariots were lined up the emperor (or whoever was
hosting the races, if they were not in Rome) dropped a cloth
known as a mappa,
signalling the beginning of the race.
Once the race had begun, the
chariots could move in front of each other in an attempt to
cause their opponents to crash into the spina. The spina had "eggs",
similar to the "dolphins" of the Greek races, which may have
dropped into a channel of water that ran along the top of
the spina to
signify the number of laps remaining. The spina eventually
became very elaborate, with statues and obelisks and other
forms of art, so that the spectators often could not see the
chariots on the other side (but they seem to have thought
this was more suspenseful and exciting). At either end of the spina there were
turning posts (metae),
and spectacular crashes took place there as well,
as in the Greek races. Crashes in which the chariot was
destroyed and the charioteer and horses incapacitated were
known as a naufragium,
also the Latin word for a shipwreck.
The race itself was much
like its Greek counterpart, although there were eventually
dozens of races every day, sometimes for hundreds of
consecutive days each year. However, a race consisted of
only 7 laps (and later 5 laps, so that there could be even
more races per day), instead of the 12 laps of the Greek
race. There were four-horse chariots (quadrigae) and
two-horse chariots (bigae),
but the four-horse races were more important. In rare cases,
if a driver wanted to show off his skill, he could use up to
10 horses, although this was extremely impractical. The
Roman drivers also wore helmets and other protective gear,
unlike the Greeks, and they wrapped the reins around their
arms, while the Greeks held the reins in their hands.
Because of this the Romans had a much harder time letting go
of the reins after a crash, so they could be dragged around
the circus until they freed themselves. They carried knives
to cut the reins in such a situation. A famous attempt to
reconstruct a Roman chariot race can be seen in the 1959
movie Ben-Hur.
Another important difference
was that the charioteers themselves, the aurigae, were
considered to be the winners, although they were usually
also slaves (as in the Greek world). They received a wreath
of laurel leaves, and probably some money; if they won
enough races they could buy their freedom. Drivers could
become celebrities throughout the Empire simply by
surviving, as the life expectancy of a charioteer was not
very high. One such celebrity driver was Scorpus, who won
over 2000 races before being killed in a collision at the meta
when he was about 27 years old. The horses, too, could
become celebrities, but their life expectancy was also low.
The Romans kept detailed statistics of
the names, breeds, and pedigrees of famous horses.
Seats in the Circus were
free for the poor, who by the time of the Empire had little
else to do, as they were no longer involved in political or
military affairs as they had been in the Republic. The
wealthy could pay for shaded seats where they had a better
view, and they probably also spent much of their times
betting on the races. The emperor's palace was located close
to the Hippodrome, and he would often watch the games as
well. This was one of the only opportunities for the general
population to view their leader. Julius Caesar frequently
watched the races specifically so that the public could see
him, although he apparently was not very interested as he
usually brought something to read.
Nero was interested in the
races almost to the exclusion of everything else. He was a
driver himself, and won the chariot
racing event at the Olympic Games, which were still
being held in the Roman era. Under Nero the major racing
factions began to develop. The four most important factions
were the Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites. They had existed
before Nero, probably as friends and patrons of the various
stables that produced the racehorses. Nero, however,
subsidized them so that they grew almost beyond his control.
Each team could have up to three chariots each in a race.
Members of the same team often collaborated with each other
against the other teams, for example to force them to crash
into the spina (a
legal and encouraged tactic). Drivers could switch teams,
much like athletes can be traded to different teams today.
Domitian created two new factions, the Purples and Golds,
but by the 3rd century only the Blues and Greens had any
importance.
There were many other
circuses throughout the Roman Empire; there was even another
major circus outside Rome, the Circus Maxentius. There were
major circuses at Alexandria and Antioch, and Herod the
Great built four circuses in Judaea. In the 4th century
Constantine the Great built a circus in his new capital at
Constantinople.
Byzantine chariot racing
Like many other aspects of
the Roman world, chariot racing continued in the Byzantine
Empire, although the Byzantines did not keep as many records
and statistics as the Romans did. Constantine preferred
chariot racing to gladiatorial combat, which he considered a
vestige of paganism. The Olympic Games
were disbanded by the later Christian emperors, but chariot
racing continued to be popular. The Hippodrome of
Constantinople (really a Roman circus, not the open space
that the original Greek hippodromes were) was connected to
the emperor's palace and the Church of Hagia Sophia,
allowing spectators to view the emperor as they had in Rome.
The bronze horses
from
the Hippodrome
are now in Venice.
There is not much evidence
that the chariot races were subject to bribes or other forms
of cheating in the Roman Empire. In the Byzantine Empire
there seems to have been more cheating; Justinian I's
reformed legal code prohibits drivers from placing curses on
their opponents, but otherwise there does not seem to have
been any mechanical tampering or bribery.
Chariot racing in the
Byzantine Empire also included the Roman racing clubs, but
by this time only the Blues and Greens were important. One
of the most famous charioteers, Porphyrius, was a member of
both the Blues and the Greens at various times in 5th
century. However, they were now more than simply sports
teams. They gained influence in military, political, and
theological matters, with, for example, the Blues tending
towards Monophysitism and the Greens remaining Orthodox.
They also developed in something like street gangs,
responsible for robberies and murders. Although they had
rioted as far back as the reign of Nero, the rioting
throughout the 5th century and into the 6th century
culminated in the Nika riots of 532 during the reign of
Justinian, which began when some of their members were
arrested for murder. Chariot racing seems to have declined
after this incident, but they had in any case become much
too expensive for the racing teams, or even the emperors, to
pay for.
The Hippodrome in
Constantinople remained a sanctuary for the emperors, until
it was sacked during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. During the
looting, the Crusaders removed a set of bronze statues of
four horses, originally part of a monument depicting a quadrigae
that was built by Constantine the Great. The horses still
exist, but they are now at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.
--------------------------
Sources
á
Boren, Henry C. Roman Society.
Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992. ISBN 0-699-17801-2
á
Finley, M. I. The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years.
New York: Viking press, 1976. ISBN 0-760-52406-9
á
Harris, H. A. Sport in Ancient Greece
and Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. ISBN
0-8014-0718-4
á
Homer. The Iliad (trans.
by E. V. Rieu). London: Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN
0-140-44794-6
á
Humphrey, John, "Roman
Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing". Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1986. ISBN: 0-5200-4921-7
á
Jackson, Ralph. Gladiators and Caesars:
The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000. ISBN 0-520-22798-0
á
Treadgold, Warren T. A History of the
Byzantine State and Society. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8047-2630-2
0105FunnyThingHappened.doc
A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum is a musical
with music and lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim and a book by Burt
Shevelove and Larry
Gelbart.
Based on the farces of the ancient Roman
playwright Plautus,
it tells the story of a slave
named Pseudolus
and his attempts to win his freedom by encouraging the
romance between his master's son Hero and a young virgin
named Philia, owned by Marcus Lycus, a dealer in courtesans,
and promised to swaggering soldier Miles
Gloriosus. The humor is broad, bawdy and
fast-paced.
Original Broadway Production
A Funny Thing Happened On The
Way To The Forum opened on Broadway
May 8,
1962 at the Alvin Theatre.
Directed by Broadway legend George
Abbott and produced by Harold
Prince, it was a smash, running 964
performances.
The show's creators originally
wanted Phil
Silvers in the lead role of Pseudolus, but he
turned them down. So did Milton Berle.
Eventually, Zero Mostel
was cast.
The production was in trouble out
of town. Director Abbott tried various fixes, including
simplifying the complex plot, but nothing worked. Famed
director Jerome Robbins,
who idolized Abbott, and who had originally promised to
direct the production before dropping out, was called in to
make changes. Robbins had "named names" during the McCarthy
era, and some feared he and the formerly
blacklisted Mostel would clash, but they worked together
well enough to turn the show around. (They soon worked again
on Fiddler
On The Roof.)
The biggest change Robbins
demanded was a new opening number to introduce the bawdy,
wild comedy. Stephen Sondheim complied, creating the famous
song "Comedy Tonight." From then on, the show was a success.
Along with Mostel, the show featured a cast of seasoned performers, including Jack Gilford (Mostel's friend and fellow blacklist member), David Burns, John Carradine, Ruth Kobart and Raymond Walburn. The young lovers were played by Brian Davies and Preshy Marker
. Karen Black was originally cast as the ingenue but was replaced out of town.The show won several Tony Awards:
best musical, best actor, best supporting actor (Burns),
best book and best director. The score, Sondheim's first
time on Broadway writing both words and music, was coolly
received, however, not even garnering a nomination.
Motion Picture
A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum was made into a film
in 1966, directed by Richard
Lester, with Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford
recreating their stage roles. It also features the great--if
ailing--clown Buster Keaton
and the man who turned down the lead in the Broadway
production, Phil Silvers. Also appearing are Lester
favorites Michael
Crawford, Michael
Hordern and Roy Kinnear.
The script was adapted for the
screen by Melvin
Frank and Michael
Pertwee. It rearranges the plot and cuts most
of the songs. The movie was not well-received
when first released, but has since acquired a cult
following.
Broadway Revivals
In 1972 there was a
critically well-received Broadway revival,
directed by co-author Burt Shevelove and finally starring Phil Silvers
(see above). Larry Blyden,
who played Hysterium, the role created by Jack Gilford, also
helped produce. Two songs were dropped from the show, and
two new Sondheim songs were added.
The production ran 156
performances, but had to close soon after Phil Silvers
suffered a stroke. The show won Tonys for Silvers and
Blyden.
The musical was also revived with
great success in 1996,
starring Nathan
Lane as Pseudolus, who was replaced later in
the run by Whoopi
Goldberg and also by David
Alan Grier. The production, directed by Jerry
Zaks, ran 715 performances. Lane won the Best
Actor Tony for his work.
It's remarkable that every actor
who has opened in the role of Pseudolus on Broadway--Zero
Mostel, Phil Silvers and Nathan Lane--won a Best Actor Tony.
In addition, Jason
Alexander, who performed as Pseudolus in Jerome
Robbins' Broadway, also won a Tony for Best
Actor in a Musical.
West End Productions
The show was presented thrice in
London's West End. The 1963
production and its 1986
revival were staged at the Strand
Theatre and the Piccadilly
Theatre respectively, and featured Frankie Howerd
starring as Pseudolus. In 2004
there was a limited-run revival at the Royal
National Theatre starring Desmond Barrit
as Pseudolus, Philip
Quast as Miles Gloriosus and Isla
Blair as Domina. (Incidentally, Isla
Blair played Philia in the 1963
production.)
Characters
á
Pseudolus
Ð A Roman slave, owned by Hero, who seeks to win his freedom
by helping his young master win
the heart of Philia, who is a virgin in the house of Marcus
Lycus.
á
Hero Ð Young son of Senex who
falls in love with the virgin, Philia.
á
Philia Ð A virgin in the house of
Marcus Lycus, and Hero's love interest.
á
Senex Ð A Roman Senator
living in a less fashionable suburb of Rome.
á
Marcus Lycus Ð A purveyor of
courtesans, who operates from the house to the left of
Senex.
á
Domina Ð The wife of Senex. A
manipulative shrewish woman whom is loathed by even her
husband.
á
Erronius Ð The elderly neighbor
to the right of Senex who is searching for his two children,
kidnapped in infancy by pirates.
á
Gymnasia Ð A mute courtesan from
the house of Lycus, for whom Pseudolus falls. (she is mute only in the film).
á
Miles
Gloriosus Ð A conceited captain in the Roman
army.
á
Hysterium Ð The chief slave in
the house of Senex.
á
Fertilla the Populator Ð A female
"Breeding Slave" (film only).
á
Crassus Ð A merchant at the docks
(film only).
á
Tintinabula Ð A courtesan in the
house of Lycus.
á
Vibrata Ð A courtesan in the
house of Lycus.
á
Geminae Ð Twin courtesans in the
house of Lycus.
á
Panacea Ð A courtesan in the
house of Lycus.
á
Domina's Mother Ð Senex's whip-wielding
mother-in-law (talked of in the play but seen only in the
film).
**************************************************************************************
[tkw note: The image is not
at all contemporary with Plautus and bears no necessary similarity to how
he really looked.}
Plautus
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Although we cannot verify
much about PlautusÕ early life, we have certain ideas. It is
believed that Titus Macchius Plautus was born in Sarsina (a
city in Umbria) around 254 B.C. According to Morris Marples,
in the early years of PlautusÕ life he worked as a
stage-carpenter or scene-shifter.
This might have been where his love of the theater
originated. After having worked in the theater, his talent
as an actor was eventually discovered, and he adopted the
names 'Macchius' (a clownish stock-character in popular
farces), and 'Plautus' (a term meaning "flat-footed").
Tradition also says that he eventually made enough money to
go into the shipping business, but that the venture
collapsed. He then is said to have worked as a manual
laborer and studied Greek drama Ð particularly the New
Comedy of Menander Ð in his spare time. His studies led to
the production of his plays, which were first produced
between c.205 BC and 184 BC. Plautus attained such
popularity, that solely his name was a guarantee of
theatrical success.
Plautus' comedies, which are
among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin
literature, are mostly adaptations of Greek models for a
Roman audience and are often directly based on the works of
the Greek playwrights. (Some might more properly be called
'adaptations') His works include Stichus, Pseudolus,
Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi,
Casina, Cistellaria, Curculio, Epidicus, Menaechmi,
Mercator, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria, Persa, Poenulus,
Rudens, Trinummus, Truculentus, and Vidularia. [tkw note: The Funny Thing action
is drawn from incidents in three of these plays: Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus,
and Mostellaria (Haunted House).]
Historical Context
The historical context within
which Plautus wrote to some extent dictated the nature of
his plays, in that there are certain ways in which Plautus
comments on contemporary events and people. Plautus was a
popular comedic playwright while Roman theater was still in
its infancy, still feeling the birth pangs of theatrical
evolution. Simultaneously, the Roman Republic was expanding
its sphere of influence and control.
Plautus and the Gods of Roman
Society
H.M. Tolliver discusses the
state gods of Rome and their importance as seen in the
Plautine Theater. These gods were an important part of
everyday life to the Romans of PlautusÕ time and a citizen
had a duty to his state to worship them. Tolliver tells us
that the gods were not exactly like our contemporary gods.
They were worshipped but also stood as a national symbol,
somewhat like our flag of today. State religion also served
as a political tool. If the gods supported a corrupt leader,
then the people should too. Plautus is sometimes accused of
teaching the public indifference and mockery of the gods.
Any character in his plays could be compared to a god. Whether to honor a character or to mock him,
these references were demeaning to the gods. These
references to the gods include characters comparing a mortal
woman to a god or saying he would
rather be loved by a woman than the gods.
Pyrgopolynices from Miles
Gloriosus (vs. 1265) to brag about his long life says
he was born one day later than Jupiter. In Pseudolus, Jupiter
is compared to the Ballio the pimp. It is not uncommon too
for a character to scorn the gods as seen in Poenulus and
Rudens. However, when a character scorns a god, it is
usually a character of low standing such as a pimp. Plautus
perhaps does this to further demoralize the characters. The
audience is not supposed to love the pimp, so by making the
pimp do sometime against the proper conventions of society, the audience will dislike
the character even more. Tolliver also relates the ways in
which the gods are referenced to by the stock characters.
Soldiers often bring ridicule among the gods. The young men,
meant to represent the upper social class, often belittle
the gods in their remarks. The parasites, pimps, and
courtesans often praise the gods with scant ceremony.
Tolliver goes on to argue that drama both reflects and
foreshadows social change. There was most likely already
much skepticism about the gods during PlautusÕ era. Plautus
did not make up or encourage irreverence to the gods, but
reflected ideas of his time. Some of PlautusÕ often
religious beliefs may have come out in his works, but the
state controlled stage productions, and PlautusÕ plays would
have been banned had they been too risquŽ.[2]
Gnaeus Naevius
Gnaeus Naevius, another Roman
playwright of the late third century B.C.E., wrote tragedies
and even founded the fabula praetexta (history plays), in
which he dramatized historical events. He is known to have
fought in the First Punic War and his birth, therefore, is
placed around the year 280 B.C.E.[3]
His first tragedy took place in 235 B.C.E. Plautus would
have been living at the exact time as Naevius, but began
writing later.[4] Naevius is most famous for having been
imprisoned by the Metelli and the Scipios Ð two powerful
families of the late third century. The Metelli and Scipios
were bitter rivals of NaeviusÕ patron, Marcus Claudius
Marcellus. Marcellus was the head of the family, the
Marcelli, who were also one of the most powerful families in
Rome.[5] Naevius was caught
between this rivalry and was Òthe victim of punishment
(including incarceration) inflicted by the chief men of the
state (principes civitatis, nobiles) for his attacks upon
them.Ó[6] According to A.J. Boyle, there is a reference in
PlautusÕ Miles
Gloriosus to a Òforeign poet,Ó showing that poets
might have been Òimprisoned for unbridled speech.Ó NaeviusÕ
imprisonment and eventual exile is a case of state
censorship that may have been a factor in PlautusÕ writing.
Naevius was being exiled when Plautus was writing and this
must have had an effect on what Plautus chose to speak about
in his plays.
The Second Punic War, The
Macedonian War and their Influence on PlautusÕ Plays
The Second Punic War, which
occurred from 218-202 B.C.E. was
the second engagement that Rome had with Carthaginian
forces, especially Hannibal. M. Leigh has devoted an
extensive chapter about Plautus and Hannibal in his recent
book, Comedy and the
Rise of Rome. He says that, Òthe plays themselves
contain occasional references to the fact that the state is
at arms...Ó[7] One good example is a piece of verse from the
Miles Gloriosus, the composition date of which is not clear
but often placed in the last decade of the 3rd century B.C.[8] A. F. West believes that this is
inserted commentary on the Second Punic War. In his article,
ÒOn a Patriotic Passage in the Miles Gloriosus of
Plautus,Ó he states that the war Òengrossed the Romans more
than all other public interests combined.Ó[9] The passage
seems intended to rile up the audience, beginning with
hostis tibi adesse or, Òthe foe is near at hand.Ó[10] At the
time, the general Scipio Africanus was requesting to go out
against Hannibal, a plan Òstrongly favored by the
plebs.Ó[11] Plautus apparently pushes for the plan to be
approved by the senate, working his audience up with the
thought of an enemy in close proximity and a call to
outmaneuver him. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that
Plautus, according to P.B. Harvey, was Òwilling to insert
[into his plays] highly specific allusions comprehensible to
the audience.Ó[12] M. Leigh writes in his chapter on Plautus
and Hannibal that, Òthe Plautus who emerges from this
investigation is one whose comedies persistently touch the
rawest nerves in the audience for whom he writes.Ó[13]
Later, coming of the heels of the conflict with Hannibal,
Rome was preparing to embark on another military mission,
this time in Greece. While they would eventually move on
Philip V in the Second Macedonian War, there was
considerable debate beforehand about the course Rome should
take in this conflict. In the article ÒBellum Philippicum:
Some Roman and Greek Views Concerning the Causes of the
Second Macedonian War,Ó E.J. Bickerman writes that Òthe
causes of the fateful warÉwere vividly debated among both
Greeks and Romans.Ó[14] Under the guise of protecting
allies, Bickerman tells us, Rome was actually looking to
expand its power and control eastward now that the Second
Punic War was ended.[15] But
starting this war would not be an easy task considering
those recent struggles with Carthage Ð many Romans were
tired of conflict to think of embarking on another campaign.
As W.M. Owens writes in his article, ÒPlautusÕ Stichus and the
Political Crisis of 200 B.C.,Ó Òthere is evidence that
antiwar feeling ran deep and persisted even after the war
was approved."[16] Owens contends that Plautus was
attempting to match the complex mood of the Roman audience
riding the victory of the Second Punic War but facing the
beginning of a new conflict.[17]
For instance, the characters of the dutiful daughters and
their father seem obsessed over the idea of Òofficium,Ó the
duty one has to do what is right. Their speech is littered
with words such as ÒpietasÓ and Òaequus,Ó and they struggle
to make their father fulfill his proper role.[18] The stock parasite in this
play, Gelasimus, has a patron client relationship with this
family and offers to do any job in order to make ends meat;
Owens puts forward that Plautus is portraying the economic
hardship many Roman citizens were experiencing as a result
of the cost of war.[19] With the repetition of
responsibility to the desperation of the lower class,
Plautus establishes himself firmly on the side of the
average Roman citizen. While he makes no specific reference
to the possible war with Greece or the previous war (that
might be too dangerous), he does seem to push the message
that the government should take care of its own people
before attempting any other military actions. Plautus was
notably influenced by the political events of his time and
thus gives modern readers a greater insight into the
politics of the ancient world and how an average Roman
citizen living during his time might have viewed those
events and the attitudes they might have possessed as a
result.
Greek Influence
The influence of Greek
playwrights is obvious when looking at the texts of the
plays of Plautus. In the delayed prologue of the Miles
Gloriosus, Palaestrio quite clearly states that, ÒAlazon
Graece huic nomen est comoediae,
/ id nos Latine ÔgloriosumÕ dicimus. hoc
oppidum Ephesust.Ó[20] So, from the outset, though the
opening is delayed a bit, the audience, if they were not
already aware, find out that the
playÕs origin and setting are Greek. Added to this, and just
as telling, is the overt use of Greek names and language.
Though the Greek influence is quite evident, PlautusÕ plays
are in no way Greek plays. Greek influence only penetrates
the texts of PlautusÕ plays superficially, i.e., names,
language, setting, and plot outline. Everything that comes
in between these things is Roman.
PlautusÕ Influences: Greek
Comedy, Menander, and Aristophanes
Greek Old Comedy
In order to understand the
Greek New Comedy of Menander and itsÕ similarities to
Plautus, it is necessary to discuss, in juxtaposition with
it, the idea of Greek Old Comedy and itsÕ evolution into New
Comedy. The ancient Greek playwright that best embodies Old
Comedy is Aristophanes. Aristophanes, a playwright of 5th
century Athens, wrote such plays as The Wasps, The Birds and
The Clouds. Each of these plays and the others that
Aristophanes wrote are known for their critical political
and societal commentary.[21] This
is the main component of Old Comedy. It is extremely
conscious of the world in which it functions and analyzes
that world accordingly. Comedy and theater were the
political commentary of the time Ð the public conscience. In
AristophanesÕ The Wasps, the playwrightÕs commentary is
unexpectedly blunt and forward. For example, he names his
two main characters ÒPhilocleonÓ and ÒBdelycleon,Ó which
mean Òpro-CleonÓ and Òanti-Cleon,Ó respectively. Simply the
names of the characters in this particular play of
Aristophanes make a political statement. Cleon was a major
political figure of the time and through the actions of the
characters about which he writes Aristophanes is able to
freely criticize the actions of this prominent politician in
public and through his comedy.
Greek New Comedy
Greek New Comedy differs
greatly from those plays of Aristophanes. The most notable
difference, according to Dana F. Sutton is that New Comedy,
in comparison to Old Comedy, is Òdevoid of an serious
political, social or intellectual contentÓ and Òcould be
performed in any number of social and political settings
without risk of giving offense.Ó[22] The risk-taking for
which Aristophanes is known is noticeably lacking in the New
Comedy plays of Menander. Instead, there is much more of a
focus on the home and the family unit Ð something that the
Romans, including Plautus, could easily understand and adopt
for themselves later in history.
Father-Son Relationships in
Greek New Comedy and Plautus
One main theme of Greek New
Comedy is the father-son relationship. For example, in
MenanderÕs Dis Exapaton there is a focus on the betrayal
between age groups and friends. The father-son relationship
is very strong and the son remains loyal to the father. The
relationship is always a focus, even if itÕs not the focus
of every action taken by the main characters. In Plautus, on
the other hand, the focus is still on the relationship
between father and son, but we see betrayal between the two
men that wasnÕt seen in Menander. There is a focus on the
proper conduct between a father and son that, apparently,
was so important to Roman society at the time of Plautus.
This becomes the main
difference and, also, similarity between Menander and
Plautus. They both address Òsituations that tend to develop
in the bosom of the family.Ó[23] Both authors, through their
plays, reflect a patriarchal society in which the father-son
relationship is essential to proper function and development
of the household.[24] It is no
longer a political statement, as in Old Comedy, but a
statement about household relations and proper behavior
between a father and his son. But the attitudes on these
relationships seem much different Ð a reflection of how the
worlds of Menander and Plautus differed.
Farce
There are differences not
just in how the father-son relationship is presented, but
also in the way in which Menander and Plautus write their
poetry. William S. Anderson discusses the believability of
Menander versus the believability of Plautus and, in
essence, says that PlautusÕ plays are much less believable
than those plays of Menander because they seem to be such a
farce in comparison. He addresses them as a reflection of
Menander with some of PlautusÕ own contributions. Anderson
claims that there is unevenness in the poetry of Plautus
that results in Òincredulity and refusal of sympathy of the
audience.Ó[25] This might be a reflection of an idea that
the Romans were less sensitive to catering to the audienceÕs
artistic sensibilities and more to their hunger for pure
entertainment.
Prologues
The poetry of Menander and
Plautus is best juxtaposed within the context of the
prologues. Robert B. Lloyd makes the point that Òalbeit the
two prologues introduce plays whose plots are of essentially
different types, they are almost identical in formÉÓ[26] He
goes on to address the specific style of Plautus that
differs so greatly from Menander. He says that the
Òverbosity of the Plautine prologues has often been
commented upon and generally excused by the necessity of the
Roman playwright to win his audience.Ó[27] However, in both
Menander and Plautus, word play is essential to their
comedy. Plautus might seem more verbose, but where he lacks
in physical comedy he makes up for it with words,
alliteration and paronomasia (punning).[28]
Plautus is well known for his
devotion to puns, especially when it comes to the names of
his characters. In Miles Gloriosus, for instance, the female
concubineÕs name, Philocomasium, translates to Òlover of a
good partyÓ Ð which is quite apt when we learn about the
tricks and wild ways of this prostitute.
Character
PlautusÕ characters Ð many of
which seem to crop up in quite a few of his plays Ð also
came from Greek stock, though they too received some
Plautine innovations. Indeed, since Plautus was adapting
these plays it would be difficult not to have the same kinds
of characters Ð roles such as slaves, concubines, soldiers,
and old men. By working with the characters that were
already there but injecting his own creativity, as J.C.B.
Lowe wrote in his article ÒAspects of PlautusÕ Originality
in the Asinaria,Ó ÒPlautus could substantially modify the
characterization, and thus the whole emphasis of a playÓ[29]
The Clever Slave
One of the best examples of
this method is the Plautine slave, a form that plays a major
role in quite a few of PlautusÕ works. The Òclever slaveÓ in
particular is a very strong character; he not only provides
exposition and humor, but also often drives the plot in
PlautusÕ plays. C. Stace argues that Plautus took the stock
slave character from New Comedy in Greece and altered it for
his own purposes. What Stace argues gives us both evidence
of PlautusÕ creativity and his Greek source material. In New
Comedy, he writes, Òthe slave is often not much more than a
comedic turn, with the added purpose, perhaps, of
exposition.Ó[30] This shows that there was precedent for
this slave archetype, and obviously some of its old role
continues in Plautus (the expository monologues, for
instance). However, because Plautus found humor in slaves
tricking their masters or comparing themselves to great
heroes, he took the character a step further and created
something very distinct.[31]
Understanding of Greek By
PlautusÕ Audience
PhilocomasiumÕs name is not
the only character of PlautusÕ whose name has Greek origins.
In fact, of the approximate 270 proper names in the
surviving plays of Plautus, about 250 names,
are Greek.Ó[32] William M. Seaman proposes that these Greek
names would have delivered a comic punch to the audience
because of their already basic understanding of the Greek
language.[33] This previous
understanding of Greek language, Seaman suggests, comes from
the Òexperience of Roman soldiers during the first and
second Punic wars. Not only did men billeted in Greek areas
have opportunity to learn sufficient Greek for the purpose
of everyday conversation, but they were also able to see
plays in the foreign tongue.Ó[34] Having an audience with
knowledge of the Greek language, whether a limited knowledge
or a more expanded one, allowed Plautus more freedom to use
Greek references and words. Also, by using his many Greek
references and showing that his plays were originally Greek,
ÒIt is possible that Plautus was in a way a teacher of Greek
literature, myth, art and philosophy; so too was he teaching
something of the nature of Greek words to people, who, like
himself, had recently come into closer contact with that
foreign tongue and all its riches.Ó[35]
These superficially Greek,
yet Roman plays make a great deal of sense. At the time of
the plays Rome is expanding, and having much success in
Greece. W.S. Anderson has commented that Plautus, Òis using
and abusing Greek comedy to imply the superiority of Rome,
in all its crude vitality, over the Greek world, which was
now the political dependent of Rome, whose effete comic
plots helped explain why the Greeks proved inadequate in the
real world of the third and second centuries, in which the
Romans exercised mastery.[36]
They are in fact colonizing the region, which is a shadow of
what it once was. Plautus was known for his adaptations of
Greek originals but, his plays are much more authentic than
just adaptations. Plautus was not merely imitating his Greek
forefathers he was distorting the plays that he had in mind.
Plautus: Copycat or Creative
Playwright?
Plautus was known for the use
of Greek style in his plays. However, this has been a point
of contention among modern scholars. One argument states
that Plautus writes with originality and creativity Ð the
other, that Plautus is a copycat of Greek New Comedy and
that he makes no original contribution to playwriting.
However, the reality lies in the middle of these two
arguments. Plautus writes with a remarkable amount of
creativity. However, he was influenced greatly by the Greek
New Comedy playwrights of the past Ð particularly Menander.
A single reading of the Miles
Gloriosus leaves the reader with the notion that the names,
place, and play is Greek, but one must look beyond these
superficial interpretations. Then again, W.S. Anderson would
steer any reader away from the idea that PlautusÕ plays are
somehow not his own or at least only his interpretation.
Anderson says that, ÒPlautus homogenizes all the plays as
vehicles for his special exploitation. Against the spirit of
the Greek original, he engineers events at the end... or
alter[s] the situation to fit his expectations.Ó[37]
AndersonÕs vehement reaction to the co-opting of Greek plays
by Plautus seems to suggest that they are in no way like
their originals were. It seems more likely that Plautus was
just experimenting putting Roman ideas in Greek forms.
Greece and Rome, although
always put into the same category, were entirely different
worlds with entirely differently paradigms and ways-of-life.
W. Geoffrey Arnott says that Òwe see that a set of formulae
[used in the plays] concerned with characterization, motif,
and situation has been applied to two dramatic situations
which possess in themselves just as many difference as they
do similarities.Ó[38] It is important to compare the two
authors and the remarkable similarities between them because
it is essential in understanding Plautus. He writes about
Greeks like a Greek. However, it is also important to note
that Plautus and the writers of Greek New Comedy, such as
Menander, were writing in two completely different contexts.
Contaminatio
One idea that is important to
recognize is that of contaminatio, which refers to the
mixing of elements of two or more source plays. Plautus, it
seems, is quite open to this method of adaptation, and quite
a few of his plots seem stitched together from different
stories. One excellent example is his Bacchides and its
supposed Greek predecessor, MenanderÕs Dis Exapaton. The
original Greek title translates as ÒThe Man Deceiving
Twice,Ó yet the Plautine version has three tricks. However
Plautus might have expanded himself upon the original plot
in order to make a statement about Roman culture versus
Greek culture Ð the possibility of another Greek play which
happens to fit the space left by Dis Exapaton seems too
improbable.[39] V. Castellani
commented that:
PlautusÕ attack on the genre
whose material he pirated was, as already stated, fourfold.
He deconstructed many of the Greek playsÕ finely constructed
plots; he reduced some, exaggerated others of the nicely
drawn characters of Menander and of MenanderÕs
contemporaries and followers into caricatures; he
substituted for or superimposed upon the elegant humor of
his models his own more vigorous, more simply ridiculous
foolery in action, in statement, even in language. [40]
By exploring ideas about
Roman loyalty, Greek deceit, and differences in ethnicity,
ÒPlautus in a sense surpassed his model.Ó[41] He was not
content to rest solely on a loyal adaptation that, while
amusing, was not new or engaging for Rome. Plautus took what
he found but again made sure to expand, subtract, and
modify. In ÒCriteria of Originality in Plautus,Ó[42] Henry
Prescott writes that many of the allusions to the Greek
culture Òcome, not from the Greek originals, but from the
mind and fancy of the Roman Poet himself.Ó While Plautus
changes much of what he found in the older comedies, he
didnÕt throw all Greek aspects out the window Ð he, and his
audience, were familiar enough with Greek culture that they
could appreciate such jokes. He clearly saw something in
those plays that made him leave such a strong Greek air in
his adaptations. It seems to be the consensus of at least
some scholars that Plautus is
influenced by the Greeks only insofar as he needed
to when devising his plays during the infancy of Roman
comedy. He seems to have followed the same path that Horace
did, though Horace is much later, in that he is putting
Roman ideas in Greek forms. He is not only imitating the
Greeks, but he is in fact distorting, cutting up, and
transforming the plays into something entirely Roman. In
essence it is Greek theater colonized by Rome and its
playwrights.
Stagecraft
In Ancient Greece during the
time of New Comedy, from which Plautus drew so much of his
inspiration, there were permanent theaters that catered to
the audience as well as the actor. The greatest playwrights
of the day had quality facilities in which to present their
work and, in a general sense,
there was always enough public support to keep the theater
running and successful. However, this was not the case in
Rome during the time of the Republic when Plautus would have
been writing his plays. Though the debate about this topic
has sometimes been hindered by a lack of evidence, scholars
have illuminated parts this field, and thus facilitated
further research of the subject. What they have found is
that while there was public support for theater and people
came to enjoy tragedy and comedy alike, there was a notable
lack of governmental support. The result was that there was
not a permanent theater until Pompey dedicated the first one
in 55 B.C.E in the Campus Martius.[43]
The lack of a permanent space was extremely influential, and
it gives us great insight if we are exploring the history of
Roman theater and its ramifications on Plautine stagecraft.
The question of why there
were no permanent theaters in Rome until 55 B.C.E. is a
puzzling question for contemporary scholars of Roman drama.
In their introduction to the Miles Gloriosus, Hammond, Mack
and Moskalew say that, Òthe Romans were acquainted with the
Greek stone theater, but, because they believed drama to be
a demoralizing influence, they had a strong aversion to the
erection of permanent theaters.Ó[44] This worry rings true
when considering the subject matter of PlautusÕ plays. The
unreal becomes reality on stage in his work. T.J. Moore
notes that, Òall distinction between the play, production,
and Ôreal lifeÕ has been obliterated [PlautusÕ play Curculio]Ó.[45] This must have been a concern
for any upstanding citizen, and so a place where social
norms were upended could not become an institution lest bad,
or at least inappropriate, behavior be reinforced. Obviously
the aristocracy was afraid of the power of the theater. They
wished to assert control over the medium and went about
doing so by making it impermanent. It would have been merely
by their good graces and unlimited resources that a
temporary stage would have been built during specific
festivals.
The Importance of the Ludi
Roman drama, specifically
Plautine comedy, was acted out on stage during the ludi or festival
games. These plays were acted out during the day on wooden
stages. Some were more important to drama - for instance, in
his discussion of the importance of the ludi Megalenses in
early Roman theater, John Arthur Hanson says that this
particular festival Òprovided more days for dramatic
representations than any of the other regular festivals, and
it is in connection with these ludi that the most
definite and secure literary evidence for the site of scenic
games has come down to us.Ó[46] Because the ludi were religious
in nature, it was appropriate for the Romans to set up this
temporary stage close to the temple of the deity being
celebrated. S.M. Goldberg notes that, Òludi were generally
held within the precinct of the particular god being
honoredÓ.[47] But that
information only tells us the where and the when. While
there has been much debate about for whom these plays were
performed, it is clear that certain members of the audience
had their own special realms around the stage. T.J. Moore
notes that, Òseating in the temporary theaters where
PlautusÕ plays were first performed was often insufficient
for all those who wished to see the play, that the primary
criterion for determining who was to stand and who could sit
was social statusÓ.[48] This is
not to say that the lower classes did not see the plays, but
simply means that they probably had to stand while watching
it. So these plays were performed in public for the public
with the most prominent members of the society in the
forefront.
As noted above, in the place
of these familiar permanent theaters of the late Republic
and Roman Empire, Plautus used temporary wooden stages, set
up by the aristocracy that provided a performance space for
the actors. These wooden structures were shallow and long
with three openings in respect to the scene-house - because
of the time-constraint on the building process,
the stages were significantly smaller than any Greek
structure that is familiar to modern scholars. The time
limits existed because while the plays were performed during
these festivals many other events took place that needed
their own space as well. Because theater was not seen as the
priority, the structures were built and dismantled within a
day. Even more practically, they were dismantled quickly
because of the fire-hazard in ancient Rome.[49]
Geography of the Stage
Often the geography of the
stage and more importantly the play matched the geography of
the city so that the audience would be well oriented to the
locale of the play. Moore says that, Òreferences to Roman
locales must have been stunning for they are not merely
references to things Roman, but the most blatant possible
reminders that the production occurs in the city of
Rome.Ó[50] So, Plautus seems to have choreographed his plays
somewhat true-to-life. To do this, he needed his characters
to exit and enter to or from whatever area their social
standing would befit.
Character and social standing
are of the utmost importance when trying to figure out the
puzzle that is Plautine stagecraft and stage-space. Two
scholars, V.J. Rosivach and N.E. Andrews, have made
interesting observations about stagecraft in Plautus: V.J.
Rosivach writes about identifying the side of the stage with
both social status and geography. He says that, for example,
Òthe house of the medicus
lies offstage to the right. It would be in the forum or
thereabouts that one would expect to find a medicus.Ó[51]
Moreover, he says that characters that oppose one another
always have to exit in opposite directions. In a slightly
different vein, N.E. Andrews discusses the spatial semantics
of Plautus; he has observed that even the different spaces
of the stage are thematically charged. He states:
PlautusÕ Casina employs
these conventional tragic correlations between male/outside
and female/inside, but then inverts them in order to
establish an even more complex relationship among genre,
gender and dramatic space. In the Casina, the
struggle for control between men and women... is articulated
by charactersÕ efforts to control stage movement into and
out of the house.
[52]
So while it seems that there
is a place for everyone in the plays of Plautus, no one
stays in their place. And what clues us in to these
specified realms is the way that
the spaces are transgressed.
Andrews makes note of the
fact that power struggle in the Casina is evident in the
verbal comings and goings. In fact the words of action and
the way that they are said are quite important to
stagecraft. The words denoting direction or action such as abeo (ÒI go offÓ),
transeo (ÒI go
overÓ), fores
crepuerunt (Òthe doors creakÓ), or intus (ÒinsideÓ),
which signal any characterÕs departure or entrance, are
standard in the dialogue of PlautusÕ plays. These verbs of
motion or phrases can be taken as Plautine stage direction
since no overt stage directions are apparent. Often, though,
in these interchanges of characters, in Plautine adaptations
of Greek originals, there occurs the need to move on to the
next act. Plautus then might use what is known as a Òcover
monologueÓ. About this S.M. Goldberg notes that, Òit marks
the passage of time less by its length than by its direct
and immediate address to the audience and by its switch from
senarii in the
dialogue to iambic
septenarii. The resulting shift of mood distracts and
distorts our sense of passing time.Ó[53] And so one method
Plautus used to stage the play within the text was to change
the meter and type of speech, which clued in the audience to
the coming of the next act.
Relationship with the
Audience
The small stages had a
significant effect on the stagecraft of ancient Roman
theater. Because of this limited space, there was also
limited movement. Greek theater allowed for grand gestures
and extensive action to reach the audience members who were
in the very back of the theater. However the Romans would
have had to depend more on their voices than large
physicality. There was not an orchestra available like there
was for the Greeks and this is reflected in the notable lack
of a chorus in Roman drama. The replacement character that
acts as the chorus would in Greek drama is often called the
Òprologue.Ó[54]
Goldberg says that, Òthese
changes fostered a different relationship between actors and
the space in which they performed and also between them and
their audiences.Ó[55] Actors were thrust into much closer
audience interaction. Because of this, a certain acting
style became required that is more familiar to modern
audiences. Because they would have been in such close
proximity to the actors, ancient Roman audiences would have
wanted attention and direct acknowledgement form the actors.[56]
That relationship between the
actor and his audience was a very important one. Not only
was the job of the actor in relation to the audience closer
than it had ever been, but the relation of the audience to
the stage was much closer. Because there was no orchestra,
there was no space separating the audience from the stage.
The audience could stand directly in front of the elevated
wooden platform. This gave them the opportunity to look at
the actors from a much different perspective. They would
have seen every detail of the actor and hear every word he
said. The audience member would have wanted that actor to
speak directly to them. It was a part of the thrill, and, to
this day, is still a thrill for audiences enjoying comedy or
any type of theater. [57]
Plautine stagecraft is a lot
more than just stage directions, theater mechanisms and
costumes. Most of what we consider traditional stagecraft is
still slightly mysterious with respect to Roman drama. The
impermanence of early Roman theater undoubtedly affected
what theater meant to PlautusÕ society - it was something
that had not reached the mainstream in the way that we think
of mainstream today. That temporary nature was, in a way,
done to control the threat posed by depictions of subverted
order, even in comedy, maintained by the upper class.
However, itÕs affect on contemporary and future theater is
unmistakable and the significance of audience-actor
interaction that is so essential to Renaissance theater during the time of
Shakespeare is first seen in these temporary theaters.
Despite its limitation, therefore, Early Roman theater was another important step in
the evolution of stagecraft.
Stock Characters
PlautusÕ range of characters
was created through his use of various techniques, but
probably the most important is his use of stock characters
and situations in his various plays. He incorporates the
same stock characters constantly, especially when the
character type is amusing to the audience. His devotion to
comedy led him to creating characters that were as humorous
as possible despite the repetition or shifts in personality.
As Walter Juniper wrote, ÒEverything, including artistic
characterization and consistency of characterization, were
sacrificed to humor, and character portrayal remained only
where it was necessary for the success of the plot and humor
to have a persona
who stayed in character, and where the persona by his
portrayal contributed to humor.Ó[58] By sacrificing the
characterization for humorÕs sake, PlautusÕ characters are
not terribly deep, only showing the traits for their stock
character type.
For example, in Miles Gloriosus,
the titular Òbraggart soldierÓ Pyrgopolynices only shows his
vain and immodest side in the first act, while the parasite
Artotrogus exaggerates PyrgopolynicesÕ achievements,
creating more and more ludicrous claims that Pyrgopolynices
agrees to without question. These two are perfect examples
of the stock characters of the pompous soldier and the
desperate parasite that appeared in Plautine comedies. In
disposing of highly complex individuals, Plautus was
supplying his audience with what it wanted, since Òthe
audience to whose tastes Plautus catered was not interested
in the character play,Ó[59] but instead, wanted the broad
and accessible humor offered by stock set-ups. The humor
Plautus offered, such as Òpuns, word plays, distortions of
meaning, or other forms of verbal humor he usually puts them
in the mouths of characters belonging to the lower social
ranks, to whose language and position these varieties of
humorous technique are most suitable,Ó[60] matched well with
the stable of characters.
The Clever Slave
In his article "The
Intriguing Slave in Greek Comedy," Philip Harsh gives
evidence to show that the clever slave is not an invention
of Plautus. While previous critics such as A.W. Gomme
believed that the slave was Ò [a] truly comic character, the
devisor of ingenious schemes, the controller of events, the
commanding officer of his young master and friends, is a
creation of Latin comedy,Ó and that Greek dramatists
Menander did not use slaves in such a way that Plautus later
did, Harsh refutes these beliefs by giving concrete examples
of instances where a clever slave appeared in Greek comedy.[61] For instance, ion the works of
Athenaeus, Alciphron, and Lucian there are deceptions that
involve the aid of a slave, and in MenanderÕs Dis Exapaton there
was an elaborate deception executed by a clever slave that
Plautus mirrors in his Bacchides. Evidence
of clever slaves also appears in MenanderÕs Thalis, Hypobolimaios, and
from the papyrus fragment of his Perinthia. Harsh
acknowledges that GommeÕs statement was probably made before
the discovery of many of the papyri that we now have. While
it was not necessarily a Roman invention, Plautus did his
own style of depicting the clever slave. With larger, more
active roles, more verbal exaggeration and exuberance, the
slave was moved my Plautus further into the front of the
action.[62] Because of the
inversion of order created by a devious or witty slave, this
stock character was perfect for achieving a humorous
response and the traits of the character worked well for
driving the plot forward.
The Lusty Old Man
Another important Plautine
stock character, discussed by K.C. Ryder, is the senex amator. A
senex amator is classified as an old man who for some reason
contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying
degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion. In Plautus these
men are Demaenetus (Asinaria),
Philoxenus and Nicobulus (Bacchides), Demipho
(Cistellaria),
Lysidamus (Casina),
Demipho (Mercator),
and Antipho (Stichus).
Periplectomenos (Miles
Gloriosus) and Daemones (Rudens) are
regarded as senes
lepidi because they usually keep their feelings within
a respectable limit. All of these characters have the same
goal, to be with a younger woman, but all go about it in
different ways as Plautus could
not be too redundant with his characters despite their
already obvious similarities. What they have in common is
the ridicule with which their attempts are viewed, the
imagery that suggests that they are motivated largely by
animal passion, the childish behavior, and the reversion to
the love-language of their youth.[63]
This is a type, like the clever slave, which is fertile
ground for comedy simply because of the nature of the
character, and that is exactly why Plautus returned to it so
many times.
Female Characters
There is often an
inconsistency when it comes to the role designations given
to female characters in PlautusÕ plays. To examine this it
is important to understand where these role designations
come from. The original manuscripts contained no prefaced
list of character names as most new editions now have.
Instead, the manuscripts sometimes have character names in
the headings, or at other times we learn the role
designation of the character through the play itself - a
character will be described before entering the stage or
another character will address him by name.
In examining the female role
designations of Plautus, Z.M. Packman found that they are
not as stable as their male counterparts: a senex will usually
remain a senex
for the duration of the play but designations like matrona, mulier, or uxor at times seem
interchangeable. Most free adult women, married or widowed,
appear in scene headings as mulier, simply
translated as ÒwomanÓ. But in PlautusÕ Stichus the two
young women are referred to as sorores, later mulieres, and then
matrona, all of
which have different meanings and connotations. Although
there are these discrepancies, Packman tries to give a
pattern to the female role designations of Plautus. Mulier is typically
given to a woman of citizen class and of marriageable age or
who has already been married. Unmarried citizen-class girls,
regardless of sexual experience, were designated virgo.
Aniclla was the
term used for female household slaves, with Anus reserved for
the elderly household slaves. A young woman that is unwed
due to social status is usually referred to as meretrix or
Òcourtesan.Ó A lena
or adoptive mother maybe a woman own these girls.[64]
Unnamed Characters
Like Packman, George
Duckworth uses the scene headings in the manuscripts to
support his theory about unnamed Plautine characters. There
are approximately 220 characters in the 20 plays of Plautus.
30 are unnamed in both the scene headings and the text and
there are about 9 characters who
are named in the ancient text but not in any modern one.
This means that about 18% of the total number of characters
in Plautus is nameless. Most of the very important
characters have names while most of the number
of unnamed characters are of less importance.
However there are some abnormalities - the main character in
Casina is not mentioned by name anywhere in the text. In
other instances, meanwhile, Plautus will give a name to a
character that only has a few words or lines. One
explanation is that some of the names have been lost over
the years and for the most part, major characters do have
names.[65]
The Language and Style of
Plautus
Overview
The language and style of
Plautus is not easy or simple. He wrote in a colloquial
style far from the codified form of Latin that is found in
Ovid or Virgil. This colloquial style is the everyday speech
that Plautus wouldÕve been familiar with, yet that means
that most students of Latin are unfamiliar with it. Adding
to the unfamiliarity of Plautine language is the
inconsistency of the irregularities that occur in the texts.
In one of his prolific word-studies, A.W. Hodgman noted
that:
the statements that one meets with,
that this or that form isÔcommon,Õor Ôregular,Õ in Plautus,
are frequently misleading, or even incorrect, and are
usually unsatisfying.... I have gained an increasing respect
for the manuscript tradition, a growing belief that the
irregularities are, after all, in a certain sense regular.
The whole system of inflexion- and, I suspect, of syntax
also and of versification- was less fixed and stable in
PlautusÕ time than it became later[66].
So, it is quite clear that
the difficulty of the language and style of Plautus is an
old issue, one that fit the bill to be in the first ever issue of The Classical Quarterly.
The issue of language and style in the plays of Plautus
covers an enormous amount of ground, and it is far too
expansive to go into enough detail to do it justice. This
glance at Plautine language and style shall briefly try to
cover the areas of archaisms, diction, syntax, poetic
devices, meter, and the manifestations of the sum of these
parts on stage. The purpose of such a task is to inform a
first time reader of Plautus of what they should expect in
the text. And in turn, this will better the understanding of
the material in the collection.
Archaisms
The best place to start then, would be quickly looking at the
words that come together to form the plays of Plautus. The
most shocking and immediate thing one notices about Plautine
diction is the use of archaic Latin forms. Some might find
these difficult to understand, but there are a great many
possibilities for why we find them in the plays of Plautus.
It is important to note, though, that Plautus did not set
out to write a play in archaic Latin, using the term
ÒarchaicÓ only comes from our contemporary interpretation of
the text. Most scholars seem to note that the plays language
is written in a colloquial, everyday speech. M. Hammond,
A.H. Mack, and W. Moskalew have noted in their introduction
to the text of the Miles
Gloriosus that Plautus was, Òfree from convention... [and that] he sought to reproduce the
easy tone of daily speech rather than the formal regularity
of oratory or poetry. Hence, many of the irregularities
which have troubled scribes and scholars perhaps merely
reflect the everyday usages of the careless and untrained
tongues which Plautus heard about himÓ[67]. Looking at the
overall use of archaisms within Plautus, one will notice
that they commonly occur in promises, agreements, threats,
prologues, or speeches. Plautus uses archaic forms, though
sometimes for metrical convenience, but more often for
stylistic effect. There are many manifestations of these
archaic forms in the texts of PlautusÕ plays, in fact too
many to completely include them in this article[68].
Here now, the most regular of irregularities, i.e.,
archaisms, will be delineated:
*
the use of uncontracted
forms of some verbs like malo
*
the emendation of the
final -e of
singular imperatives
*
the use of -o in some verb
stems where it would normally be -e
*
the use of the -ier ending for the
present passive and deponent infinitive
*
often the forms of sum are joined to
the preceding word
*
the deletion of the final
-s and final -e when ne is added
to a second singular verb
*
the replacement of -u with -o in noun endings
*
the use of qu instead of c, as in quom instead of cum
*
the use of the -ai genitive
singular ending
*
the addition of a final -d onto personal
pronouns in the accusative or ablative
*
there is sometimes the
addition of a final -pte,
-te, or -met to pronouns
*
the use of -is as the
nominative plural ending[69]
These peculiarities are the
most common in the plays of Plautus, and their notation
should make initial readings a bit easier. Archaic word
forms in Plautus reflect the way that his contemporaries
interacted. PlautusÕ use of colloquial dialogue helps us
understand, to a certain extent, how RomanÕs would have
greeted each other and consequentially responded. For
example, there are certain formulaic greetings such as
ÒhelloÓ and Òhow are you?Ó that illicit a certain formulaic
response such as a returning hello, or answer as to your
state of being well. Quid
agis here would mean, ÒHow are you?Ó Other responses
are factual and have a less fixed answer. Overall though,
archaic forms present the reader with a richer understanding
of the Latin language.
Means of Expression
There are certain ways in
which Plautus expressed himself in his plays, and these
individual means of expression give a
certain flair to his style of writing. The means of
expression are not always specific to the writer, i.e.,
idiosyncratic, yet they are characteristic of the writer.
The two examples of these characteristic means of expression
are the use of proverbs and the use of Greek language in the
plays of Plautus. Plautus employs the use of proverbs in
many of his plays. G.L. Beede defines proverbs as sayings
currently among the folk. They are fundamentally of popular
appeal, employed to drive home a point, to sum up a
situation, and to characterize. Many times proverbs will
addresses a certain genre such as law, religion, medicine,
trades, crafts, and seafaring. PlautusÕ proverbs and
proverbial expressions number into the hundreds. They
sometimes appear alone or interwoven within a speech. The
most common appearance of proverbs in Plautus appears to be
at the end of a soliloquy. Plautus does this for dramatic
effect to emphasize a point. Further interwoven into the
plays of Plautus and just as common as the use of proverbs
is the use of Greek within the texts of the plays. J.N.
Hough suggests that PlautusÕ use of Greek is for artistic
purposes and not simply because a Latin phrase will not fit
the meter. Greek words are used when describing foods, oils,
perfumes, etc. This is similar to our use of other languages
in the English language such as the words garcon or
rendezvous. These words give us a French flair just as the
Greek would to the Romans. Slaves or characters of low
standing speak much of the Greek. One possible explanation
for this is that many Roman slaves would have been
foreigners perhaps even speaking Greek.
Poetic Devices
Plautus also used more
technical means of expression in his plays. One tool that
Plautus used for the expression of his servus callidus
stock character was alliteration. Alliteration is the
repetition of sounds in a sentence or clause; those sounds
usually come at the beginning of words. In the Miles Gloriosus,
the servus callidus
is Palaestrio. As he speaks with the character,
Periplectomenus, he uses a significant amount of
alliteration in order to assert his cleverness and,
therefore, his authority. Plautus uses phrases such as
Òfalsiloquom, falsicum,falsiiuriumÓ
(MG l. 191). These
words express the deep and respectable knowledge that
Palaestriohas of the Latin language. Alliteration can also
happen at the endings of words as well. For example,
Palaestrio says, Ò linguam, perfidiam, malitiam atque
audaciam, confidentiam, confirmitatem, fraudulentiamÓ (MG ll. 188-9). Also
used, as seen above, is the technique of assonance, which is
the repetition of similar sounding syllables. Word play is
also a technique quite obvious in the plays of Plautus.
There are various manifestations of word play in Plautus,
but one instance in the Miles Gloriosus is
Sceledre, scelus.
This example is one of the punning of names in Plautus. Word
play figures as an important
technique in Plautus because it is fitting for certain
characters, especially the clever slave. These poetic
devices stand in the text in order to accentuate and
emphasize whatever is being said in the text, and it also
elevates the artistry of the language.
Meter
Further emphasizing and
elevating the artistry of the language of the plays of
Plautus is the use of meter, which simply put is the rhythm
of the play. There seems to be great debate over whether
Plautus found favor in strong word accent or verse ictus,
stress. Plautus did not follow the meter of the Greek
originals that he adapted for the Roman audience. Plautus
used a great number of meters, but most frequently he used
the trochaic septenarius. Iambic words, though common in
Latin, are difficult to fit in this meter, and naturally
occur at the end of verses. G.B. Conte has noted that
Plautus favors the use of cantica instead of
Greek meters. This vacillation between meter and word stress
highlights the fact that Latin literature was still in its
infancy, and that there was not yet a standard way to write
verse.
Language on Stage
Meter is not the only way in
which the poet expressed what he wanted to say. The poet
also gave each character a certain way to speak, or perhaps
society expected certain stock characters to voice their
opinions in certain ways. The servus callidus
functioned as the exposition in many of Plautus' plays.
According to C. Stace, "slaves in Plautus account for almost
twice as much monologue as any other character... [and] this is a significant statistic;
most of the monologues being, as they are, for purposes of
humor, moralizing, or exposition of some kind, we can now
begin to see the true nature of the slave's importance"[70].
Because humor, vulgarity, and "incongruity" are so much a
part of the Plautine comedies, the slave becomes the
essential tool to connect the audience to the joke through his
monologue and direct connection to the audience. He
is, then, not only a source for exposition and
understanding, but connection - specifically, connection to
the humor of the play, the playfulness of the play. The servus callidus is
a character that, as McCarthy says, "draws the complete
attention of the audience, and, according to C. Stace,
'despite his lies and abuse,
claims our complete sympathy'"[71]. He does this, according
to some scholarship, using monologue, the imperative mood
and alliteration - all of which are specific and effective
linguistic tools in both writing and speaking.
The specific type of
monologue (or soliloquy) in which a Plautine slave engages
is the prologue.
As opposed to simple exposition, according to N.W. Slater,
ÒtheseÉprologuesÉhave a far more important function than
merely to provide informationÓ[72]. Another way in which the
servus callidus
asserts his power over the play Ð specifically the other
characters in the play Ð is through his use of the
imperative mood. This is a mood in the Latin language that
includes direct statement. In English, sentences such as,
ÒGo!Ó or ÒStayÓ are in the imperative mood. This type of
language is used in order for, according to E. Segal, Òthe
forceful inversion, the reduction of the master to an abject
position of supplicationÉthe master-as-suppliant is thus an
extremely important feature of the Plautine comic
finaleÓ[73]. The language, the imperative mood is therefore
used in the complete role-reversal of the normal
relationship between slave and master and Òthose who enjoy
authority and respect in the ordinary Roman world are
unseated, ridiculed, while the lowliest members of society
mount to their pedestalsÉthe humble are in face
exaltedÓ[74]. This is not only an essential tool for the
stock character of the servus callidus but
also an essential tool for laughter.
Mscottknight 05:37, 5
December 2006 (UTC)
The Influence and Reception
of Plautus
Despite Plautus being long
dead, his influence lives on in such literary giants as
Moliere and Shakespeare. The critical reception of Plautus
has been much different than his influence on later
literature. On one hand, scholarly reception of Plautus has
come from viewing the Plautine corpus as crude to something
a bit warmer and more complex. On the other hand, PlautusÕ
influence on later literature is impressive since it has
been an influence on two literary giants, Shakespeare and
Moliere. When one puts scholarly approach and the literary
influence of Plautus together, you can still find
pretentiousness and snobbery thwarting contemporary success
of the playwright. The downright denigration of Plautus and
his influence on two literary giants seems not to fit
together. Plautus lived over 2,000 years ago and his memory
and imprint on society still lives on. Playwrights
throughout history have looked to Plautus for character,
plot, humor, and other elements of comedy. His influence
ranges from similarities in idea to full literal
translations woven into the play. PlautusÕ plays, though
farcical in nature, are incredibly penetrating in their
exploration of character, even if there are few obvious
changes between PlautusÕ stock characters from play to play.
The playwrightÕs apparent familiarity with the absurdity of
humanity and both the comedy and tragedy that stem from this
absurdity have inspired his succeeding fellow playwrights
centuries after his death. The most famous of these
successors is Shakespeare Ð on whom Plautus had a tremendous
amount of influence when it came to the BardÕs earlier
comedies.
Plautus and Shakespeare
Shakespeare does much the
same thing as Plautus. Shakespeare takes from Plautus like
Plautus took from his Greek models. He has taken someone
elseÕs plot for his own uses. C.L. Barber says that,
ÒShakespeare feeds Elizabethan life into the mill of Roman
farce, life realized with his distinctively generous
creativity, very different from PlautusÕ tough, narrow,
resinous geniusÓ[75]. So, there seems to have been a growing
inclination to use Plautus as time went on, but there has
always remained a resistance to him as a playwright. Perhaps
one of the most famous plays that Plautine comedy influenced
was William ShakespeareÕs Comedy of Errors. Some argue that
the Comedy of Errors was a failed attempt to imitate
PlautusÕ Menaechmi, but H.A. Watt argues otherwise. In his
article ÒPlautus and Shakespeare: Further Comments on Menaechmi and the
Comedy of Errors,Ó
Watt shows that while Comedy
of Errors was not ShakespeareÕs best work, its failure
was not due to his departure from the Menaechmi as some
have suggested, but due to insufficient skill in character
development as it was one of ShakespeareÕs earliest plays.
The Shakespearean comedy most
studied for itsÕ Plautine influence and parallels has been
The Comedy of Errors. The Plautus and Shakespeare plays that
most parallel each other, according to some modern
scholarship, are, respectively, The Menaechmi and The Comedy of Errors.
In fact, according to Marples, Shakespeare drew directly
from Plautus, Òparallels in plot, in incident, and in
characterÓ[76] and is undeniably influenced by the classical
playwrightÕs work. Marples even uses the word, ÒborrowerÓ in
reference to not only how Plautus borrowed plots and
characters from Menander, but how Shakespeare borrowed plots
and characters from Plautus Ð especially PlautusÕ Menaechmi.
However, Shakespeare didnÕt just Òborrow,Ó but he also
amplified some key aspects of PlautusÕ play in order to make
it more relevant for and more influential over his
contemporary audience.
In fact, before one explores
the connections between the two plays, H.A. Watt stresses
the importance of recognizing the fact that the Òtwo plays
were written under conditions entirely different and served
audience as remote as the polesÓ[77]. The worlds of Plautus
and Shakespeare were entirely different and it is important
to keep this in mind when comparing and contrasting their
work, but despite such different worlds, their work was
remarkably similar and equally relevant for their respective
audiences as some things are eternally funny, such as the
clever slave outwitting the boorish master.
The nature of the differences
between The Menaechmi
and The Comedy of
Errors is undeniable. In The Menaechmi, Plautus
uses only one set of twins Ð twin servants. Shakespeare, on
the other hand, uses two sets of twins, which, according to
William Connolly, Òdilutes the force of [ShakespeareÕs]
situationsÓ[78]. This speaks to the idea that Shakespeare
took his play Òto a new levelÓ in many different aspects.
The number of twins is the most prominent. As a result of
such modifications of Plautine comedy, Shakespeare succeeds
in creating a comedy that is not only Plautine but also
Shakespearean.
As a way to show that
Shakespeare has a comedic category of fusion between
Elizabethan and Plautine techniques, T.W. Baldwin writes,
ÒÉErrors does not have the miniature unity of Menaechmi,
which is characteristic of classic structure for
comedyÓ[79]. Baldwin discusses the importance in noting that
Shakespeare covers a much greater area in the structure of
the actual play than Plautus ever does. This is also a
result of ShakespeareÕs audience because he was writing for
an audience whose minds werenÕt necessarily focused on house
and home but also on the greater world around them and the
role that they might have played in that world. Another
characteristic of ShakespeareÕs audience that is certainly
different from the audience of Plautus is that ShakespeareÕs
audience was dominantly Christian. It was important for
Shakespeare to acknowledge this in his writing. So, at the
end of Errors, the world of the play is returned to normal
when a Christian abbess interferes with the feuding. Menaechmi, on the
other hand according to Niall Rudd, Òis almost completely
lacking in a supernatural dimensionÓ[80]. Rudd says that a
character in PlautusÕ play would never blame an inconvenient
situation on witchcraft Ð something that is quite common in
Shakespeare.
However, regardless of the
differences between the two plays, Shakespeare was clearly
influenced by PlautusÕ work. He used many of the same
elements. He used the same type of characters as well as the
ever important Plautine idea of
the slave versus his master. He used the same type of humor
(adjusted for the time) and pushed boundaries in the way
that Plautus did, an example of which being the clever slave
managing to undo all the chaos created by farcical plot
situations, most often a mistaken identity. It is, in the
end, an acknowledgement of the brilliance and timelessness
of PlautusÕ work. Shakespeare, although his play is
significantly different from PlautusÕ Menaechmi, is a
continuation of the playwrighting tradition in general. He
in no way tried discredit the work of Plautus, but simply
built on what had existed before him. Although he did rely
heavily on PlautusÕ work for his first comedy, Shakespeare
eventually departed from a form of translation to a
combination of Plautine devices and facets of Elizabethan
drama.
Watt argues that
ShakespeareÕs departure from the Menaechmi is
because Shakespeare takes his influence not only from
Plautus, but also from Elizabethan drama. The Menaechmi
already has one set of twins, and Shakespeare adds the
servant twins as well. One suggestion is that Shakespeare
got this idea from PlautusÕ Amphitruo, in which both twin
masters and twin slaves appear. Another is that the doubling
is just a stock situation of Elizabethan comedy (not just
Shakespeare). The relationship between a master and a clever
slave is also a common element in Elizabethan comedy. Again
looking to Elizabethan comedy, Shakespeare often includes
foils for his characters to have one set off the other.
Another Shakespearian theme stems from Elizabethan romantic
comedy. In this genre it is common for the plays to end with
many marriages and couplings of pairs. This is something
that is not seen in Plautine comedy. In the Comedy of Errors
Aegeon and Aemilia are separated, Antipholus and Luciana are
at outs, and Antipholus and Luciana have not yet met. At the
end of the day, all the couples are happily together. These
couplings are something that Plautus would not have dealt
with. By writing his comedies in a combination of
Elizabethan and Plautine styles, Shakespeare helps to create
his own brand of comedy, one that uses both styles. Watt
concludes that ShakespeareÕs Comedy of Errors is
not his best and this is due to lack of characterization.
Here Plautus succeeds, as he has much more characterization
in his comedy. The Comedy of Errors should not be looked at
as a failed copy of the Menaechmi, but as a Shakespearian
hybrid of Plautine and Elizabethan comedy[81].
Early Productions of Plautine
Comedies
Although a great influence on
Shakespeare, Plautine comedies were translated and performed
before ShakespeareÕs time. W.B. Sedgwick gives us a record,
as we know it, of the Amphitruo,
perhaps one of PlautusÕ most famous works throughout
history. It was the most popular Plautine play in the Middle
Ages, publicly performed at the Renaissance, and the first
Plautine play to be translated into English. As well as
having renaissance versions of PlautusÕ work, the
Elizabethans also knew of Plautus. There is evidence of
imitation in EdwardesÕ Damon and Pythias, ShakespeareÕs
Comedy of Errors, and HeywoodÕs Silver Age. Heywood
sometimes even translated whole passages of Plautus. By
being translated as well as imitated, Plautus is a major
influence on comedy of the Elizabethan era and the Middle
Ages, as can be seen in the Stonyhurst Pageants.
By looking to the Middle Ages
and the entertainment typical of its day, H.W. Cole
discusses the influence of Plautus and Terence on the
Stonyhurst Pageants. The Stonyhurst Pageants are manuscripts
of Old Testament plays that were probably composed after
1609 in Lancashire. Cole focuses on PlautusÕ influence on
the particular Pageant of Naaman. The playwright of this
pageant breaks away from the traditional style of religious
medieval drama and relies heavily on the works of Plautus.
Overall, the playwright cross-references eighteen of the
twenty surviving plays of Plautus and five of the six
Terence ones. It is clear that the author of the Stonyhurst
Pageant of Naaman had a great knowledge of Plautus and was
significantly influenced by this[82].
As well as being performed in the early 1600Õs, PlautusÕ
plays and their influence goes back to even the early
1500Õs.
Even though few records of
the plays of the 1500Õs exist, Bradner discusses the first
known university production of Plautus in England. Although
uncertain, through the limited records we can guess that
this first production was of Miles Gloriosus at
Oxford in 1522. The earliest recorded performance of a
Plautine play comes from the magnum jornale of
Queens College which contains a
reference to a comoedia Plauti in either 1522 or 1523. This
fits directly with comments made in the poems of Leland
about the date of the production. The next
production of Miles
Gloriosus that we know of from limited records, was
given by the Westminster School in 1564[83]. Other
records also tell us about performances of the Menaechmi. From
our knowledge, performances were given
in the house of Cardinal Wolsey by boys of St. PaulÕs
School as early as 1527[84]. From this we can
determine that Plautus had a lasting influence on comedy
throughout history. His influence ranges from little known
plays such as the Stonyhurst Pageants to greats such as
Shakespeare. By having such a wide range of influenced
writers, Plautus lives on in othersÕ works.
Echoes of Plautine Stock
Characters and Plot Devices
As well as passing on his
plots, Plautus passed on stock characters and plot devices.
Not that Plautus created the stock characters, such as the
clever slave and the parasite, not that he created the pun
or wordplays, but with the similar plots, it is easy to see
where later authors got their inspiration for plots and
stock characters and plot devices.
One of the most important
echoes of Plautus is the stock character of the parasite,
which appears in many of PlautusÕ plays and goes on to
achieve fame in the work of better known literary giants.
Certainly the best example of this is Falstaff, the portly
and cowardly knight who appears in three different
Shakespeare plays. As J.W. Draper notes, the gluttonous
Falstaff shares many characteristics with a parasite such as
Artotrogus from Miles
Gloriosus. Both characters seem fixated on food and
where their next meal is coming from Ð FalstaffÕs great
girth and his constant call for food, for instance, echo the
pleasure Artotrogus takes in a certain kind of olive spread.
But they also rely on flattery in order to gain these gifts,
and both characters are willing to bury their patrons in
empty praise[85]. Of course,
Draper notes that Falstaff is also something of a boastful
military man, but notes, ÒFalstaff is so complex a character
that he may well be, in effect, a combination of
interlocking typesÓ[86]. And while Shakespeare obviously had
a knowledge of Latin literature, the parasite was so common
in European drama at the time that he could have, in fact,
not have been influenced directly by Plautus but instead
received this stock character third-hand[87].
As well as appearing in
Shakespearean comedy, the Plautine parasite appears in one
of the first English comedies, Ralph Roister Doister. In Ralph Roister Doister,
the character of Matthew Merrygreeke follows in the
tradition of both Plautine Parasite and Plautine slave, as
he both searches and grovels for food and also attempts to
achieve his masterÕs desires[88].
Indeed, the play itself is often seen as borrowing heavily
from or even being based on the Plautine comedy Miles Gloriosus[89].
Plautus obviously became the same kind of representative of
earlier comedy that he himself found in Menander; as one of the most proficient
examples of an older style of comedy who became a kind of
gold mine for newer writers.
In terms of plot, or perhaps
more accurately plot device, the method of conveying his
plot, Plautus served as a source of inspiration and also
provided the possibility of adaptation for later
playwrights. The many deceits that Plautus layered his plays
with, giving the audience the feeling of a genre bordering
on farce, appear in much of the comedy written by
Shakespeare and Moliere. For instance, the clever slave,
which is also a Plautine stock character, has important
roles in both LÕAvare
and LÕEtoudri,
two plays by Moliere, and in both drives the plot and
creates the rouse just like Palaestrio in Miles Gloriosus[90].
These similar characters set up the same kind of deceptions
in which many of PlautusÕ plays find their driving force,
and it is not a simple coincidence.
Beyond this, Shakespeare has
many other Plautine elements appear in his work: he uses the
same kind of opening monologue so common in PlautusÕ plays
and includes many Greek names and places, to mention a few
of such Plautine elements. He even uses a ÒvillainÓ in The Comedy of Errors
of the same type as the one in Menaechmi,
switching the character from a doctor to a teacher but
keeping the character a shrewd, educated man[91]. While Watt also notes that
this is one of ShakespeareÕs least successful plays, it is
clear that some of these elements appear in many of his
works, such as Twelfth
Night or A
Midsummer NightÕs Dream, and had a deep impact on
ShakespeareÕs writing[92]. Even
though PlautusÕ influence did not make the first
Shakespearean comedy a success, Plautine stock characters do
make later Shakespearean comedies successful.
It is in many ways fitting
that Plautus became such a source for writers of any age to
look at for inspiration, considering his own reference to
the New Comedy works of Greece. Many of his tropes have
become so commonplace, or so frequently used, that most
people wouldnÕt even realize the true source of the
technique. His popularity in Elizabethan England clearly had
a hand in this, as one of the greatest writers of that or
any time, Shakespeare found it
fit to borrow from PlautusÕ writing for his own plays. Like
Plautus, he was able to take certain elements, work with
them, and create something very original and very fitting
for his own time. It is to PlautusÕ great credit that his
work has remained so influential and accessible in a future
that is so different from his own time. It is clear that
Plautus was a poet who had many direct influences, such as
the Greek author Menander and various other writers of New
Comedy. In fact many have written off Plautus as simply a
talented translator, but Plautus imbued his work with his
own original genius and he himself went on to influence
writers hundreds of years in the future. His use of stock
character, deceptions, and farce all trickled down from
playwright to playwright, appearing in the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and 17th Century France.
Footnotes and Works Cited can
be found on the internet at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautus#Footnotes
0201ScipioMovie.doc
A major subplot concerns the
vampish Carthaginian princess Sofonisba, whose marriage to
the King of Numidia has ensnared him in a ruinous anti-Roman
alliance. Hannibal, meanwhile, learning of Scipio's
gathering forces, is forced to depart Italy and bring his
armies back to defend Carthage. Finally, inevitably, Hannibal's and Scipio's forces meet
on the vast plains of Zama. The spectacular battle scenes
include an extraordinarily graphic sequence involving scores
of elephants *- Hannibal's most famous military innovation -
slaughtered as they charge wildly into Scipio's massed
infantry force. Large clashes of cavalry and infantry
follow. In the end, a Roman standard rises over the stilled
field, pronouncing Rome's great African victory. With the
return of peace - and a greatly expanded Roman imperium in
the Mediterranean - Scipio returns to his estate to plant
next year's wheat crop.
Italy, 1937, B&W, 85
minutes, dubbed in English, Digitally Restored. Not since Thomas
Edison electrocuted Topsy the elephant before the cameras in
1903 had the movies so enraged animal rights advocates. In
addition to its 32,848 human extras and 1,000 horses, the
making of Scipio Africanus required a cast of 50 elephants.
The butchering of many of these elephants -- one is speared
in the eye by Scipio himself -- was central to the film's
climactic battle scenes. Stampeding madly into crowds of
terrified extras, many elephants were hacked and gored to
death -- sacrificed in the interests of spectacle and
realism.
0202ScipioneLAfricano.doc
Scipione l'africano/Scipio
Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal (1937)
"Victory - Or DEATH!"
Designed to instill a
greater sense of nationalism among Italians close to the
outbreak of WWII, Scipio Africanus chronicles the pivotal
battle by the Roman military leader that quashed Hannibal and his
mighty band of warriors and pachyderms at the Battle of
Zama, in 202 B.C.
It's an obvious propaganda piece,
designed to instill patriotism near the end of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War by
Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, but
Scipio is less politically overt in spite of some heavy
borrowing from the work of Hitler's favourite director at
the time, Leni Riefenstahl.
Veteran director Carmine Gallone
- whether by his own decision or from the supervision of
Mussolini and his 21 year old son Vittorio - employs the
same-styled cutaways to waves of saluting, cheering masses,
and even mimics the declarations of loyalty by provincial
followers when Scipio calls out to fellow Romans for
support.
There's no doubt Riefenstahl's
brilliant use of montages and music were used to model
scenes of moving masses: early sequences are underscored
with the same over-abundant, Wagnerian-styled orchestral
fugues and chorus that dominate the opening celebrations in
Riefenstahl's Olympia: Part 1, but in Scipio, the
Riefenstahl riffs are jarring and disjointed, and the
decision to mimic a Germanic musical style is a glaring
cultural interpolation.
The only sequence where Gallone's
nod actually works is at the very end, when a full scale
Roman forum is gradually filled with victorious citizens,
bearing flaming torches. The dark sky and backlit edifices
parallel the sweeping crowds of flame-bearing soldiers in
Triumph of the Will, as they assembled for a massive book
burning ceremony; or the famous sequence of marching
soldiers surrounded by columns of light in the Nuremberg
stadium.
(A rare moment of humour, and one
evocative of more familiar American WWII action/war genre,
has an older Roman gob boarding a military ship for
Carthage. Lamenting a lack of action back in Rome, he says
he's back to get the job done. From an American angle, it's
the familiar pro-active Average Joe who's willing to
sacrifice his life for the nation; in Scipio, his stance is
a bit more critical, inferring Rome 's power has been
completely emasculated by Hannibal and his barbarians, and
the only route to victory lies in kicking some Carthaginian
butt.)
One key problem with Scipio is
Gallone's amazing dull direction, which relies far too much
on static shots bearing bland compositions. Whereas an
eccentric like Joseph Von Sternberg would've exploited the
Roman setting with more expressive set designs, Gallone goes
for workmanlike setups covering fairly theatrical sets.
Worse are clumsy edits that make one ponder whether it was
more stilted dialogue from the reportedly longer Italian 117
min. version that was trimmed to create the shorter English
edit (retitled Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal)
used for this DVD.
The Scipio script is just plain
banal, and the English dub track - feeling more like a
sixties effort, with some occasional streetwise American
tonalities - tries to distill the basic relationships and
plot to even more simplistic conflicts; throw in a captured
wife (Isa Miranda), and you've got a character marker for
the audience to follow the cross-cut narratives, before the
warring sides finally meet on the battlefield.
Gallone does effectively uses
cross-cutting as the Roman and Carthaginian armies anxiously
await the first aggressive step that will kick-start the
battle. This stylistic ploy may also have been used in
earlier scenes, as characters like the separated Roman
couple - the hubbie in Scipio's infantry, the wife now
Hannibal's concubine - disappear for a long chunk until the
grand finale.
Allegedly patterned after Benito
Mussolini, Annibale Ninchi's performance is much more
reserved than expected, and the military hero is relegated
to a posing icon, mostly administering the nitty gritty
battle tactics after throwing the pivotal lance that incites
Hannibal 's pachyderm division. As with many good villains,
the only figure of genuine interest is Hannibal.
Camillo Pilotto as the cruel
invader has some strong scenes, including a few brief
moments as he hashes out some theoretical strategies with
soldiers in his tent; and, most oddly, when he meets the
captured upper-class wife of a Roman soldier (Miranda),
whose home was trashed by brown-painted soldiers, and who
clearly gets raped off-screen by the self-serving ruler.
Revenge is a main theme in
Scipio, and the film opens with a sea of bodies, and a lone
Roman staff that beckons justice; reclaimed and elevated to
a symbolic relic, the staff manages to survive the bloody
Battle of Zama in a severely hacked up form, and bookends
Scipio as a sign of sweet revenge.
The action finale is a real mixed
bag, largely because the production used real elephants in
the combat scenes, and some were clearly maimed and killed
for 'authenticity.' Scipio marshals his wary soldiers into
battle by grabbing a lance at throwing it right into the eye
of a mounted elephant; later scenes show the poor creatures
getting lanced in the legs, and a mother dying on her side,
while the baby - 'humanely' spared by a smiling Roman -
hovers close by.
The rest of the battle is fairly
standard, as Gallone never manages to impress the immensity
and scope of the battlefield in spite of actually having
fields full of infantry and cavalry to play with. The
hand-to-hand combat scenes are decent, and unusually gory
for the era. (Hollywood 's Production Code mandated sadistic
stabs be generally reduced to clean and fatal pokes in the
tummy or back.)
In their witty, satirical, and
informative 1984 book, The Hollywood Hall of Shame, writers
Harry and Michael Medved chronicled Scipio in their 'Fascist
Follies' wing, and describe the film as the epic that would
restore Italy's stature in the filmmaking world. The film
did win a prize - the Mussolini Cup at the 1937 Venice Film
Festival - but according to the Medveds' research, the $2
million spectacular lasted a week in Italian cinemas before
it was reduced to free screenings at diverse public events,
and yearly grade school assemblies in Italy. A New York City
premiere failed to ignite the interest of critics and
cinemagoers, and the film ultimately disappeared in the art
house circuits.
Alongside Stalin's The Fall of Berlin and
Goebbels' Kolberg, Scipio
Africanus is one of three legendary propaganda epics
released by IHF on DVD. The source print for this disc is
the shorter American release version, and while in decent
shape, the print has some harsh contrasts that detract from
scenes that one must assume were shot with greater care for
richer shades of gray. The mono mix is standard, and the DVD
comes with a brief text essay that provides a good intro,
and warns viewers about the animal cruelties.
Director Carmine Gallone explored
an interesting mix of genres throughout his long career,
notably (or infamously, depending upon one's blick) the silent
mega-production, The Last Days of Pompeii / Ultimi giorni di
Pompeii, Gli (1927), shot on location among the ruins, and
costing seven million Lire. After Scipio, Gallone chose to
focus on several biopics and filmed operas (including Madame
Butterfly, with Asian actors in a unique Italian-Japanese
co-production), and returned to the historical epic in 1960
with Carthages in Flames / Cartagine in fiamme, which
featured Camillo Pilotto among the cast.
Film editor Oswald Hafenrichter
later edited Carol Reed's Fallen Idol and The Third Man, and
an eclectic mix of projects, including the Peter Sellers
comedy, Smallest Show on Earth,
and several British horror and sci-fic films during the
1960s.
Annibale Ninchi later appeared in
Frederico Fellini's La Dolce vita and 8 1/2, and Isa Miranda
maintained a lengthy career, popping up in a trio of cult
films: Dorian Gray (1970), and Mario Bava's Roy Colt and
Winchester Jack / Roy Colt e Winchester Jack (1970) and
Twitch of the Death Nerve / Bay of Blood/Reazione a catena
(1971).
© 2006 Mark R. Hasan
0203The war moves to Africa.doc
The war moves to
Africa
After his victories in
Hispania, Scipio returned to Rome a great hero, and,
although he was technically ineligible, was elected consul
in 205 BC. He resolved to end the war by attacking Carthage
itself, and appealed directly to the Centuriate Assembly
when he found the Senate opposed this. Thus he was given
command of the two legions in Sicily, plus 7,000 volunteers
he had recruited, and the next year brought the war to North
Africa when he landed at Utica, about twenty miles away from
Carthage. Here he was counting on support from some
Numidians, who resented Carthaginian control and so agreed
to provide him with cavalry.
In 203 BC, when Scipio was
carrying all before him in Africa and the Carthaginian peace
party were arranging an
armistice, Hannibal was recalled from Italy by the war party
at Carthage. After leaving a record of his expedition
engraved in Punic and Greek upon brazen tablets in the
temple of Juno at Crotona, he sailed back to Africa. These records have been quoted by Polybius.
His arrival immediately restored the predominance of the war
party, who placed him in command
of a combined force of African levies and his mercenaries
from Italy. Hannibal opposed this and tried to convince them
not to send these troops into battle. In 202 BC, Hannibal
met Scipio in a peace conference, but political
circumstances forced him to take battle. Despite mutual
admiration, negotiations floundered due to Roman allegations
of "Punic Faith," referring to the breach of protocols which ended the First Punic
War by the Carthaginian attack on Saguntum, as well as
perceived breach in the idealised Roman military etiquette
(Hannibal's numerous ambuscades). Thus being a very biased
view of the Roman wartime and postwartime propaganda.
The Battle of Zama
Painting of the Battle of Zama by Cornelis Cort, 1567 --
Art Institute, Chicago
This decisive battle soon
followed. Unlike most battles of the Second Punic War, the
Romans had superiority in cavalry and the Carthaginians had
superiority in infantry. The Roman army was generally better
armed and a head taller than the Carthaginian. Hannibal had
refused to lead this army into battle because he expected
them not to stand their ground. There have been very hard
arguments between him and the oligarchy. His co-general
Hasdrubal Gisco was forced to suicide by a violent mob after
he spoke in support of Hannibal not to lead these troops
into battle. Before the battle Hannibal held no speech to
his new troops, only to his veterans. The new troops proved
as cowardly and inexperienced as he had expected.
The Roman cavalry won an
early victory, and Scipio had devised tactics for defeating
Carthaginian war elephants. However, the battle remained
closely fought, and at one point it seemed that Hannibal was
on the verge of victory. However, Scipio was able to rally
his men, and his cavalry attacked Hannibal's rear. This
two-pronged attack caused the Carthaginian formation to
disintegrate and collapse. After their defeat, Hannibal
convinced the Carthaginians to accept peace. Notably, he
broke the rules of the assembly by forcibly removing a
speaker who supported continued resistance. Afterwards he
was sued to apologize for his lack of behaviour.
Results
Hispania was lost to Carthage
forever, and was reduced to a client state. A war indemnity
of 10,000 talents was imposed, her navy was limited to 10
ships to ward off pirates, and she was forbidden from
raising an army without Rome's permission. Numidia took the
opportunity to capture and plunder Carthaginian territory.
Half a century later, when Carthage raised an army to defend
itself from these incursions, it was destroyed by Rome in
the Third Punic War. Rome on the other hand, by her victory,
had taken a key step towards domination of West Eurasia.
The end of the war was not
universally welcomed in Rome, for reasons of both politics
and morale. When the Senate decreed upon a peace treaty with
Carthage, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, a former consul, said
he did not look upon the termination of the war as a
blessing to Rome, since he feared that the Roman people
would now sink back again into its former slumbers, from
which it had been roused by the presence of Hannibal. (Valerius Maximus vii. 2. ¤3.).
Others, most notably Cato the Elder, feared that if Carthage
was not completely destroyed it would soon reacquire its
power and pose new threats to Rome, and pressed for harsh
peace conditions. Archeology found out that the famous
military harbor, the Coton, was built after this war. It
could house and quickly deploy 200 triremes, while Carthage
was allowed to have 10 triremes and it was a protected
against viewing inside.
Hannibal survived the battle
of Zama and continued to enjoy a leadership role in Carthage
even after the end of the war. However, Carthaginian
nobility was upset by his democratisation and battle against
corruption. They convinced the Romans to force him into
exile, where he met them and their allies on the
battlefield. He eventually committed suicide to avoid
capture.
0204ZamaBattle.doc
Battle of Zama
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
The Battle of Zama, generally
accepted to have been fought on
or around October 19 of 202 BC, was the final and decisive
battle of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Scipio
Africanus defeated a Carthaginian force led by Hannibal
Barca. Soon after this defeat on their home ground, the
Carthaginian senate sued for peace, ending the 17-year war.
Prelude
Despite nearly two decades of
constant victories, much of it on Italian soil, the
Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca was still in Italia
although confined to the south of the peninsula. A decisive
victory by Gaius Claudius Nero in the brief Metaurus
campaign killed Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal Barca and
permanently severed Hannibal from all hope of
reinforcements. Hannibal was now stranded, and forced to
sustain a scorched earth policy throughout Southern Italy.
Hannibal had entered Italy as a victorious conqueror. He
humiliated the Romans at Ticinus, Trebia, Lake Trasimeno,
and finally Cannae where the cream of the Roman army was
slaughtered. Hannibal had anticipated using these victories
to convince the Italian city-states to mutiny. Instead, they
only produced a growing resolve in the Italian states to
rally to Roman leadership.
After destroying the
Carthaginian presence in Spain, Scipio Africanus proposed
ending the war by invading Carthage's home territories, an
area now roughly comprising modern-day Tunisia. Despite the
cautious Senate's opposition to this plan, the Roman people
gave Scipio the requisite authority to attempt the invasion.
At first Scipio operated cautiously, acting mostly to
reinforce his army with local defectors. After Massinissa
replaced the pro-Carthage Syphax as chieftain of the
Numidians, Scipio felt able to risk a decisive battle and
began menacing the city of Carthage itself. The Carthaginian
senate recalled Hannibal from Italy and he met Scipio on the
plains of Zama leading a ragtag army composed of local
citizens and veterans from his Italian campaigns.
The two men are said to have
met face-to-face before the battle. Hannibal reminded Scipio
of fate's role in the war, and how lenient Hannibal was to
Rome when it was on the brink of destruction. Scipio replied
that chance played a role in every decision every day, and
would not give peace without battle.
Battle
Zama marked a reversal from
typical battles of the Second Punic War in that the Romans
had less infantry, while the Carthaginians Ñ by the
defection of the Numidians Ñ were outnumbered 6,000 to 3,000
in cavalry. Hannibal amassed some 50,000 infantry and 4,000
cavalry, while Scipio had a total of 34,000 infantry and
8,700 cavalry at his disposal. Placing his inexperienced
cavalry on the flanks, Hannibal aligned his troops in three
phalangial lines behind eighty war elephants. The first line
consisted of mixed infantry of Gauls, Ligurians, and
Balerians. In his second line he placed the Carthaginian and
Libyan levies while his veterans from Italy were placed in
the third line. Hannibal intentionally held back his third
infantry line, in order to thwart Scipio's tendency to pin
the Carthaginian center and envelop his opponent's lines, as
he had previously done at the Battle of Ilipa.
Scipio Africanus
Hannibal hoped that the
combination of the war elephants and the depth of the first
two lines would weaken and disorganize the Roman advance,
whereupon he would complete a victory with his reserves in
the third line and overlap Scipio's lines. Though this
formation was indeed well-conceived,
it failed to produce a victory for the aging Hannibal, who
was, by some claims, suffering from mental exhaustion after
his campaigns in Italy.
At the outset of the battle,
the superior Roman cavalry swept aside their Carthaginian
counterparts and pursued them off the fieldÑ depriving
Hannibal of his entire body of cavalry (though it is
believed that Hannibal had intended his cavalry to lure
their opponents away from the battlefield, in effect
eliminating the advantage the Romans enjoyed in this arm).
Likewise, HannibalÕs first two lines, unable to cope against
the well-trained and confident Roman soldiers, were disposed
of soon thereafter. For years, Hannibal had won victories
with his experienced army, but now he faced the best of the
Roman army, while he commanded a makeshift army, who fared
poorly against the Romans. As Livy states Ò...the Romans
immediately drove back the line[s] of their opponents; then
pushing their elbows and the bosses of their shields, and
pressing forward into the places which they had pushed them,
they advanced at a considerable pace, as if there had been
no one there to resist them...Ó [10].
Moreover, Scipio came up with
an inventive method of neutralizing Hannibal's elephants.
Hannibal lost all of his original elephant troops (who
crossed the Alps with him) by the battle of Cannae, but they
were replenished in Africa. First of all, Scipio knew that
elephants could be ordered to charge forward, but they could
only continue their charge in a straight line. So rather
than lining his Roman forces in the traditional manipular
lines, which put the velites, principes, and triarii in
succeeding lines of 500 men groups, Scipio instead put the
maniples in a checker pattern, with his elite heavy infantry
in diagonals. Scipio realized that intentionally opening
gaps in his troops meant that the elephants would continue
between them, without harming a soul. He did this, and after
the elephants passed through his troops harmlessly and were picked off on the other side
(many of them were so distraught, in fact, they charged back
into their own Carthaginian lines). Scipio's troops then
fell back into formation and continued marching.
Plan of the battle
Despite these setbacks, the
battle remained a closely contested engagement. When the
Roman infantry confronted the Carthaginian third line, the
resulting clash was fierce and bloody, with neither side
achieving local superiority. In fact, at one point during
the battle, it seemed that Hannibal was on the verge of
victory. However, Scipio was able to rally his men, and his
cavalry, after pursuing the Carthaginian cavalry, returned
in time to deliver a devastating blow in Hannibal's rear.
This two-pronged attack caused the Carthaginian formation to
disintegrate and collapse. Unable to cope against the
well-trained and confident Roman soldiers with his own
indifferent troops after losing his notorious advantage,
Hannibal experienced a crushing defeat that put an end to
all resistance on the part of Carthage. In
total, as many as 31,000 men of HannibalÕs army were
mercilessly killed at Zama, while 15,000 were taken as
prisoners. The Romans on the other hand, lost as
few as 1,500 dead and 4,000 wounded.
Aftermath
Soon after Scipio's victory
at Zama, the war ended with the Carthaginian senate suing
for peace. Unlike the treaty that ended the First Punic War,
and which amounted merely to an extended armistice, the
terms Carthage acceded to were
so punishing that it was never able to challenge Rome for
supremacy of the Mediterranean again. When Rome waged a
third war on Carthage 50 years later, the Carthaginians were
far from having the power to invade Italy, because the
Romans had tricked them into completely disarming
beforehand. Unarmed, they could only organize a defense of
their home city, which, after an extended siege, was
captured and utterly destroyed.
References
*
Hans DelbrŸck; Warfare
in Antiquity; 1920; ISBN 0-8032-9199-X
*
Robert F. Pennel; Ancient Rome from the
earliest times down to 476 A.D; 1890
*
Theodore Ayrault Dodge; Hannibal: A History of
the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans down to
the Battle of Pydna, 168 B.C., with a Detailed Account of
the Second Punic War; 1891; ISBN 0-306-81362-9
*
In fiction, Dante's Divine Comedy, poem, Inferno
XXXI.97-132, 115-124
Retrieved from
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama"
0301Spartacus.doc
The development of Spartacus was
partly instigated by Kirk Douglas's failure to win the title
role in William Wyler's
Ben-Hur.
Douglas had worked with Wyler before on Detective Story,
and was disappointed when Wyler chose Charlton
Heston instead. Not wanting to appear beaten,
he decided to upstage Wyler, and create his own epic, Spartacus, with
himself in the title role.
Screenplay development
Originally, Howard Fast
was hired to adapt his own novel as a screenplay,
but he experienced difficulty working in the screenplay
format and was replaced by the blacklisted
Dalton Trumbo,
who worked under the pseudonym
"Sam Jackson". Some people feel the Spartacus in Trumbo's
adaptation is depicted as a form of early communist
who fights against the wealthy Roman establishment by
liberating the slaves. The filming was plagued by the
conflicting visions of Kubrick and Trumbo: Kubrick, a young
director at the time, did not have the degree of control he
would later have over his films, and the final product is
more a result of Trumbo's optimistic screenplay than it is
of Stanley Kubrick's trademark cynicism.
In post-production, Douglas was
made aware that Kubrick intended to take writing credit for
the film instead of Trumbo. The powerful Douglas publicly
resisted Trumbo's exclusion, and when Trumbo's name appeared
in the credits, the Hollywood blacklist was effectively
broken.
Filming
Spartacus was originally to be directed by
Anthony Mann.
However, two weeks into shooting, Mann
was fired by the studio because of his lack of leadership
and Stanley
Kubrick was hired to take over. At this point
in his career, Kubrick had already directed four feature
films, two of which were major Hollywood productions. Even
so, Spartacus was
Kubrick's biggest project so far, with a budget of $12
million and a cast of 10,500, an impressive achievement for
such a young director (although his contract did not give
him complete control over the filming).
Spartacus was filmed using 70 mm
Super Technirama cameras, which was a change
for Kubrick, who preferred using square-format ratios.
Kubrick found working outdoors or in real locations to be
distracting and thus preferred to film in the studio. He
believed the actors would benefit more from working on a
sound stage, where they could fully concentrate. To create
the illusion of the large crowds that play such an essential
role in the film, Kubrick's crew used three-channel sound
equipment to record 76,000 spectators at a Michigan
State Ð Notre
Dame college
football game shouting "Hail, Crassus!" and
"I'm Spartacus!"
The intimate scenes were filmed
in Hollywood, but Kubrick insisted that all battle scenes be
filmed on a vast plain outside Madrid.
Eight thousand trained soldiers from the Spanish infantry
were used to double as the Roman army. Kubrick directed the
armies from the top of specially constructed towers.
However, he eventually had to cut all but one of the gory
battle scenes, due to negative audience reactions at preview
screenings.
| |
SPARTACUS: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND |
Violence Enters Politics:
133 BCE: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a
noble plebeian, was elected tribune. He proposed essential
land and economic reforms which
threatened the wealthy senatorial classes, so he passed
these through the Assembly of Tribes. Gracchus was very
popular with the masses, so he ran for a second consecutive
term as tribune (though this was unconstitutional). A group
of senators led an armed band against him in the Assembly
and killed him and 300 of his followers.
123-21 BCE: Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (the
younger brother of Tiberius) was elected tribune for two
successive years; through the Assembly, he increased the
power of the equestrian class at the expense of the
senators. He also attempted sweeping economic reforms.
Opposition between his followers and the Senate broke into
riots and bloodshed, and he died in the violence.
The reform efforts of the Gracchi
and the opposition these generated in the Senate constituted
the foundation of the two political factions, the populares
and the optimates.
Rise of the Generals:
107 BCE: Gaius Marius, a plebeian of the
equestrian class and a novus homo, was elected consul and was
designated by the Assembly of Tribes as general in the
African war against the wishes of the Senate. He reorganized
the army and successfully concluded several wars. Marius was
elected to five consecutive consulships (though this was
unconstitutional) and then to a sixth consulship in 100. He
became leader of the populares. During this time there was
considerable unrest and rioting in Rome.
88 BCE: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a
patrician leader of the optimates, was elected consul and
designated by the Senate as general in the war in Asia Minor
although the Assembly had given this command to Marius.
Sulla marched his legions into Rome itself to enforce his
appointment and to stop the reform legislation of the populares; this was the first time in
history that a Roman army marched upon Rome. Sulla outlawed
Marius and took up his command in Asia Minor.
86 BCE: Marius returned to Rome and
outlawed Sulla; he was elected to his seventh consulship and
led a five-day bloodbath against the optimates. Marius, however, died within
the year.
82-79 BCE: Sulla returned to Italy with
his army and had himself proclaimed dictator. He conducted
first Òproscriptions,Ó in which he posted lists of those condemned to be executed (the Senate
had asked him to publish these names with the
following plea: ÒWe do not ask you to pardon those whom you
have destined for destruction; we only want you to relieve
the anxiety of those whom you have decided to spareÓ). A
large number of Roman aristocrats associated with the populares (520, according to Sorbonne
professor Francois Hinard) were proscribed and their
property confiscated. Sulla strengthened the power of the
Senate, weakened the power of the tribunes, and stopped the
grain dole. He passed a law that no army was to be stationed
in or near RomeÑin effect, he banned standing armies in
ItalyÑand no general was to lead his army out of the
provinces without permission of the Senate. Sulla retired
and died in 79.
77-72 BCE: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey
the Great, who had been a general under Sulla and celebrated
a triumph at the exceptionally young age of 24, took command
of the Roman legions in Spain and put down a revolt led by
the followers of Marius.
Revolt of Spartacus:
The real Spartacus was a freeborn
provincial from Thrace, who may have served as an auxiliary
in the Roman army in Macedonia. He deserted the army, was
outlawed, captured, sold into slavery, and trained at the
gladiatorial school of Batiatus in Capua.
73 BCE: Spartacus escaped with 70-80
gladiators, seizing the knives in the cook's shop and a
wagon full of weapons. They camped on Vesuvius and were
joined by other rural slaves, overrunning the region with
much plunder and pillage, although Spartacus apparently
tried to restrain them. His chief aides were gladiators from
Gaul, named Crixus and Oenomaus.
The Senate sent a praetor,
Claudius Glaber (his nomen may have been Clodius; his praenomen is unknown), against the rebel
slaves with about 3000 raw recruits hastily drafted from the
region. They thought they had trapped the rebels on
Vesuvius, but Spartacus led his men down the other side of
the mountain using vines, fell on the rear of the soldiers,
and routed them.
Spartacus subsequently defeated
two forces of legionary cohorts; he wanted to lead his men
across the Alps to escape from Italy, but the Gauls and
Germans, led by Crixus, wanted to stay and plunder. They
separated from Spartacus, who passed the winter near Thurii
in southern Italy.
72 BCE: Spartacus had raised about 70,000
slaves, mostly from rural areas. The Senate, alarmed,
finally sent the two consuls (L. Gellius Publicola and Cn.
Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus), each with two legions,
against the rebels. The Gauls and
Germans, separated from Spartacus, were defeated by
Publicola, and Crixus was killed. Spartacus
defeated Lentulus, and then Publicola; to avenge Crixus,
Spartacus had 300 prisoners from these battles fight in
pairs to the death. (map)
At Picenum in central Italy
Spartacus defeated the consular armies, then pushed north
and defeated the proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul at Mutina. The
Alps were now open to the rebels, but again the Gauls and
Germans refused to go, so Spartacus returned to southern
Italy, perhaps intending to ship to Sicily.
In the autumn, when the revolt
was at its height and Spartacus had about 120,000 followers,
the Senate voted to pass over the consuls and grant imperium to Marcus Licinius Crassus,
who had been a praetor in 73 B.C. but currently held no
office. Crassus was the wealthiest man in Rome, a noble from
an old plebeian family; since he had received very little
support from the conservative nobles who dominated the Senate, he had allied himself with
the faction of the populares.
Crassus was given six new legions
plus the four consular legions. When one of Crassus' legates
attacked Spartacus with two legions, against orders,
Spartacus roundly defeated them. Crassus decimated the most
cowardly cohort, then used his
combined forces to defeat Spartacus, who retreated to
Rhegium, in the toe of Italy. Spartacus tried to cross the
straits into Sicily, but the Cilician pirates betrayed him.
Meanwhile, the Senate recalled
Pompey and his legions from Spain, and they began the
journey overland; Marcus Licinius Lucullus landed in
Brundisium in the heel of Italy with his legions from
Macedonia. When Spartacus finally fought his way out of the
toe of Italy, he could not march to Brundisium and take ship
to the east because of the presence of Lucullus. (map)
71 BCE: Spartacus started north; some of
the Gauls and Germans separated from him and were nearly
defeated by Crassus before Spartacus rescued them. The
slaves gained one more minor victory against part of
Crassus' forces, but they were finally wiped out by Crassus'
legions in a major battle in southern Italy, near the
headwaters of the Siler river.
It is believed that Spartacus died in this battle; there
were so many corpses that his body was never found. The
historian Appian reports that 6000 slaves were taken
prisoner by Crassus and crucified along the Appian Way from
Capua to Rome.
As many as 5000 slaves escaped
and fled northward, but they were captured by Pompey's army
north of Rome as he was marching back from Spain; Pompey
subsequently tried to claim the glory of victory from
Crassus, although he had not actually participated in any of
the battles. The Senate voted Pompey a triumph because of
his victory in Spain, but they decreed an ovation (a far
less splendid and prestigious parade) for Crassus because
his victory had been merely over slaves. There were no
political purges or proscriptions after the rebellion was
crushed.
70 BCE: Pompey and Crassus were elected
consuls, although Pompey was six years too young for the
office and had never held any of the lower magistracies. As
consuls, they repealed some of the unpopular laws of Sulla
and restored the power of the tribunes.
Significance of Spartacus: quotation from Erich Gruen, The Last Generation of the
Roman Republic (University of California
Press, 1974) 20-21:
It was not the governing class
alone that would react in horror to the prospect of a slave
insurrection. Whatever the grievances of men disenfranchised
and dispossessed by Sulla, they would have found unthinkable
any common enterprise with Thracian or Gallic slaves. It
causes no surprise that Marxist historians and writers have
idealized Spartacus as a champion of the masses and leader
of the one genuine social revolution in Roman history. That,
however, is excessive. Spartacus and his companions sought
to break the bonds of their own grievous oppression. There
is no sign that they were motivated by ideological
considerations to overturn the social structure. The sources
make clear that Spartacus endeavored to bring his forces out
of Italy toward freedom rather than to reform or reverse
Roman society. The achievements of Spartacus are no less
formidable for that. The courage, tenacity, and ability of
the Thracian gladiator who held Roman forces at bay for some
two years and built a handful of followers into an
assemblage of over 120,000 men can only inspire admiration.
The Roman reaction was tardy and
ineffective. . . . Error of
judgment induced the Senate to treat the uprising too
lightly at the outset. By the time Rome took firm steps,
Spartacus' ranks had considerably swelled and the state's
finest soldiers were serving abroad. But Crassus' efforts
obtained full support, and the revolt was wiped out in 71.
Characters in Film with a
Recorded Historical Existence:
Marcus Licinius Crassus (Lawrence
Olivier)
Marcus Publius Glabrus [real name
was Claudius Glaber] (John Dall)
Gaius Julius Caesar (John Gavin)
Lentulus Batiatus (Peter
UstinovÑwon Academy Award for best supporting actor)
Spartacus (Kirk Douglas)
Crixus (John Ireland)
Cilician pirates
Characters in Film with No
Historical Record of Existence:
Antoninus (Tony Curtis)
Gracchus (Charles Laughton)
Helena (Nina Foch) and Claudia
(Joanna Barnes)
Varinia (Jean Simmons)Ñonly
Plutarch says Spartacus had a wife, a Thracian who was
enslaved with him
Marcellus (Charles McGraw)
Draba (Woody Strode)
Tigranes Levantes (Herbert
Lom)Ñthough there was a King of Armenia named Tigranes
Source
Barbara F. McManus, The
College of New Rochelle
bmcmanus@cnr.edu
revised June, 1999
Third Servile War
The Third
Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and The War of
Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated
and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic,
known collectively as the Servile Wars. The Third Servile War
was the only one to directly threaten the Roman heartland of
Italia and was doubly alarming to the Roman people due to the
repeated successes of the rapidly growing band of rebel slaves
against the Roman army between 73 and 71 BC. The rebellion was
finally crushed in 71 BC through the concentrated military
effort of a single commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus,
although the rebellion continued to have indirect effects on
Roman politics for years to come.
Between 73 and 71 BC, a band of escaped
slaves Ñ originally a small cadre of about 70 escaped
gladiators which grew into a band of over 120,000 men, women
and children Ñ wandered throughout and raided the Roman
province of Italia with relative impunity under the guidance
of several leaders, including the famous gladiator-general
Spartacus. The able-bodied adults of this band were a
surprisingly effective armed force that repeatedly showed they
could withstand the Roman military, from the local Campanian
patrols, to the Roman militia, and to trained Roman legions
under consular command. Plutarch described the actions of the
slaves as an attempt by Roman slaves to escape their masters
and flee through Cisalpine Gaul, while Appian and Florus
depicted the revolt as a civil war in which the slaves waged a
campaign to capture the city of Rome itself.
The Roman Senate's growing
alarm about the continued military successes of this band,
and about their depredations against Roman towns and the
countryside, eventually led to Rome's fielding of an army of
eight legions under the harsh but effective leadership of
Marcus Licinius Crassus. The war ended in 71 BC when, after
a long and bitter fighting retreat before the legions of
Crassus, and the realization that the legions of Gnaeus
Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus were
moving in to entrap them, the armies of Spartacus launched
their full strength against Crassus' legions and were
utterly destroyed.
While Spartacus' war is
noteworthy in its own right, the Third Servile War was
significant to the broader history of ancient Rome mostly in
its effect on the careers of Pompey and Crassus. The two
generals used their success in putting down the rebellion to
further their political careers, using their public acclaim
and the implied threat of their legions to sway the consular
elections of 70 BC in their favor. Their actions as Consuls
greatly furthered the subversion of Roman political
institutions and contributed to the eventual transition of
the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
Slavery in the Roman
republic:
Through varying degrees
throughout Roman history, the existence of a pool of
inexpensive labor in the form of slaves was an important
factor in the economy. Slaves were acquired for the Roman
workforce through a variety of means, including purchase
from foreign merchants and the enslavement of foreign
populations through military conquest.[1]
With Rome's heavy involvement in wars of conquest in the
first and second centuries BC, tens if not hundreds of
thousands of slaves at a time were imported into the Roman
economy.[2] While there was limited use for slaves as
servants, craftsmen, and personal attendants, vast numbers
of slaves worked in mines and on the agricultural lands of
Sicily and southern Italia.[3]
For the most part, slaves
were treated harshly and oppressively during the Roman
republican period. Under Republican law, a slave was not
considered a person, but property. Owners could abuse,
injure or even kill their own slaves without legal
consequence. While there were many grades and types of
slaves, the lowest Ñ and most numerous Ñ grades who worked
in the fields and mines were subject to a life of hard
physical labor.[4]
This high concentration and
oppressive treatment of the slave population led to
rebellions. In 135 BC and 104 BC, the First and Second
Servile Wars, respectively, erupted in Sicily, where small
bands of rebels found tens of thousands of willing followers
wishing to escape the oppressive life of a Roman slave.
While these were considered serious
civil disturbances by the Roman Senate, taking years and
direct military intervention to quell, they were
never considered a serious threat to the Republic. The Roman
heartland of Italia had never seen a slave uprising, nor had
slaves ever been seen as a potential threat to the city of
Rome. This would all change with the Third Servile War.
The rebellion begins (73 BC)
Ð The Capuan revolt:
In the Roman Republic of the
first century BC, gladiatorial games were one of the more
popular forms of entertainment. In order to supply
gladiators for the contests, several training schools, or
ludi, were established throughout Italia.[5]
In these schools, prisoners of war and condemned criminals Ñ
who were considered slaves Ñ were taught the skills required
to fight to the death in gladiatorial games.[6] In 73 BC, a
group of some 200 gladiators in the Capuan school owned by
Lentulus Batiatus plotted an escape. When their plot was
betrayed, a force of about 70 men seized implements from the
kitchen ("choppers and spits"), fought their way free from
the school, and seized several wagons of gladiatorial
weapons and armor.[7]
Once free, the escaped
gladiators chose leaders from their number, selecting two
Gallic slaves Ñ Crixus and Oenomaus Ñ and Spartacus, who was
said either to be a Thracian auxiliary from the Roman
legions later condemned to slavery, or a captive taken by
the legions.[8] There is some
question as to Spartacus's nationality, however, as
"Thraces" were a type of gladiator in Rome.[9]
These escaped slaves were
able to defeat a small force of troops sent after them from
Capua, and equip themselves with captured military equipment
as well as their gladiatorial weapons.[10]
Sources are somewhat contradictory on the order of events
immediately following the escape, but they generally agree
that this band of escaped gladiators plundered the region
surrounding Capua, recruited many other slaves into their
ranks, and eventually retired to a more defensible position
on Mount Vesuvius.[11]
Defeat of the praetorian
armies:
As the revolt and raids were
occurring in Campania Ñ which was a vacation region of the
rich and influential in Rome, and the location of many
estates Ñ the revolt quickly came to the attention of Roman
authorities. It took Rome some time to realize the scale of
the problem, viewing the slave revolt as more of a major
crime wave than as an armed rebellion.
However, in 73 BC, Rome
dispatched military force under praetorian authority to put
down the rebellion.[12] A Roman
praetor, Gaius Claudius Glaber, gathered a force of 3,000
men, not as legions, but as a militia "picked up in haste
and at random, for the Romans did not consider this a war
yet, but a raid, something like an attack of robbery."[13]
Glaber's forces besieged the slaves on Mount Vesuvius,
blocking the only known way down the mountain. With the
slaves thus contained, Glaber was content to wait until
starvation forced the slaves to surrender.
While the slaves lacked
military training, Spartacus' forces displayed ingenuity in
their use of available local materials, and in their use of
clever, unorthodox tactics when facing the disciplined Roman
armies.[14] In response to
Glaber's siege, Spartacus' men made ropes and ladders from
vines and trees growing on the slopes of Vesuvius and used
them to rappel down the cliffs on the side of the mountain
opposite Glaber's forces. They moved around the base of
Vesuvius, outflanked the army, and annihilated Glaber's men.[15]
A second expedition, under
the praetor Publius Varinius, was then dispatched against
Spartacus. For some reason, Varinius seems to have split his
forces under the command of his subordinates Furius and
Cossinius. Plutarch mentions that Furius commanded some
2,000 men, but neither the strength of the remaining forces,
nor whether the expedition was composed of militia or
legions, appears to be known. These forces were also
defeated by the army of escaped slaves: Cossinius was
killed, Varinius was nearly captured, and the equipment of
the armies was seized by the slaves.[16]
With these successes, more and more slaves flocked to the
Spartacan forces, as did "many of the herdsmen and shepherds
of the region", swelling their ranks to some 70,000.[17] The
rebel slaves spent the winter of 73 BC arming and equipping
their new recruits, and expanding their raiding territory to
include the towns of Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and
Metapontum.[18]
The victories of the rebel
slaves did not come without a cost. At some time during
these events, or possibly during one of the winter raids in
late 73 BC, leader Oenomaus was lost Ñ presumably in battle
Ñ and is not mentioned further in the histories.[19]
Motivation and leadership of
the escaped slaves:
By the end of 73 BC,
Spartacus and Crixus were in command of a large group of
armed men with a proven ability to withstand Roman armies.
What they intended to do with this force is somewhat
difficult for modern readers to determine. Since the Third
Servile War was ultimately an unsuccessful rebellion, no
firsthand account of the slaves' motives and goals exists,
and historians writing about the war propose contradictory
theories.
Many popular modern accounts
of the war claim that there was a factional split in the
escaped slaves between those under Spartacus, who wished to
escape over the Alps to freedom, and those under Crixus, who
wished to stay in southern Italia to continue raiding and
plundering. This appears to be an interpretation of events
based on the following: the regions that Florus lists as
being raided by the slaves include Thurii and Metapontum,
which are geographically distant from Nola and Nuceria. This
indicates the existence of two groups: Lucius Gellius
Publicola eventually attacked Crixus and a group of some
30,000 followers who are described as being separate from
the main group under Spartacus;[20]
Plutarch describes the desire of some of the escaped slaves
to plunder Italia, rather than escape over the Alps.[21]
While this factional split is not contradicted by classical
sources, there does not seem to be any direct evidence to
support it.
Fictional accounts Ñ such as
Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus Ñ sometimes portray
Spartacus as an ancient Roman freedom fighter, struggling to
change a corrupt Roman society and to end the Roman
institution of slavery. Similarly, this
is not contradicted by classical historians, but no
historical account mentions that the goal of the rebel
slaves was to end slavery in the Republic, nor do any of
Spartacus' actions seem specifically aimed at ending
slavery.
Even classical historians,
who were writing only years after the events themselves,
seem to be divided as to what the motives of Spartacus were.
Appian and Florus write that he intended to march on Rome itself[22] Ñ although this may have
been no more than a reflection of Roman fears. If Spartacus
did intend to march on Rome, it was a goal he must have
later abandoned. Plutarch writes that Spartacus merely
wished to escape northwards into Cisalpine Gaul and disperse
his men back to their homes.[21]
It is not certain that the
slaves were a homogeneous group under the leadership of
Spartacus. While this is the unspoken assumption of the
Roman historians, this may be the Romans projecting their
own hierarchical view of military power and responsibility
on the ad hoc organization of the slaves. Certainly other
slave leaders are mentioned Ñ Crixus, Oenomaus, Gannicus,
and Castus Ñ and we cannot tell from the historical evidence
whether they were aides, subordinates, or even equals
leading groups of their own and traveling in convoy with
Spartacus' people.
Defeat of the consular
armies (72 BC):
In the spring of 72 BC, the
escaped slaves left their winter encampments and began to
move northwards towards Cisalpine Gaul.
The Senate, alarmed by the
size of the revolt and the defeat of the praetorian armies
of Glaber and Varinius, dispatched a pair of consular
legions under the command of Lucius Gellius Publicola and
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus.[23]
Initially, the consular armies were successful. Gellius
engaged a group of about 30,000 slaves, under command of
Crixus, near Mount Garganus and killed two -thirds of the
rebels, including Crixus himself.[24]
At this point in the history,
there is a divergence in the classical sources as to the
course of events which cannot be
reconciled until the entry of Marcus Licinius Crassus into
the war. The two most comprehensive
(extant) histories of the war by Appian and Plutarch
detail very different events. However, neither
accounts directly contradicts the other, but simply reports
different events, ignoring some events in the other account,
and reporting events that are unique to that account.
Appian's history:
According to Appian, the
battle between Gellius' legions and Crixus' men near Mount
Garganus was the beginning of a long and complex series of
military maneuvers that almost resulted in the Spartacan
forces directly assaulting the city of Rome itself.
After his victory over
Crixus, Gellius moved northwards, following the main group
of slaves under Spartacus who were heading for Cisalpine
Gaul. The army of Lentulus was deployed to bar Spartacus'
path, and the consuls hoped to trap the rebel slaves between
them. Spartacus' army met Lentulus' legion, defeated it,
turned, and destroyed Gellius' army, forcing the Roman
legions to retreat in disarray.[25]
Appian claims that Spartacus executed some 300 captured
Roman soldiers to avenge the death of Crixus, forcing them
to fight each other to the death as gladiators.[26]
Following this victory, Spartacus pushed northwards with his
followers (some 120,000) as fast as he could travel, "having
burned all his useless material, killed all his prisoners,
and butchered his pack-animals in order to expedite his
movement".[25]
The defeated consular armies
fell back to Rome to regroup while Spartacus' followers
moved northward. The consuls again engaged Spartacus
somewhere in the Picenum region, and once again were
defeated.[25]
Appian claims that at this
point Spartacus changed his intention of marching on Rome Ñ
implying this was Spartacus' goal following the
confrontation in Picenum[27] Ñ
as "he did not consider himself ready as yet for that kind
of a fight, as his whole force was not suitably armed, for
no city had joined him, but only slaves, deserters, and
riff-raff", and decided to withdraw into southern Italia
once again. They seized the town of Thurii and the
surrounding countryside, arming themselves, raiding the
surrounding territories, trading plunder with merchants for
bronze and iron (with which to manufacture more arms), and
clashing occasionally with Roman forces which were
invariably defeated.[28]
Plutarch's description of
events differs significantly from that of Appian's:
According to Plutarch, after
the battle between Gellius' legion and Crixus men (whom
Plutarch describes as "Germans"[29]) near Mount Garganus,
Spartacus' men engaged the legion commanded by Lentulus,
defeated them, seized their supplies and equipment, and
pushed directly into northern Italia. After this defeat,
both consuls were relieved of command of their armies by the
Roman Senate and recalled to Rome.[30]
Plutarch does not mention Spartacus engaging Gellius' legion
at all, nor of Spartacus facing the combined consular
legions in Picenum.[29]
Plutarch then goes on to
detail a conflict not mentioned in Appian's history.
According to Plutarch, Spartacus' army continued northwards
to the region around Mutina (modern Modena). There, a Roman
army of some 10,000 soldiers, led by the governor of
Cisalpine Gaul, Gaius Cassius Longinus attempted to bar
Spartacus' progress and were also defeated.[31]
Plutarch makes no further
mention of events until the initial confrontation between
Marcus Licinius Crassus and Spartacus in the spring of 71
BC, omitting the march on Rome and the retreat to Thurii
described by Appian.[30] However,
as Plutarch describes Crassus forcing Spartacus' followers
to retreat southwards from Picenum, one might infer that the
rebel slaves approached Picenum from the south in early 71
BC, implying that they withdrew southwards from Mutina to
winter in southern or central Italia.
Why they might do so, when
there was apparently no reason for them not to escape over
the Alps Ñ Spartacus' goal according to Plutarch[32]
Ñ is not explained.
The war under Crassus (71
BC):
The events of early 71 BC. Marcus Licinius Crassus
takes command of the Roman legions, confronts Spartacus, and
forces the rebel slaves to retreat through Lucania to the
straits near Messina. Plutarch claims this occurred in the
Picenum region, while Appian places the initial battles
between Crassus and Spartacus in the Samnium region.
The events of early 71 BC. Marcus Licinius Crassus
takes command of the Roman legions, confronts Spartacus, and
forces the rebel slaves to retreat through Lucania to the
straits near Messina. Plutarch claims this occurred in the
Picenum region, while Appian places the initial battles
between Crassus and Spartacus in the Samnium region.
Despite the contradictions in
the classical sources regarding the events of 72 BC, there
seems to be general agreement that Spartacus and his
followers were in the south of Italia in early 71 BC.
Crassus takes command of the
legions:
The Senate, now alarmed at
the apparently unstoppable rebellion occurring within
Italia, gave the task of putting down the rebellion to
Marcus Licinius Crassus. Crassus had been a praetor in 73
BC, and although he was known for his political connections
and family, he had no reputation as a military commander.[30]
He was assigned six new
legions in addition to the two formerly consular legions of
Gellius and Lentulus, giving him an army of some
40,000-50,000 trained Roman soldiers.[33]
Crassus treated his legions with harsh, even brutal,
discipline, reviving the punishment of unit decimation
within his army. Appian is uncertain whether he decimated
the two consular legions for cowardice when he was appointed
their commander, or whether he had his entire army decimated
for a later defeat (an event in which up to 4,000
legionaries would have been executed).[34]
Plutarch only mentions the decimation of 50 legionaries of
one cohort as punishment after Mummius' defeat in the first
confrontation between Crassus and Spartacus.[35] Regardless
of what actually occurred, Crassus' treatment of his legions
proved that "he was more dangerous to them than the enemy",
and spurred them on to victory rather than running the risk
of displeasing their commander. [34]
Crassus and Spartacus:
When the forces of Spartacus
moved northwards once again, Crassus deployed six of his
legions on the borders of the region (Plutarch claims the
initial battle between Crassus' legions and Spartacus'
followers occurred near the Picenum region[30],
Appian claims it occurred near the Samnium region[36]), and
detached two legions under his legate, Mummius, to maneuver
behind Spartacus, but gave them orders not to engage the
rebels. When an opportunity presented itself, Mummius
disobeyed, attacked the Spartacan forces, and was
subsequently routed.[35] Despite
this initial loss, Crassus' engaged Spartacus and defeated
him, killing some 6,000 of the rebels.[36]
The tide seemed to have
turned in the war. Crassus' legions were victorious in
several engagements, killing thousands of the rebel slaves,
and forcing Spartacus to retreat south through Lucania to
the straits near Messina. According to Plutarch, Spartacus
made a bargain with Cilician pirates to transport him and
some 2,000 of his men to Sicily, where he intended to incite
a slave revolt there and gather reinforcements. However, he
was betrayed by the pirates, who took payment and then
abandoned the rebel slaves.[35]
Minor sources mention that there were some attempts at raft
and shipbuilding by the rebels as a means to escape, but
that Crassus took unspecified measures to ensure the rebels
could not cross to Sicily, and their efforts were
abandoned.[37]
Spartacus' forces then
retreated towards Rhegium. Crassus' legions followed and
upon arrival built fortifications across the isthmus at
Rhegium, despite harassing raids from the rebel slaves. The
rebels were under siege and cut off from their supplies.[38]
Reinforcement legions
arrive; the end of the war:
The last events of the war
in 71 BC, where the army of Spartacus broke the siege by
Crassus' legions and retreated toward the mountains near
Petelia. Shows the initial skirmishes
between elements of the two sides, the turn-about of the
Spartacan forces for the final confrontation. Note the
legions of Pompey moving in from the north to capture
survivors.
The last events of the war
in 71 BC, where the army of Spartacus broke the siege by
Crassus' legions and retreated toward the mountains near
Petelia. Shows the initial skirmishes
between elements of the two sides, the turn-about of the
Spartacan forces for the final confrontation. Note the
legions of Pompey moving in from the north to capture
survivors.
At this time, the legions of
Pompey were returning to Italia, having put down the
rebellion of Quintus Sertorius in Hispania.
Sources disagree on whether
Crassus had requested reinforcements, or whether the Senate
simply took advantage of Pompey's return to Italia, but
Pompey was ordered to bypass Rome and head south to aid
Crassus.[39] The Senate also sent
reinforcements under the command of "Lucullus", mistakenly
thought by Appian to be Lucius Licinius Lucullus, commander
of the forces engaged in the Third Mithridatic War at the
time, but who appears to have been the proconsul of
Macedonia Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, the former's
younger brother.[40] With Pompey's legions marching out of
the north, and Lucullus' troops landing in Brundisium,
Crassus realized that if he did not put down the slave
revolt quickly, credit for the war would go to the general
who arrived with reinforcements, and thus he spurred his
legions on to end the conflict quickly.[41]
Hearing of the approach of
Pompey, Spartacus attempted to negotiate with Crassus to
bring the conflict to a close before Roman reinforcements
arrived.[42] When Crassus
refused, a portion of Spartacus' forces broke out of
confinement and fled toward the mountains west of Petelia
(modern Strongoli) in Bruttium, with Crassus' legions in
pursuit.[43] The legions managed to catch a portion of the
rebels Ð under the command of Gannicus and Castus Ð
separated from the main army, killing 12,300.[44] However,
Crassus' legions also suffered losses, as some of the army
of escaping slaves turned to meet the Roman forces under the
command of a cavalry officer named Lucius Quinctius and the
quaestor Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, routing them.[45] The
rebel slaves were not, however, a professional army, and had
reached their limit. They were unwilling to flee any
further, and groups of men were breaking away from the main
force to independently attack the oncoming legions of
Crassus.[46] With discipline
breaking down, Spartacus turned his forces around and
brought his entire strength to bear on the oncoming legions.
In this last stand, Spartacus' forces were finally routed
completely, with the vast majority of them being killed on
the battlefield.[47] The eventual
fate of Spartacus himself is unknown, as his body was never
found, but he is accounted by historians to have perished in
battle along with his men.[48]
Aftermath:
The rebellion of the Third
Servile War had been annihilated by Crassus.
Pompey's forces did not
directly engage Spartacus' forces at any time, but his
legions moving in from the north were able to capture some
5,000 rebels fleeing the battle, "all of whom he slew".[49] Because of this, Pompey sent a
dispatch to the Senate, saying that while Crassus certainly
had conquered the slaves in open battle, he himself had
ended the war, thus claiming a large portion of the credit
and earning the enmity of Crassus.[50]
While most of the rebel
slaves had been killed on the battlefield, some 6,000
survivors had been captured by the legions of Crassus. All
6,000 were crucified along the road between Rome and Capua.[51]
Pompey and Crassus reaped
political benefit for having put down the rebellion. Both
Crassus and Pompey returned to Rome with their legions and
refused to disband them, instead encamping them outside Rome.[52] Both men stood for the
consulship of 70 BC, even though Pompey was ineligible to do
so because of his age, nor had he ever served as praetor or
quaestor.[53] Nonetheless, both men were elected consul for
70 BC,[54] partly due to the implied threat of their armed
legions encamped outside the city.[55]
The effects of the Third
Servile War on the Roman attitudes towards slavery, and the
institution of slavery in Rome, are harder to determine.
Certainly the revolt had shaken the Roman people, who "out
of sheer fear seem to have begun to treat their slaves less
harshly than before."[56] The wealthy owners of the
latifundia began to reduce the number of agricultural
slaves, opting to employ the large pool of formerly
dispossessed freemen in sharecropping arrangements.[57] With the end of Julius Caesar's
Gallic Wars in 52 BC, the major Roman wars of conquest would
cease until the reign of emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117 AD),
and with them the supply of plentiful and inexpensive slaves
through military conquest, further promoting the use of
freemen laborers in agricultural estates.
The legal status and rights
of the Roman slave also began to change. During the time of
emperor Claudius (reigned 41-54 AD), a constitution was
enacted which made the killing of an old or infirm slave an
act of murder, and decreed that if such slaves were
abandoned by their owners, they became freedmen.[58] Under Antoninus Pius (reigned
138-161 AD), the legal rights of slaves were further
extended, holding owners responsible for the killing of
slaves, forcing the sale of slaves when it could be shown
that they were being mistreated, and providing a
(theoretically) neutral third party authority to which a
slave could appeal.[59] While these legal changes occurred
much too late to be direct results of the Third Servile War,
they represent the legal codification of changes in the
Roman attitude toward slaves which would have been evolving
for decades.
It is difficult to determine
the extent to which the events of this war contributed to
the changes in the use and legal rights of Roman slaves. It
seems that the end of the Servile Wars coincided with the
end of the period of most prominent use of slaves in Rome,
and the beginning of a new perception of the slave within
Roman society and law. The Third Servile War was the last of
the Servile Wars, and Rome would not see another slave
uprising of this type again.
References
Books
Classical works:
*
Appian, Civil wars, Penguin Classics; New Ed edition, 1996.
ISBN 0-14-044509-9.
*
Caesar, Julius, Commentarii de Bello Gallico.
*
Cicero, M. Tullius. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero,
literally translated by C. D. Yonge, "for Quintius, Sextus
Roscius, Quintus Roscius, against Quintus Caecilius, and
against Verres". London. George Bell
& Sons. 1903. OCLC: 4709897
* Florus, Publius
Annius, Epitome of Roman History. Harvard
University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-674-99254-7
*
Frontinus, Sextus Julius, Stratagems, Loeb edition, 1925 by
Charles E. Bennett. ISBN 0-674-99192-3
*
Gaius the Jurist, Gai Institvtionvm Commentarivs Primvs
*
Livius,Titus, This History of
Rome
*
Livius,Titus, Periochae, K.G.
Saur Verlag, 1981. ISBN 3-519-01489-0
*
Orosius, Histories.
*
Plutarchus, Mestrius ,
Plutarch's Lives, "The Life of Crassus" and "The Life of
Pompey". Modern Library, 2001.
ISBN 0-375-75677-9.
*
Sallust, Histories, P.McGUSHIN (Oxford,1992/1994)
ISBN 0-19-872140-4
*
Seneca, De Beneficiis
* Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve
Caesars: The Life of Claudius.
Modern works:
*
Bradley, Keith. Slavery and Rebellion
in the Roman World. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1989. ISBN 0-7134-6561-X.
*
Broughton, T. Robert S. Magistrates of the Roman Republic,
vol. 2. Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1968.
*
Davis,William Stearns ed.,
Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the
Sources, 2 Vols, Vol. II: Rome and the West. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon, 1912-13.
*
Matyszak, Philip, The enemies of Rome, Thames & Hudson,
2004. ISBN 0-500-25124-X.
*
Strachan-Davidson, J. L. (ed.), Appian, Civil Wars: Book I,
Oxford University Press, 1902 (repr. 1969).
*
Mommsen, Theodor, The History of Rome, Books I-V, project
Gutenburg electronic edition, 2004. ISBN 0-415-14953-3.
*
William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D., A Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.
Multimedia:
*
Fagan, Garret G., "The History of Ancient Rome: Lecture 23,
Sulla's Reforms Undone", The Teaching Company. [sound recording:CD].
Notes:
* References to the Mommsen text is
based on the Project Gutenburg e-text edition of the books.
References are therefore given in terms of line numbers
within the text file, and not page numbers
as would be the case with physical books.
*
References to "classical works" (Livy, Plutarch, Appian,
etc.) are given in the traditional "Book:verse"
format, rather than edition-specific page numbers.
1. ^ Smith,
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Servus", p.
1038; details the legal and military means by which people
were enslaved.
2. ^ Smith,
Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Servus", p. 1040; Caesar,
Commentarii de Bello Gallico, 2:33. Smith refers to the
purchase of 10,000 slaves from Cilician pirates, while
Caesar provides an example of the enslavement of 53,000
captive Aduatuci by a Roman army.
3. ^ Smith,
Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Servus", p. 1039; Livy, The
History of Rome, 6:12
4. ^ Smith,
Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Servus", pp. 1022Ð39
summarizes the complex body of Roman law pertaining to the
legal status of slaves.
5. ^ Smith,
Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Gladiatores", p. 574.
6. ^ Mommsen, The History of Rome,
3233-3238.
7. ^
Plutarch, Crassus, 8:1-2; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Livy,
Periochae, 95:2; Florus, Epitome, 2.8. Plutarch claims 78
escaped, Livy claims 74, Appian "about seventy", and Florus
says "thirty or rather more men". "Choppers and spits" is
from Life of Crassus.
8. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:116; Plutarch, Crassus, 8:2. Note: Spartacus'
status as an auxilia is taken from the Loeb edition of
Appian translated by Horace White, which states "...who had
once served as a soldier with the Romans...". However, the
translation by John Carter in the Penguin Classics version
reads: "...who had once fought against the Romans and after
being taken prisoner and sold...".
9. ^ Smith,
Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Gladiatores", p. 576.
10. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:1.
11. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:116; Florus, Epitome, 2.8; - Florus and Appian
make the claim that the slaves withdrew to Vesuvius, while
Plutarch only mentions "a hill" in the later account of
Glaber's siege of the slave's encampment.
12. ^ Note: while
there seems to be consensus as to the general history of the
praetorian expeditions, the names of the commanders and
subordinates of these forces varies widely based on the
historical account.
13. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:116.
14. ^ Frontinus,
Stratagems, Book I, 5:20-22 and Book VII:6.
15. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:1-3; Frontinus, Stratagems, Book I, 5:20-22;
Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Broughton, Magistrates of the
Roman Republic, p. 109. Note: Plutarch and Frontinus write
of expeditions under the command of "Clodius the praetor"
and "Publius Varinus", while Appian writes of "Varinius
Glaber" and "Publius Valerius".
16. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:4-5; Livy, Periochae ,
95; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Sallust, Histories, 3:64-67.
17. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:3; Appian, Civil War, 1:116. Livy identifies the
second commander as "Publius Varenus" with the subordinate
"Claudius Pulcher".
18. ^ Florus, Epitome, 2.8.
19. ^ Orosius, Histories 5.24.2; Bradley,
Slavery and Rebellion, p.96.
20. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:7; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:117.
21. ^ a b Plutarch, Crassus, 9:5-6.
22. ^ Appian, Civil Wars, 1:117; Florus,
Epitome, 2.8.
23. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:116-117; Plutarch, Crassus 9:6; Sallust,
Histories, 3:64-67.
24. ^ Appian, Civil Wars, 1:117; Plutarch,
Crassus 9:7; Livy, Periochae 96. Livy reports that
troops under the (former) praetor Quintus Arrius killed
Crixus and 20,000 of his followers.
25. ^ a b c Appian, Civil Wars, 1:117.
26. ^ Appian, Civil war, 1.117; Florus,
Epitome, 2.8; Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion, p.121;
Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Gladiatores", p.574.
- Note that gladiator contests as part of some funeral
rituals in the Roman Republic were a high honor, according
to Smith. This accords with Florus' passage "He also
celebrated the obsequies of his officers who had fallen in
battle with funerals like those of Roman generals, and
ordered his captives to fight at their pyres".
27. ^ Appian, Civil war, 1.117; Florus,
Epitome, 2.8. Florus does not detail when and how
Spartacus intended to march on Rome, but agrees this was
Spartacus' ultimate goal.
28. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:117.
29. ^ a b Plutarch, Crassus, 9:7.
30. ^ a b c d Plutarch, Crassus 10:1;.
31. ^ Bradley,
Slavery and Rebellion, p. 96; Plutarch, Crassus 9:7; Livy, Periochae , 96:6. - Bradley
identifies Gaius Cassius Longinus as the governor of
Cisalpine Gaul at the time. Livy also identifies "Caius
Cassius" and mentions his co-commander (or sub-commander?)
"Cnaeus Manlius".
32. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 9:5.
33. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:118; Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities, "Exercitus", p.494; Appian details the number
of legions, while Smith discusses the size of the legions
throughout the Roman civilization, stating that late
republican legions varied from 5,000-6,200 men per legion.
34. ^ a b Appian, Civil Wars, 1:118.
35. ^ a b c Plutarch, Crassus, 10:1-3.
36. ^ a b Appian, Civil Wars, 1:119.
37. ^ Florus,
Epitome, 2.8; Cicero, Orations, "For Quintius, Sextus
Roscius...", 5.2
38. ^ Plutarch, Crassus, 10:4-5.
39. ^ Contrast
Plutarch, Crassus, 11:2 with Appian, Civil Wars, 1:119.
40. ^ Strachan-Davidson on Appian.
1.120; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:120; Plutarch, Crassus, 11:2.
41. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:120; Plutarch, Crassus, 11:2.
42. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:120;.
43. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:120; Plutarch, Crassus, 10:6. No mention of
the fate of the forces who did
not break out of the siege is mentioned, although it is
possible that these were the slaves under command of
Gannicus and Castus mentioned later.
44. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 11:3; Livy, Periochae, 97:1. Plutarch gives the
figure 12,300 rebels killed. Livy claims 35,000.
45. ^ Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion.
p. 97; Plutarch, Crassus, 11:4.
46. ^ Plutarch,
Crassus, 11:5;.
47. ^ Appian, Civil Wars, 1:120; Plutarch,
Crassus, 11:6-7; Livy, Periochae, 97.1. Livy claims
some 60,000 rebel slaves killed in this final action.
48. ^ Appian, Civil Wars, 1:120; Florus,
Epitome, 2.8.
49. ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome p.133;
Plutarch, Pompey, 21:2, Crassus 11.7.
50. ^ Plutarch, Crassus, 11.7.
51. ^ Appian, Civil Wars, 1.120.
52. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:116.
53. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:121.
54. ^ Appian,
Civil Wars, 1:121; Plutarch, Crassus, 12:2.
55. ^ Fagan, The
History of Ancient Rome; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:121.
56. ^ Davis,
Readings in Ancient History, p.90
57. ^ Smitha, Frank E. (2006). From a
Republic to Emperor Augustus: Spartacus and Declining
Slavery. Retrieved on 2006-09-23.
58. ^ Suetonius,
Life of Claudius, 25.2
59. ^ Gaius,
Institvtionvm Commentarivs, I:52;
Seneca, De Beneficiis, III:22. Gaius details the changes in
the right of the owner to inflict whatever treatment they
wished upon the slave, while Seneca details the slave's
right to proper treatment and the creation of a "slave
ombudsman".
Appian on Spartacus
Spartacus was the leader of
an army of runaway slaves that infested Italy in 73-71 BCE
but was ultimately defeated by the Roman general Crassus.
There are two important sources about this revolt: the story
is told in the Life of Crassus by Plutarch of Chaeronea, and
in the Civil wars by Appian of Alexandria. Both authors
lived in the second century CE, but used older accounts,
such as the Histories of Sallust and Livy's History of Rome
from the Foundation.
Here, we find the story by
Appian (Civil wars 1.116-120). The
translation was made by John Carter.
In Italy, at this same time,
Spartacus, a Thracian who had once fought against the Romans
and after being taken prisoner and sold had become a
gladiator in a troop which was kept to provide
entertainments at Capua, persuaded about seventy of his
fellows to risk their lives for freedom rather than for
exhibition as a spectacle. With them, he overpowered their
guards and escaped. Then he equipped himself and his
companions with staves and daggers seized from travelers and
took refuge on Mount Vesuvius, where he allowed many runaway
domestic slaves and some free farm hands to join him.
With the gladiators Oenomaus
and Crixus as his subordinates he plundered the nearby
areas, and because he divided the spoils in equal shares his
numbers quickly swelled. The first commander sent against
him was Varinius Glaber [1], and the second Publius Valerius
[2]; instead of legionary forces they had anyone they could
quickly conscript on the way, because the Romans did not yet
class the affair as a war, but as a kind of raid akin to
piracy, and they were defeated when they attacked him.
Spartacus himself actually captured Varinius' horse from
under him; so nearly was a Roman
general taken prisoner by a gladiator. After this,
people flocked in still greater numbers to join Spartacus:
his army now numbered 70,000 and he began to manufacture
weapons and gather stores.
The government in Rome now
dispatched the consuls with two legions. Crixus, at the head
of 3,000 men, was defeated and killed by one of them at
Mount Garganus, with the loss of two-thirds of his force.
Spartacus, who was eager to go through the Apennines to the
Alpine regions, and then to Celtic lands from the Alps, was
intercepted and prevented from escaping by the other consul,
while his colleague conducted the pursuit. But Spartacus
turned on each of them and defeated them separately.
In the aftermath they
retreated in confusion, while Spartacus, first sacrificing
300 Roman prisoners to Crixus, made for Rome with 120,000
foot soldiers after burning the useless equipment and
putting all the prisoners to death and slaughtering the
draught animals to free himself of all encumbrances; and
although a large number of deserters approached him he
refused to accept any of them.
When the consuls made another
stand in Picenum, there was a further great struggle and on
that occasion also a great Roman defeat. Spartacus, however,
changed his mind about marching on Rome because he was not
yet a match for the defenders and his troops did not all
have soldier's arms and equipment (no town had joined their
cause, and they were all slaves, deserters and human
flotsam).
He seized the mountains
around Thurii, together with the town itself, and then
prevented traders bringing in gold and silver, barred his
own men from acquiring any, and bought exclusively iron and
bronze at good prices without harming those who brought
them. As a result they had plenty of raw material and were
well equipped and made frequent raiding expeditions. They
again confronted the Romans in battle, defeated them, and on
that occasion too returned to camp laden with booty.
The war had now lasted three
years and was causing the Romans great concern, although at
the beginning it had been laughed-at and regarded as trivial
because it was against gladiators. When the appointment of
other generals was proposed there was universal reluctance
to stand, and no one put himself forward until Licinius
Crassus, distinguished both for his family and his wealth,
undertook to assume the post, and led six legions against
Spartacus. To these he added the two consular legions when
he reached the front.
He immediately punished the
latter for their repeated defeats, making them draw lots for
every tenth man to be put to death [3]. According to some,
this was not what happened; instead, when he himself had
suffered defeat after engaging the enemy with his whole
force he had them all draw lots for the tenth place and put
to death up to 4,000 men without being in the least deterred
by their numbers. Whatever the truth, he established himself
in the eyes of his men as more to be feared than a defeat at
the hands of the enemy, and forthwith won a victory over
10,000 of Spartacus' men who were encamped separately
somewhere. He killed two thirds of them and marched
confidently against Spartacus himself.
After winning a
brilliant victory, Crassus pursued Spartacus as he fled
towards the sea with the intention of sailing across to
Sicily, overtook him, and walled him in with ditches,
earthworks, and palisades. Spartacus then tried to force his
way out and reach the Samnite country, but Crassus killed
almost 6,000 of his opponents at the beginning of the day and
nearly as many more at evening, at the cost of three dead and
seven wounded from the Roman army; so effective had their
punishment been in altering their will to win.
Spartacus, who was waiting
for some cavalry that were on their way to him, no longer
went into battle with his full force, but conducted many
separate harassing operations against his besiegers; he made
sudden and repeated sorties against them, set fire to
bundles of wood which he had thrown into the ditches, and
made their work difficult. He crucified a Roman prisoner in
no-man's land to demonstrate to his own troops the fate
awaiting them if they were defeated.
When the government at Rome
heard of the siege and contemplated the dishonor they would
incur from a protracted war with gladiators, they appointed
Pompey, who had recently arrived from Hispania, to an
additional command in the field, in the belief that the task
of dealing with Spartacus was now substantial and difficult.
As a result of this appointment Crassus pressed on urgently
with every means of attacking Spartacus, to stop Pompey
stealing his glory, while Spartacus, thinking to forestall
Pompey, invited Crassus to negotiate.
When Crassus spurned the
offer, Spartacus decided to make a desperate attempt, and
with the cavalry which had by now arrived forced a way
through the encircling fortifications with his whole army
and retired towards Brundisium, with Crassus in pursuit. But
when he discovered that Lucullus, who was on his way back
from his victory over Mithridates [4], was there, he
despaired of everything and, at the head of a still large
force, joined battle with Crassus. The fight was long, and
bitterly contested, since so many tens of thousands of men
had no other hope.
Spartacus himself was wounded
by a spear-thrust in the thigh, but went down on one knee,
held his shield in front of him, and fought off his
attackers until he and a great number of his followers were
encircled and fell. The rest of his army was already in
disorder and was cut down in huge numbers; consequently
their losses were not easy to estimate (though the Romans
lost about 1,000 men), and Spartacus' body was never found.
Since there was still a very large number of fugitives
from the battle in the mountains, Crassus proceeded against
them. They formed themselves into four groups and kept up
their resistance until there were only 6,000 survivors, who
were taken prisoner and crucified all the way along the road
from Rome to Capua.
Notes
[1]
The first army was
commanded by Gaius Claudius Glaber, and the second one by
Publius Varinius. Appian combines these
names.
[2]
This man never existed. The
commander of the second army was called Publius Varinius.
[3]
This punishment was called
decimation.
[4]
An error. Lucullus was the
Roman general fighting in the east against Mithradates. In
fact, another Lucullus fought against Spartacus.
Florus on Spartacus
Spartacus was the leader of
an army of runaway slaves that infested Italy in 73-71 BCE
but was ultimately defeated by the Roman general Crassus.
There are two important sources about this revolt: the story
is told in the Life of Crassus by Plutarch of Chaeronea, and
in the Civil wars by Appian of Alexandria.
A third account is that of
Publius Annius Florus, the author of an epitome of the
History of Rome since its foundation of the great Roman
historian Livy. Here, we find his story (Epitome 2.8) in the
translation by Edward Forster.
Spartacus, Crixus and
Oenomaus, breaking out of the gladiatorial school of
Lentulus with thirty or rather more men [1] of the same
occupation, escaped from Capua. When, by summoning the
slaves to their standard, they had quickly collected more
than 10,000 adherents, these men, who had been originally
content merely to have escaped, soon began to wish to take
their revenge also.
The first position which attracted them (a suitable one
for such ravening monsters) was Mt. Vesuvius. Being besieged
here by Clodius Glabrus [2], they slid by means of ropes
made of vine-twigs through a passage in the hollow of the
mountain down into its very depths, and issuing forth by a
hidden exit, seized the camp of he general by a sudden
attack which he never expected. They then attacked other
camps, that of Varenius [3] and afterwards that of Thoranus
[4]; and they ranged over the whole of Campania. Not content
with the plundering of country houses and villages, they
laid waste Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum with
terrible destruction.
Becoming a regular army by
the daily arrival of fresh forces, they made themselves rude
shields of wicker-work and the
skins of animals, and swords and other weapons by melting
down the iron in the slave-prisons. That nothing might be
lacking which was proper to a regular army, cavalry was
procured by breaking in herds of horses which they
encountered, and his men brought to their leader the
insignia and fasces captured from the praetors, nor were
they refused by the man who, from being a Thracian
mercenary, had become a soldier, and from a soldier a
deserter, then a highwayman, and finally, thanks to his
strength, a gladiator.
He also celebrated the
obsequies of his officers who had fallen in battle with
funerals like those of Roman generals, and ordered his
captives to fight at their pyres, just as though he wished
to wipe out all his past dishonor by having become, instead
of a gladiator, a giver of gladiatorial shows.
Next, actually attacking
generals of consular rank, he inflicted defeat on the army
of Lentulus [5] in the Apennines and destroyed the camp of
Gaius Cassius at Mutina [6]. Elated by these victories he
entertained the project -in itself a sufficient disgrace to
us- of attacking the city of Rome.
At last a combined effort was
made, supported by all the resources of the empire, against
this gladiator, and Licinius Crassus [7] vindicated the
honor of Rome. Routed and put to fight by him, our enemies
-I am ashamed to give them this
title- took refuge in the furthest extremities of Italy.
Here, being cut off in the angle of Bruttium and preparing
to escape to Sicily, but being unable to obtain ships, they
tried to launch rafts of beams and casks bound together with
withies on the swift waters of the straits.[8]
Failing in this attempt, they
finally made a sally and met a death worthy of men, fighting
to the death as became those who were commanded by a
gladiator. Spartacus himself fell, as became a general,
fighting most bravely in the front rank.
Notes
[1]
According to Appian and
Plutarch about seventy.
[2]
The full name of this
praetor was Gaius Claudius Glaber.
[3]
A praetor who was sent
after the defeat Claudius Glaber.
[4]
Not known from other
sources.
[5]
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus
Clodianus, consul in 72.
[6]
Gaius Cassius Longinus, the
governor of Gallia Cisalpina.
[7]
Marcus Licinius Crassus was
praetor in 72.
[8]
Near Messina.
Plutarch on Spartacus
Spartacus was the leader of
an army of runaway slaves that infested Italy in 73-71 BCE
but was ultimately defeated by the Roman general Crassus.
There are two important sources about this revolt: the story
is told in the Life of Crassus by Plutarch of Chaeronea, and
in the Civil wars by Appian of Alexandria. Both authors
lived in the second century CE, but used older accounts,
such as the Histories of Sallust and Livy's History of Rome
from the Foundation.
Here, we find the story by
Plutarch of Chaeronea (Life of Crassus 8-11). The translation was made by Rex Warner.
The rising of the gladiators
and their devastation of Italy, which is generally known as
the war of Spartacus, began as follows.
A man called Lentulus
Batiatus had an establishment for gladiators at Capua. Most
of them were Gauls and Thracians. They had done nothing
wrong, but, simply because of the cruelty of their owner,
were kept in close confinement until the time came for them
to engage in combat. Two hundred of them planned to escape,
but their plan was betrayed and only seventy-eight, who
realized this, managed to act in time and get away, armed
with choppers and spits which they seized from some
cookhouse. On the road they came across some wagons which were carrying arms for
gladiators to another city, and they took these arms for
their own use.
They then occupied a strong
position [1] and elected three leaders. The first of these
was Spartacus [2]. He was a Thracian from the nomadic tribes
and not only had a great spirit and great physical strength,
but was, much more than one would expect from his condition,
most intelligent and cultured, being more like a Greek than
a Thracian [3]. They say that when he was first taken to
Rome to be sold, a snake was seen coiled round his head
while he was asleep and his wife, who came from the same
tribe and was a prophetess subject to possession by the
frenzy of [the god of ecstasy] Dionysus, declared that this
sign meant that he would have a great and terrible power
which would end in misfortune. This woman shared in his
escape and was then living with him.
First, then, the gladiators
repulsed those who came out against them from Capua. In this
engagement they got hold of proper arms and gladly took them
in exchange for their own gladiatorial equipment
which they threw away, as being barbarous and
dishonorable weapons to use.
Then the praetor Clodius [4],
with 3,000 soldiers, was sent out against them from Rome. He
laid siege to them in a position which
they took up on a hill. There was only one way up this hill,
and that was a narrow and difficult one, and was closely
guarded by Clodius; in every other direction there was
nothing but sheer precipitous cliffs. The top of the hill,
however, was covered with wild vines and from these they cut
off all the branches that they needed, and then twisted them
into strong ladders which were long enough to reach from the
top, where they were fastened, right down the cliff face to
the plain below. They all got down safely by means of these
ladders except for one man who stayed at the top to deal
with their arms, and he, once the rest had got down, began
to drop the arms down to them, and, when he had finished his
task, descended last and reached the plain in safety. The
Romans knew nothing of all this, and so the gladiators were
able to get round behind them and to throw them into
confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, first routing
them and then capturing their camp.
And now they were joined by
numbers of herdsmen and shepherds of those parts, all sturdy
men and fast on their feet. Some of these they armed as
regular infantrymen and made use of others as scouts and
light troops.
The second expedition
against them was led by the praetor Publius Varinus [5]. First they engaged and
routed a force of 2,000 men under his deputy commander,
Furius by name, then came the turn
of Cossinius, who had been sent
out with a large force to advise Varinus and to share with
him the responsibility of the command. Spartacus watched his
movements closely and very nearly captured him as he was
bathing near Salinae. He only just managed to escape, and
Spartacus immediately seized all his baggage and then
pressed on hard after, him and captured his camp. There was
a great slaughter and Cossinius was among those who fell.
Next Spartacus defeated the praetor himself in a number of
engagements and finally captured his lictors and the very
horse that he rode.
By this time Spartacus had
grown to be a great and formidable power, but he showed no
signs of losing his head. He could not expect to prove
superior to the whole power of Rome, and so he began to lead
his army towards the Alps. His view was that they should
cross the mountains and then disperse to their own homes,
some to Thrace and some to Gaul. His men, however, would not
listen to him. They were strong in numbers and full of
confidence, and they went about Italy ravaging everything in
their way.
There was now more to disturb
the Senate than just the shame and the disgrace of the
revolt. The situation had become dangerous enough to inspire
real fear, and as a result both consuls [6] were sent out to
deal with what was considered a major war and a most
difficult one to fight. One of the consuls, Gellius, fell
suddenly upon and entirely destroyed the German contingent
of Spartacus' troops, who in their insolent self-confidence
had marched off on their own and lost contact with the rest;
but when Lentulus, the other consul, had surrounded the
enemy with large forces, Spartacus turned to the attack,
joined battle, defeated the generals of Lentulus and
captured all their equipment.
He then pushed on towards the
Alps and was confronted by Cassius, the governor of
Cisalpine Gaul, with an army of 10,000 men. In the battle
that followed Cassius was defeated and, after losing many of
his men, only just managed to escape with his own life.
This news roused the Senate
to anger. The consuls were told to return to civilian life,
and Crassus [7] was appointed to the supreme command of the
war. Because of his reputation or because of their
friendship with him large numbers of the nobility
volunteered to serve with him.
Spartacus was now bearing
down on Picenum, and Crassus himself took up a position on
the borders of the district with the intention of meeting
the attack there. He ordered one of his subordinate
commanders, Mummius, with two legions to march round by
another route and instructed him to follow the enemy, but
not to join battle with them or even to do any skirmishing.
Mummius, however, as soon as he saw what appeared to him a
good opportunity, offered battle and was defeated. Many of
his men were killed and many saved their lives by throwing
away their arms and running for it. Crassus gave Mummius
himself a very rough reception after this.
He re-armed his soldiers and
made them give guarantees that in future they would preserve
the arms in their possession. Then he took 500 of those who
had been the first to fly and had shown themselves the
greatest cowards, and, dividing them into fifty squads of
ten men each, put to death one man, chosen by lot, from each
squad. This was a traditional method of punishing soldiers,
now revived by Crassus after having been out of use for many
years [8]. Those who are punished in this way not only lose
their lives but are also disgraced, since the whole army are
there as spectators, and the
actual circumstances of the execution are very savage and
repulsive.
After employing this method
of conversion on his men, Crassus led them against the
enemy. But Spartacus slipped away from him and marched
through Lucania to the sea. At the Straits [9] he fell in
with some pirate ships from Cilicia and formed the plan of
landing 2,000 men in Sicily and seizing the island; he would
be able, he thought, to start another revolt of the slaves
there, since the previous slave war had recently died down
and only needed a little fuel to make it blaze out again
[10]. However, the Cilicians, after agreeing to his
proposals and receiving gifts from him, failed to keep their
promises and sailed off.
So Spartacus marched back
again from the sea and established his army in the peninsula
of Rhegium. At this point Crassus came up. His observation
of the place made him see what should be done, and he began
to build fortifications right across the isthmus. In this
way he was able at the same time to keep his own soldiers
busy and to deprive the enemy of supplies. The task which he had set himself was
neither easy nor inconsiderable, but he finished it and,
contrary to all expectation, had it done in a very short
time. A ditch, nearly sixty kilometers long and five meters
wide, was carried across the neck of land from sea to sea;
and above the ditch he constructed a wall
which was astonishingly high and strong.
At first Spartacus despised
these fortifications and did not take them seriously; but
soon he found himself short of plunder and, when he wanted
to break out from the peninsula, he realized that he was
walled in and could get no more supplies where he was. So he
waited for a night when it was snowing and a wintry storm
had got up, and then, after filling up a small section of
the ditch with earth and timber and branches of trees,
managed to get a third of his army across.
Crassus was now alarmed,
thinking that Spartacus might conceive the idea of marching
directly on Rome. But he was relieved from his anxiety when
he saw that, as the result of some disagreement, many of
Spartacus' men had left him and were encamped as an
independent force by themselves near a lake in Lucania
[...]. Crassus fell upon this division of the enemy and
dislodged them from their positions by the lake, but at this
point Spartacus suddenly appeared and stopped their flight,
so that he was prevented from following them up and
slaughtering them.
Crassus now regretted that he
had previously written to the Senate to ask them to send for
Lucullus from Thrace and Pompey from Hispania [11]. He made
all the haste he could to finish the war before these
generals arrived, knowing that the credit for the success
would be likely to go not to himself but to the commander
who appeared on the scene with reinforcements.
In the first place, then, he
decided to attack the enemy force under Gaius Canicius and
Castus, who had separated themselves
from the rest and were operating on their own. With this
intention he sent out 6,000 men to occupy some high ground
before the enemy could do so and he told them to try to do
this without being observed. They, however, though they
attempted to elude observation by covering up their helmets,
were seen by two women who were sacrificing for the enemy,
and they would have been in great danger if Crassus had not
quickly brought up the rest of his forces and joined battle.
This was the most stubbornly contested battle of all. In it
Crassus' troops killed 12,300 men, but he only found two of
them who were wounded in the back. All the rest died
standing in the ranks and fighting back against the Romans.
After this force had been
defeated, Spartacus retired to the mountains of Petelia. One
of Crassus' officers called Quintus, and the quaestor
Scrophas [12] followed closely in his tracks. But when
Spartacus turned on his pursuers, the Romans were entirely
routed and they only just managed to drag the quaestor, who had been wounded, into safety.
This success turned out to be the undoing of Spartacus,
since it filled his slaves with over-confidence. They
refused any longer to avoid battle and would not even obey
their officers. Instead they surrounded them with arms in
their hands as soon as they began to march and forced them
to lead them back through Lucania against the Romans.
This was precisely what
Crassus most wanted them to do. It had already been reported
that Pompey was on his way, and in fact a number of people
were already loudly proclaiming that the victory in this war
belonged to him; it only remained for him to come and fight
a battle, they said, and the war would be over. Crassus,
therefore, was very eager to fight the decisive engagement
himself and he camped close by the enemy. Here, as his men
were digging a trench, the slaves came out, jumped into the
trench and began to fight with those who were digging. More
men from both sides kept on coming up, and Spartacus,
realizing that he had no alternative, drew up his whole army
in order of battle.
First, when his horse was
brought to him, he drew his sword and killed it, saying that
the enemy had plenty of good horses which would be his if he
won, and, if he lost, he would not need a horse at all. Then
he made straight for Crassus himself, charging forward
through the press of weapons and wounded men, and, though he
did not reach Crassus, he cut down two centurions who fell
on him together. Finally, when his own men had taken to
flight, he himself, surrounded by enemies, still stood his
ground and died fighting to the last.
Crassus had had good fortune,
had shown excellent generalship, and had risked his own life
in the fighting; nevertheless the success of Crassus served
to increase the fame of Pompey. The fugitives from the
battle fell in with Pompey's troops and were destroyed, so
that Pompey, in his dispatch to the senate, was able to say
that, while Crassus certainly had conquered the slaves in
open battle, he himself had dug the war up by the roots.
Pompey then celebrated a magnificent triumph for his
victories against Sertorius and for the war in Hispania,
[11] while Crassus, much as he may have wanted to do so, did
not venture to ask for a proper triumph; indeed it was
thought that he acted rather meanly and discreditably when
he accepted, for a war fought against slaves, the minor
honor of a procession on foot, called the 'ovation'.
Notes
[1]
According to Appian of
Alexandria, the Vesuvius.
[2]
The others were Oenomaus and
Crixus.
[3]
This last remark is a
well-known clichŽ from ancient literature. Any non-Greek/Roman who had done something special,
was said to be more intelligent than other barbarians. The
same is said about Arminius (who destroyed three Roman
legions in the battle in the Teutoburg Forest [September 9
CE]) and Julius Civilius (the leader of the Batavian
revolt).
[4]
His full name was Gaius
Claudius Glaber.
[5]
We are still in the year 73.
[6]
Lucius Gellius Publicola and
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, consuls in 72.
[7]
Marcus Licinius Crassus was
praetor in 72.
[8]
This type of punishment was
known as decimation.
[9]
Near Messina.
[10]
In the second and first
centuries, there were several slave wars on Sicily. Time and
again, the slaves on Sicily had revolted, once crowning a
king of their own.
[11]
Pompey had been fighting
against Sertorius in Hispania and had recently finished the
war. He was now on his way back home.
[12]
Their full names are Quintus
Marcius Rufus and Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa.
0401Julius Caesar.doc
Julius Caesar (1953 film)
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Julius Caesar is a 1953 film
adaptation of the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar. It was
made by MGM, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also
wrote the uncredited screenplay, and produced by John
Houseman. The original music score was by Mikl—s R—zsa.
It stars Marlon Brando as
Marc Antony, James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius,
Louis Calhern as Julius Caesar, Edmond O'Brien as Casca,
Greer Garson as Calpurnia, and Deborah Kerr as Portia.
Awards and nominations:
The film won the Academy
Award for Best Art Direction, and was nominated for Best
Actor in a Leading Role (Marlon Brando), Best
Cinematography, Black-and-White, Best Music, Scoring of a
Dramatic or Comedy Picture and Best Picture.
It also won two BAFTA awards
for Best British Actor (John Gielgud) and Best Foreign Actor
(Marlon Brando). It was also nominated in the Best Film
category.
Trivia:
á
Julius Caesar represents the
third time in three consecutive years that Brando was
nominated for the Best Actor Award. He was nominated in 1951
for A Streetcar Named Desire
and in 1952 for Viva Zapata!.
á
Brando won the BAFTA Best
Actor award in three consecutive years for Viva Zapata!
(1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and On the Waterfront (1954).
á
John Gielgud, who plays
Cassius in this version, played the title role in the 1970
film with Charlton Heston, Jason Robards and Richard Johnson
(as Cassius)
á
John Houseman, who had
produced the famous 1937 Broadway version of the play
starring Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, also produced
the MGM film. By this time, however, Welles and Houseman had
had a falling out, and Welles had nothing to do with the
1953 film.
á
John Hoyt, who plays Decius
Brutus, also played him in the 1937 stage version.
á
Marlon Brando listened to old
records of John Barrymore reciting Shakespeare in
preparation for his role as Marc Antony.
N.Y. TIMES REVIEW
Julius Caesar' and Two Other
Arrivals; Shakespeare Tragedy,
Filmed by M-G-M With a Notable
Cast, Unfolds at Booth
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
(Published June 5, 1953)
William Shakespeare's
"Julius Caesar," most familiar, perhaps, of all the plays
that poured in great floods of noble rhetoric from the pen
of the immortal Bard, has been put on the screen by Joseph
L. Mankiewicz and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in a production that smites
the eye with violence and rings with the clang of metal
words. Considering the vast amount of talking and the
patchiness of action in the play, it is a production that
pulls the full potential of point and passion from this
classic of the stage.
Actually, Shakespeare wrote
this drama to be observed within the confines of a fairly
modest theatre and to be absorbed in large measure through
the ear which, of course, was
the physical necessity with all of his eloquent plays. And
thus, any faithful translation from the written text to the
screen must perforce be confined and conditioned by the
exigencies of the play. It is much to Mr. Mankiewicz's
credit that he had captured his characters at close range
and staged the whole drama, with few elisions, from an
intimate point of view.
Blessed with a cast of actors
that conspicuously includes John Gielgud. as the lean and hungry Cassius;
Marlon Brando, as Mark Antony; James Mason, as the
conscientious Brutus, and Louis Calhern, as Caesar, who is
slain. Mr. Mankiewicz has got most of his impact out of the
words that surge hotly from their throats and from the
subtleties of their expressions and the violence of their
attitudes.
The occurrence of physical
action, though almost entirely confined to the actual
assassination of Caesar and the briefly played battle of
Philippi, seems strangely to run through the picture with
the characters' every word and move. The vibrant illusion of
mighty doings flows strongly from the screen of the Booth
[theater].
Through no fault, of course,
of the director or of John Houseman, who produced, the
script for this admirable effort does contain some
embarrassing flaws. Breathes there a high school junior who
doesn't know that the high point of the play is Mark
Antony's stirring oration over the body of his friend? With
Mr. Brando delivering this oration in a brilliant,
electrifying splurge of bitter and passionate invective
about two-thirds of the way through the film, the remaining
decline and fall of Brutus and Cassius seem spiritless and
drab. If ever there was an anti-climax in a film (or a
play), it is here.
Also, the cavalier fashion in
which Shakespeare introduced and tossed aside the wives of
poor Caesar and Brutus brings a minor irritation to the
film. Somehow, one feels that Greer Garson, as Calpurnia,
great Caesar's wife, and Deborah Kerr, as the loyal spouse
of Brutus, go too swiftly and sadly down the drain.
However, it is true that
"Julius Caesar" is essentially a drama of men caught in the
complex dilemma of political power and tyranny. And it is in
the illumination of the thoughts and the characters of men
entangled and absorbed in this dilemma that this eloquent
picture excels.
It is no slight at all to
anybody to say that Britain's Mr. Gielgud gives by far the
most rounded and subtle performance in the film. His Cassius
is desperate, sarcastic, perceptive and intense, the
quintessence of the feverish rebelliousness that Shakespeare
put into words. But then, of course, this Cassius is the most clever realist in the play. If
Brutus had followed his urgings, the show would have been
over in Act 3.
Next to Mr. Gielgud's
Cassius, the delight and surprise of the film is Mr.
Brando's Mark Antony, which is something memorable to see.
Athletic and bullet-headed, he looks the realest Roman of
them all and possesses the fire of hot convictions and the
firm elasticity of steel. Happily, Mr. Brando's diction,
which has been guttural and slurred in previous films, is
clear and precise in this instance. In him a major talent
has emerged.
As for the Brutus of Mr.
Mason, it has depth and authority, but lacks that one final
bond of candor that would attract the full sympathy he
deserves. Mr. Calhern's Caesar is puffed and pompous, the
Casca of Edmund O'Brien is glib and tough, and a dozen or so
other actors are easy and sure in lesser roles.
The wide screen upon which
the picture is projected twice a day at the Booth enhances
somewhat its scenic grandeur, but exaggerates the size of
its close views. Pan shots are blurred in many instances,
and some slight distortion does occur for those who happen
to be seated forward of the middle of the house. The
stereophonic sound is an improvement, especially for a short
symphonic film wherein the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer symphonic
orchestra plays Tchaikowsky's "Capriecio Italien." This
comes as a suitable introduction to a stirring and memorable
film.
JULIUS CAESAR, the play by
William Shakespeare; directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz;
produced by John Houseman for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At the Booth Theatre.
CAST:
Julius Caesar - Louis
Calhern, Mark Antony -
Marion Brando, Brutus -
James Mason, Cassius -
John Gielgud, Casca -
Edmond O'Brien, Calpurnia
- Greer Garson Portia
- Deborah Kerr, Marulius - George Macready,
Flavius -
Michael Pate, A soothsayer
- Richard Hale, Cicero
- Alan Napier, Decius Brutus - John Hoyt,
Metellus Cimber -
Tom Powers, Cinna -
William Cottrell, Trebomus
- Jack Raine, Ligartus
- Iam Wolfe, Artimidorus - Morgan Farley,
Servant to Anthony -
Bill Phipps
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a play
by William
Shakespeare probably written in 1599.
It portrays the conspiracy
against the Roman
dictator,
Julius Caesar,
his assassination and its aftermath. It is the first of his
Roman plays and is based on true events from Roman history.
Caesar is not the central
character in the action of the play, appearing in only three
scenes and dying at the beginning of the third Act. The
central protagonist
of the play is Brutus
and the central psychological drama is his struggle between
the conflicting demands of honour,
patriotism,
and friendship.
Most Shakespeare critics and
historians agree that the play reflected the general anxiety
of England
due to worries over succession of leadership. At the time of
its creation and first performance, Queen
Elizabeth, a strong ruler, was elderly and
had refused to name a successor, leading to worries that a civil
war similar to that of Rome's might break out
after her death.
Date of the play
Allusions in three
contemporaneous works support a date of 1599 for Julius
Caesar.[1]
1) Ben Jonson's
play Every Man
Out of His Humour (acted 1599, published
1600) paraphrases Shakespeare's line "O judgment, thou art
fled to brutish beasts" (Julius Caesar, III,ii,104) as "reason long since is
fled to animals" in III,i. Jonson's play also includes "Et
tu, Brute" in V,iv.
2) The anonymous play The Wisdom
of Dr. Dodipoll (published in 1600) gives its own
paraphrase, "Then reason's fled to animals, I see."
3) A passage in John Weever's
Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601,
makes clear reference to the speeches of Brutus
and Mark Antony
in Julius Caesar. John Weever stated that he'd written his
poem two years earlier, which (presumably) fixes the date as
1599.
Performance history
Thomas Patter, a Swiss
traveller, saw a tragedy about Julius
Caesar at a Bankside
theatre on September 21,
1599. This was most
likely Shakespeare's play. There is no immediately obvious
alternative candidate. (While the story of Julius Caesar was
dramatized repeatedly in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period,
none of the other plays known is as good a match with
Patter's description as Shakespeare's play.)[2]
After the theatres re-opened at the start of the Restoration era, the play was revived by Thomas Killigrew's King's Company
in 1672. Charles Hart initially played Brutus, as did Thomas Betterton in later productions. Julius Caesar was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was not adapted during the Restoration period or the eighteenth century.[3]Text of the play: Julius Caesar was
first published in the First Folio
in 1623, that text
being the sole authority
for the play. The Folio text is notable for its quality and
consistency; scholars judge it to have been set into type
from a theatrical promptbook. The play's source was Sir
Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's
Life of Brutus and Life of Caesar.
The plot
Marcus
Brutus is Caesar's close friend; his
ancestors were famed for driving the tyrannical King
Tarquin from Rome (described in Shakespeare's
earlier The
Rape of Lucrece). Brutus allows himself to be
cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators
because of a growing suspicionÑimplanted by Gaius
CassiusÑthat Caesar intends to turn
republican Rome into a monarchy
under his own rule. Traditional readings of the play
maintain that Cassius and the other conspirators are
motivated largely by envy and ambition,
whereas Brutus is motivated by the demands of honour
and patriotism;
other commentators, such as Isaac
Asimov, suggest that the text shows Brutus is
no less moved by envy and flattery.[4]
One of the central strengths of the play is that it resists
categorising its characters as either simple heroes or
villains.
The early scenes deal mainly with
Brutus's arguments with Cassius and his struggle with his
own conscience.
The growing tide of public support soon turns Brutus against
Caesar (This public support was actually faked. Cassius
wrote letters in different handwritings over the next month
and hid them in different places for Brutus to find in order
to get Brutus to join the conspiracy). A soothsayer warns
Caesar to "beware the Ides of March,"
which he ignores, culminating in his assassination at the Capitol
by the conspirators that day.
Caesar's assassination is perhaps
the most famous part of the play. After ignoring the
soothsayer as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar is
caught at the senate at the mercy of the conspirators. After
a few words exchanged, Casca stabs Caesar in the back of his
neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last.
At this point, Caesar utters the famous line "Et tu, Brute?"
("And you, Brutus?", i.e., "You
too, Brutus?"). Shakespeare has him add, "Then fall,
Caesar," suggesting that Caesar did not want to survive such
treachery. The conspirators make clear that they did this
act for Rome, not for their own purposes.
After Caesar's death, however, Mark
Antony, with a subtle and eloquent speech
over Caesar's corpse -- the much-quoted Friends,
Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... --
deftly turns public opinion
against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people,
in contrast to the rational tone of Brutus's speech. Antony
rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome.
The beginning of Act Four is
marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius
for soiling the noble act of regicide
by accepting bribes ("Did not great Julius bleed for
justice' sake? / What villain touch'd his body, that did
stab, / And not for justice?",
IV.iii,19-21). The two are reconciled, but as they prepare
for war with Mark Antony and Caesar's great-nephew, Octavian
(Shakespeare's spelling: Octavius), Caesar's ghost appears
to Brutus with a warning of defeat ("thou shalt see me at
Philippi", IV.iii,283). Events go
badly for the conspirators during the battle; both Brutus
and Cassius choose to commit suicide rather than to be
captured. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus, who has
remained "the noblest Roman of them all" (V.v,68) and hints at the friction
between Mark Antony and Octavian which will characterize
another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony
and Cleopatra.
Deviations From Plutarch
Shakespeare
makes Caesar's
triumph take place on the day of lupercalia instead of six
months earlier
For greater Dramatic effect he
has made the Capitol
the venue of Caesar's death and not the Curia Pompeiana (A
meeting hall at the rear of the courtyard behind Pompey's
theater in the Campus Martius).
Caesar's
murder, the funeral, Antony's
oration, the reading of the will, and Octavius'
arrival all take place on the same day in the play. However,
historically, the assassination took place on March
15 (The ides of March), the will was
published three days later on March 18,
the funeral took place on March
20 and Octavius
arrived only in May.
Shakespeare
makes the Triumvirs
meet in Rome instead of near Bolonia,
so as to avoid a third locale.
He has combined the two Battles of
Phillipi although there was a twenty day interval between them.
Shakespeare gives Caesar's last
words as "Et tu, Brute?
Then fall, Caesar." ("And you, Brutus? Then
fall, Caesar."). Plutarch
says he said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he
saw Brutus among the conspirators.[5].
However, Suetonius
reports his last words, spoken in Greek
" (transliterated as) "Kai su, teknon?" = "You too, child?"
in English.[6]
Shakespeare
deviated from these historical facts in order to curtail
time and compress the facts so that the play could be staged
without any kind of difficulty. The tragic force is
condensed into a few scenes for the heightened effect.
Notable stage productions
á
1926:
By far the most elaborate performance of the play was staged
as a benefit for the Actors'
Fund of America at the Hollywood
Bowl. Caesar arrived for the Lupercal
in a chariot drawn by four white horses. The stage was the
size of a city block and dominated by a central tower eighty
feet in height. The event was mainly aimed at creating work
for unemployed
actors. Three hundred gladiators
appeared in an arena scene not featured in Shakespeare's
play; a similar number of girls danced as Caesar's captives;
a total of three thousand soldiers took part in the battle
sequences.
1937:
Orson Welles'
famous production at the Mercury
Theatre drew fervored comment as the director
dressed his protagonists in uniforms reminiscent of those
common at the time in Fascist
Italy
and Nazi
Germany,
as well as drawing a specific analogy between Caesar and Mussolini.
Opinions vary on the artistic value of the resulting
production: some see Welles' mercilessly pared-down script
(the running time was around 90 minutes without an interval,
several characters were eliminated, dialogue was moved
around and borrowed from other plays, and the final two acts
were reduced to a single scene) as a radical and innovative
way of cutting away the unnecessary elements of
Shakespeare's tale; others thought Welles' version was a
mangled and lobotomised version of Shakespeare's tragedy
which lacked the psychological depth of the original. Most
agreed that the production owed more to Welles than it did
to Shakespeare. However, Welles's innovations have been
echoed in many subsequent modern productions, which have
seen parallels between Caesar's fall and the downfalls of
various governments in the twentieth century. The production
was most noted for its portrayal of the slaughter of Cinna (Norman Lloyd).
Parodies
The Canadian
comedy duo Wayne and
Shuster parodied Julius Caesar in their 1958
sketch Rinse the Blood off My Toga. Flavius Maximus, Private
Roman I, is hired by Brutus to investigate the death of
Caesar. The police procedural combines Shakespeare, Dragnet,
and vaudeville jokes and was first broadcast on the Ed Sullivan
Show. [1]
Notes
1.
F. E. Halliday, Shakespeare Companion, pp. 159, 260,
524, 533.
2. Richard Edes's Latin
play Caesar Interfectus (1582?) would not qualify. The Admiral's Men
had an anonymous Caesar and Pompey in their repertory in
1594Ð5, and another play, Caesar's Fall, or the Two Shapes,
written by Thomas Dekker,
Michael
Drayton, Thomas
Middleton, Anthony Munday,
and John Webster,
in 1601-2, too late for Patter's reference. Neither play has
survived. The anonymous Caesar's Revenge dates to 1606,
while George Chapman's
Caesar and Pompey dates from ca. 1613. E. K. Chambers,
Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2, p. 179; Vol. 3, pp. 259, 309;
Vol. 4, p. 4.
3. Halliday, p. 261.
4. Asimov's
Guide to Shakespeare, Vols. I and II (1970), ISBN
0-517-26825-6, 1970
5. Plutarch, Caesar 66.9
6. Suetonius, Julius 82.2
References
Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare
Companion 1564Ð1964. Balyimore, Penguin, 1964.
How did Shakespeare know about
Julius Caesar?
The Parallel Lives of Plutarch (Greek, AD 46 Ð
119) compares the lives of important Greeks with those of
Important Romans. Plutarch's
book was translated by
Sir Thomas North in 1579, and this translation was
Shakespeare's source for his Roman plays: Shakespeare used
full passages making only minor changes that would suit his
story line and give a more dramatic effect.
In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare took the following plots
or events almost without change from North's translation of
Plutarch:
Act I Scene ii
The Celebration of the feast of
Lupercal.
Offering of crown to Julius
Caesar by Mark Anthony, which Caesar refused to accept.
Suspicion in the mind of Caesar
about Cassius.
Act II Scene iii
Artemidorus giving Caesar a
letter of warning.
Act III Scene i
Assassination of Julius Caesar.
Oration of Brutus in the market
place.
Cassius opposed to the idea of
Brutus of giving Cassius a chance to speak at the Caesar's
funeral.
Act III Scene ii
Antony's funeral speech and,
afterward, the riot by the Roman people.
The escape of the conspirators.
Act III Scene iii
Mistaken murder of the poet Cinna
by the angry Roman mob.
Act IV Scene iii
Cassius's meeting with Brutus and
his accusation.
The Caesar's ghost appeared to
Brutus.
Act V Scene i
Brutus decides that he will
commit suicide if he loses the battle.
Act V Scene v
Brutus's suicide by running
onto the sword held by Strato.
Praise of Brutus by Antony.
0501Antony and Cleopatra.doc
A 1974
television production of Trevor
Nunn's stage version performed by London's
Royal Shakespeare Company, this version was shown in 1975
in the United
States to great acclaim. It stars Janet
Suzman as Cleopatra, Richard
Johnson as Antony, and Patrick
Stewart as Enobarbus.
-------------------------------------------------
Scholars believe that
Shakespeare wrote Antony
and Cleopatra in 1606, immediately after Macbeth, and it is
one of the last great tragedies that Shakespeare produced.
The most geographically sweeping of ShakespeareÕs plays, Antony and CleopatraÕs
setting is the entire Roman Empire, its backdrop the
well-documented history of Octavius Caesar, Marc Antony, and
Cleopatra. ShakespeareÕs primary source for Antony and Cleopatra
was the Life of
Marcus Antonius contained in PlutarchÕs Lives of the Noble
Grecians and Romans, which was translated into English
by Sir Thomas North in 1579. NorthÕs language was so rich
that Shakespeare incorporated large, relatively unchanged
excerpts of it into his text. The plot of the play also
remains close to NorthÕs history, although characters like
Enobarbus and CleopatraÕs attendants are largely
Shakespearean creations.
The action of the story takes
place roughly two years after the events of ShakespeareÕs
earlier play about the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar. At
the beginning of that tragedy, Caesar has triumphed over his
rival Pompey the Great, the father of young Pompey in Antony and Cleopatra,
and aspires to kingship. Caesar is then
assassinated by Cassius and Brutus, who hope to preserve
the Roman Republic. Instead, Cassius
and Brutus are defeated by Mark Antony and Octavius
Caesar, JuliusÕs nephew, who then join Marcus Aemilius
Lepidus to create a three-man government, or triumvirate,
over the empire.
Historically, the action of Antony and Cleopatra
takes place over a ten-year span, whereas in the play the
story is compressed to fit the needs of the stage. Antony is
clearly much older than he was in Julius Caesar, and
his political instincts seem to be waning. Octavius Caesar
was only a minor character in the earlier play, but here he
comes into his own as the man who will rise to become the
first Roman emperor. Most of the political battles and
machinations depicted are historically accurate, as is the
romance of the title characters.
Analysis of Major Characters
Mark Antony
Throughout the play, Antony
grapples with the conflict between his love for Cleopatra
and his duties to the Roman Empire. In Act I, scene i, he
engages Cleopatra in a conversation about the nature and
depth of their love, dismissing the duties he has neglected
for her sake: ÒLet Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fallÓ
(I.i.35Ð36). In the very next scene, however, Antony worries
that he is about to Òlose [him]self
in dotageÓ (I.ii.106) and fears that the death of his wife
is only one of the ills that his Òidleness doth hatchÓ
(I.ii.119). Thus, Antony finds himself torn between the Rome
of his duty and the Alexandria of his pleasure. The
geographical poles that draw him in opposite directions
represent deep-seated conflicts between his reason and
emotion, his sense of duty and his desire, his obligations
to the state and his private needs.
AntonyÕs understanding of
himself, however, cannot bear the stress of such tension. In
his mind, he is first and foremost a Roman hero of the first
caliber. He won his position as one of the three leaders of
the world by vanquishing the treacherous Brutus and Cassius,
who conspired to assassinate his predecessor, Julius Caesar.
He often recalls the golden days of his own heroism, but now
that he is entangled in an affair with the Egyptian queen,
his memories do little more than demonstrate how far he Has strayed from his ideal self. As
he points out to Octavia
in Act III, scene iv, his
current actions imperil his honor, and without his honorÑthe
defining characteristic of the Roman heroÑhe can no longer
be Antony: ÒIf I lose my honor, / I lose myself. Better
I were not yours / Than yours so
branchlessÓ (III.iv.22Ð24). Later, having suffered defeat at
the hands of both Caesar and Cleopatra, Antony returns to
the imagery of the stripped tree as he laments, Ò[T]his pine is barked / That
overtopped them allÓ (IV.xiii.23Ð24). Rather than amend his
identity to accommodate these defeats, Antony chooses to
take his own life, an act that restores him to his brave and
indomitable former self. In suicide, Antony manages to
convince himself and the world (as represented by Cleopatra
and Caesar) that he is Òa Roman by a Roman / Valiantly
vanquishedÓ (IV.xvi.59Ð60).
Cleopatra
The assortment
of perspectives from which we see Cleopatra illustrates the
varying understandings of her as a decadent foreign woman and
a noble ruler. As Philo and Demetrius take the stage in Act I,
scene i, their complaints about AntonyÕs neglected duties
frame the audienceÕs understanding of Cleopatra, the queen for
whom Antony risks his reputation. Within the first ten lines
of the play, the men declare Cleopatra a lustful Ògipsy,Ó a
description that is repeated throughout the play as though by
a chorus (I.i.10). Cleopatra is labeled a Òwrangling queenÓ
(I.i.50), a ÒslaveÓ (I.iv.19), an ÒEgyptian dishÓ (II.vi.123),
and a ÒwhoreÓ (III.vi.67); she is called ÒSalt CleopatraÓ
(II.i.21) and an enchantress who has made Antony Òthe noble
ruin of her magicÓ (III.x.18).
But to view Cleopatra as such is
to reduce her character to the rather narrow perspective of
the Romans, who, standing to lose their honor or kingdoms
through her agency, are most
threatened by her. Certainly this threat has much to do with
CleopatraÕs beauty and open sexuality, which, as Enobarbus
points out in his famous description of her in Act II, scene
ii, is awe-inspiring. But it is also a performance. Indeed,
when Cleopatra takes the stage, she does so as an actress,
elevating her passion, grief, and outrage to the most
dramatic and captivating level. As Enobarbus says, the queen
did not walk through the street, but rather
Hop[ped] forty paces . . .
And having lost her breath,
she spoke and panted,
That she did make defect
perfection,
And breathless, pour breath forth.
(II.ii.235Ð238)
Whether whispering sweet words of
love to Antony or railing at a supposedly disloyal servant,
Cleopatra leaves her onlookers breathless. As Antony notes,
she is a woman Ò[w]hom everything
becomesÑto chide, to laugh / To weepÓ (I.i.51Ð52). It is
this ability to be the perfect embodiment of all
thingsÑbeauty and ugliness, virtue and viceÑthat Cleopatra stands to lose after
her defeat by Caesar. By parading her through the streets of
Rome as his trophy, he intends to reduce her character to a
single, base elementÑto immortalize her as a whore. If
Antony cannot allow his conception of self to expand to
incorporate his defeats, then Cleopatra cannot allow hers to
be stripped to the image of a boy actor Òsqueaking
Cleopatra . . . / IÕthÕ posture of a whoreÓ
(V.ii.216Ð217). Cleopatra often behaves childishly and with
relentless self-absorption; nevertheless, her charisma,
strength, and indomitable will make her one of ShakespeareÕs
strongest, most awe-inspiring female characters.
Octavius
Caesar
Octavius Caesar is both a
menacing adversary for Antony and a rigid representation of
Roman law and order. He is not a two-dimensional villain,
though, since his frustrations with the ever-neglectful
Antony seem justified. When he complains to Lepidus that he
resents having to Òbear / So
great weight in [AntonyÕs] lightness,Ó we certainly
understand his concern (I.iv.24Ð25). He does not emerge as a
particularly likable characterÑhis treatment of Lepidus, for
instance, betrays the cruel underside of CaesarÕs aggressive
ambitionsÑbut he is a complicated one. He is, in other
words, convincingly human. There is, perhaps, no better
example of CaesarÕs humanity than his conflicted feelings
about Antony. For a good deal of the play, Caesar seems
bent, rather ruthlessly, on destroying Antony. When he
achieves this desired end, however, he does not relish the
moment as we might expect. Instead, he mourns the loss of a
great soldier and musters enough compassion to be not only
fair-minded but also fair-hearted, commanding that the
lovers be buried beside one another.
From SparkNotes
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the
fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Struggle Between Reason and
Emotion:
In his opening lines to
Demetrius, Philo complains that Antony has abandoned the
military endeavors on which his reputation is based for
CleopatraÕs sake. His criticism of AntonyÕs Òdotage,Ó or
stupidity, introduces a tension between reason and emotion
that runs throughout the play (I.i.1). Antony and
CleopatraÕs first exchange heightens this tension, as they
argue whether their love can be put into words and
understood or whether it exceeds such faculties and
boundaries of reason. If, according to Roman consensus,
Antony is the military hero and disciplined statesmen that
Caesar and others believe him to be, then he seems to have
happily abandoned his reason in order to pursue his passion.
He declares: ÒLet Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fallÓ
(I.i.35Ð36). The play, however, is more concerned with the
battle between reason and emotion than the triumph of one
over the other, and this battle is waged most forcefully in
the character of Antony. More than any other character in
the play, Antony vacillates between Western and Eastern
sensibilities, feeling pulled by both his duty to the empire
and his desire for pleasure, his want of military glory and
his passion for Cleopatra. Soon after his nonchalant
dismissal of CaesarÕs messenger, the empire, and his duty to
it, he chastises himself for his neglect and commits to
return to Rome, lest he Òlose [him]self
in dotageÓ (I.ii.106).
As the play progresses, Antony
continues to inhabit conflicting identities that play out
the struggle between reason and emotion. At one moment, he
is the vengeful war hero whom Caesar praises and fears. Soon
thereafter, he sacrifices his military position by unwisely
allowing Cleopatra to determine his course of action. As his
Roman alliesÑeven the ever-faithful EnobarbusÑabandon him,
Antony feels that he has, indeed, lost himself in dotage,
and he determines to rescue his noble identity by taking his
own life. At first, this course of action may appear to be a
triumph of reason over passion, of -Western sensibilities
over Eastern ones, but the play is not that simple. Although Antony dies
believing himself a man of honor, discipline, and reason,
our understanding of him is not nearly as straight-forward. In order to come to
terms with AntonyÕs character, we must analyze the aspects
of his identity that he ignores. He is, in the end, a man
ruled by passion as much as by reason. Likewise, the play
offers us a worldview in which one sensibility cannot easily
dominate another. Reason cannot ever fully conquer the
passions, nor can passion wholly undo reason.
The Clash of East and West:
Although Antony and Cleopatra
details the conflict between Rome and Egypt, giving us an
idea of the Elizabethan perceptions of the difference
between Western and Eastern cultures, it does not make a
definitive statement about which culture ultimately
triumphs. In the play, the Western and
Eastern poles of the world are characterized by those who
inhabit them: Caesar, for instance, embodies the
stoic duty of the West, while Cleopatra, in all her
theatrical grandeur, represents the free-flowing passions of
the East. CaesarÕs concerns throughout the play are
certainly imperial: he means to invade foreign lands in
order to invest them with traditions and sensibilities of
his own. But the play resists siding with this imperialist
impulse. Shakespeare, in other words, does not align the
playÕs sympathies with the West; Antony and Cleopatra
can hardly be read as propaganda for Western domination. On
the contrary, the Roman understanding of Cleopatra and her
kingdom seems exceedingly superficial. To Caesar, the queen
of Egypt is little more than a whore with a flair for drama.
His perspective allows little room for the real power of
CleopatraÕs sexualityÑshe can, after all, persuade the most
decorated of generals to follow her into ignoble retreat.
Similarly, it allows little room for the indomitable
strength of her will, which she demonstrates so forcefully
at the end of the play as she refuses to allow herself to be
turned into a ÒEgyptian puppetÓ for the entertainment of the
Roman masses (V.ii.204).
In Antony and Cleopatra,
West meets East, but it does
not, regardless of CaesarÕs triumph over the land of Egypt,
conquer it. CleopatraÕs suicide suggests that something of
the EastÕs spirit, the freedoms and passions that are not
represented in the playÕs conception of the West, cannot be
subsumed by CaesarÕs victory. The play suggests that the
East will live on as a visible and unconquerable
counterpoint to the West, bound as inseparably and eternally
as Antony and Cleopatra are in their tomb.
The Definition of Honor:
Throughout the play, characters
define honor variously, and often in ways that are not
intuitive. As Antony prepares to meet Caesar in battle, he
determines that he Òwill live / Or
bathe [his] dying honour in the blood / Shall make it live
againÓ (IV.ii.5Ð7). Here, he explicitly links the notion of
honor to that of death, suggesting the latter as a surefire
means of achieving the former. The play bears out this
assertion, since, although Antony and Cleopatra kill
themselves for different reasons, they both imagine that the
act invests them with honor. In death, Antony returns to his
identity as a true, noble Roman, becoming Òa Roman by a
Roman / Valiantly vanquishedÓ (IV.xvi.59Ð60), while
Cleopatra resolves to Òbury him, and then whatÕs brave,
whatÕs noble, / LetÕs do it after the high Roman fashionÓ
(IV.xvi.89Ð90). At first, the queenÕs words seem to suggest
that honor is a distinctly Roman attribute, but CleopatraÕs
death, which is her means of ensuring that she remains her
truest, most uncompromised self, is distinctly against Rome.
In Antony and
Cleopatra, honor seems less a function of Western or
Eastern culture than of the charactersÕ determination to
define themselves on their own terms. Both Antony and
Cleopatra secure honorable deaths by refusing to compromise
their identities.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring
structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help
to develop and inform the textÕs major themes.
Extravagant Declarations of Love:
In Act I, scene i, Antony and
Cleopatra argue over whether their love for one another can
be measured and articulated:
CLEOPATRA: [to Antony] If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
ANTONY: ThereÕs beggary in the
love that can be reckoned.
CLEOPATRA: IÕll set a bourn
how far to be beloved.
ANTONY: Then must thou needs
find out new heaven, new earth.
(I.i.14Ð17)
This exchange sets the tone for
the way that love will be discussed and understood
throughout the play. Cleopatra expresses the expectation
that love should be declared or demonstrated grandly. She
wants to hear and see exactly how much Antony loves her.
Love, in Antony and
Cleopatra, is not comprised of private intimacies, as
it is in Romeo and
Juliet. Instead, love belongs to the public arena. In
the lines quoted above, Cleopatra claims that she will set
the boundaries of her loverÕs affections, and Antony
responds that, to do so, she will need to discover uncharted
territories. By likening their love to the discovery and
claim of Ònew heaven, new earth,Ó the couple links private
emotions to affairs of state. Love, in other words, becomes
an extension of politics, with the annexation of anotherÕs
heart analogous to the conquering of a foreign land.
Public Displays of Affection:
In Antony and Cleopatra,
public displays of affection are generally understood to be
expressions of political power and allegiance. Caesar, for
example, laments that Octavia arrives in Rome without the
fanfare of a proper entourage because it betrays her
weakness: without an accompanying army of horses, guardsmen,
and trumpeters, she cannot possibly be recognized as
CaesarÕs sister or AntonyÕs wife. The connection between
public display and power is one that the
charactersÑespecially Caesar and CleopatraÑunderstand well.
After AntonyÕs death, their battle of wills revolves around
CaesarÕs desire to exhibit the Egyptian queen on the streets
of Rome as a sign of his triumph. Cleopatra refuses such an
end, choosing instead to take her own life. Even this act is
meant as a public performance, however: decked in her
grandest royal robes and playing the part of the tragic
lover, Cleopatra intends her last act to be as much a
defiance of CaesarÕs power as a gesture of romantic
devotion. For death, she claims, is Òthe way / To fool their preparation and to
conquer / Their most absurd intentsÓ (V.ii.220Ð222).
Female Sexuality:
Throughout the play, the male
characters rail against the power of female sexuality.
Caesar and his men condemn Antony for the weakness that
makes him bow to the Egyptian queen, but they clearly lay
the blame for his downfall on Cleopatra. On the rare
occasion that the Romans do not refer to her as a whore,
they describe her as an enchantress whose beauty casts a
dangerous spell over men. As Enobarbus notes, Cleopatra
possesses the power to warp the minds and judgment of all
men, even Òholy priestsÓ who Ò[b]less
herÓ when she acts like a whore (II.ii.244Ð245).
The unapologetic openness of
CleopatraÕs sexuality stands to threaten the Romans. But
they are equally obsessed with the powers of OctaviaÕs
sexuality. CaesarÕs sister, who, in beauty and temperament
stands as CleopatraÕs opposite, is nevertheless considered
to possess power enough to mend the triumvirÕs damaged
relationship: Caesar and Antony expect that she will serve
to Òknit [their] hearts / With an unslipping knotÓ
(II.ii.132Ð133). In this way, women are saddled with both
the responsibility for menÕs political alliances and the
blame for their personal failures.
Symbols
Symbols are objects,
characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts.
Shape-Changing Clouds:
In Act IV, scene xv, Antony
likens his shifting sense of self to a cloud that changes
shape as it tumbles across the sky. Just as the cloud turns
from Òa bear or lion, / A towered citadel, a pendent rock,Ó
Antony seems to change from the reputed conqueror into a
debased victim (IV.xv.3Ð4). As he says to Eros, his
uncharacteristic defeat, both on the battlefield and in
matters of love, makes it difficult for him to Òhold this
visible shapeÓ (IV.xv.14).
CleopatraÕs Fleeing Ships:
The image of CleopatraÕs fleeing
ships is presented twice in the play. Antony twice does
battle with Caesar at sea, and both times his navy is
betrayed by the queenÕs retreat. The ships remind us of
CleopatraÕs inconstancy and of the inconstancy of human
character in the play. One cannot be sure of CleopatraÕs
allegiance: it is uncertain whether she flees out of fear or
because she realizes it would be politically savvy to align
herself with Caesar. Her fleeing ships are an effective
symbol of her wavering and changeability.
The Asps:
One of the most memorable symbols
in the play comes in its final moments, as Cleopatra applies
deadly snakes to her skin. The asps
are a prop in the queenÕs final
and most magnificent performance. As she lifts one snake,
then another to her breast, they become her children and she
a common wet nurse: ÒDost thou not see my baby at my breast,
/ That sucks the nurse asleep?Ó
(V.ii.300Ð301). The domestic
nature of the image contributes to CleopatraÕs final
metamorphosis, in death, into AntonyÕs wife. She assures
him, ÒHusband, I comeÓ (V.ii.278).
--------------------------
Cleopatra -- Daughter of the Pharaoh
From http://www.royalty.nu/Africa/Egypt/Cleopatra.html
Cleopatra VII was born in 69 BC
in Alexandria, which was then the capital of Egypt. Her
father was Egypt's pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, nicknamed Auletes
or "Flute-Player." Cleopatra's mother was probably Auletes's
sister, Cleopatra V Tryphaena. (It was commonplace for
members of the Ptolemaic dynasty to marry their siblings.)
There was another Cleopatra in
the family -- Cleopatra VII's elder sister, Cleopatra VI.
Cleopatra VII also had an older sister named Berenice; a
younger sister, Arsinoe; and two younger brothers, both
called Ptolemy. The family was not truly Egyptian, but
Macedonian. They were descended from Ptolemy I, a general of
Alexander the Great who became king of Egypt after
Alexander's death in 323 BC.
Ptolemy XII was a weak and cruel
ruler, and in 58 BC the people of Alexandria rebelled and
overthrew him. He fled to Rome while his eldest daughter,
Berenice, took the throne. She married a cousin but soon had
him strangled so that she could marry another man,
Archelaus. At some point during Berenice's three-year reign
Cleopatra VI died of unknown causes. In 55 BC Ptolemy XII
reclaimed his throne with the help of the Roman general
Pompey. Berenice was beheaded (her husband was executed, as
well).
Cleopatra VII was now the
pharaoh's oldest child. When her father died in 51 BC,
leaving his children in Pompey's care, Cleopatra and her
brother Ptolemy XIII inherited the throne.
Queen of Egypt
Cleopatra was 17 or 18 when she
became the queen of Egypt. She was far from beautiful,
despite her glamorous image today. She is depicted on
ancient coins with a long hooked nose and masculine
features. Yet she was clearly a very seductive woman. She
had an enchantingly musical voice and exuded charisma. She
was also highly intelligent. She spoke nine languages (she
was the first Ptolemy pharaoh who could actually speak
Egyptian!) and proved to be a shrewd politician.
In compliance with Egyptian
tradition Cleopatra married her brother and co-ruler,
Ptolemy XIII, who was about 12 at the time. But it was a
marriage of convenience only, and Ptolemy was pharaoh in
name only. For three years he remained in the background
while Cleopatra ruled alone.
Ptolemy's advisors - led by a
eunuch named Pothinus - resented Cleopatra's independence
and conspired against her. In 48 BC they stripped Cleopatra
of her power and she was forced into exile in Syria. Her
sister Arsinoe went with her.
Cleopatra and Caesar
Determined to regain her throne,
Cleopatra amassed an army on Egypt's border. At this time
Pompey was vying with Julius Caesar for
control of the Roman Empire. After losing the battle of
Pharsalos he sailed to Alexandria, pursued by Caesar, to
seek Ptolemy's protection. But Ptolemy's advisors thought it
would be safer to side with Caesar, and when Pompey arrived
he was stabbed to death while the pharaoh watched.
Three days later Caesar reached
Alexandria. Before he entered the city, Ptolemy's courtiers
brought him a gift -- Pompey's head. But Pompey had once
been Caesar's friend, and Caesar was appalled by his brutal
murder. He marched into the city, seized control of the
palace, and began issuing orders. Both Ptolemy and Cleopatra
were to dismiss their armies and meet with Caesar, who would
settle their dispute. But Cleopatra knew that if she entered
Alexandria openly, Ptolemy's henchmen would kill her. So she
had herself smuggled to Caesar inside an oriental rug. When
the rug was unrolled, Cleopatra tumbled out. It is said that
Caesar was bewitched by her charm, and became her lover that
very night.
When Ptolemy saw Caesar and
Cleopatra together the next day, he was furious. He stormed
out of the palace, shouting that he had been betrayed.
Caesar had Ptolemy arrested, but the pharaoh's army -- led
by the eunuch Pothinus and Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe --
laid seige to the palace.
In hopes of appeasing the
attackers Caesar released Ptolemy XIII, but the Alexandrian
War continued for almost six months. It ended when Pothinus
was killed in battle and Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile
while trying to flee. Alexandria surrendered to Caesar, who
captured Arsinoe and restored Cleopatra to her throne.
Cleopatra then married her brother Ptolemy XIV, who was 11
or 12 years old.
Soon after their victory
Cleopatra and Caesar enjoyed a leisurely two-month cruise on
the Nile. The Roman historian Suetonius wrote that they
would have sailed all the way to Ethiopia if Caesar's troops
had agreed to follow him. Cleopatra may have become pregnant
at this time. She later gave birth to a son, Ptolemy XV,
called Caesarion or "Little Caesar." It has been suggested
that Caesar wasn't really Caesarion's father -- despite his
promiscuity, Caesar had only one other child - but Caesarion
strongly resembled Caesar, and Caesar acknowledged Caesarion
as his son.
After the cruise Caesar returned
to Rome, leaving three legions in Egypt to protect
Cleopatra. A year later he invited Cleopatra to visit him in
Rome. She arrived in the autumn of 46 BC, accompanied by
Caesarion and her young brother/husband, Ptolemy XIV. In
September Caesar celebrated his war triumphs by parading
through the streets of Rome with his prisoners, including
Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe. (Caesar spared Arsinoe's life,
but later Mark Antony had her killed at Cleopatra's
request.)
Cleopatra lived in Caesar's villa
near Rome for almost two years. Caesar showered her with
gifts and titles. He even had a statue of her erected in the
temple of Venus Genetrix. His fellow
Romans were scandalized by his extra-marital affair
(Caesar was married to a woman named Calpurnia). It was
rumored that Caesar intended to pass a law allowing him to
marry Cleopatra and make their son his heir. It was also
rumored that Caesar -- who had accepted a lifetime
dictatorship and sat on a golden throne in the Senate -
intended to become the king of Rome.
On March 15, 44 BC a crowd of
conspirators surrounded Caesar at a Senate meeting and
stabbed him to death. Knowing that she too was in danger,
Cleopatra quickly left Rome with her entourage. Before or
immediately after their return to Egypt, Ptolemy XIV died,
possibly poisoned at Cleopatra's command. Cleopatra then
made Caesarion her co-regent.
Cleopatra and Mark Antony
Caesar's assassination caused
anarchy and civil war in Rome. Eventually the empire was
divided among three men: Caesar's great-nephew Octavian, who
later became the emperor Augustus; Marcus
Lepidus; and Marcus Antonius, better known today as Mark
Antony.
In 42 BC Mark Antony summoned
Cleopatra to Tarsus (in modern-day Turkey) to question her
about whether she had assisted his enemies. Cleopatra
arrived in style on a barge with a gilded stern, purple
sails, and silver oars. The boat was sailed by her maids,
who were dressed as sea nymphs. Cleopatra herself was
dressed as Venus, the goddess of love. She reclined under a
gold canopy, fanned by boys in Cupid costumes.
Antony, an unsophisticated,
pleasure-loving man, was impressed by this blatant display
of luxury, as Cleopatra had intended. Cleopatra entertained
him on her barge that night, and the next night Antony
invited her to supper, hoping to outdo her in magnificence.
He failed, but joked about it in his good-natured, vulgar
way. Cleopatra didn't seem to mind his tasteless sense of
humor - in fact, she joined right in. Like Caesar before
him, Antony was enthralled. Forgetting his responsibilities,
he accompanied Cleopatra to Alexandria and spent the winter
with her there.
The Greek writer Plutarch wrote
of Cleopatra, "Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but she
had a thousand. Were Antony serious or disposed to mirth,
she had at any moment some new delight or charm to meet his
wishes; at every turn she was upon him, and let him escape
her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with
him, drank with him, hunted with him; and when he exercised
in arms, she was there to see. At night she would go
rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their
doors and windows, dressed like a servant-woman, for Antony
also went in servant's disguise... However, the Alexandrians
in general liked it all well enough, and joined
good-humouredly and kindly in his frolic and play."
Finally, "rousing himself from
sleep, and shaking off the fumes of wine," Antony said
goodbye to Cleopatra and returned to his duties as a ruler
of the Roman empire. Six months
later Cleopatra gave birth to twins, Cleopatra Selene and
Alexander Helios. It was four years before she saw their
father again. During that time Antony married Octavian's
half-sister, Octavia. They had two daughters, both named
Antonia.
In 37 BC, while on his way to
invade Parthia, Antony enjoyed another rendezvous with
Cleopatra. He hurried through his military campaign and
raced back to Cleopatra. From then on Alexandria was his
home, and Cleopatra was his life. He married her in 36 BC
and she gave birth to another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Meanwhile, back in Rome, Octavia
remained loyal to her bigamous husband. She decided to visit
Antony, and when she reached Athens she received a letter
from him saying that he would meet her there. However,
Cleopatra was determined to keep Antony away from his other
wife. She cried and fainted and starved herself and got her
way. Antony cancelled his trip, and Octavia returned home
without seeing her husband.
The Roman people were disgusted
by the way Antony had treated Octavia. They were also angry
to hear that Cleopatra and Antony were calling themselves
gods (the New Isis and the New Dionysus). Worst of all, in
34 BC Antony made Alexander Helios the king of Armenia,
Cleopatra Selene the queen of Cyrenaica and Crete, and
Ptolemy Philadelphus the king of Syria. Caesarion was
proclaimed the "King of Kings," and Cleopatra was the "Queen
of Kings."
Outraged, Octavian convinced the
Roman Senate to declare war on Egypt. In 31 BC Antony's
forces fought the Romans in a sea battle off the coast of
Actium, Greece. Cleopatra was there with sixty ships of her
own. When she saw that Antony's cumbersome, badly-manned galleys were losing to
the Romans' lighter, swifter boats, she fled the scene.
Antony abandoned his men to follow her. Although it is
possible that they had prearranged their retreat, the Romans
saw it as proof that Antony was enslaved by his love of
Cleopatra, unable to think or act on his own.
For three days Antony sat alone
in the prow of Cleopatra's ship, refusing to see or speak to
her. They returned to Egypt, where Antony lived alone for a
time, brooding, while Cleopatra prepared for an invasion by
Rome. When Antony received word that his forces had
surrendered at Actium and his allies had gone over to
Octavian, he left his solitary home and returned to
Cleopatra to party away their final days.
Cleopatra began experimenting
with poisons to learn which would cause the most painless
death. She also built a mausoleum to which she moved all of
her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and other
treasure.
In 30 BC Octavian reached
Alexandria. Mark Antony marched his army out of the city to
meet the enemy. He stopped on high ground to watch what he
expected would be a naval battle between his fleet and the
Roman fleet. Instead he saw his fleet salute the Romans with
their oars and join them. At this Antony's cavalry also
deserted him. His infantry was soon defeated and Antony
returned to the city, shouting that Cleopatra had betrayed
him. Terrified that he would harm her, Cleopatra fled to the
monument that housed her treasures and locked herself in, ordering her servants to
tell Antony she was dead. Believing it, Antony cried out,
"Now, Antony, why delay longer? Fate has snatched away your
only reason for living."
He went to his room and opened his
coat, exclaiming that he would soon be with Cleopatra. He
ordered a servant named Eros to kill him, but Eros killed
himself instead. "Well done, Eros," Antony said, "you show
your master how to do what you didn't have the heart to do
yourself." Antony stabbed himself in the stomach and passed
out on a couch. When he woke up he begged his servants to
put him out of his misery, but they ran away. At last
Cleopatra's secretary came and told him Cleopatra wanted to
see him.
Overjoyed to hear
Cleopatra was alive, Antony had himself carried to her
mausoleum. Cleopatra was afraid to open the door because of
the approach of Octavian's army, but she and her two serving
women let down ropes from a window and pulled him up.
Distraught, Cleopatra laid Antony on her bed and beat her
breasts, calling him her lord, husband and emperor. Antony
told her not to pity him, but to remember his past
happiness. Then he died.
The Death of Cleopatra:
When Octavian and his men reached
her monument Cleopatra refused to let them in. She
negotiated with them through the barred door, demanding that
her kingdom be given to her children. Octavian ordered one
man to keep her talking while others set up ladders and
climbed through the window. When Cleopatra saw the men she
pulled out a dagger and tried to stab herself,
but she was disarmed and taken prisoner. Her children were
also taken prisoner and were treated well.
Octavian allowed Cleopatra to
arrange Antony's funeral. She buried him with royal
splendor. After the funeral she took to her bed, sick with
grief. She wanted to kill herself, but Octavian kept her
under close guard. One day he visited her and she flung
herself at his feet, nearly naked, and told him she wanted
to live. Octavian was lulled into a false sense of security.
Cleopatra was determined to die -
perhaps because she had lost Mark Antony, perhaps because
she knew Octavian intended to humiliate her, as her sister
Arsinoe had been humiliated, by marching her through Rome in
chains. With Octavian's permission she visited Antony's
tomb. Then she returned to her mausoleum, took a bath, and
ordered a feast. While the meal was being prepared a man
arrived at her monument with a basket of figs. The guards
checked the basket and found nothing suspicious, so they
allowed the man to deliver it to Cleopatra.
After she had eaten, Cleopatra
wrote a letter, sealed it, and sent it to Octavian. He
opened it and found Cleopatra's plea that he would allow her
to be buried in Antony's tomb. Alarmed, Octavian sent
messengers to alert her guards that Cleopatra planned to
commit suicide. But it was too late. They found the 39-year
old queen dead on her golden bed, with her maid Iras dying
at her feet. Her other maid, Charmion, was weakly adjusting
Cleopatra's crown. "Was this well done of your lady,
Charmion?" one of the guards demanded.
"Extremely well," said Charmion,
"as became the descendent of so many kings." And she too
fell over dead.
Two pricks were found on
Cleopatra's arm, and it was believed that she had allowed
herself to be bitten by an asp (a kind of poisonous snake)
that was smuggled in with the figs. As she had wished, she
was buried beside Antony.
Cleopatra was the last pharaoh;
after her death Egypt became a Roman province. Because
Caesarion was Julius Caesar's son and might pose a threat to
Octavian's power, Octavian had the boy strangled by his
tutor. Cleopatra's other children were sent to Rome to be
raised by Octavia in the court of Octavian (Augustus).
Cleopatra Selene married King Juba II of Mauretania (who had
been raised in the court of Augustus along with Cleopatra
Selene) and had two children, Ptolemy and Drusilla. Their
capital as Sirta in northern Africa was a thriving and very
Roman metropolis. No one knows what happened to Alexander
Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus.
0601Augustus.doc
Imperium: Augustus
DVD/178 MIN./US R
"O'Toole
is the one who really carries the film, an old veteran
delivering on a part that, in retrospect, seems as if it
couldn't have been played by another."
DVD REVIEW
By James Plath
FIRST PUBLISHED Dec 28, 2004
As a boy, I was a bit of an
Ancient Rome junkie. I collected Roman Imperial coins, I
read every book I could find on the Roman Empire, and, of
course, I relished those period films. Even as an adult, I
loved "I, Claudius" and Russell Crowe's performance in
"Gladiator." I'm also a Peter O'Toole fan, so the stage was
certainly set for me to settle in on a cold winter's night
and curl up with this made-for-Italian-television three-hour
film. And I did enjoy "Augustus"Ñdespite one egregiously
horrible scene, some soap-opera moments, and occasional
wincing over apparent anachronisms.
You could call "Augustus" a
more peripatetic and orgy-less "I, Claudius," because there
are plenty of scenes that will otherwise remind viewers of
that acclaimed 1960 BBC mini-series. The cameras frequently
pull in for tight shots on the faces of Augustus (O'Toole)
and his wife Livia (Charlotte Rampling), or on Marc Antony
(Massimo Ghini) and Cleopatra (Anna Valle). The scene
construction also resembles a stage play or a screenplay
shot on a small soundstage, with characters talking at
length to each other in close quarters. But unlike "I,
Claudius," which was shot
indoorsÑeven implied faraway battle locations were filmed
inside tentsÑthis 2003 entry also offers scenery, scope, and
large-scale battles. "Augustus" was filmed on location in
Tunisia, and the production values are quite good.
"Did I play my part well in
this comedy called life?" Augustus asks those who gather
around his deathbed at the film's beginning. "Applause
please." Then it's a flashback to the recent past, with the
beloved Augustus milling among his people in the streets of
Rome and surviving yet another assassination attempt. But
perhaps because we haven't seen it before in films, the shot
of Augustus walking through the crowded streets while the
plebeians applaud seems more appropriate to Martin Sheen
walking onto the set of "The West Wing." Yes, Augustus was
instrumental in encouraging public readings as performances,
and the historian Suetonius talks about occasions when
audiences were so rude that they talked, slept, or did
nothing with their hands. But it was still a bit
jarringÑsame with a line that Marc Antony says to Augustus:
"You have no balls." Whoa! And yet, Rai Radiotelevisione
Italiana enlisted seven professors as historical advisors,
so perhaps these aren't anachronisms after all. Still, they
sure felt head-snappingly contemporary.
The other major head-snapper
was a battle scene where Augustus and Mark Anthony are about
to face off with their armies when one soldier staring
straight ahead at the opposing phalanx exclaims, "It's my
brother," then another says "That's my friend, Marcus," and
another says, "That's my wife's brother," and
so-on-and-so-forth, until you expect them all to belt out a
stirring rendition of "He's My Friend," a song from "The
Unsinkable Molly Brown." It's contemporary, it's comic, and
it beats you over the head with a point that a five year old
could have gotten. Another battle scene features the
corniest deaths by arrows many of you will have witnessed.
Yet, those goofy moments aside, the battles, the scenes of
political intrigue, and the "talky" scenes that lend some
depth to the characters make for a collectively enjoyable
viewing experience.
The action begins with Julius
Caesar calling for Octavius (Augustus) to join him in Spain,
and we see the pair fighting side by side and understand the
secret behind Caesar's power: love the legions and work side
by side with them and they will die for you. Later, Octavius
takes on the name that his great-uncle bestowed upon him:
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, though he would become known
as Caesar Augustus or, after his deification, the Divine
Augustus. As the first master of public relations, Augustus
also discovers that to succeed he must get the people to
love him. Even as he's destined to be part of a second
triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus, we watch him form part
of a trio of close friends: Octavius, the leader; Agrippa
(Ken Duken), the general; and Maecenas (Russell Barr, who
plays the part in a flamboyantly flaming way), the
politician. The film is narrated in an interesting way, told
in flashbacks within a flashback as the dying Augustus
narrates part of the story and an old Augustus shares part
of his life with his daughter, Julia (Vittoria Belvedere).
There's intrigue everywhere and always because the throne is
at stake, and the film stays pretty close to the basic
historical facts about Augustus' life, leaving out an
earlier marriage and deviating slightly in other areas as
well. But that's not bad. It allows the filmmakers to focus
on the events that led to Augustus' swift rise to power, and
his inclination toward peace when all around him preferred
war.
O'Toole is the one who really
carries the film, an old veteran delivering on a part that,
in retrospect, seems as if it couldn't have been played by
another. The supporting cast isn't as strong, but they still
deliver believable performances. Part of the credit has to
go to Eric Lerner, who contributes an intelligent script
that only infrequently crosses the line into melodrama, and
to Young, who manages to move the film forward so that 178
minutes doesn't feel like a punishment. This would have
merited a 7, if it weren't for that really awful battle
scene that's an insult to even a rock's intelligence.
Those of you wanting to read
more about Augustus, who ruled Rome from 27 bc to 14 ad, might consider the
following as a starting point:
Buchan, John. Augustus.
Boston: Houghton, 1937. Many consider this to be the modern
definitive biography of Caesar Augustus.
Carcopino, Jerome. Daily Life in Ancient Rome. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1940. A highly readable and
fascinating account of what it would have been like to live
in Rome, including daily routines and customs, based on
historical research.
Charlesworth, M.P. The Roman Empire. London: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1968. Another good primer
about life in Ancient Rome, this one focusing on broader
areas of culture.
Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Trans. Robert
Graves. London: Penguin Classics, 1957. The
"horse's mouth" bio. Suetonius was born around 69
ad. and based his lives of the
Caesars on eyewitness accounts.
Walworth, Nancy Z. Augustus
Caesar. New York: Chelsea House,
1989. This one is suggested for younger readers.
Bottom Line:
Aside from the lapses in
writing and directorial judgment that push "Augustus" in the
direction of a bad soap opera, and despite some action
scenes where the deaths seem as routinely dramatic as the
cavalrymen shot by arrows in all those 1950s westerns, this
made-for-TV movie is a respectable addition to a growing
roster of ancient world spectaclesÑand no, we're not
counting that thinly disguised porno flick, "Caligula."
"Augustus" is as good as or
better than "The Robe" (1953) and its sequel, "Demetrius
and the Gladiators" (1954), and the writing and
performances are miles of aqueducts better than "The Last
Days of Pompeii" (1960). As an epic celebrating a single
character's life, it's on a par with "Cleopatra" (1963),
but the storyline and action isn't as compelling as
"Ben-Hur" (1959) or "Spartacus" (1960), and the
cinematography isn't anywhere near as stylish as what
Ridley Scott gave us in "Gladiator" (2000). Still,
"Augustus" does a nice job of blending a relatively
historically accurate narrative with some action and
character development. In fact, those who think "I,
Claudius" too talky and slow-moving might actually prefer
"Augustus." O'Toole's performance is every bit as strong
as Derek Jacobi's, and there's much more in the way of
public scenes and battles to offset quieter momentsÑno
orgies, mind you, but then again, Roman debauchery wasn't
built in a day.
AUGUSTUS (31 B.C. - 14 A.D.)
by Nina C. Coppolino
From http://www.roman-emperors.org/auggiex.htm
Introduction and Summary
Augustus was born Gaius Octavius
on 23 September 63 B.C. His mother, Atia, was the niece of
Julius Caesar; Atia's mother was Caesar's sister. Augustus,
therefore, as the great-nephew of Julius Caesar, had family
connections to political power at Rome. Unlike his
great-uncle and adoptive father who was murdered by a
senatorial conspiracy in 44 B.C., Augustus lived a long
life, having replaced the oligarchic rule of the Roman
Republic with a constitutional monarchy, controlled first by
the Julio-Claudian Dynasty (31 B.C. -- 68 A.D.), in which
Augustus was followed by Tiberius,
Claudius, Caligula,
and Nero,
all of whom were descended from Augustus or his wife, Livia.
Through his gradual efforts, and
through the circumstances of his era, Augustus ruled Rome
alone for nearly a half-century (31 B.C. -- 14 A.D.), and he
set for all his successors the institutional and ideological
foundations of the Roman Empire. The broad bases of his
power were the army, whose loyalty was maintained by money
and land-grants at retirement, and Tiberius'
apparently genuine support of many people, who wanted at any
constitutional cost an end to the factional bloodshed of the
late Republican civil wars; the nobles retained niches in
the regular operation of the still prestigious political
administration or in military roles, property was ultimately
secured, administrative roles were more easily filled by
some increased social mobility among the ranks and classes,
and the populace (once fed) was ostensibly defended by the
tribunicia potestas with which Augustus legitimized his
rule, and which finally became the official rubric under
which the state was run for centuries. The innovative
outcome of Augustus' rule was the acquisition of sole power
at Rome and abroad by the assumption of traditionally
distributed powers found in long-standing Roman
magistracies, military commands, state religious honors,
patronage, family connections, and personal influence.
Rise and Acquisition of Powers
Youth and career to 28 B.C.
In 51 B.C., at the age of twelve,
Octavian first appeared publicly to give the funeral oration
for his grandmother, Julia. In 48 Caesar had his
fifteen-year-old great-nephew elected to the priestly
college of the pontifices, and he also enrolled him in the
hereditary patrician aristocracy of Rome: on his mother's
side Octavian had the patrician blood of the Caesars, while
his father's family, the Octavii, were wealthy townsmen from
Velitrae, southeast of Rome, to which his father came only
as an equestrian banker, though his grandfather was a
senator. After recovering from illness in 46, Octavian
joined Caesar in Spain against the two sons of Pompey the
Great, and in 45 Octavian was sent to Apollonia in Epirus to
study with the Greek rhetorician Apollodorus of Pergamum,
and to train with legions stationed nearby. In 44, only
several months after his arrival in Greece, Octavian learned
that Julius Caesar had been murdered at Rome. Octavian then
arrived back in southern Italy to discover that he had been
adopted in Caesar's will as his son and heir. From this time
Octavian called himself C. Julius Caesar Octavianus, though
to avoid confusion, modern scholars customarily refer to him
as Octavian before 27 B.C.
A feud soon developed between
Octavian and Antony, Caesar's colleague as consul, who
intended to gain hold of Caesar's Gallic provinces and was
luring Caesar's veterans to his side. Octavian raised an
army on his own. Under the terms of Caesar's will, Octavian
was required to pay a legacy to the urban plebs, but Antony
refused to hand over the necessary cash which Caesar's widow
had given to him. In 43 at Mutina Antony was defeated by
Octavian with armies given to him by the senate. Octavian
was elected consul that year for the first time at the
unusually young age of nineteen; he had refused to fight
unless he got the consulship because he was convinced that
the senate would discard him after they had used him to get
rid of Antony. Finally in 43 at Bononia, Octavian made terms
with Antony and Lepidus, who had alternately supported
Caesar, Antony, and the senate. Together the three men
formed the triumvirate, which had been initially granted
absolute powers for five years. They ruthlessly proscribed
120 senators and many equestrian whose property and money
were confiscated to pay troops. In 42 Antony and Octavian
defeated Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar, in two
battles at Philippi in Macedonia; the credit went to Antony
because Octavian was ill during the fighting. On the
ostensibly Republican side, only Sextus Pompey survived with
a fleet, and Domitius Ahenobarbus with the fleet of Brutus
and Cassius.
In the division of provinces and
duties after Philippi, Antony got the potential wealth and
glory of the East, and Octavian got the difficult task of
settling veterans in Italy by confiscating property, since
there was no money yet to buy it. He faced protest at home
and the starvation of Rome by Sextus Pompey, who was
blockading grain ships in Sicily. In 40 Antony married
Octavian's sister Octavia. In that year at Perusia Octavian
fought and defeated Antony's brother, Lucius, who had
objected to Octavian's receiving credit for settling troops
in Italy before Antony returned from the East. Though Lucius
was pardoned, others of Octavian's enemies and the town
council of Perusia were executed. Octavian tried to win the
support of Sextus Pompey and his fleet by marrying Pompey's
aunt, Scribonia, in what was now Octavian's third and
penultimate match, producing his only daughter, Julia.
Pompey, however, sided with Antony who was vexed at the
Perusine episode and since 42 was spending winters in Egypt
with Cleopatra. In the autumn of 40 at Brundisium, Octavian
confronted Antony and the combined fleets of Pompey and
Ahenobarbus, but instead of hostilities they agreed to a
pact; they declared Antony's the Greek-speaking provinces
east of Macedonia, and Octavian's the Latin-speaking
provinces west of Illyricum, while Lepidus remained in
Africa, and Pompey initially got nothing and continued to
blockade Italy.
Despite concessions to Pompey, in
38 war broke out in indecisive
sea battles off Cumae and Rhegium on the coast of southern
Italy. Octavian divorced Scribonia and married his last wife
Livia, who brought to the marriage her own sons, Tiberius and
Drusus. In 38 Octavian replaced his praenomen Gaius with
Imperator, the title by which troops hailed their leader
after military success (ultimately Imperator developed into
the title Emperor). From this time Octavian's full title was
Imperator Caesar Divi Filius, including the reference to him
as the son of his deified father. In 37 Octavian built a new
fleet under the direction of his friend and lieutenant
Agrippa, and he met Antony at Tarentum to renew the
triumvirate for five more years. In 36 Octavian, Agrippa,
and Lepidus launched a triple attack on Sextus Pompey in
Sicily, and they won a naval battle at Naulochus, after
which Pompey was killed in Egypt, and Lepidus was ousted
from the triumvirate for trying to take over Sicily.
In 36 Octavian received
tribunician sacrosanctity for his personal security and as
an invocation of his father's support of the people; he
circumspectly declined the title of pontifex maximus because
it was held by Lepidus. Antony
launched a failed campaign against the Parthians, and when
his wife, Octavia, attempted to bring supplies and
additional troops, he snubbed her and her brother by sending
her home. In 34 Antony gave eastern provinces to his
children by Cleopatra, and Egypt and Cyprus to Cleopatra's
children by Caesar; these were the so-called Donations of
Alexandria. In the resulting propaganda war, Octavian did
the most damage to Antony by presenting Cleopatra and her
territorial gains as a foreign menace to the security of
Rome. From 35 to 33 Octavian fought in Illyricum and
Dalmatia, the eastern borders of Italy. In 33 Agrippa as
aedile dealt with the precious water supply in Rome and
restored aquaducts.
In 32 the inhabitants of Italy
and of many provinces swore a personal oath of allegiance to
Octavian to support him against his private enemies. By this
oath Octavian claimed that the people were demanding him as
leader in the now inevitable war, declared nominally against
Cleopatra. Antony divorced Octavia. In 31 Octavian defeated
the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra in a naval
battle at Actium
off the coast of Greece. After the suicides of Antony and
Cleopatra in Egypt, Octavian annexed Egypt as a province. In
31 Octavian assumed the consulship at Rome for the third
time and monopolized it successively through 23.
In 29 Octavian celebrated a
triple triumph at Rome for his conquest of Illyricum, for
the battle of Actium, and for the annexation of Egypt.
Octavian's now huge army of sixty legions began to be
demobilized and was shortly reduced to twenty-eight.
Soldiers and veterans were paid with funds now drawn from
the vast wealth of Egypt. Despite the fact that wars were
going on in Gaul and Spain, the temple of Janus at Rome was
ceremoniously closed, an event that happened only twice
before in history, to signify that Rome was at peace with
the world. The senate and people voted Octavian countless
other honors, crowns, games, commemorative structures, and
additional powers, including his ability to create
patricians, both to enlarge and to preserve the social
hierarchy into which Julius Caesar had previously introduced
Octavian himself. In 28 with Agrippa as his colleague in his
sixth consulship, Octavian held a census of the people and
moderately reduced the swollen ranks of the senate from 1000
to 800 members, of which he was appointed the leading man.
'The Republic Restored':
The First Constitutional
Settlement of the Principate, 27-24 B.C.
In 27 Octavian declared that he
had restored the republic, a claim echoed but also dismissed
even among the ancients. Octavian gave amnesty to his former
opponents in the civil wars. While the senate and assemblies
resumed their regular functions, Octavian maintained his
hold on the consulship, but elections for his colleague took
place. The swollen ranks of praetors
and quaestors were reduced by half to the Sullan numbers
of eight and twenty, respectively, and all these
offices retained their traditional functions, including the
consulship and praetorship as springboards for provincial
commands.
The real, monarchical hold,
however, that Octavian had on the state was military. When
Octavian announced his plans to lay down supreme power,
there had been protest in the senate, partly from his
partisans and partly perhaps from concern that the state
would erupt again into civil war. In the so-called 'first
settlement' of 27, Octavian agreed to accept for ten years a
provincial command which contained the largest standing
Roman armies, then stationed in Spain, Gaul, and Syria, the
so-called 'imperial provinces.' By the removal of senatorial
proconsuls from Octavian's three major provinces, and with
the placement there of subordinate legates, Octavian was no
longer threatened by men of consular rank with significant
armies. The three major senatorial provinces of Illyricum,
Macedonia and Africa appeared to balance Octavian's grant,
but in reality these provinces held only a few legions. Thus
without appearing to force the senate, Octavian obtained
sole proconsular power over the major provincial armies;
though this power normally lapsed at Rome, he maintained
both civil and military authority there through his
consulship. Technically Octavian used powers given to him
for a fixed period by the senate and people of Rome, and
there were Republican precedents, albeit abnormal ones, for
such powers and continuous rule.
Octavian later claimed that in 27
he had no more power than any of his colleagues in any
magistracy (Res Gestae 34.3), and he referred to himself
simply as princeps, the first man among equals at Rome. This
strictly unofficial and broad title, not to be confused with
the narrow parameters of the 'princeps senatus', had already
been applied to individuals in the late Republic, and for
centuries the leading men of Rome had been known as
'principes viri'. Thus the 'principate', as the era is now
designated, suggests a mere pre-eminence in civil affairs which belies absolute power
based ultimately on the army.
The official title decreed to
Octavian by the senate in 27 was Augustus, the name by which
he is most widely known, making his full title Imperator
Caesar Divi Filius Augustus. He considered adopting the name
'Romulus' and the association it would have for him as the
refounder of Rome. Because Romulus, however, also had the
contemporary discredit of both overt monarchy and
fratricide, Augustus preferred the association of his new
title with religious awe: holy things, for instance, were
called augusta. The title was
traditionally linked by etymology with augere, 'to
increase'; the adjective was juxtaposed with the religious
practice of augury in Ennius's well-known description of
Romulus's founding of Rome augusto
augurio. The title Augustus was
subsequently held by all Roman emperors except Vitellius,
and Augusta was used to address the wife of the reigning
emperor, or his mother.
After 27 Augustus maintained that
he excelled all his equals only in his auctoritas. This
term, also etymologically connected with augustus, had no constitutional
meaning and implied no legal powers; it signified Augustus's
moral authority and increased prestige which guaranteed the
good of the order in Rome. Auctoritas was personal power which rested on the loyalty of
people who, as clients of Augustus, recognized his military
conquest and his achievement of political stability for the
commonwealth. This type of power was seen previously in the
personal oath of allegiance of 32, and it did not depend on
the immediate constitutional settlement.
In 27 Augustus ultimately and
perhaps wisely freed Rome from his presence to visit the
western provinces of Gaul and Spain. When he returned to
Rome in 24, he became consul for the tenth time with one
Norbanus Flaccus, who had supported both Sextus Pompey and
Antony in the civil wars. Despite an indecisive outcome in
the Spanish war, honors were voted by
the senate to Augustus's relatives who
participated. Augustus himself was ill and facing a
conspiracy against his life.
The Second Settlement and the
Evolution
of the Principate, 23 -- 16 B.C.
In Augustus's absence from Rome,
dissatisfaction with the new regime had apparently resulted
in a conspiracy by his colleague in the consulship, Varro
Murena, and a Republican, Fannius Caepio, both of whom were
brought to trial and executed. Though Augustus veiled
monarchic power more than Julius Caesar did, Augustus's
unending series of consulships was a thorn in the side of
the senatorial class, which was prevented yearly from
competing for one of the two seats of the supreme
magistracy. In 23 Augustus abdicated the consulship, and in
so doing, he made room for more nobles, relieved himself of
consular duties, and increased the number of former consuls
available for administrative work. He held the consulship
again on only two occasions, 5 and 2 B.C., to introduce his
grandsons to public life; he held this office a total of
thirteen times, nine of them consecutively from 31-23.
Without the consulship Augustus
lacked legitimate civil and military authority at Rome.
Accordingly in 23, he was awarded the tribunicia potestas
for life. With this grant, Augustus regained the initiative
to bring legislation and motions before the senate; he got
the right of putting the first motion in any meeting of the
senate, despite the fact that the seniority of the actual
tribunate was very low; he technically had the right to the
tribunician veto, but he probably never had to use it,
because he would already have approved of motions before
they reached the senate; he got magisterial power to compel
citizens to obey his orders; he got the power to help
citizens oppressed by other magistrates (and he had already
been granted tribunician sacrosanctity for his personal
protection in 36). Augustus did not need any of these new
powers themselves, but rather the legitimacy they provided.
It was also convenient that tribunician power was
traditionally invoked in protection of the common people. To
advertise this association with the people, Augustus set the
official beginning of his reign at the assumption of
tribunician power in 23; traditionally years had been
numbered by the annual consulship, but now they were counted
by the successive tenure of tribunician power, a practice
which continued throughout the Imperial period.
Without the consulship, Augustus
technically did not any longer have military power in Rome,
but only in his own provinces. The senate therefore enlarged
his proconsular imperium so that it did not lapse when he
entered the boundaries of the city; more importantly, since
the consuls at Rome had more power than any one abroad and
could command any army, Augustus's military power was
officially declared greater than any proconsul's, reducing
them all to his legates, with what was called 'maius
imperium proconsulare'. Greater military power and
tribunician power were thus for Augustus the legitimate
bases of rule, and they remained so throughout the duration
of the Empire.
Perhaps Augustus's illness in 23
forced him to provide for the control of the armies abroad
by having the senate grant Agrippa proconsular imperium for
five years; Agrippa then got an eastern command. In 22 riots
broke out at Rome, when flood, disease and famine were
attributed to the fact that Augustus had withdrawn from the
consulship and apparently was not in charge. Augustus
refused to take the office of dictator, which was too
politically charged with envy and hatred, and he also
refused to accept the censorship for life and its
traditionally despised power to expel members of the senate
arbitrarily. He did, however, assume the care of the grain
supply, which he quickly repaired, and then he left for
Sicily, Greece, and Asia.
After Augustus left Rome, there
was disorder at the consular elections of 22, with only one
consul elected when Augustus refused to stand for the
office; the next year there was a similar crisis. Augustus
refused to return to Rome during all the trouble. To help
elect the consuls and to restore order he sent Agrippa, who
in 21 married Augustus's daughter, Julia, then widowed by
the death of Marcellus two years earlier. In 19 Augustus was
again begged to take the consulship, which he refused, and
was summoned to Rome because of more unrest; the day he
finally arrived was declared a holiday by the senate, and an
altar was dedicated to Fortune the Homebringer. In 19 he
accepted consular power for life, the right to sit between
the two elected consuls, to bear the fasces as symbols of
power, and to be attended by twelve lictors. Though Augustus
did not need consular power, the visibility of it appeared
to quell the agitation of the people. He also accepted a
five-year appointment as supervisor of morals with censorial
powers. By 19 he held not the invidious offices but the
actual powers of the consulship, tribunate, censorship;
effectively, he also held the military dictatorship.
In 18 the powers of the
principate were renewed for five more years through the
extension of the proconsular power
which was initially granted to Augustus for ten
years at the first constitutional settlement of 27. Now
Augustus made Agrippa virtually co-regent through the
renewal award of proconsular power, and the award of
tribunician power. In 18 Augustus used his censorial power
to reduce the ranks of the senate again from eight-hundred to six- hundred members
(the three such senatorial reforms took place in 29, 18, and
11). By the authority of his tribunician power, he passed
the Julian Laws of 18 for moral reform and the criminal
code. The new laws were intended to mitigate the social and
civil disorder caused by the cynicism of late Republican
anarchy, and to encourage long-term stability for the state.
There were laws against adultery and promoting marriage and
childbirth by the grant of special privileges or penalties,
laws against luxury and electoral corruption, and appellate
laws superceding public
jury-verdicts ultimately to the jurisdiction of Augustus
himself.
Remaining years of the
Principate and
Succession, 17 B.C. -- 14 A.D.
To mark the new age of Augustus
in 17, he and Agrippa celebrated the solemn sacrifices at
the time-honored Secular Games. In succession plans that
year, Augustus adopted his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, sons
of Agrippa and Julia. From 16 to 13 Augustus was abroad
organizing Gaul, and Agrippa was in Asia. In 15 Augustus
established the Imperial mint at Lugdunum; the senate, which
traditionally controlled coinage, continued to produce money
in bronze, while Augustus obtained direct control over gold
and silver coinage with the mint at Lugdunum in the west and
at Antioch in the east. In 13 Augustus and Agrippa returned
to Rome, and their provinces were renewed for five more
years, as was Agrippa's tribunician power; later in that
year Agrippa died, leaving Augustus without his long-trusted
friend, who was buried with lavish honors in Augustus's
mausoleum on the bank of the Tiber river.
After Agrippa's death, Julia bore their third son, Agrippa
Postumus. Tiberius had
to divorce his wife, Vipsania, to marry the widowed Julia.
In 13 the former triumvir, Lepidus, also died, leaving open
the life-long office of the high priest of Roman
state-religion; in 12 Augustus
became pontifex maximus. Augustus's power as supervisor of
morals was renewed for five more years. He reformed the
senate for the third time, and he set up a permanent
commission for the care of the water supply, which had been
Agrippa's domain. Tiberius and
Drusus campaigned in Germany and Dalmatia, and in 9 Drusus
died. In 8 Augustus's proconsular power was renewed for a
third time for ten years; a census was held, the month
Sextilis was renamed August, and Rome was divided into
fourteen regions.
In 6 Tiberius was
given tribunician power for life and was sent to the east to
settle the throne in Armenia. In 5 and 2 Augustus again
assumed the consulship only to introduce his grandsons,
Gaius and Lucius, to public life, with their ceremonial
assumption of the toga virilis. At the designation of Gaius
in 5 as princeps iuventutis and so as apparent successor of
Augustus, Tiberius
settled at Rhodes for eight years in so-called retirement,
which may have been used to gain support in the east for his
own succession. In 2 B. C. Augustus received the purely
honorific title pater patriae, with the associations of the
power and prestigious influence of a father over the state
family. His titles included Imperator Caesar Divi Filius
Augustus Pontifex Maximus, Pater Patriae. All of his titles
were republican, including Imperator. His military
proconsular power was never given prominence in his official
appellation; Trajan was the first emperor to use the title
proconsul, and only when he was not in Italy.
In 2 Gaius was dispatched from
Rome to negotiate with the Parthians in the east. In this
year Augustus was compelled to banish from Rome his own
daughter, Julia, for her scandalous personal behavior, which
was a great embarrassment to her father's legislative
efforts at moral reform. With Julia's departure and divorce
from Tiberius,
Augustus had to make his dynastic plans without the hope of
any more male grandchildren, the supply of which dwindled to
only Agrippa Postumus, when Lucius and Gaius died, in 2 and
4 A.D., respectively. In 2 A.D. Tiberius was
recalled from Rhodes to Rome, perhaps because eastern
support for his succession had surpassed Gaius'; Tiberius'
consular imperium and tribunician power had run out in 1
B.C. and had not been renewed. In 4 A.D., after the death of
Gaius, Augustus adopted Tiberius and
Agrippa Postumus. Though Augustus preferred a Julian heir to
the Claudian Tiberius,
Augustus disliked the wild behavior of Agrippa Postumus and
exiled him three years after his adoption. Tiberius, now
adopted into the Julian line, was forced to enlarge the line
further by adopting, in dynastic preference to his own son
by Vipsania, his nephew Germanicus; his mother was the
daughter of Augustus's sister, and Germanicus married
Augustus's granddaughter, Agrippina.
From 4 to 11 Augustus employed Tiberius
in campaigns in the Balkans and Germany. In 6 Augustus
established the aerarium militare as a public treasury to
pay soldiers; though he made the initial grant from his own
money, thereafter the treasury was maintained by new sales
and inheritance taxes, with the result that donations to
retired soldiers did not appear to depend on the emperor. A
new fire brigade and nocturnal police force was also
established, in seven cohorts of one-thousand
freedmen each, with two cohorts for each of the fourteen
regions of the city. In 12 Tiberius
celebrated a triumph for Dalmatia and Pannonia, and
Germanicus held the consulship.
In 13 Tiberius was
again granted proconsular imperium and tribunician power. In
14 he conducted a census with Augustus and then left Rome
for a command in Illyricum. Augustus died on 19 August A.D.
14 at Nola. The armies were loyal to Tiberius, and
he had the tribunician right of initiative at Rome. This hereditary system of succession was
established by Augustus for centuries.
The
Empire
Territorial Acquisitions
Political power at Rome had
always been won through the force, prestige, and wealth of
conquest; Augustus' armies conquered more lands than any of
his Roman predecessors or successors. After the death of
Cleopatra in 30, Egypt was the first major gain by Augustus,
with the wealth and flourishing cities of the Ptolemies, and
Egyptian grain. Exposed geographically only in the south,
the province was advanced to the First Cataract by the
prefect Cornelius Gallus; in 25 there was another successful
expedition against raids by the Ethiopians. Although
Augustus, through his legate, failed to conquer Arabia
Felix, the Red Sea was secured and sea-trade with India was
ultimately established. In 27 Augustus visited Gaul and held
a census there for the purpose of fairer taxation, and in
26-25 he fought a war in Spain, which Agrippa finally
concluded in 19, with the pacification of the province.
While Augustus was in Spain, Varro Murena defeated the
Salassi, who were raiding Cisalpine Gaul from Aosta in the
western Alps. In 25 Augustus settled Juba as the king of
Mauretania in Africa, another province valuable for the
grain supply to Rome.
In 25 in Asia Minor, Galatia was
annexed, and Augustus founded the colony of Caesarea at
Antioch. The main problem in the east was Parthia, which
could unsettle Roman control in neighboring Armenia, and
further west into Galatia. In 30 Augustus refrained from a
draining war with Phraates of Parthia, by refusing to abet a
pretender to the Parthian throne, by setting up a
client-king in Armenia minor, and by holding the brothers of
Armenian king Artaxes as hostages to Armenia's good behavior
as a buffer state in the area. Ten years later, after the
watchful regency of Agrippa from 23-21, Augustus reached a
diplomatic settlement with Parthia for the return of the
Roman standards captured from Crassus in 53 B.C., for the
stability of the Parthian kingdom in the region, and for
Parthian agreement to Roman control in Armenia; Parthia
acquiesced under only the threat of combined military force
from Augustus in Syria and Tiberius in
Armenia. From 16-13 Agrippa was back in the east settling
the Bosporan kingdom, which was economically important as
the main source of food from southern Russia for cities of
northern Asia Minor and the Aegean, as well as for Roman
troops on the eastern frontier; despite a later shift in
local control, Roman hegemony was established.
In 15 Tiberius and
Drusus completed the pacification of the northern Alpine
frontier, begun in 25 when T. Varro wiped out the Salassi on
the western side. Now on the eastern side of the Alps, the
frontier was pushed up to the Danube river,
including Raetia and Noricum. With Alpine passes open,
Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul became more united and
prosperous; the raids of the Alpine tribes of Italy were
over, and Roman armies could more easily get to central Gaul
and the Rhine. From 13-9 the northern frontier was further
strengthened near Illyricum by the conquest of Pannonia.
Roman control thus stretched from the Adriatic to the
Danube, making an overland route from Rome to Illyricum
through the easternmost Julian Alps, and connecting
Macedonia to Italy and Gaul. After an uprising in Thrace was
quelled from 11-9, the Romans were in control of the
territory south of the entire length of the Danube to the
Black Sea. At the northernmost frontier, Drusus campaigned
in Germany from 12-9 and tried to advance Caesar's German
frontier of the Rhine as far as the Elbe, but he
accomplished only raids between the two rivers.
On the eastern frontier, the
Parthians and Armenians were in dispute again, and in 2 B.C.
Augustus sent his grandson Gaius there, in what was already
a successfully negotiated end to the trouble. Since 37 Judea
had been controlled by Herod the Great as a friend of
Augustus; Judea was finally made into a Roman province in 6
A.D., when at the request of the Jews, Archelaus, the son of
Herod, was driven out.
In 5 A.D. on the northern
frontier Tiberius
reached the Elbe, and then tried to subdue the Marcomanni,
so that by linking the Elbe with the Danube a new frontier
could be established all the way to the Black Sea. His
efforts were interrupted and never resumed. In 6 there was a
great and bloody revolt in Pannonia and Dalmatia, which Tiberius
finally crushed in 7-8 in Pannonia, and in 9 in Dalmatia.
Though Tiberius did
return to Germany, he and Germanicus were occupied in
defending the Rhine after Quinctilius Varus suffered a
disastrous defeat there at the Battle
of the Teutoburg Forest, losing three
legions and all the territory east of the river. Despite the
recovery of the river and forays beyond it, Augustus gave up
the thought of a frontier beyond the Rhine.
Imperial Policy and Ideology
In his relationship with the
armies as well as with the provincials, Augustus operated as
a patron to clients. He was the only patron of the client
army, which he controlled with land or money, often out of
his own great wealth; he gave to his successors an army
accustomed to dynastic loyalty. Similarly in the provinces,
local client-kings and magistrates who were loyal to
Augustus created relative stability for an empire whose
allegiance no longer shifted to the latest victor in Roman
civil wars, but rested on the dynasty of the principate.
While an overseas empire demanded
a standing army instead of simply an emergency force,
Augustus still did not have an integrated imperial policy of
either defense or expansion. Military campaigns were
conducted pragmatically for the protection of frontiers, the
assurance of the food supply, or the reaction to rebellion.
Augustus, however, exploited the appearance of aggressive
conquest, taking military credit even for diplomatic gains
like Parthia, and granting decisive honors for family who
were only minimally successful, or who had to return
subsequently to quell rebellion.
The ideology of the Pax Augusta
referred to the condition of those who had been subdued;
peace was born of broad imperial conquest, which did not
imply any limits or a governing policy of pacifism.
Similarly, conquest or colonization by Augustus did not have
an ideological and policy goal of Romanization. The primary
purpose of colonization of pacified regions was military
control through the grant of land to soldiers who formed
garrison-colonies, and these colonies had the effect of
encouraging trade in the provinces. In the west, the
adoption of Roman customs and language took place
spontaneously in the relative cultural void, which absorbed
the Roman pattern of urbanization; in the east the
sophisticated native cultures were not Romanized, nor did
Augustus intend them to be.
State
Religion,
and Imperial Image and Building
Roman religion consisted of cult
ritual, whose regular and traditional performance had a
cohesive role in the state. The prestige of religious things
had been dampened by neglect during the civil war years, but
now religion was restored and promoted by Augustus for
stability and for his own position in the state. Julius
Caesar had traced the divine ancestry of his family to Venus
and Mars, and when he was deified in 42, Augustus early in
his career became the son of a god; in 29 he dedicated the
Temple of the Divine Julius in the Roman Forum. Augustus's
defeat of Antony and Cleopatra was portrayed as a victory of
Roman over Egyptian gods; in 28 Augustus dedicated a temple
to 'Actian Apollo' on Rome's Palatine Hill, where Augustus
himself lived. Apollo was represented in a cult statue and
in reliefs as both the god of vengeance against sacrilege
like Antony's, and also as a bringer of peace. Augustus
undertook the restoration of existing temples in the city,
and he claims to have rebuilt eighty-two. (Res Gestae, 20.4)
After Actium Augustus was
venerated as a divine king in Egypt, and the provinces in
the east were allowed to erect temples to him in association
with the goddess Roma. At Rome the senate made the
traditional vows and prayers for his safety, and included
him in annual prayers at the beginning of the year; even at
Rome, however, the process of divination was begun. His name
was included in the ancient Salian hymn to Mars or Quirinus.
In 27 the cult of the Genius of Augustus was established, in
which it was decreed that a libation should be poured to his
guardian spirit at public and private banquets. The senate
authorized a tribute to his moral leadership by setting up
in the senate-house a golden shield celebrating his military
virtue, clemency, justice, and social and religious
responsibility; this shield was associated with the goddess
Victoria and therefore implied god-given rule. Laurel trees
sacred to Apollo were set up on either side of Augustus's
house, and for rescuing citizens he was awarded the corona
civica, made of oak leaves from the tree sacred to Jupiter.
On coins of the period Jupiter's eagle, a symbol of apotheosis, was depicted with the
civic crown and laurel branches.
In 27 in the Campus Martius
Agrippa built the Pantheon, but he was not allowed to
fashion it as an overt 'Augusteum'; instead the temple was
dedicated to the divine ancestry of Augustus through Venus,
Mars, and the deified Julius. In 25-24 work began on the
Temple of Mars Ultor, which Augustus had vowed at the battle
of Philippi in vengeance for his father's murder, and which
later housed the standards returned by the Parthians. In 22
the temple of Jupiter Tonans was
dedicated on the Capitoline Hill by Augustus who had
escaped being struck by lightning during the Spanish
campaign. After 20 the Prima Porta Augustus was
commissioned, a statue of the emperor on whose cuirass is
depicted the return of the standards by Parthia, in the
presence of Mars, Apollo, and Venus.
In 17 Augustus celebrated the
Secular Games which marked the
close of a saeculum or epoch of a human life-span, defined
in the Republic at one- hundred years, but celebrated
elastically in Augustus's day at one-hundred- and-ten. In
the new spirit of prosperity, the traditional deities of
dread, including warlike Mars, and underworld Pluto and
Persephone, were absent; sacrifices were made in honor of
the Fates, the goddess of childbirth, Earth Mother, Jupiter
and Juno, and Apollo and Diana. The poet Horace was
commissioned to write a hymn which was
sung by twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls.
In 13 at the return of Augustus
from Spain and Gaul, the senate decreed the Ara Pacis to be
built near the Campus Martius. This altar was to be used by
magistrates and priests for annual sacrifices. Reliefs on
the altar depict the symbols and fruits of peace in
juxtaposition with figures of war
by which peace was gained, and there are processions perhaps
representing the major priesthoods in Rome, with Augustus
himself portrayed in religious attire. Near this altar was a
sundial associated with Augustus's patron, the sun-god Apollo. In 12 in the western
province of Gaul, Drusus set up an altar at Lugdunum
dedicated to Roma and Augustus.
After Actium, when Augustus was
given the power of creating new patricians, the supply of
men for priesthoods was increased. Augustus himself became a
member of the Fratres Arvales, an elite fraternity which performed time-honored, public
sacrifices for the prosperity of the state- family. In 12
Augustus became pontifex maximus; in 11, a new high priest
of Jupiter, the flamen dialis, was appointed. When Augustus
in 8 divided Rome into fourteen regions, the humble worship
by the poor of the gods of the crossroads, the Lares
Compitales, was elevated to official stature; this worship
was promoted throughout the regions of Rome and Italy in
association with the worship of the genius of Augustus. At
this time the genius of Augustus was probably included in
official oaths.
Less than one
month after his death in 14 A.D., divine honors were decreed
to Augustus at Rome, and the precedent was set there for the
posthumous deification of successive emperors.
Assessment
There was not a dyarchic division
of power between the senate and Augustus. Augustus
ultimately had the power of all the legions abroad and of
the standing army of 9,000 soldiers in the Praetorian Guard
at Rome and in the Italian towns. The senate, however, had
important judicial, financial, and probouleutic functions at
home, and it was the source of provincial governorships. The
basic social hierarchy of Rome was maintained with the
senatorial nobility at the top; the equites, who were of the
same economic class but lacked the prestige of the senate,
still staffed the jury-courts and junior army and
procuratorial posts, but now they also got provincial
commands. Around Augustus there was not so much a 'party' of
political alliance, as a group of friends or clients who
were confidants by the personal choice of Augustus. Most
important for advisory, administrative, and military
positions was the dynastic network of the imperial family.
In both the ancient and modern
assessments of Augustus, there is a tension between the
favorable view that the statesman Augustus atoned for the
ruthlessness of Octavian, and the negative view that
Augustus pursued power under all circumstances, doomed the
nobility, slaughtered libertas, and was the political
forerunner of World War Two continental dictators. It is
apparent, at least, that the most historically significant
result of the principate was the restoration of a ratified
rule of law, with Augustus as the supreme judge, initiator,
and executive officer. This rule evolved gradually and
pragmatically; its basic ideology and administration were
transmitted by the dynastic system for centuries of relative
stability at Rome.
Ancient Sources
On Augustus as Octavian, Cicero's
letters and Philippics describe the year after Julius
Caesar's murder (March 44 - summer 43 BC); Plutarch's Lives
of Brutus and Antony are sources for the triumviral period.
The Monumentum Ancyranum is an
inscription known since the sixteenth century from the
temple of 'Rome and Augustus' at Ancyra in Galatia. The
inscription is Augustus's own account of his achievements
and honors at Rome. This account is commonly known by its
prefatory title Res Gestae Divi Augusti, or "achievements of
the divine Augustus." The purpose of the inscription was to
show and justify Augustus's influence and power at Rome and
in the Roman world. The text, which is addressed to the
Roman people, describes the beginning of his public life,
his military successes, honors given to him, official
expenditures for the public good, foreign policy, and
ultimately the highest honor any Roman could receive, the
title of pater patriae, 'father of the country.' Since
Augustus received this title in 2 B.C. the text of the
Ancyra inscription appears to date from that time, though
earlier drafts are likely, as his honors and achievements
grew. According to Suetonius (Aug. 101, 4), the inscription
was originally designed for bronze tablets set up in front
of Augustus's mausoleum built substantially, if not
completely, in 28 BC at Rome.
The Fasti Consulares and Fasti
Juliani provide further epigraphic evidence about Augustus
and his time in the form of official lists of the holders of
the annual consulship at Rome, and of holidays and religious
festivals, respectively.
Nicolaus of Damascus wrote a Life
of Augustus c. 25-20 B.C.; only a fragment of this
eulogistic work survives concerning Augustus's youth and
ending with the death of Julius. The work was probably a
free paraphrase of an autobiography by Augustus.
Velleius Paterculus, who wrote
the Histories during the reign of Tiberius (14-37 A,D.), provides a virtually
contemporary, often eye-witness, and flattering account of
wars of the Augustan period.
Appian describes events at Rome
until 35 B.C. Though he wrote the Civil Wars in the second
century A.D., Appian's account, sometimes favorable and
sometimes not, is based on the contemporary history of C.
Asinius Pollio, who was consul in 40 B.C.
Dio Cassius is the main source
for events at Rome from 36 B.C., though the author himself
lived c. 150-235 A.D., and his sources for the Augustan
period are unknown. His account describes a ruthless
Octavian, but an ideal Augustus as princeps, and a model for
the Severan Era.
Tacitus gives an account of
Augustus's merits and mostly demerits in the Annals, which
the historian may have started composing as early as 115.
Suetonius wrote a Life of
Augustus in the second century A.D. Suetonius was the court
archivist of Hadrian ( 117-38
A.D.), and he had access to imperial documents of the
Augustan age. Detached anecdotes replace a fully connected
chronology.
Philo of Alexandria extols the
benevolence of Augustus in contrast to Caligula, in Embassy
to Gaius, c. 40 A.D.
Flavius Josephus both favored and
disfavored Rome in Bellum Judaism c. 75 and Jewish
Antiquites c 93-94A.D..
Pliny the Elder wrote negative
reports about Augustus in Natural History, completed in 77
A.D.
Florus wrote a second century
A.D. Epitome of all Wars during 700 Years, an abridgement of
the history of Roman wars waged through the Age of Augustus.
Eutropius and Aurelius Victor were fourth century A.D.
epitomists; Eutropius based his early Roman history on an
epitome of Livy, and Victor wrote the Caesares based on
Suetonius. John Zonaras wrote a twelfth century epitome of
Dio Cassius.
Lastly, for the era and the man,
the literature of the Augustan Age is a major source which includes the works of
Livy, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, and Tibullus
.
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0701Caligula.doc
Caligula
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_in_film
Caligula is a 1979 film
directed by Tinto Brass, with additional scenes filmed by
Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, about the Roman Emperor
Gaius Caesar Germanicus also known as "Caligula". Caligula
was written by Gore Vidal and co-financed by Penthouse
magazine, though the script underwent several re-writes
after Tinto Brass and Malcolm McDowell found Gore Vidal's
interpretation of the infamous Emperor to be unsatisfactory.
The producers were Bob Guccione and Franco Rossellini. The
film was initially budgeted at $17.5-million, but by the end
of the production the budget swelled up to about $22
million. The film ended up grossing $21 million in its
initial release; afterward, Caligula became a long-time hit
on home video market. The production advertised itself as
"the most controversial film in history. Only one movie
dares to show the perversion behind Imperial Rome..."
It stars Malcolm McDowell as
the Emperor and chronicles his rise and fall as the brief
ruler of the Roman Empire. The film focuses heavily on
Caligula's infamously deviant sexual practices, as well as
those of his contemporaries. It drew heavy criticism because
of its scenes of actual penetration in the "uncut" version.
Production:
Gore Vidal developed the
screenplay from Roberto Rossellini's unproduced television
mini-series treatment at the request of the famous
director's nephew, Franco. Rossellini and Vidal originally
intended for the film to be a modestly budgeted historical
drama, but could not find a financier, until Vidal had the
idea of contacting media mogul Bob Guccione, who agreed on
two conditions; that the film would be transformed into a
flamboyant, over-the-top, luxurious spectacle akin to
Hollywood's sword and sandal epics of the 50's and 60's and
that hardcore sex would be added to the script in order to
plug Guccione's Penthouse magazine. Both Vidal and
Rossellini obliged.
Celebrated art director
Danilo Donati was hired to build the expensive and complex
sets & costumes. Renowned talent, including Malcolm
McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud were
cast. Maria Schneider was originally cast as Caligula's
doomed sister Drusilla, but later dropped out due to her
concerns with the sex and nudity in the film and was shortly
replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy. Tinto Brass, a relatively
young Italian director known for his works of avante-garde,
but picked out by Bob Guccione for being able to fuse
explicit sex and big budget historical drama in the 1976
controversial film Salon Kitty, was hired to direct the
film. The production was housed in Dear Studios, Rome, where
the infamous debacle Cleopatra was filmed thirteen years
earlier. The shooting commenced in September of 1976, with
the hopes of an early 1977 release.
This proved to be simply
wishful thinking, as the entire production started to slowly
fall apart. It first started with Tinto Brass and Malcolm
McDowell being unhappy with Gore Vidal's interpretation of
the title character, Vidal agreed to collaborate with them
and re-write the shooting script over a dozen times, and the
three people became rather annoyed with each other by the
time the principal photography began.
Soon afterwards, due to
Rossellini and Guccione's inexperience in producing major
films, it was realized by the filmmakers involved that the
shooting schedule for the production was horribly
unrealistic for a film of such scope and Danilo Donati had
to scrap his original ideas for the sets and replace them
with such surreal imagery as bizarre matte paintings,
blacked out areas, silk backdrops and curtains. This
resulted in even more departures from the script, with Tinto
Brass and the actors improvising around scenes written to
take place in entirely different locations, and sometimes
shooting whole new scenes (such as the frolicking scene that
erroneously opens the film) in order show some progress made
while the incomplete sets were off-limits. The production
was also plagued with delays due to the constant clashes
between Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione over the sexual nature
of the film.
By the time the principal
photography on Caligula had completed, Gore Vidal (having
learned the hard way from his involvement with Myra
Breckinridge), was beginning to fear of being associated
with such an out-of-control production and rightfully
thinking that the film would turn out incoherent, disowned
the movie and did his best to distance himself from the
project. Bob Guccione, infuriated that Tinto Brass didn't
showcase his hand-picked Penthouse Pet models, secretly
snuck back into the studio and shot additional hardcore
sexual content more in line with his vision of the film,
which he would later use to replace Tinto Brass' bizarre and
farcical scenes of sexual depravity.
When the film finally entered
post-production, Bob Guccione and his close friend Giancarlo
Lui decided to fire Tinto Brass because neither was happy of
where he had taken the film in terms of story, political
context (Guccione would later call Brass a "Communist") and
depiction of sexuality. Giancarlo Lui then took it upon
himself to re-fashion the film into something more in-line
with what Gore Vidal had first scripted many drafts ago and,
more importantly, with what the readers of Penthouse
magazine were expecting out of a Bob Guccione production.
This ultimately proved to be a grave mistake that destroyed
the film.
Lui deleted as much
surrealism and inventions of Malcolm McDowell and Brass as
he possibly could without completely distorting the story.
Also, with much footage improvised and re-written from the
original draft of the film, many scenes were deleted all
together or trimmed, scrambled and re-cut into something
barely coherent. Also, much of the disturbing sexual images
Brass had shot were deleted and about six minutes worth of
them were replaced by Bob Guccione's re-shoots. All in all,
the final cut of the film bore virtually no resemblance to
what Tinto Brass and Malcolm McDowell had intended.
Ironically, it also bore little resemblance to what Vidal
wanted as well.
In the unpleasant aftermath,
Tinto Brass and Gore Vidal launched numerous independent
lawsuits over such things as breach of contract and fraud,
delaying the release of Caligula indefinitely. Both
eventually settled for cash settlements and the right to
have their names partially removed from the film.
Afterwards, various charges of obscenity also contributed to
the film's hold up from public release.
In late 1979, almost four
years after the production began, Caligula finally made its
debut in a crippled, butchered, practically incoherent form.
Multiple versions:
Caligula was shown in
various versions, including:
* A 150 minute Italian cut; it was
basically a shortened version of the U.S. edition. It was
eventually pulled out of release in favor of Franco
Rossellini's re-edited version (more on which below), but a
briefly released VHS tape exists, though it is now out-of
print and until recently was considered a collector's item.
However, Raro Video announced that it would release a
re-mastered edition of this cut on December 5th, 2006, along
with an interview by Tinto Brass, in which he, for the first
time, would discuss in great detail where the editing of the
film went wrong. This never came to fruition, when Raro
Video's distributor backed out at the last second and the
company ended up replacing it with a remastered print of
Franco Rossellini's edit, though Raro Video did promise to
release the 150 minute version in the near future.
* The unrated version, available in the U.S.
and mainland Europe, running 156 minutes (NTSC) and 150
minutes (PAL). This is the most widely seen cut of
the film. It enjoyed a limited, albeit highly profitable,
run in the American cinemas. This version contained many
scenes with extremely taboo, sexually, and violently
explicit content, including orgies, masturbation, fellatio,
cunnilingus, anal fisting, male and female homosexuality,
cross-dressing and transvestism, sibling incest, rape, male
and female urination, decapitating prisoners using a
lawn-mower-type device (which is unlikely to have actually
existed), unseen fratricide, penile castration and unseen
testi castration, and slamming a child on stone steps like a
rag doll. The
film was highly controversial and would certainly have
received an X rating from the MPAA. The U.S. DVD release of
this version is available in a blue cover. In 2001, Dutch
FilmWorks (DFW) released a European region 2 uncut version
of Caligula in re-mastered form with a cleaner print. DFW
released two editions; first, a standard single DVD of the
main feature, and a second, limited edition double disc set
including biographies of the actors, filmographies of the
actors, a "making of Caligula" featurette (55 mins), and a
photo gallery. Another 2 disc deluxe edition was released in
France early in 2003, containing improved image and audio
quality.
* The
UK version, running 144 minutes. Aside from the removing 12
minutes of explicit footage, the editors included some
replacement shots, derived from Tinto Brass' principal
shoot, as well as remainder footage from Bob Guccione's
re-shoots. Just like the older Italian cut, this version is
also out-of-print these days, but is actively hunted for by
various collectors.
* The
rumored and infamous 210-minute unreleased version, shown in
a private screening in Cannes, France (though not as part of
the film festival). It is highly sought-after, but no one
has been able to locate a copy of this version, and is
considered by many to be simply an urban legend.
*
Guccione eventually authorized an R-rated cut released in
1981, 105 minutes long, which earned the film wider
distribution. Contrary to popular belief, majority of the
cut footage was that of various dramatic scenes, which many
felt brought the pace to a screeching halt (this was
possibly due to the botched editing). In this version all of
the hardcore, bloody and violent footage was either trimmed
or replaced with yet another set of alternate shots and
angles.
* In
1984, Franco Rossellini, unhappy with Bob Guccione's final
edit of the film, re-edited an extended, pre-release print
of Caligula, which may or may not have been the infamous 210 minute version. This new edition
of the film, re-titled as Io, Caligola clocked in at 133
minutes and contained various minor scenes and shots not
present in any other versions of the film, but the Italian
censors had it cut down to an astonishing 86 minutes.
However, after a huge backlash, they allowed it to be
brought up to 123 minutes. The missing ten minutes are no
doubt responsible for a few jump cuts that occur throughout
the film. This version has been released on DVD, but is
available exclusively in Italy.
* When
Io, Caligola was released on home video in the late
eighties, the distributor put back in some of the hardcore
material shot by Bob Guccione (it was deleted at Franco
Rossellini's order) in order to boost the sales. This is the
version that is currently available on DVD.
* The
second R-rated version saw light in 1999. It was released
straight to DVD and contained no alternate angles. Various
shots simply repeated themselves continuously instead of
using the different takes of scenes seen in the R-rated
theatrical release, causing numerous continuity problems and
a disorienting, nauseating feel to the viewers. The rest of
the cuts and trims, however, were based on the 1981 censored release. This DVD
version ran a total of 102 minutes and was released with a
red cover.
* A
few months later, the FilmFour channel, frustrated by the
lack of any extended version of the film available in the UK
(only the low quality 1981 censored version was still in
print), released their own cut
of Caligula, running approximately 140 minutes (the missing
16 minutes can be mostly attributed to the PAL overspeeding
and time compression.) It was essentially the same as the 156 minute version, but lacked all of
Guccione's footage (much to his anger). Those missing bits
were the lesbian tryst and a handful of sexual inserts
during the imperial bordello sequence.
The new R-rated version, the
156-minute cut and the Io, Caligola version have been
released to DVD in various countries. The 1981 R-rated cut
was released briefly on DVD in the UK
The uncut Twentieth
Anniversary Edition DVD was refused classification in 2006
by Australia's OFLC effectively banning the film in its
uncensored form. The OFLC deemed the film too sexually
explicit to fall within the R18+ classification (despite
sexually explicit mainstream films such as 9 Songs receiving
this rating). The film could not be accommodated in the X
classification (for explicit sex) as it contains depictions
of violence. Although the film's sexual content was
permissible in the X category, the OFLC's classification
guidelines unambiguously state "No depiction of violence...
is allowed in the category" [1].
Critical reaction:
The film was heavily panned
by critics; Roger Ebert gave it zero
stars, describing it as "sickening, utterly worthless,
shameful trash"; a generation later it remained on the list
of his most hated films (he also mentioned walking out of
the theatre in the middle of it). Both Peter O'Toole and
Malcolm McDowell have since expressed regret in
participating in the film. The director, Tinto Brass,
disowned the film altogether, since it was taken out of his
hands and given to Giancarlo Lui, to complete the editing.
Writer Gore Vidal also disowned the film, but that happened
much earlier than the incident with Brass and for an
entirely different reason: Vidal and Brass had major
creative differences over the subject matter, and though
both had strong ideas concerning Caligula's reasons and
motivations behind his madness, neither could find a common
ground. The majority of those behind the film backed Tinto
Brass, which infuriated Gore Vidal, who left the project,
bad-mouthing the entire production. Whatever intellectual
heft Vidal's writing and research would have given the
production is notably absent from the finished version,
since it was re-written into a somewhat fictionalized
political fable by Brass and McDowell, which, in turn, was
deleted by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui during the editing
process.
Cast
*
Malcolm McDowell -- Caligula
*
Peter O'Toole -- Tiberius
*
Paolo Bonacelli -- Cassius Chaerea
* John
Gielgud -- Nerva
*
Helen Mirren -- Caesonia
*
Teresa Ann Savoy -- Drusilla
* Lori
Wagner -- Agrippina
*
Anneka di Lorenzo -- Messalina
* John
Steiner -- Longinus
As would be the case with Commodus 120
years later, after he was assassinated Caligula was savaged by
Roman era "historians" in the employ of his enemies. There is little
independent evidence that anything they wrote about his
depravity and violence is true.
Ð tkw
Caligula
From
http://www.roman-emperors.org/gaius.htm
Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
(b. A.D. 12, d. A.D. 41, emperor A.D. 37-41) represents a
turning point in the early history of the Principate.
Unfortunately, his is the most poorly documented reign of
the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The literary sources for these
four years are meager, frequently anecdotal, and universally
hostile.[[1]] As a
result, not only are many of the events of the reign
unclear, but Gaius himself
appears more as a caricature than a real person, a crazed
megalomaniac given to capricious cruelty and harebrained
schemes. Although some headway can be made in disentangling
truth from embellishment, the true character of the youthful
emperor will forever elude us.
Early Life and Reign:
Gaius was born on 31 August, A.D.
12, probably at the Julio-Claudian resort of Antium (modern
Anzio), the third of six children born to Augustus's
adopted grandson, Germanicus,
and Augustus's
granddaughter, Agrippina. As
a baby he accompanied his parents on military campaigns in
the north and was shown to the troops wearing a miniature
soldier's outfit, including the hob-nailed sandal called caliga, whence the
nickname by which posterity remembers him.[[2]] His
childhood was not a happy one, spent amid an atmosphere of
paranoia, suspicion, and murder. Instability within the
Julio-Claudian house, generated by uncertainty over the
succession, led to a series of personal tragedies. When his
father died under suspicious circumstances on 10 October
A.D. 19, relations between his mother and his grand-uncle,
the emperor Tiberius,
deteriorated irretrievably, and the adolescent Gaius was
sent to live first with his great-grandmother Livia in A.D.
27 and then, following Livia's death
two years later, with his grandmother Antonia.
Shortly before the fall of Tiberius's
Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus, in A.D. 31 he was summoned to
join Tiberius at
his villa on Capri, where he remained until his accession in
A.D. 37. In the interim, his two brothers and his mother
suffered demotion and, eventually, violent death. Throughout
these years, the only position of administrative
responsibility Gaius held was an honorary quaestorship in
A.D. 33. [[3]]
When Tiberius died
on 16 March A.D. 37, Gaius was in a perfect position to
assume power, despite the obstacle of Tiberius's
will, which named him and his cousin Tiberius
Gemellus joint heirs. (Gemellus's life
was shortened considerably by this bequest, since Gaius
ordered him killed within a matter of months.) Backed by the
Praetorian Prefect Q. Sutorius Macro, Gaius asserted his
dominance. He had Tiberius's
will declared null and void on grounds of insanity, accepted
the powers of the Principate as conferred by the Senate, and
entered Rome on 28 March amid scenes of wild rejoicing. His
first acts were generous in spirit: he paid Tiberius's
bequests and gave a cash bonus to the Praetorian Guard, the
first recorded donativum
to troops in imperial history. He honored his father and
other dead relatives and publicly destroyed Tiberius's
personal papers, which no doubt implicated many of the Roman
elite in the destruction of Gaius's immediate family.
Finally, he recalled exiles and reimbursed those wronged by
the imperial tax system [[4]]. His
popularity was immense. Yet within four years he lay in a
bloody heap in a palace corridor, murdered by officers of
the very guard entrusted to protect him. What went wrong?
Gaius's "Madness":
The ancient sources are
practically unanimous as to the cause of Gaius's downfall:
he was insane. The writers differ as to how this condition
came about, but all agree that after his good start Gaius
began to behave in an openly autocratic manner, even a
crazed one. [[5]]
Outlandish stories cluster about the raving emperor,
illustrating his excessive cruelty, immoral sexual
escapades, or disrespect toward tradition and the Senate.
The sources describe his incestuous relations with his
sisters, laughable military campaigns in the north, the
building of a pontoon bridge across the Bay at Baiae, and
the plan to make his horse a consul. [[6]] Modern
scholars have pored over these incidents and come up with a
variety of explanations: Gaius suffered from an illness; he
was misunderstood; he was corrupted by power; or, accepting
the ancient evidence, they conclude that he was mad.[[7]]
However, appreciating the nature of the ancient sources is
crucial when approaching this issue. Their unanimous
hostility renders their testimony suspect, especially since
Gaius's reported behavior fits remarkably well with that of
the ancient tyrant, a literary type enshrined in Greco-Roman
tradition centuries before his reign. Further, the only eye-witness account of Gaius's
behavior, Philo's Embassy
to Gaius, offers little evidence of outright insanity,
despite the antagonism of the author, whom Gaius treated
with the utmost disrespect. Rather, he comes across as
aloof, arrogant, egotistical, and cuttingly witty -- but not
insane. The best explanation both for Gaius's behavior and
the subsequent hostility of the sources is that he was an
inexperienced young man thrust into a position of unlimited
power, the true nature of which had been carefully disguised
by its founder, Augustus.
Gaius, however, saw through the disguise and began to act
accordingly. This, coupled with his troubled upbringing and
almost complete lack of tact led to behavior that struck his
contemporaries as extreme, even insane.
Gaius and the Empire:
Gaius's reign is too short, and
the surviving ancient accounts too sensationalized, for any
serious policies of his to be discerned. During his reign,
Mauretania was annexed and reorganized into two provinces,
Herod Agrippa was appointed to a kingdom in Palestine, and
severe riots took place in Alexandria between Jews and
Greeks. These events are largely overlooked in the sources,
since they offer slim pickings for sensational stories of
madness. [[8]] Two
other episodes, however, garner greater attention: Gaius's
military activities on the northern frontier, and his
vehement demand for divine honors. His military activities
are portrayed as ludicrous, with Gauls dressed up as Germans
at his triumph and Roman troops ordered to collect sea-shells as "spoils of the sea."
Modern scholars have attempted to make sense of these events
in various ways. The most reasonable suggestion is that
Gaius went north to earn military glory and discovered there
a nascent conspiracy under the commander of the Upper German
legions, Cn. Lentulus Gaetulicus. The subsequent events are
shrouded in uncertainty, but it is known that Gaetulicus and
Gaius's brother-in-law, M. Aemilius Lepidus, were executed
and Gaius's two surviving sisters, implicated in the plot,
suffered exile. [[9]] Gaius's
enthusiasm for divine honors for himself and his favorite
sister, Drusilla (who died suddenly in A.D. 38 and was
deified), is presented in the sources as another clear sign
of his madness, but it may be no more than the young
autocrat tactlessly pushing the limits of the imperial cult,
already established under Augustus. Gaius's excess in this
regard is best illustrated by his order that a statue of him
be erected in the Temple at Jerusalem. Only the delaying
tactics of the Syrian governor, P. Petronius, and the
intervention of Herod Agrippa prevented riots and a
potential uprising in Palestine. [[10]]
Conspiracy and Assassination:
The conspiracy that ended Gaius's
life was hatched among the officers of the Praetorian Guard,
apparently for purely personal reasons. It appears also to
have had the support of some senators and an imperial
freedman. [[11]] As
with conspiracies in general, there are suspicions that the
plot was more broad-based than the sources intimate, and it
may even have enjoyed the support of the next emperor Claudius, but
these propositions are not provable on available evidence.
On 24 January A.D. 41 the praetorian tribune Cassius Chaerea
and other guardsmen caught Gaius alone in a secluded palace
corridor and cut him down. He was 28 years old and had ruled
three years and ten months. [[12]]
Conclusion:
Whatever damage Tiberius's
later years had done to the carefully crafted political
edifice created by Augustus,
Gaius multiplied it a hundredfold. When he came to power in
A.D. 37 Gaius had no administrative experience beyond his
honorary quaestorship, and had spent an unhappy early life
far from the public eye. He appears, once in power, to have
realized the boundless scope of his authority and acted
accordingly. For the elite, this situation proved
intolerable and ensured the blackening of Caligula's name in
the historical record they would dictate. The sensational
and hostile nature of that record, however, should in no way
trivialize Gaius's importance. His reign highlighted an
inherent weakness in the Augustan Principate, now openly
revealed for what it was -- a raw monarchy in which only the
self-discipline of the incumbent acted as a restraint on his
behavior. That the only means of retiring the wayward princeps was murder
marked another important revelation: Roman emperors could
not relinquish their powers without simultaneously
relinquishing their lives.
Bibliography
The bibliography on Gaius is far
too vast for comprehensive citation here. Most of the
ancient material can be found in Gelzer and Smallwood. Ample
reference to relevant secondary works is made in Barrett, Caligula (319-28)
and Hurley (219-30). The works listed below are therefore
either the main treatments of Gaius or are directly
pertinent to the issues discussed in the entry above.
Balsdon, J.P.V.D. The Emperor Gaius.
Oxford, 1934.
________. "The Principates of
Tiberius and Gaius." ANRW
2.2 (1975): 86-94.
Barrett, A.A. Caligula: The
Corruption of Power. New Haven,
1989.
________. Agrippina. Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early
Empire.
New Haven, 1996.
Benediktson, D.T. "Caligula's
Madness: Madness or Interictal Temporal Lobe Epilepsy?" Classical
World 82 (1988-89), 370-5.
Bicknell, P. "The Emperor Gaius'
Military Activities in AD 40." Historia 17
(1968): 496-505.
Bilde, P. "The Roman Emperor
Gaius (Caligula)'s Attempt to Erect his Statue in the Temple
of Jerusalem." STh
32 (1978): 67-93.
Boschung, D. Die Bildnisse des
Caligula. Berlin,
1989.
Charlesworth, M.P. "The Tradition
About Caligula" Cambridge
Historical Journal 4 (1933): 105-119.
Davies, R.W. "The Abortive
Invasion of Britain by Gaius." Historia 15
(1966): 124-28.
D'EcrŽ, F. "La mort de Germanicus
et les poisons de Caligula." Janus 56 (1969):
123-48.
Ferrill, A. Caligula, Emperor of
Rome. London, 1991.
Gelzer, M. "Iulius Caligula." Real-EnzyclopŠdie
10.381-423 (1919).
Grant, M. The Roman Emperors. A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of
Imperial Rome 31 BC - AD 476 (New York, 1985), 25-28.
Hurley, D.W. "Gaius Caligula in
the Germanicus Tradition." American Journal of
Philology 110 (1989): 316-38.
________. An
Historical and Historiographical Commentary on Suetonius' Life of C. Caligula. Atlanta, 1993.
Jerome, T.S. "The Historical
Tradition About Gaius," in id., Aspects of the Study of
Roman History. New York, 1923.
Katz, R.S. "The Illness of
Caligula." Classical
World 65 (1971-72): 223-5
McGinn, T.A.J. "Caligula's
Brothel on the Palatine," EMC 42 (1998): 95-107.
Massaro, V. and I. Montgomery. "Gaius: Mad Bad, Ill or All
Three?" Latomus
37 (1978): 894-909
________. "Gaius (Caligula) Doth
Murder Sleep." Latomus
38 (1979): 699-700.
Maurer, J. A. A
Commentary on C. Suetoni Tranquilli, Vita C. Caligulae
Caesaris, Chapters I-XXI. Philadelphia, 1949.
Morgan, M.G. "Caligula's Illness
Again." Classical
World 66 (1972-73): 327-9
Philips, E.J. "The Emperor Gaius'
Abortive Invasion of Britain." Historia 19
(1970): 369-74.
Simpson, C. J. "The 'Conspiracy'
of AD 39." In Studies
in Latin Literature and Roman History II, edited by C.
Deroux, 347-66. Brussels, 1980.
Smallwood, E.M. (ed.). Documents
Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero.
Cambridge. 1967.
Wardle, D. Suetonius' Life of
Caligula: A
Commentary. Brussels, 1994.
Woods, D. "Caligula's Seashells."
Greece and Rome 47
(2000): 80-87.
Wood, S. "Diva Drusilla Panthea
and the Sisters of Caligula." AJA 99 (1995):
457-82.
NOTES
[[1]] The main ancient sources
for Gaius's reign are: Suet. Gaius; Dio 59;
Philo In Flaccum
and Legatio ad
Gaium; Jos. AJ 19.1-211.
Tacitus's account of the reign is lost. However, he makes
occasional references to Gaius in the extant portions of his
works, as does Seneca. All of these sources have reason to
be hostile to Gaius's memory: Seneca's
style was roundly abused by the emperor (Suet. Gaius 53.2; Dio
59.19.7-8); Philo and Josephus, as Jews, resented Gaius's
blasphemous demands for divinity that almost roused
Palestine to rebellion (see above, Gaius and the Empire);
and the later sources inherited a tradition about Gaius that
can be shown to be biased and exaggerated, cf. Charlesworth,
"The Tradition about Gaius." Besides these literary sources,
inscriptions and coins also offer some information, see
Smallwood, Documents
Illustrating.
[[2]] Tac. Ann. 1.41.3;
Suet. Gaius
9.1.
[[3]] Death of Germanicus and
aftermath: Tac. Ann.
2.69-3.19; Gaius with Livia,
Antonia, and Tiberius: Tac. Ann. 6.20.1;
Suet. Gaius 10.1, 23.2; fate of Agrippina: Tac. Ann. 5.3.2 - 5.5.2,
6.25.1; and of Nero and Drusus
Caesar: Tac. Ann. 5.3.2,
6.23.4-5, Suet. Tib. 54, Gaius 7; Gaius's
quaestorship: Dio 58.23.1. For the alleged involvement of
Gaius in his father's death, see D'EcrŽ, "La mort de
Germanicus."
[[4]] Early reign and first acts:
Suet. Gaius
13-16; Philo Leg.
8-13; Dio 59.2-3. Macro's full
name: Smallwood, Documents
Illustrating, no. 254. Date of Gaius's arrival in
Rome: Acta Fratrum
Arvalium (Smallwood, Documents Illustrating,
no. 3.15-17). Gemellus: Suet. Gaius 14.1, 15.2,
23.3; Dio 59.1.2-3, 59.8.1-2; Philo Leg. 23-31.
[[5]] Seneca, without
explanation, believes he went mad (Brev. 18.5-6; Helv. 10.4; Tranqu. 14.5; Ben. 7.11.2).
Josephus also thinks that Gaius went mad but alludes to a
love-potion administered by his wife Caesonia as the cause (AJ 19.193),
apparently after two years of good rule (AJ 18.256). Philo
blames an illness in the fall of A.D. 37 (Leg. 14-22).
Suetonius mentions simply a "brain sickness" (valitudo mentis; Gaius 51.1). Dio
thinks that faults of character led to a deterioration in
his behavior (59.3-4). Surviving references suggest that
Tacitus thought Gaius at least of troubled and impulsive
mind, which is not the same thing as crazed (Agr. 13.2; Ann. 6.20.1,
6.45.5, 13.3.6; Hist.
4.48.2).
[[6]] Incest: Suet. Gaius
24.1; Dio 59.3.6; Jos. AJ 19.204. Military
campaigns: Tac. Hist. 4.15.3, Germania 37.5,
Suet. Gaius
43-46, Dio 59.21.1-3. Bridge at Baiae: Suet. Gaius 19; Dio
59.17; Jos. AJ
19.5-6. Horse as consul: Suet. Gaius 55.3; Dio
59.14.7; His alleged setting up of a brothel in the palace
may contain a kernel of truth, even if the story is much
embellished, see T.A.J. McGinn, "Caligula's Brothel on the
Palatine," EMC 42
(1998): 95-107.
[[7]] Alcoholism: Jerome,
"Historical Tradition"; hyperthyroidism/thyrotoxicos: Katz,
"Illness of Caligula"; mania: Massaro and Montgomery,
"Gaius: Mad, Bad, Ill or All Three" and "Gaius (Caligula)
Doth Murder Sleep"; epilepsy: Benediktson, "Caligula's
Madness." Morgan ("Caligula's Illness Again") makes some
astute observations on the weakness of the medical approach
as a whole. He points out that the ancient concept of
physiognomy -- that people's characters are manifest in
their appearance -- makes any diagnosis highly suspect. In
fact, all such medical explanations are doomed to failure.
The sources simply cannot be trusted, and diagnosing a
patient 2,000 years dead is, at best, a stretch. Balsdon (The Emperor Gaius)
argued that Gaius was misunderstood and attempted to offer
rational explanations for all of his apparently deranged
antics. A useful summary and critique of "madness" theories
is to be found in Barrett, Caligula, 213-41. For a recent acceptance of
the madness thesis, cf. Ferrill, Caligula, Emperor of Rome.
[[8]] Mauretania: Dio 59.25.1;
see also Barrett, Caligula,
115-20. Agrippa: Jos. AJ
18.228-37; Phil Leg.
324-26; see also E. M. Smallwood,
The Jews under Roman
Rule (Leiden, 1976), 187-200. Alexandrian riots: Philo
Flacc and Leg.
[[9]] Fake Germans in triumph:
Suet. Gaius 47.
Military campaigns: see above, note [6]. For
modern rationalizations of these campaigns, cf., e.g.,
Bicknell, "Military Activities"; Davies, "Abortive
Invasion"; Philips, "Abortive Invasion"; Barrett, Caligula, 125-39,
and Woods, "Caligula's Seashells.".
Execution of Gaetulicus and exile of sisters: the Gaetulicus
affair is ably assessed in Barrett, Caligula, 91-113,
and id. Agrippina,
60-70; for a contrasting view, see Simpson, "The
'Conspiracy' of AD 39."
[[10]] The Jerusalem affair is
described most fully by Josephus (AJ 18.261-309; BJ 2.184-203) and
Philo (Leg. 188,
198-348). Thorough modern assessments can be found in
Barrett, Caligula,
188-91, cf. 140-53 (on Gaius's demand for divine honours,
which Barrett argues are exaggerated by the sources); Bilde
"Statue in the Temple"; and
Smallwood, Jews
(above, note [8]),
174-80. Drusilla: Suet. Gaius 24.2-3; Dio
59.11; Smallwood, Documents
Illustrating, nos 5.12-15, 11, 128, 401.12; Wood,
"Diva Drusilla."
[[11]] The
named Praetorian conspirators include three tribunes --
Cassius Chaerea (Suet. Gaius 56.2; Dio
59.29.1; Sen. Const.
18.3; Jos. AJ
19.18, 21, 28-37); Cornelius Sabinus (Suet. Gaius
58.2; Dio 59.29.1; Jos. AJ 19.46, 48, 261);
Papinius (Jos. AJ
19.37) -- and the Prefect M. Arrecinus Clemens (Jos. AJ
19.37-46). Senators associated with the plot are M.
Annius Vinicianus (Jos. AJ 19.18, 20, 49-51), M. Valerius Asiaticus
(Tac. Ann.
11.1.2), Cluvius Rufus and L. Nonius Asprenas (Jos. AJ
19.91-92, 98). Gaius's freedman Callistus is also a
named participant (Tac. Ann. 11.29.1; Dio
29.29.1; Jos.
AJ 19.63-69).
[[12]] The
possible involvement of Claudius in the plot is assessed
by B. Levick, Claudius
(New Haven, 1990), 33-39. The fullest account of
the assassination is that of Josephus (AJ 19.70-113), with
more summary accounts found in Suetonius (Gaius 58) and the
epitome of Dio (59.29.5-7).
0801Satyricon1.doc
From http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Fellini/FSat.htm
By Lawrence Russell
Fellini Satyricon (1969)
dir. Frederico Fellini writ. Fellini
and Bernardino Zapponi (based on the writings of
Petronious) cine. Giuseppe Rotunno sets Danilo
Donati and Luigi Caccianoce music Nino Rota, Ilhan
Mimaroght, Tod Dockstader, Andrew Rudin star. Martin Potter
(Encolpio), Hiram Keller (Ascylite), Max Born (Gitone),
Salvo Randone (Eumolpo the Poet), Il Moro (Trimalcione),
Magali Noel (Fortunata), Capucine (Trifena), Alain Cuny
(Lica), Fanfulla (Vernacchio), Luigi Montefiori (Minotaur),
Joseph Wheeler (suicide: Petronius), Lucia Bose (suicide:
P's wife), et. al.
figures in a fresco
The "theatre effect" is often
the sign of primitivism in film drama -- except when it's
Orson Welles or Frederico Fellini. Satyricon's sets are
spectacular, neo-modernist constructions that combine both
the pictographic art of the past with the angular
sensibility of the present. Characters declaim their lines
to phantoms beyond the screen or to decadent aristocrats in
the burlesques that are frequently featured within the
playhouses, feasts, tombs, temples and the other venues that
carry the action of this mythical adventure.
The film begins with the
"hero" Encolpio (Martin Potter) monologuing in front of a
fresco, bemoaning his fate:
Encolpio: The earth has not
dragged me into the abyss... nor has the tempestuous sea
engulfed me... I have fled from justice, from the arena... I
have even stained my hands with blood... to end up here,
banished and abandoned.... Who was it that condemned me to
this solitude? He who knows every vice... who himself admits
he deserves banishment: Ascylitus!
Who is he speaking to? The obsolete convention of live theatre is
resurrected by Fellini in order to break the
alienation between the viewer and the subject, thus moving
away from the aesthetic of cinematic voyeurism into audience
complicity.
It's a clever directive, one which establishes not only the
dramatic method but also the visual style. An atmosphere of
history is integral to the audience's acceptance of the
story. Proceeding as if the world is an art gallery is often
the kiss of death in drama, but under Fellini's direction
it's a brilliant fugue of modern expressionism and
interpretative mythology.
Fellini Satyricon: Encolpio
"In Satyricon, I was
influenced by the look of frescoes. At the end, these
people, whose lives were so real to them, are now only
crumbling frescoes." (Fellini)
Encolpio: student, pretty boy
bisexual adventurer, and creature of fortune whose present
misery is due to the theft of his boy lover Gitone by his
friend and fellow student, Ascylitus. We are also introduced
to Ascylitus (Hiram Keller) by way of a monologue and
quickly learn that he's no sentimentalist:
Ascylitus: (hoarsely)
Encolpio is looking for me, he wants revenge. (gloats) Friendship lasts as long as
it is convenient.
They fight, and Encolpio
holds Ascylitus's head over a steaming culvert.
Encolpio: Where is Gitone?
Ascylitus: (gasping) I sold
him to Vernacchio the actor...
Their dispute over the
boy-toy Gitone (Max Born) is another one of those peculiar
passions that make love an illness, sex a disease. Gitone is
a treacherous little ponce whose affections are political
rather than spiritual, so we are forced to consider him as a
symbol of Encolpio's cruel Fortune. While Encolpio's
fascination with Gitone is pathetic, the masochism is part
of the complexity of his friendship with A.
"Because of the picture's
open, non-judgemental portrayal of homosexuality, some
journalists seized upon the tempting notion that I myself
must be a homosexual or at least bisexual...." (Fellini)
In one of the many great
scenes, Encolpio confronts Vernacchio (Fanfulla), the actor
who bought the boy and is training him for female roles
("Helen of Troy, the faithful Penelope, Cornelia...").
Typical of the Roman arts in the time of Nero, Vernacchio's
playhouse stages not only obscene farces but also the
"theatre of the real thing" -- a blasphemer has his hand
chopped off as part of the evening's entertainment. The
audience laughs at Encolpio's attempt to regain Gitone,
begin bidding for him. But a Senator intervenes, and
Encolpio is allowed to lead Gitone away.
They wander the city, which
is a warren of the grotesque, a bizarre brothel, a merchant
mall of the unconscious. A huge head is being dragged
through an alley, a nightmare from a beheading, or an icon
of the local Caesar (the megalomaniacal Trimalchio, as it
later develops). They retire to Encolpio's room, make love,
but in the morning are found by Ascylitus. Instead of
fighting, they decide to go their separate ways, split their
possessions, but when asked who he wants to be with, the
faithless Gitone chooses Ascylitus. Encolpio barely has time
to dwell upon this treachery when an earthquake hits, and
the city collapses, blocks splitting from the huge dream
walls, burying citizens, animals and the collective memory.
Cut to: an art gallery that
looks perhaps a little too chic for the ancient world, but
nonetheless sustains the film's neo-primitivist/moderno
style. Here Encolpio meets up with the poet Eumolpus (Salvo
Randone), an older gentleman, also down on his luck. As the
camera patrols the hangings:
Eumolpus: The masters in this
gallery... are indicative of the apathy of our times. Nobody
paints like this anymore.
Encolpio: What caused this
decadence?
Eumolpus: Lust of money...
How did you get here? While
the continuity is outstanding in terms of tone, the
narrative progression is difficult to comprehend unless one
is familiar with Petronius, recognizes the stories, the
characters and the Fellini fictions. This isn't a major
problem, as the action exists as a
Fellini expressionism as much as it is a history,
is a literature. Petronius' Satyricon is also a collection
of fragments, memories of the original work, an incomplete
oeuvre, like the plays of Sophocles or the writings of
Cicero. In this sense Fellini's narrative imagery is
internal, fragments of music from the id.
The next major scene is the
feast at Trimalchio's, another Caesar who considers himself
a poet, wit, bon vivant -- a
subject of envy, contempt and rage from Eumolpus. The scene
is raw, the characters coarse, the action bizarre to the
point of revulsion. Eumolpus and Encolpio watch,
participate, but are really observers in this casual orgy of
sexual theatre, gluttony, and megalomania.
The aging Trimalchio (Il
Moro), who, like Truman Capote, can do anything at his
party, humiliates his slaves and his guests as dwarves
stagger in with smoldering cauldrons of flesh -- ambiguous
torsos from ambiguous creatures in an ambiguous universe. A
pig is brought forth, gutted, releasing an avalanche of
hens, snails, pigeons -- verily, all the small animals and
fowl of the known world. The guests drink, dance, insult one another under a huge icon
of the host. Trimalchio's belches, farts, snores are decoded as maxims of wisdom and
divinations by a vulpine secretary. At one point
Trimalchio denounces the drunken Eumolpus for having stolen
his verses, orders that he be thrown into the ovens.
Eumolpus is dragged up the steps to these open pits of hell,
but allowed to retreat, intimidated and debased. Trimalchio
is a tyrant of the flesh, the soul -- a tumorous ego.
His feast is a farce, as is
the next scene, his rehearsal for death -- a
play-within-the-play which is an
existential homage to the occult.
The party adjourns to the
plutocrat's tomb, a Roman
theatre-set of heavy megalithic blocks, a stone garden of
the soul. Here Trimalchio rehearses his funeral and
internment, has his guests weep and deliver their
sycophantic perorations as he lies smugly in the vault.
Telescoping the narrative
within itself even further, Fellini now inserts the story of
The Matron of Ephesus. A beautiful widow makes love to a
young soldier who has been guarding a crucified thief on a
nearby ridge. When the body of the thief is stolen, the
widow aids her lover by replacing the thief with the body of
her husband... which allows
Trimalchio to proclaim his grandest witticism, "Better to
hang a dead husband than a living lover."
Thus Fellini uses the
theatre-effect to cobble together an episodic narrative that
has the spacial architecture of consciousness, an anecdotal
progression of memory, cause, and effect. Art can't exist
without history. It exists as a perception of the Past,
which in turn becomes an anticipation of the Future.
"It was like speculating
about life on Mars, but with the help of a Martian, so
Satyricon satisfied in me some of my desire to make a
science-fiction film." (Fellini)
Now the dynamic changes,
moving away from the closed, interior city sets of
perpetual night into the open, exterior landscape of the
ocean and the unknown. The transition here is
thrilling, like arriving on another planet -- albeit as a
prisoner.
A huge barge sits on the
ocean, its black hulk a fantastic metaphor of evil, a
contradiction in the face of Nature. The V.O. by Encolpio
tells us "we had been taken prisoner by the terrible Lichas
of Tarantum." By "we" he means himself, his friend Ascylitus
and toy-boy Gitone. How? It doesn't really matter. As
Encolpio moves, so goes his nightmare, so goes his fate.
These sequences are among the
most brilliantly executed in all film drama to date. The
photographic compositions isolate Nature and exalt the
machine. The screen is sectionized into the geometrics of
ocean horizon and the raised oars of the slave galley --
dramatic simplicities that give imaginative and emotional
depth to the historical reality. No matter how fantastic the
characters and their actions, there's a raw authenticity
continuously seeping from the expressionism. This, says
Fellini, is how it was.
The bowels of this war barge
are a hellhole of chained slaves working the huge chorus of
oars as acrobats perform on the walkway between the
bulkheads, musicans play lyres in droning harmony with the
pitch and yawl... and Gitone sings in the tradition of the
Arabic boy soprano. The master Lichas (Alain Cuny) amuses
himself and his cast of cutthroats and slaves by wrestling
selected victims in a sexual overture to death. His insane,
reptilian eyes turn to Encolpio:
Lichas: (rasps) Come to me,
O tender fawn...
The androgynous Encolpio is
no match for the sadistic Lichas. But instead of snapping
his neck, Lichas' death embrace becomes one of love. "What
eyes, what clear blue eyes," he intones as he pins Encolpio
to the deck and kisses him. And this is no mere one-night
stand -- Lichas and Encolpio are married in a hastily
convened ceremony on the top deck and celebrate their love
with the slaughter of a young calf. Lichas wears a veil in a
peculiar gesture of submission and dominance, as if he is
both male and female, his homosexuality a primal twining, an
omnivore from the deep.
Time passes... the ship is
seen passing through sleet and snow. A sea-monster is
captured, raised to the deck, butchered. Then, as they draw
close to the island where the young Caesar has his home,
armed vessels surround them. As they watch, the young Caesar
is hunted along the shoreline onto the sculptured white
rocks where, cornered, he draws his sword and kills himself.
His body is then impaled on a pike to the cries of "The
Tyrant is dead!" The invaders confront Lichas on his ship,
sneer, "We've drowned your
emperor like a pig!" A sword is drawn and -- in one of those
cinematic moments you forever recall in your dreams --
Lichas is decapitated, his head flying into the ocean where
it sinks beneath the waves, his broken eyes rolled upwards
in a frozen moment of ecstasy.
You last see Gitone being
hustled away ("We'll keep him") as you expect Encolpio and
Ascylitus to either die or remain in chains. But no... here
Fellini changes the mood dynamic again.
You see an enclave bounded by
a rock face, a sand garden adjoining the villa of Petronius,
which is where he slits his wrists after freeing his slaves
and sending away his children. You don't know it's Petronius, although Fellini has
said elsewhere that's who it is. Does this matter? You know
suicide was a Roman option, an occultic solution to a
political fait accompli. Again, the episodic narrative
emulates dream, articulates history.
In this broken paradise of
softly falling water, chirping birds and frescos, they find a beautiful Ethiopian slave girl hiding
in her kennel, share her for
the night. Encolpio awakens at dawn to sound of
departing horsemen, and the roar of flames. The bodies of
Petronius and his wife are being immolated on their funeral
pyre.
Cut To: Another desolate
landscape where the wind stirs the dust around some tethered
horses near a covered wagon. This is the encampment of the
Nymphomaniac, who lies bound in the wagon, writhing in a
perpetual state of indiscriminate arousal. Her position is
more cruciform than missionary, her desire more occultic
than mad. A crone tells them her husband is taking her to
the "Hermaphrodite" at the oracle for a "cure"... but in the
meantime he would be pleased if the young men would help
soothe his wife's hermetic fever. Forever the incorrigible
opportunist, Ascylite is only too happy to oblige, and he
mounts the Nymphomaniac in an act that simulates ecstasy,
but seals his fate.
They journey with the husband
to the Oracle. The plan is to steal the Hermaphrodite, a
sickly grotesque who lies in a crib beside the healing pool
in the cave. The Hermaphrodite is a transgendered being who
mirrors our origins, realizes our fears, fixes myth with biological fact. All come to this "demigod" seeking a cure
for what ails them. War
amputees, seniles, the insane... and the wandering voyeurs
of history. Encolpio stabs and kills the old man
who is the Hermaphrodite's guardian, and the trio flee with
this sacred creature lodged on a hand
cart. But like some fragile experiment from the
stud farm, the Hermaphrodite dies, and the nympho's husband,
enraged, attacks Encolpio and Ascylitus.
What now? Fellini's complex,
episodic narrative continues to scroll.
Somehow Encolpio finds
himself rolling down a slope into a crude arena, the lair of
the Minotar. And, true to form, his "friend" Ascylitus is
somehow the grinning intimate of the Caesar and his
entourage who will watch this piece of mythological theatre.
The Minotar is a seven foot
giant wearing a bull-ram headpiece, and awaits his trophy in
his labyrinth. Once again Encolpio finds himself on-stage
against his will.
He escapes death by
appealing to the Minotar's humanity:
Encolpio: Dear Minotar, I
will love you if you set me free...
The Minotar removes his
headpiece, smiles, laughs, addresses the crowd:
Minotar: (to the pro-Consul)
This isn't cowardice... it's the commonsense of an educated
youth!
They embrace and instead of
being killed, Encolpio is given Ariadne, a trophy harlot who
lies willing and able on a stone bed nearby. But Encolpio
finds himself incapable of performing and is tossed
contemptuously into the surrounding trench by the
disgruntled Ariadne. And as he crawls out, who should appear
on a travelling litter, reborn as a wealthy noble with an
entourage of women? His old mentor Eumolpus, The Poet... in
a crazy reversal of Fortune that makes him the heir of
Trimalchio!
They retire to Eumolpus'
harem, a fantasy quadrangle of the senses. Encolpio has his
bum smacked by a bevy of voluptuaries in a futile attempt to
restore his potency as Ascylitus stands arrogantly on a
giant swing, riding it back and forth in a vulgar foreplay
as infantile as it is theatrical. This respite -- like an
interlude from One Thousand and One Nights -- is brief, and
presently Encolpio journeys beyond the Great Swamps in
search of the Witch who will restore his lost sexuality.
Oenothea is a plump negress, another vagina on a slab.
Her magic is to morph into fire in a basic metaphor of
potency. Once again Encolpio is invited to perform -- and
this time he seems to have better luck. As Ascylitus lingers
outside by the river bank, he is
attacked and killed by a man who might be the Nymphomaniac's
husband or merely a bandit who preys on the clients of the
Witch. Ascylitus calls out to Encolpio
as he's fatally stabbed, then mysteriously enters
the Witch's cave, urges Encolpio to leave. Delighted with
his restored powers, Encolpio follows the ghost, finds
Ascylitus dead in the saw grass. The incident is
contradictory, occultic, and left unexplained. The scene
closes with the shocked Encolpio framed against a solitary
stone megalith.
The final episode sees
Encolpio encounter a ship heading for Africa. The Master
lies dead on the shore, surrounded by crates, friends and
retainers. The Master's will is read, the lucky inheritors
told that they will have to eat his body if they want to
share in his wealth. Meanwhile the crew invites Encolpio to
join them, and as they run happily over the dunes towards
the ship, the Master's body is eaten. Although there's no
Christian intent, the situation appeals to the cynical who will recall The Last Supper.
The film ends with Encolpio's
V.O. telling of his odyssey, the islands, the cities... then, in a
lap-dissolve, he and his friends transmogrify, become
figures in a fresco on a broken wall in a set of ruins.
"'What a pity,' some
archaeologist laments, upon viewing something called
Fellini's Satyricon. 'It seems to be missing its beginning,
middle and end. It is so strange... what kind of man could
this Fellini have been? Perhaps he was mad.'"
Fellini's narrative has an
interesting image/symbol sub-text, one which
integrates the action in a series of loops. There is the
head, at first a mysterious icon in the street, later a
mural at the Feast of Trimalchio, finally the severed head
of Lichas sinking below the waves. Lichas is first seen
wearing an animal head piece, a
totemic mask similar to that worn by the Minotar. There's
the white horse, sleeping on its feet in a sunken court
prior to the earthquake, a thing of beauty and innocence in
a city of polymorphic decadence. Horses recur in elegant
pursuit of the horizon or in captive poses, more beautiful
than the human, closer to the Gods, never grotesque, never
decadent. Women on their backs: the Nymphomaniac, Ariadne, the Witch. Always on altars, sexual transponders of
Fortune and reincarnation. And the frescoes....
paganism: religious order and the
secularization of form
The pagan form is episodic,
mythical, anthropomorphic, open.
The religious form is determinist, codified, atomic, closed.
Fellini Satyricon is the perfect post-modern testament, a
de-construction of the determinist model in which the hero
is the author of his fate in favor of the episodic model
where Fate is a subject of Fortune etc. By interpreting the
past, it predicts the future: the end of religious order,
the secularization of Form. When a priest posted a black
edged bulletin of the door of his church denouncing Fellini
as a sinner, he was responding instinctively to the heresy
of art and the fatal movement of history. But Fellini is
only the messenger, not the messiah.
*Fellini quotes from I,
Fellini by Charlotte Chandler
Gaius Petronius (~27-66
A.D.), the author of the Satyricon, was the emperor Nero's
advisor in matters of luxury and extravagance (his
unofficial title was arbiter elegantiae). As befitted his
office, he slept days and partied nights. He was a lover of
style, manners, and literature, and his
personality was characterized by freedom, a lack of
self-consciousness, a loose tongue, and an attitude.
A rival's jealousy turned Nero against Petronius, and he was
forced to commit suicide. However, before his death, he
lampooned Nero in his will and sent the emperor a copy.
The emperor Nero was
interested in literature and art, especially theater. He
fancied himself as a sort of reincarnation of Apollo, and
liked to display his talents and be praised. His artistic
obsessions and extravagant buildings brought him ridicule.
Nero's court was distinguished by its immorality and
extravagance. Everyone's primary goal was making lots of
money. Because there was so much leisure for the very rich,
strong ambition and responsibility were required for almost
anything at all to be accomplished. Life at court was
uncertain because Nero was capricious. Literature was used
for flattery, personal advancement, advocacy of your own
position, and destruction of your opponent's position. The
literary arms of the establishment included censorship,
prosecution, libel suits, and that old standby, physical
attacks.
Unconventional and unique,
the Satyricon stands almost alone in literature. It touches
on everything, especially small-town life and ordinary
people. Its characters are mostly of Greek or Near Eastern
origin and are probably based on real people; Trimalchio's
house has a lot in common with Nero's court. Some of the
characters' names have given rise to much interesting
etymological speculation: the name of Encolpius, our
narrator, means "in the fold," or more explicitly here, "in
the crotch"; his friend is named Ascyltos, or "unwearied,"
and they fight over the affections of the boy Giton
("neighbor").
The Satyricon was probably
written around 61 AD and first printed in 1664. It is a very
long work, of which we only have fragments. Petronius
probably read it in installments to his friends, and
possibly to the court of Nero. The Cena is one of the longer
fragments; its survival in its entirety suggests that people
have been enjoying it as a separable story for a long time.
A banquet is the traditional setting for the kind of light
conversation that is featured in the Cena.
The Satyricon itself, as its
name implies, is a satire. The origin of the word "satire"
has been a subject for academic debate: some say it comes
from satura, or medley, while others theorize that it refers
to something which is goat-like,
like a satyr (smelly, rude, unkempt, and hairy?). Petronius
satirizes anything and everything, using taste as the only
standard. This is NOT a moralistic story intended to produce
reform, as we often imagine a satire to be. We never know
Petronius's own opinion (although he warns prudes not to
criticize his story), because he doesn't give it to us
directly. The only opinions we have are those of the
characters in the story. Encolpius, as we shall see,
criticizes Trimalchio, but Encolpius is no great prize
either, so what is his criticism worth?
More specifically, the
Satyricon is a Menippean satire. This genre, originally a
humorous discussion of philosophy in alternating prose and
verse, is characterized by the use of many different styles.
In the Satyricon, accordingly, we find proverbs, verse,
interpolated stories, and varied levels of language (from
the very vulgar to the very elegant).
Some of the stories told by
Trimalchio's guests are part of the genre called Milesian
tales. These are funny, often questionable, stories
characterized by a great deal of variety and incongruity in
their plots, and by lots of digressions. They have a lot in
common with the more outlandish controversiae of the
rhetorical schools, as we shall see.
The Satyricon is set in
Campania, which is the region around Naples and Mt.
Vesuvius, in the middle of Italy. The advantage of this
setting for us, paradoxically, is the eruption of Vesuvius
in 79 A.D. Two nearby towns, Pompeii and Herculaneum, were
completely destroyed but in such a way that an unusual number of antiquities of this
date were preserved by being covered with ash or
mud. We have many resources at our disposal to help us learn
about life in Mediterranean countries at this time, which
enables us to visualize what life was like for Petronius and
the characters of the Satyricon.
Pompeii was a walled town,
densely built up with little wasted space. In the center of
town was the Forum, an open space off-limits to wheeled
vehicles. The Forum had three functions: religious,
civic/governmental, and commercial. There were buildings
around the perimeter of the Forum for each function.
Gladiator contests were held in the open center. In Chapter
4, Encolpius and his friends will be discussing an upcoming
contest in which the combatants will fight to the death.
This was a rare and special treat; animals and people were
too expensive to sacrifice in that way very often.
Houses and baths made up the
rest of Pompeii. As we shall see, the baths were a vitally
important aspect of Roman social life. The city streets did
double duty as sewers also; there were stepping stones to
make crossing easier. Often the owner of a house would rent
out the first floor to a small shopkeeper.
The houses had no exterior
windows (why would they want to look out into the sewer?);
all the windows looked inward to the atrium. On the walls
were paintings which allowed you
to imagine you were looking out into an unreal world. Fake
columns, perspectives, historical or religious scenes,
sacred landscapes, and abstract designs all ornamented the
walls of a Roman house. What you didn't paint on the walls
was your life story, as we shall see that Trimalchio has
done. Holes in the roof let in light and air, but, as you
can imagine, the light inside was very dim. At the entrance
to the house was the lararium, a shrine to your ancestors
and protecting genii.
Trimalchio
probably has a house outside the city walls, unrestricted in
size and with actual windows, not unlike that of the emperor
Tiberius. This emperor, who was old and paranoid, lived in a
country villa on the island of Capri and used to dump people
he considered suspicious over the cliffs.
From: Ancient History
Sourcebook
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/petronius-satyricon-feast.html
Petronius Arbiter (c.27-66
CE)
The Banquet of Trimalchio from the Satyricon
[Introduction (adapted from
Davis)]
The following is a excerpt from a comic
romance probably composed during the reign of Nero. The
picture of Trimalchio, the coarse freedman parvenu, who
has nothing to commend him but his money, and who is
surrounded by countless parasites and creatures of his
whims, is one of the most clever and unsparing
delineations in ancient literature. .
At last we went to recline at
table where boys from Alexandria poured snow water on our
hands, while others, turning their attention to our feet,
picked our nails, and not in silence did they perform their
task, but singing all the time. I wished to try if the whole
retinue could sing, and so I called for a drink, and a boy,
not less ready with his tune, brought it accompanying his
action with a sharp-toned ditty; and no matter what you
asked for it was all the same song.
The first course was served and
it was good, for all were close up at the table, save
Trimalchio, for whom, after a new fashion, the place of
honor was reserved. Among the first viands there was a
little ass of Corinthian bronze with saddle
bags on his back, in one of which were white olives
and in the other black. Over the ass were two silver
platters, engraved on the edges with Trimalchio's name, and
the weight of silver. Dormice seasoned with honey and
poppies lay on little bridge-like structures of iron; there
were also sausages brought in piping hot on a silver
gridiron, and under that Syrian plums and pomegranate
grains.
We were in the midst of these
delights when Trimalchio was brought in with a burst of
music. They laid him down on some little cushions, very
carefully; whereat some giddy ones broke into a laugh,
though it was not much to be wondered at, to see his bald
pate peeping out from a scarlet cloak, and his neck all
wrapped up and a robe with a broad purple stripe hanging
down before him, with tassels and fringes dingle-dangle
about him.
Then going through his teeth with
a silver pick, "my friends," quoth he, "I really didn't want
to come to dinner so soon, but I was afraid my absence would
cause too great a delay, so I denied myself the pleasure I
was at---at any rate I hope you'll let me finish my game." A
slave followed, carrying a checkerboard of turpentine wood,
with crystal dice; but one thing in particular I noticed as
extra nice---he had gold and silver coins instead of the
ordinary black and white pieces. While he was cursing like a
trooper over the game and we were starting on the lighter
dishes, a basket was brought in on a tray, with a wooden hen
in it, her wings spread round, as if she were hatching.
Then two slaves came with their
eternal singing, and began searching the straw, whence they
rooted out some peahen's eggs, and distributed them among
the guests. At this Trimalchio turned around---"Friends," he
says, "I had some peahen's eggs placed under a hen, and so
help me Hercules!---I hope
they're not hatched out; we'd better try if they're still
tasty." Thereupon we took up our spoons---they were not less
than half a pound weight of silver---and broke the eggs that
were made of rich pastry. I had been almost on the point of
throwing my share away, for I thought I had a chick in it,
until hearing an old hand saying, "There must be something
good in this," I delved deeper---and found a very fat
fig-pecker inside, surrounded by peppered egg yolk.
At this point Trimalchio stopped
his game, demanded the same dishes, and raising his voice,
declared that if anyone wanted more liquor he had only to
say the word. At once the orchestra struck up the music, as
the slaves also struck up theirs, and removed the first
course. In the bustle a dish chanced to fall, and when a boy
stooped to pick it up, Trimalchio gave him a few vigorous
cuffs for his pains, and bade him to "throw it down
again"---and a slave coming in swept out the silver platter
along with the refuse. After that two long-haired Ethiopians
entered with little bladders, similar to those used in
sprinkling the arena in the amphitheater, but instead of
water they poured wine on our hands. Then glass wine jars
were brought in, carefully sealed and a ticket on the neck
of each, reading thus: "Opimian Falernia, One hundred years
old."
[Davis: Presently one of the
guests remarks, first on how completely Trimalchio is under
the thumb of his wife; next he comments on the gentleman's
vast riches.] "So help me Hercules, the tenth of his slaves
don't know their own master.... Some time ago the quality of
his wool was not to his liking; so what does he do, but buys
rams at Tarentum to improve the breed. In order to have
Attic honey at home with him, he has bees brought from
Attica to better his stock by crossing it with the Greek. A
couple of days ago he had the notion to write to India for
mushroom seed. And his freedmen, his one-time comrades [in
slavery] they are no small cheese either; they are immensely
well-off. Do you see that chap on
the last couch over there? Today he has his 800,000
sesterces. He came from nothing, and time was when he had to
carry wood upon his back.... He has been manumitted only
lately, but he knows his business. Not long ago he displayed
this notice: "Caius Pompeius Diogenes, Having Taken A House
Is Disposed To Let His Garret From The Kalends Of July."
[After a very long discussion in
like vein and a vulgar display of luxuries and riches,
Trimalchio condescends to tell the company how he came by
his vast wealth.]
"When I came here first [as a
slave] from Asia, I was only as high as yonder candlestick,
and I'd be measuring my height on it every day, and greasing
my lips with lamp oil to bring out a bit of hair on my
snout. Well, at last, to make a long story short, as it
pleased the gods, I became master in the house, and as you
see, I'm a chip off the same block. He [my master] made me
coheir with Caesar, and I came into a royal fortune, but no
one ever thinks he has enough. I was mad for trading, and to
put it all in a nutshell, bought five ships, freighted them
with wine---and wine was as good as coined money at that
time--and sent them to Rome. You wouldn't believe it, every one of those ships was
wrecked. In one day Neptune swallowed up 30,000,000
sesterces on me. D'ye think I lost heart? Not much! I took
no notice of it, by Hercules! I got more ships made, larger,
better, and luckier; that no one might say I wasn't a plucky
fellow. A big ship has big strength---that's plain! Well I
freighted them with wine, bacon, beans, perfumes, and
slaves. Here Fortuna (my consort) showed her devotion. She
sold her jewelry and all her dresses, and gave me a hundred
gold pieces---that's what my fortune grew from. What the
gods ordain happens quickly. For on just one voyage I
scooped in 10,000,000 sesterces and immediately started to
redeem all the lands that used to be my master's. I built a
house, bought some cattle to sell again---whatever I laid my
hand to grew like a honeycomb.
When I found myself richer than all the country round about
was worth, in less than no time I gave up trading, and
commenced lending money at interest to the freedmen. Upon my
word, I was very near giving up business altogether, only an
astrologer, who happened to come into our colony, dissuaded
me.
"And now I may as well tell you
it all---I have thirty years, four months and two days to
live, moreover IÕm to fall in for an estate---that's
prophecy anyway. If I'm so lucky as to be able to join my
domains to Apulia, I'll say I've got on pretty well.
Meanwhile under Mercury's' fostering, I've built this house.
Just a hut once, you know---now a regular temple! It has
four dining rooms, twenty bedrooms, two marble porticoes, a
set of cells upstairs, my own bedroom, a sitting room for
this viper (my wife!) here, a very fine porter's room, and
it holds guests to any amount. There are a lot of other
things too that I'll show you by and by. Take my word for it, if you have a penny you're worth
a penny, you are valued for just what you have. Yesterday
your friend was a frog, he's a king today---that's the way
it goes."
[Trimalchio goes on to show off
to his guests the costly shroud, perfumes, etc., he has been
assembling for his own funeral; and at last] we, the guests
were already disgusted with the whole affair when
Trimalchio, who, by the way, was beastly drunk, ordered in
the cornet players for our further pleasure, and propped up
with cushions, stretched himself out at full length.
"Imagine I'm dead," says he, "and play something soothing!"
Whereat the cornet players struck up a funeral march, and
one of them especially---a slave of the undertaker
fellow---the best in the crowd, played with such effect that
he roused the whole neighborhood. So the watchmen, who had
charge of the district, thinking Trimalchio's house on fire,
burst in the door, and surged in---as was their right---with
axes and water ready. Taking advantage of such an opportune
moment . . . we bolted incontinently, as if there had been a
real fire in the place.
Source:
From: William Stearns Davis, ed.,
Readings in Ancient
History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources, 2
Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West,
pp. ??
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg,
Dept. of History, Cal. State
Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.
0802Satyricon2.doc
http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Fellini/FelliniFiles.htm
Film Court | copyright 2000 | Lawrence
Russell
Fellini Satyricon (1969) dir. Frederico Fellini writ. Fellini and
Bernardino Zapponi (based on the writings of Petronious)
cine. Giuseppe Rotunno sets Danilo Donati and Luigi
Caccianoce music Nino Rota, Ilhan Mimaroght, Tod Dockstader,
Andrew Rudin star. Martin Potter (Encolpio), Hiram Keller
(Ascylite), Max Born (Gitone), Salvo Randone (Eumolpo the
Poet), Il Moro (Trimalcione), Magali Noel (Fortunata),
Capucine (Trifena), Alain Cuny (Lica), Fanfulla
(Vernacchio), Luigi Montefiori (Minotaur), Joseph Wheeler
(suicide: Petronius), Lucia Bose (suicide: P's wife), et. al.
The "theatre effect" is often the
sign of primitivism in film drama -- except when it's Orson
Welles or Frederico Fellini. Satyricon's sets
are spectacular, neo-modernist constructions that combine
both the pictographic art of the past with the angular
sensibility of the present. Characters declaim their lines
to phantoms beyond the screen or to decadent aristocrats in
the burlesques that are frequently featured within the
playhouses, feasts, tombs, temples and the other venues that
carry the action of this mythical adventure.
The film begins with the "hero"
Encolpio (Martin Potter) monologuing in front of a fresco,
bemoaning his fate:
Encolpio:
The earth has not dragged me into the abyss... nor has the
tempestuous sea engulfed me... I have fled from justice, from
the arena... I have even stained my hands with blood... to end
up here, banished and abandoned.... Who was it that condemned
me to this solitude? He who knows every vice... who himself
admits he deserves banishment: Ascylitus!
Who is he speaking to? The obsolete convention of live theatre is
resurrected by Fellini in order to break the
alienation between the viewer and the subject, thus moving
away from the aesthetic of cinematic voyeurism into audience
complicity.
It's a clever directive, one which establishes not only the
dramatic method but also the visual style. An atmosphere of
history is integral to the audience's acceptance of the
story. Proceeding as if the world is an art gallery is often
the kiss of death in drama, but under Fellini's direction
it's a brilliant fugue of modern expressionism and
interpretative mythology.
"In Satyricon, I was influenced by
the look of frescoes. At the end, these people, whose lives
were so real to them, are now only crumbling frescoes."
(Fellini)
Encolpio: student, pretty boy
bisexual adventurer, and creature of fortune whose present
misery is due to the theft of his boy lover Gitone by his
friend and fellow student, Ascylitus. We are also introduced
to Ascylitus (Hiram Keller) by way of a monologue and
quickly learn that he's no sentimentalist:
Ascylitus: (hoarsely) Encolpio
is looking for me, he wants revenge. (gloats)
Friendship lasts as long as it is convenient.
They fight, and Encolpio holds
Ascylitus's head over a steaming culvert.
Encolpio: Where is Gitone?
Ascylitus: (gasping) I sold
him to Vernacchio the actor...
Their dispute over the boy-toy
Gitone (Max Born) is another one of those peculiar passions
that make love an illness, sex a disease. Gitone is a
treacherous little ponce whose affections are political
rather than spiritual, so we are forced to consider him as a
symbol of Encolpio's cruel Fortune. While Encolpio's
fascination with Gitone is pathetic, the masochism is part
of the complexity of his friendship with A.
"Because of the picture's
open, non-judgemental portrayal of homosexuality, some
journalists seized upon the tempting notion that I myself
must be a homosexual or at least bisexual...." (Fellini)
In one of the many great scenes,
Encolpio confronts Vernacchio (Fanfulla), the actor who
bought the boy and is training him for female roles ("Helen
of Troy, the faithful Penelope, Cornelia..."). Typical of
the Roman arts in the time of Nero, Vernacchio's playhouse
stages not only obscene farces but also the "theatre of the
real thing" -- a blasphemer has his hand chopped off as part
of the evening's entertainment. The audience laughs at
Encolpio's attempt to regain Gitone, begin bidding for him.
But a Senator intervenes, and Encolpio is allowed to lead
Gitone away.
They wander the city, which is a
warren of the grotesque, a bizarre brothel, a merchant mall
of the unconscious. A huge head is being dragged through an
alley, a nightmare from a beheading, or an icon of the local
Caesar (the megalomaniacal Trimalchio, as it later
develops). They retire to Encolpio's room, make love, but in
the morning are found by Ascylitus. Instead of fighting,
they decide to go their separate ways, split their
possessions, but when asked who he wants to be
with, the faithless Gitone chooses Ascylitus. Encolpio
barely has time to dwell upon this treachery when an
earthquake hits, and the city collapses, blocks splitting
from the huge dream walls, burying citizens, animals and the collective
memory.
Cut to: an art gallery that looks
perhaps a little too chic for the ancient world, but
nonetheless sustains the film's neo-primitivist/moderno
style. Here Encolpio meets up with the poet Eumolpus (Salvo
Randone), an older gentleman, also down on his luck. As the
camera patrols the hangings:
Eumolpus: The masters in this
gallery... are indicative of the apathy of our times. Nobody
paints like this anymore.
Encolpio: What caused this
decadence?
Eumolpus: Lust of money...
How did you get here? While the
continuity is outstanding in terms of tone, the narrative
progression is difficult to comprehend unless one is
familiar with Petronius, recognizes the stories, the
characters and the Fellini fictions. This isn't a major
problem, as the action exists as a
Fellini expressionism as much as it is a history,
is a literature. Petronius' Satyricon is also a
collection of fragments, memories of the original work, an
incomplete oeuvre,
like the plays of Sophocles or the writings of Cicero. In
this sense Fellini's narrative imagery is internal,
fragments of music from the id.
The next major scene is the feast
at Trimalchio's, another Caesar who considers himself a
poet, wit, bon vivant -- a
subject of envy, contempt and rage from Eumolpus. The scene
is raw, the characters coarse, the action bizarre to the
point of revulsion. Eumolpus and Encolpio watch,
participate, but are really observers in this casual orgy of
sexual theatre, gluttony, and megalomania.
The aging Trimalchio (Il Moro),
who, like Truman Capote, can do anything at his party,
humiliates his slaves and his guests as dwarves stagger in
with smoldering cauldrons of flesh -- ambiguous torsos from
ambiguous creatures in an ambiguous universe. A pig is
brought forth, gutted, releasing an avalanche of hens,
snails, pigeons -- verily, all the small animals and fowl of
the known world. The guests drink, dance, insult one another under a huge icon
of the host. Trimalchio's belches, farts, snores are decoded as maxims of wisdom and
divinations by a vulpine secretary. At one point
Trimalchio denounces the drunken Eumolpus for having stolen
his verses, orders that he be thrown into the ovens.
Eumolpus is dragged up the steps to these open pits of hell,
but allowed to retreat, intimidated and debased. Trimalchio
is a tyrant of the flesh, the soul -- a tumorous ego.
His feast is a farce, as is the
next scene, his rehearsal for death -- a
play-within-the-play which is an
existential homage to the occult.
The party adjourns to the
plutocrat's tomb, a Roman
theatre-set of heavy megalithic blocks, a stone garden of
the soul. Here Trimalchio rehearses his funeral and
internment, has his guests weep and deliver their
sycophantic perorations as he lies smugly in the vault.
Telescoping the narrative within
itself even further, Fellini now inserts the story of The Matron of Ephesus.
A beautiful widow makes love to a young soldier who has been
guarding a crucified thief on a nearby ridge. When the body
of the thief is stolen, the widow aids her lover by
replacing the thief with the body of her husband... which allows Trimalchio to
proclaim his grandest witticism, "Better to hang a dead
husband than a living lover."
Thus Fellini uses the
theatre-effect to cobble together an episodic narrative that
has the spacial architecture of consciousness, an anecdotal
progression of memory, cause, and effect. Art can't exist
without history. It exists as a perception of the Past,
which in turn becomes an anticipation of the Future.
"It was like speculating about
life on Mars, but with the help of a Martian, so Satyricon
satisfied in me some of my desire to make a
science-fiction film." (Fellini)
Now the dynamic changes, moving
away from the closed, interior city sets of perpetual
night into the open, exterior landscape of the ocean and
the unknown. The transition here is
thrilling, like arriving on another planet -- albeit as a
prisoner.
A huge barge sits on the ocean,
its black hulk a fantastic metaphor of evil, a contradiction
in the face of Nature. The V.O. by Encolpio tells us "we had
been taken prisoner by the terrible Lichas of Tarantum." By
"we" he means himself, his friend Ascylitus and toy-boy
Gitone. How? It doesn't really matter. As Encolpio moves, so
goes his nightmare, so goes his fate.
These sequences are among the
most brilliantly executed in all film drama to date. The
photographic compositions isolate Nature and exalt the
machine. The screen is sectionized into the geometrics of
ocean horizon and the raised oars of the slave galley --
dramatic simplicities that give imaginative and emotional
depth to the historical reality. No matter how fantastic the
characters and their actions, there's a raw authenticity
continuously seeping from the expressionism. This, says Fellini,
is how it was.
The bowels of this war barge are
a hellhole of chained slaves working the huge chorus of oars
as acrobats perform on the walkway between the bulkheads,
musicans play lyres in droning harmony with the pitch and
yawl... and Gitone sings in the tradition of the Arabic boy
soprano. The master Lichas (Alain Cuny) amuses himself and
his cast of cutthroats and slaves by wrestling selected
victims in a sexual overture to death. His insane, reptilian
eyes turn to Encolpio:
Lichas: (rasps) Come to me,
O tender fawn...
The androgynous Encolpio is no
match for the sadistic Lichas. But instead of snapping his
neck, Lichas' death embrace becomes one of love. "What eyes,
what clear blue eyes," he intones as he pins Encolpio to the
deck and kisses him. And this is no mere one-night stand --
Lichas and Encolpio are married in a hastily convened
ceremony on the top deck and celebrate their love with the
slaughter of a young calf. Lichas wears a veil in a peculiar
gesture of submission and dominance, as if he is both male
and female, his homosexuality a primal twining, an omnivore
from the deep.
Time passes... the ship is seen
passing through sleet and snow. A sea-monster is captured,
raised to the deck, butchered. Then, as they draw close to
the island where the young Caesar has his home, armed
vessels surround them. As they watch, the young Caesar is
hunted along the shoreline onto the sculptured white rocks
where, cornered, he draws his sword and kills himself. His
body is then impaled on a pike to the cries of "The Tyrant
is dead!" The invaders confront Lichas on his ship, sneer, "We've drowned your emperor like a
pig!" A sword is drawn and -- in one of those cinematic
moments you forever recall in your dreams -- Lichas is
decapitated, his head flying into the ocean where it sinks
beneath the waves, his broken eyes rolled upwards in a
frozen moment of ecstasy.
You last see Gitone being hustled
away ("We'll keep him") as you expect Encolpio and Ascylitus
to either die or remain in chains. But no...
here Fellini changes the mood
dynamic again.
You see an enclave bounded by a
rock face, a sand garden adjoining the villa of Petronius,
which is where he slits his wrists after freeing his slaves
and sending away his children. You don't know it's Petronius, although Fellini has
said elsewhere that's who it is. Does this matter? You know
suicide was a Roman option, an occultic solution to a
political fait
accompli. Again, the episodic narrative emulates
dream, articulates history.
In this broken paradise of softly
falling water, chirping birds and frescos, they find a beautiful Ethiopian slave girl hiding
in her kennel, share her for
the night. Encolpio awakens at dawn to sound of
departing horsemen, and the roar of flames. The bodies of
Petronius and his wife are being immolated on their funeral
pyre.
Cut To: Another desolate
landscape where the wind stirs the dust around some tethered
horses near a covered wagon. This is the encampment of the
Nymphomaniac, who lies bound in the wagon, writhing in a
perpetual state of indiscriminate arousal. Her position is
more cruciform than missionary, her desire more occultic
than mad. A crone tells them her husband is taking her to
the "Hermaphrodite" at the oracle for a
"cure"... but in the meantime he would be pleased if the
young men would help soothe his wife's hermetic fever.
Forever the incorrigible opportunist, Ascylite is only too
happy to oblige, and he mounts the Nymphomaniac in an act
that simulates ecstasy, but seals his fate.
They journey with the husband to
the Oracle. The plan is to steal the Hermaphrodite, a sickly
grotesque who lies in a crib beside the healing pool in the
cave. The Hermaphrodite is a transgendered being who mirrors
our origins, realizes our fears, fixes
myth with biological fact. All come to
this "demigod" seeking a cure for what ails them. War amputees, seniles, the insane... and the
wandering voyeurs of history. Encolpio stabs and
kills the old man who is the Hermaphrodite's guardian, and
the trio flee with this sacred creature lodged on a hand cart. But like some fragile
experiment from the stud farm, the Hermaphrodite dies, and
the nympho's husband, enraged, attacks Encolpio and
Ascylitus.
What now? Fellini's complex,
episodic narrative continues to scroll.
Somehow Encolpio finds himself
rolling down a slope into a crude arena, the lair of the
Minotar. And, true to form, his "friend" Ascylitus is
somehow the grinning intimate of the Caesar and his
entourage who will watch this piece of mythological theatre.
The Minotar is a seven foot
giant wearing a bull-ram headpiece, and awaits his trophy in
his labyrinth. Once again Encolpio finds himself on-stage
against his will.
He escapes death by appealing to
the Minotar's humanity:
Encolpio: Dear Minotar, I will love you
if you set me free...
The Minotar removes his
headpiece, smiles, laughs, addresses the crowd:
Minotar: (to the pro-Consul)
This isn't cowardice... it's the commonsense of an educated
youth!
They embrace and instead of being
killed, Encolpio is given Ariadne, a trophy harlot who lies
willing and able on a stone bed nearby. But Encolpio finds
himself incapable of performing and is tossed contemptuously
into the surrounding trench by the disgruntled Ariadne. And
as he crawls out, who should appear on a travelling litter,
reborn as a wealthy noble with an entourage of women? His
old mentor Eumolpus, The Poet... in a crazy reversal of
Fortune that makes him the heir of Trimalchio!
They retire to Eumolpus' harem, a
fantasy quadrangle of the senses. Encolpio has his bum
smacked by a bevy of voluptuaries in a futile attempt to
restore his potency as Ascylitus stands arrogantly on a
giant swing, riding it back and forth in a vulgar foreplay
as infantile as it is theatrical. This respite -- like an
interlude from One
Thousand and One Nights -- is brief, and presently
Encolpio journeys beyond the Great Swamps in search of the
Witch who will restore his lost sexuality.
Oenothea is a plump negress, another vagina on a slab.
Her magic is to morph into fire in a basic metaphor of
potency. Once again Encolpio is invited to perform -- and
this time he seems to have better luck. As Ascylitus lingers
outside by the river bank, he is
attacked and killed by a man who might be the Nymphomaniac's
husband or merely a bandit who preys on the clients of the
Witch. Ascylitus calls out to Encolpio
as he's fatally stabbed, then mysteriously enters
the Witch's cave, urges Encolpio to leave. Delighted with
his restored powers, Encolpio follows the ghost, finds
Ascylitus dead in the saw grass. The incident is
contradictory, occultic, and left unexplained. The scene
closes with the shocked Encolpio framed against a solitary
stone megalith.
The final episode sees Encolpio
encounter a ship heading for Africa. The Master lies dead on
the shore, surrounded by crates, friends and retainers. The
Master's will is read, the lucky inheritors told that they
will have to eat his body if they want to share in his
wealth. Meanwhile the crew invites Encolpio to join them,
and as they run happily over the dunes towards the ship, the
Master's body is eaten. Although there's no Christian
intent, the situation appeals to the cynical who will recall The Last Supper.
The film ends with Encolpio's
V.O. telling of his odyssey, the islands, the cities...
then, in a lap-dissolve, he and his friends transmorgrify,
become figures in a
fresco on a broken wall in a set of ruins.
"'What a pity,' some
archaeologist laments, upon viewing something called
Fellini's Satyricon. 'It seems to be missing its
beginning, middle and end. It is so strange... what kind
of man could this Fellini have been? Perhaps he was mad.'"
Fellini's narrative has an
interesting image/symbol sub-text, one which
integrates the action in a series of loops. There is the head, at first a
mysterious icon in the street, later a mural at the Feast of
Trimalchio, finally the severed head of Lichas sinking below
the waves. Lichas is first seen wearing an animal head piece, a totemic mask similar to
that worn by the Minotar. There's the white horse, sleeping on
its feet in a sunken court prior to the earthquake, a thing
of beauty and innocence in a city of polymorphic decadence.
Horses recur in elegant pursuit of the horizon or in captive
poses, more beautiful than the human, closer to the Gods,
never grotesque, never decadent. Women on their backs:
the Nymphomaniac, Ariadne, the
Witch. Always on altars, sexual
transponders of Fortune and reincarnation. And the frescoes....
paganism: religious order and the
secularization of form
The pagan form is episodic,
mythical, anthropomorphic, open.
The religious form is determinist, codified, atomic, closed.
Fellini Satyricon
is the perfect post-modern testament, a de-construction of
the determinist model in which the hero is the author of his
fate in favor of the episodic model where Fate is a subject
of Fortune etc. By interpreting the past, it predicts the
future: the end of religious order, the secularization of
Form. When a priest posted a black edged bulletin of the
door of his church denouncing Fellini as a sinner, he was
responding instinctively to the heresy of art and the fatal
movement of history. But Fellini is only the messenger, not
the messiah.
*Fellini quotes from I, Fellini by
Charlotte Chandler
© LR 29/5/99
The following gives
background of the original Satyricon text by
Petronius and makes a few comments on FelliniÕs treatment of
that text.
From http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/LatinAuthors/Petronius.html
PETRONIUS AND THE SATYRICON
Fragments of a popular Roman
Novel
The
name of one Gaius (?) Petronius who died in 65 A.D. has been
for so long associated with the fragmentary novel called The
Satyricon, that it seems petty at this time to argue the
question of authorship. Tacitus does give in about a page a
vignette of Petronius, formerly consul and a governor of
Bithynia, adding that he was a man of undisputed taste,
which led to his being called (or appointed?) arbiter elegantiae , an
interesting and unique title, but one whose meaning is not
really clear. He lived an unconventional life, often
reversing night and day, but had talent for administration
also. But no mention is made of his writing any book, and
the best reason for staying with this Tacitean Petronius is
the lack of any other candidate to whom the Satyricon can be
assigned. The question still remains whether the kind of man
Tacitus describes would be like to write a novel devoted to
people of the lower classes, whether he would be as
intimately aware of their language and their sociology as
the writer of the Satyricon is.
One
MS of the central portion which we have, the Cena
Trimalchionis, was discovered in the 17 c. in what is
now Yugoslavia, which together with some pages of
dissociated text usually printed before and after it, form
the hundred or so pages of this absolutely unusual novel.
Our text is apparently one section of a much longer work,
perhaps fifteen times as long, of which the outline is not
at all clear to us. It does seem a shame that so little of a
work of such value is preserved, while reams of Statius and
Silius Italicus survive intact!
The
Satyricon is our only source of information about the
language of the people who made up the Roman populace. It is
true, Plautus does show traces of popular speech in his
Grecizing comedies, and the myriad inscriptions do reveal
bits and pieces of ordinary language, but in the Satyricon
we find description, conversations, stories and bits of
biography which tell us much about that unknown Roman, the
proletariat. In Trimalchio, at whose villa an elaborate
party is being staged, we see what must have been a common
occurrence in Rome of the time, an immigrant bourgeois who
has become rich without picking up any of the elements of
taste and education which would make him pass for a Roman
gentleman. Coarse as he is, gross, rich and often
disgusting, Trimalchio is above all real, as are the friends
who congregate for free dinner at his lavish table.
Reading
this
novella, there are many surprises, but perhaps none is more
interesting than the language itself. It is not easy to read
in places, since there are
numerous items of vocabulary found rarely or nowhere else in
Latin. But there is nothing of the well-groomed literariness
of Ciceronian periods, sentence structure is simple and
direct, and the notions of the speakers are just the sort of things that real people are
liable to be saying. Knowing so little about the Roman lower
classes, we are grateful for this one eye-opened, and only
wish we had more of it. For social history of the Roman
immigrant freedmen of the 1 st c. A.D., the Satyricon is a
mine of information, actually the only such mine of
information we have.
Fellini's
film
Satyricon is well worth seeing as background to
reading the text. It is such a lavish and overwrought
production, that one might miss the fact that it is quite
near to the text, actually most of the dialog is close
translation into Italian, while the scenes of the Cena
are as gross and gaudy as the Latin text indicates.
One
episode, that of the Ephesian Matron, is completely
remarkable and unexpected, since it portrays a light-hearted
skit of a widow attending a corpose of her husband in a
tomb. For reasons based in the story line, the body of the
husband ends up hung on a crufix outside the tomb, in
sompany with two cricified criminals. There is no space to
go into this here, but it seems clear that someone who
misunderstood Christianity totally, heard of Christ's
entombment and crucifixion, and turned it into an odd form
of comedy. This needs further study and discussion....
No
student who has studied a few years of high school Latin
should miss reading sections of Petronius. This is what
Romans read for entertainment, there is nothing fancy or
oratorical here, but the daily talk of the little people who
have vanished from the Roman scene. The gabby table-talkers,
the nouveau riche Trimalchio, the grossly expensive estate
with everything a person could imagine imagining---- these
were a part of Roman life, and curiously, can be found in
astonishing replica in America of the end of the 20th
century!
Return to Latin Author index
William
Harris,
Prof. Emeritus, Middlebury College,
www.middlebury.edu/~harris
0901Gladiator.doc
Gladiator: Trashing Commodus
Now that everyone in the
world has seen Ridley Scott's Gladiator movie,
maybe we should look at what's true in it and what is
cinematic invention. The
short answer is that everything in the background (sets,
costumes, gladiatorial activities, the Colosseum and games)
is very accurate and that the storyline and main characters
are pretty much invented, even characters who were
historical, like Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and his sister
Lucilla.
Commodus is shown in Gladiator as
arriving on the battlefield after the action is complete. In fact, he
campaigned with his father and participated in battles from
the time he was five years old and actually was in command
of the troops in the successful campaign shown at the start
of the movie. Maximus,
the movie's heroic and victorious general, never existed,
and his fictional victories really belonged to Commodus. Three years before
his death, Marcus Aurelius named Commodus co-Emperor in
recognition of his military victories, but Marcus Aurelius
actually ruled alone until his death. That occurred in
180 AD, of disease usually identified as "the plague"
(medical authorities differ on what that might have been),
somewhere near modern Vienna (and historians, of course,
argue about exactly where).
A few enemies of Commodus later mentioned poison, but
there's really no evidence (and it was always "poison" and
never smothering that came up in such cases.) Lucilla wasn't in
the military theater.
Nobody ever was
able to determine the exact fatherhood of the many children
produced by Faustina the Younger, the wife of Marcus Aurelius,
but both Lucilla and Commodus were among her brood. Lucilla was older by
a number of years, and she really had married Lucius Verus
when Commodus was four years older. Verus died ten years
before the action of the film starts, so it is unlikely that
there would be an eight-year-old son of theirs running around
several years into the epic.
Lucilla did hate Commodus and she participated in an
early assassination plot for which she was exiled and then
murdered on orders of Commodus.
There was never any hint that he took her to bed, but
there was plenty of evidence of such activity with some of his
younger sisters -- nobody knows how willing they were. (Lucilla, who had
remarried, was also promiscuous -- just not with her brother.) Commodus' main
squeeze was a cousin named Marcia, and there will be more
about her later.
Shortly after Marcus
Aurelius' death, Commodus signed treaties with the Germans
and withdrew all Roman forces from north of the Danube
River. This
move was immensely popular with the Army, who had been
campaigning there relentlessly for almost 20 years, and with
most Romans, who were tired of the high casualty rate and of
the economic drain caused by war profiteering by many
Senatorial families. Commodus
brought the 180,000 man Danube
Army home to an immense triumphal celebration, which he
dedicated to his deceased father. But it was
Commodus who was the people's hero. His popularity was
bolstered by the unprecedented long series of gladiatorial
games associated with the Triumph and with large
distributions of money to all Romans.
Commodus sponsored additional
games throughout his reign and always gave out cash to help
people enjoy them. He
was arguably the most popular Emperor that Rome had since
Augustus. Of
course, he was hated by the upper classes -- it was their
war profits he was distributing to the masses. Modern economists
have estimated that his expenditures for "bread and
circuses" were huge, but that he spent much less than the
"good emperors" before him (and especially Marcus Aurelius)
had spent on border wars that were of marginal to negative
value to the already over-extended Empire.
Commodus did fight in the
arena, but he had an understandably perfect record. His gladiatorial
opponents knew that if they put on a good but not dangerous
show they would only receive a minor wound and would be
spared in the end by the merciful Emperor. He was also an
accomplished animal slayer and had lions, bears, leopards,
hippos, and a giraffe on his lists of conquests. Some of these he
slew from safe platforms and catwalks, but he also sometimes
went down to the arena floor.
One of his great crowd pleasers was shooting the
heads off running ostriches with specially designed
broad-headed arrows -- they'd run around headless for a
while, much to the delight of the crowd. And it should be
remembered that none of his excesses put off the audience. Bloody as the
movie is, it cannot compare with the hellish scenes played
out in the real Colosseum -- scenes relished by the Roman
public Ð men, women, and children alike. Some revisionists
have gone so far as to say that Commodus just played to his
audience and that, perhaps, he wasn't as mad as he seemed. (This is the
Hamlet debate a millennium and a half sooner.)
I think he was really a
little nuts. And really evil Ð as was his whole society. And saying that he
was just an ultimate expression of his society doesn't
excuse. By the
end of his rule, he had apparently identified himself with
both Jupiter and Hercules.
He took to wearing a Herculean lion skin and keeping
a Hercules style club next to his throne. His arena persona
took over his life, and he turned civil administration over
to lackeys and freedmen.
With his encouragement, they increased the number of
executions and property seizures among the upper classes,
always trying to get enough money to mollify the Roman mob. Commodus
eventually tried to rename the months of the year after his
own names and titles, and he proclaimed a new name for Rome: the "Colony of
Commodus". Ultimately
his extreme behaviors and megalomaniacal beliefs became
habitual, and because of them he ended up with many more
powerful enemies than he could defend against.
The Gladiator film
vastly telescopes the reign of Commodus, showing him being
killed early in his reign in the Colosseum. He really lasted
thirteen years, and, at the end of 192, he was poised to
seize the last remaining public offices for himself. On New Years day
193 he planned to go before the Senate (dressed as a
gladiator, with the Hercules lion skin on his shoulders) to
take over the offices of the two elected Consuls after
having them murdered. The
story then becomes murky.
Perhaps because of
"information" supplied by enemy Senators, Marcia (Commodus'
mistress/cousin), connived with some of Commodus' cronies
and the wrestlers and gladiators he hung out with, and they
convinced each other that they were all on Commodus' latest
death list. The
story goes that, on New Year's Eve, they first poisoned
Commodus, but the dose was only strong enough to render him
unconscious. Fearing
that he might wake up in a mean mood, Marcia persuaded one
of the wrestlers to strangle him. Commodus never saw
the dawn of the new year.
The Senate rejoiced and
proclaimed famously that Commodus' corpse should be dragged
through the streets with "the hook" -- that was how really
badly disgraced dead gladiators were taken from the arena. He was saved from
that post-mortem indignity by one of the high-ranking
plotters, who spirited the body away to an unmarked grave
outside Rome.
The death of Commodus marked
the beginning of a new series of civil wars. His immediate
successor, Pertinax, lasted only 87 days before the army
killed him off. Then
Didius Julianus offered the Praetorian Guard the biggest
bribe, and they made him emperor. When he couldn't
deliver the bribe money, he soon lost Praetorian support. Provincial armies
proclaimed their own emperors, and, when Septimius Severus
marched on the city, Julianus was killed an officer in his
own guard platoon -- only 66 days after the Senate had
proclaimed him. The
Senate then proclaimed Septimius Severus Emperor, but it
took him four years to root out other claimants.
You should also remember that
Commodus' enemies got to pay the next generation of
historians, whose works became the basis for "historical
fact".
The dying game:
How did the gladiators really live?
By John Follain, The London
Times 12/15/02
Roman gladiators are the
stuff of legend and Hollywood movies. But newly discovered
bones are finally revealing the truth about how these
ancient heroes lived and died.
The tall gladiator had
marched into the Ephesus arena earlier that afternoon, to
perform before an audience of up to 25,000 spectators. He
was among the lowest of the low in the gladiator hierarchy,
which paired off opponents as evenly as possible to ensure
contests lasted. As a retiarius, he carried no helmet, and
his weapons were a trident and a net. Normally he would have
been pitted against a secutor or a murmillo - both of whom
had a visored helmet, a shield, greaves, a sword or a
dagger, and a protected sword arm.
The profession of retiarius
attracted the scorn of the contemporary writer Juvenal:
'What he hurls is a net, and he misses, of course, and we
see him Look up at the seats, then run for his life, all
around the arena, Easy for all to know and identify.' We
will never know whether the Ephesus gladiator, who was
between 18 and 25 years old, and 6ft tall - giving him an
advantage as far as throwing his net over his adversary went
- fought well or badly. But we do know how he met his end: a
dagger blow of such violence that it split his head open
with a gash that ran from the top of one ear, across the
front of his face, under the nose, to the opposite cheek.
His badly mangled skull has
survived to tell the tale of his death. Until now, what we
knew about gladiators - those bloody icons of the ancient
world - was derived from inscriptions on tombs, from the
literature of the time, and from the decorations on columns
that celebrated the triumphs of Roman emperors. But in
Ephesus in western Turkey, a city so rich and thriving it
was the New York of ancient Rome, a cemetery for gladiators
is for the first time yielding bony evidence of not only how
they died, but also how they lived, and how their injuries
were treated.
Believed to have been
inherited from the Etruscans,
gladiator contests spread across the Roman dominions and
were at first part of funeral celebrations for rich
families. In 78BC, the death of the dictator Sulla was
marked with battles fought by 6,000 gladiators. In time, the
private and religious significance of these contests
disappeared, and they became shows put on as popular
entertainment. The gladiators were tools of Roman rulers who
believed, as the ancient formula said, that they could keep
the plebs under control with 'bread and games'. Entry was
free.
The fury of gladiatorial
combat first came to Ephesus in 69BC, courtesy of Lucullus,
the Roman army's commander-in-chief. The city was a vital
centre, on a par with Alexandria in Egypt, or Antioch in
Syria. Under the Emperor Augustus, it became the first city
of the Roman province of Asia, and the residence of the
proconsul. A political and commercial centre with a
population of an estimated 200,000, it sat astride trade
routes that ran from West to East, and from South to North.
To accommodate the contests,
the eastern part of the Ephesus stadium built by the Greeks
was converted into an elliptical arena. One of the biggest
monuments of the city, the stadium was oval-shaped, about
330 yards long and 160 yards wide. Some 25,000 spectators -
half the capacity of the Colosseum - could watch the
athletic games favoured by the Greeks. Centuries later,
people could watch chariot races, and the gladiator combats
that began in the afternoon with the participants, right
arms raised, hailing high officials, nobles and senators
with the ritualistic words: 'Those who are about to die
salute you.'
There was no mistaking the
purpose of these fights: they were designed to impress
people with the might of Rome, and they allowed the cities
of the entire empire to show that they belonged to it.
Significantly, the Ephesus contests were organised by the
high priest who oversaw the worship of the emperor. In the
amphitheatre, the audience embodied the Roman nation, the
sovereign people of the Earth. It was the people, and not
their ruler, who decided whether a vanquished gladiator had
demonstrated sufficient fighting spirit and courage to
obtain a pardon. The people could also decide to grant a
gladiator freedom - most of them were prisoners of war,
slaves or condemned offenders - just as they could call for
his execution on the spot.
When a gladiator died, his
body was carried only a short distance from the scene of his
last stand. Some 300 yards away, off a covered passage built
with huge limestone blocks, lay a cemetery. There, the body
was placed in a sarcophagus that rested on the ground. No
other objects were buried with the body. But the dead man
was often honoured with an inscription that would guarantee
him later recognition. Some epitaphs carried the word
'gladiator' in both Latin and Greek, and detailed the cities
he had fought in and the victories he had won. One related
how Pandos, from Asia Minor, had won 10 contests and that,
even though he had had the sun in his eyes, he had managed
to kill an opponent 'as if he were a donkey'.
The epitaphs were discovered
in 1993, when archeologists stumbled across them as they
tried to trace the path taken by holy processions from the
centre of Ephesus to the Temple of Artemis - one of the
seven wonders of the ancient world - on the city's
outskirts. The cemetery, now covered by an orchard and off a
street where shepherds walk their sheep, yielded not only
the inscriptions but also - much more excitingly - enough
material to allow for the first mass autopsy ever performed
on the bones of gladiators.
The 'Dr Death' ministering to
these remains works from a small office in the faculty of
medicine at the University of Vienna. The screensaver on the
computer of Karl Grossschmidt, an anthropologist and
assistant professor, has grinning skeletons in sneakers
jogging in all directions. A burly man with delicate
tortoiseshell glasses and a ready grin, Grossschmidt is
deadpan about his daily dealings with death: when he warns
that the junction underneath his window is highly dangerous,
he mentions that he once saw a student thrown by a car above
a tram. Of the student's fate, he comments: 'Fresh bones.'
In May last year, the
somewhat staler gladiator bones were turned over to
Grossschmidt and his assistant Fabian Kanz. The age of the
remains did not worry him: the work he is proudest of was on
Neanderthal bones from Croatia, the youngest of which was
26,000 years old. When he arrived in Ephesus, Grossschmidt
was taken to a huge warehouse where, stacked from floor to
ceiling, were 300 blue plastic crates full of bones. He
picked his way through them and selected the most promising
relics. 'There wasn't much about these bones that suggested
death,' he says, 'so I wasn't shaken by them at all. Not
like Egyptian mummies. What with the eyes and the hair, you
really do feel you have a corpse in front of you.'
Grossschmidt soon established
that the bones had been mixed up, and that the remains of
one single body were more often than not spread between
different crates. Gradually he was able to put the skeletons
back together again, although it was impossible to complete
the task, as smaller bones, like the ones from the ribcage,
are too similar to be attributed to a particular skeleton.
The bones were not just of men - sometimes women and
children had been buried with them, making it likely that
these were family graves.
He estimated the remains were
of some 120 individuals, and dated most of them to
AD200-300. This was a time when gladiatorial combats reached
their zenith. Some of the fighters buried in the cemetery
may have performed under the emperor-gladiator Commodus, who
took part in a thousand bouts, and enjoyed shooting
sickle-headed arrows to decapitate ostriches. Commodus, who
was assassinated in AD192, features in Ridley Scott's film
Gladiator, starring Russell
Crowe. After his death, gladiator games became more and more
popular, and in AD249, to celebrate the millennium of the
foundation of Rome, 1,000 pairs of gladiators fought in the
Colosseum. Thirty-two elephants, a dozen tigers, more than
50 lions and six hippopotamuses were among the animals that
were sacrificed.
Of the Ephesus remains, the
gladiator bones stood out. They are now the subject of an
exhibition in the Turkish city - entitled Gladiators in
Ephesus: Death in the Afternoon - which attracts half the
visitors who come to the site, and which organisers hope
will travel to Britain next year. The skeletons' hands and
feet especially were extremely developed, with odd-looking
swellings in certain places due to constant strain.
Gladiators wore no sandals and walked barefoot on the sand
that was spread across the arena to soak up their blood.
Their feet had an abnormal bone structure, and marks on the
bones showed that their tendons were also bigger than normal
- much like the racket arm of a modern-day tennis champion
can be an inch or two longer than his other arm.
But it was the damage to the
bones that spoke the most. Many shoulder blades bore the
mark of the belt that held the heavy shield many of them
used. Other, more serious injuries found on the skeletons
helped to reveal what kind of gladiators these were - in
ancient Rome, they were divided into several categories, and
rules determined what weapons they could carry and who they
were paired against. The aim was to make it difficult to
injure the adversary.
A lucky find allowed the
experts to precisely match an injury with the kind of weapon
that caused it. A bronze trident fished from the bottom of
the harbour of Ephesus in 1989 matches exactly three jagged
holes found in a skull from the cemetery. The holes, each
2in apart, form a neat line across the top of the skull,
with the lowest one at the point where the fighter's brows
met. The prongs are 81/2in long, and plunged into his brain.
It was the last injury this man suffered, but not the first:
between two of the holes was the mark of an earlier blow,
which had healed but only after, as Grossschmidt puts it,
'he had bled like a pig'.
On the femur just above the
knee of another skeleton, Grossschmidt found four
odd-looking marks that form the outline of a square. The
marks are believed to have been made
by a four-pronged weapon that is depicted on a tombstone
found in Romania. It is held by a retiarius, who also
carries a trident, his dog at his feet. Until now,
archeologists thought the four-pronged version was an
artist's invention, an object with perhaps a religious
significance, but the Austrian team
believe they have shown that it really existed.
They are in no doubt that the femur injury was suffered
during fighting, as this part of the body was one of the
least protected in gladiator combats. The gladiator,
although not fatally injured, cannot have survived very long
as, crippled, he could no longer avoid his opponent's blows.
Sometimes execution, when it
came, was swift. For decades, the popular wisdom has been
that a death sentence was ordered with a thumbs-down sign,
but this is disputed by many historians
who believe that the sign was only made once the gladiator
had already been killed. The more common practice
was for the public to cry: 'Iugula [Lance him through]!'
The vanquished were expected
to act in accordance with the greatness of manhood and,
motionless, await the death thrust. Rather than a public
display of killing, according to the late Bristol university
historian Thomas Wiedemann, gladiatorial combat should be
seen more usefully as a demonstration of the power to
overcome death. '[The loser] was expected to take the coup
de grace without protest, and the ritualized way in which it
was carried out will have helped many defeated gladiators to
fulfill this expectation,' wrote Wiedemann in his book
Emperors and Gladiators. 'In that sense, even the gladiator
who died in the arena had overcome death. His death was
certainly a consolation to those who watched it. They had
assembled in order to be reminded of the death of a great
Roman.'
At least one of the
gladiators buried in Ephesus was executed with a single
dagger blow to the throat. He may have been squatting on all
fours at the time, exhausted; the sword smashed through his
left shoulder blade, slipped through the upper aperture of
the thorax and pierced the heart. Another was dispatched
with a dagger blow to the front of the throat, echoing a
report of the time that the Emperor Claudius ordered that
defeated fighters have their throats slit, so that he could
enjoy watching their faces as they died.
In Pompeii in the Gulf of
Naples, a relief on a panel shows a similar episode: the
loser holds onto the left knee of the victor, who pierces
his throat with a sword. 'Of course,' Wiedemann observed, 'a
gladiator who failed to accept his execution heroically
would hardly have been remembered on a relief glorifying the
generosity [of the games' organizer].'
The epitaphs found in the
cemetery reveal that most of the gladiators died in the
first year of their career. During that first year, the
chances of survival were an estimated 3:1, and every second
gladiator who was defeated in the arena was put to death.
Those contestants who were sent into the arena armed with
swords were usually given no prior training, and for them
the first fight was a death sentence. It was truly, as
Michael Grant wrote in his vivid little book Gladiators: The
Bloody Truth, the nastiest blood sport invented.
But gladiators also lived to
fight another day, and many more. Some fighters had 150
victories recorded on their tombstones. One 21-year-old had
trained for four years, and died during his fifth fight. One
30-year-old had fought 34 times; he had scored 21 victories,
and had been pardoned four times after being defeated.
Gladiators could even live to very old age: the oldest in
Ephesus died at 99, long freed and pensioned.
'If they were good, the
gladiators became heroes,' says Professor Fritz Krinzinger,
director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, which
oversees the Ephesus study. 'They were the Schumachers of
the ancient world. They were in danger every time they
performed, and they were ready to give their lives for
sport.' The gladiators exuded an aura of myth, glory, power
and eroticism. Even children idolized them, as revealed by
the discovery in Ephesus of graffiti of gladiators drawn in
an infantile hand. Young women swooned at the thought of
their prowess: one gladiator, Crescens, was notorious as
'the boss and healer of girls at night' and 'the girls'
darling'. Probably to appease nervous husbands, the Emperor
Augustus decreed that women, other than the six vestal
virgins who were in any case sworn to chastity, could watch
the games only from the seats that were furthest away.
Games were advertised in
public places, fan clubs supported individual gladiators,
and street hawkers sold souvenirs of the biggest contests.
People believed that they could cure epilepsy with the warm
blood of a butchered gladiator. The most expensive fighters
were sold to games organisers for a sum equivalent to 15
times the yearly income of a legionnaire: provided the
gladiator lived long enough to fight a couple of battles,
the organisers could count on recovering their investment.
Apart from fame, one of the
few perks enjoyed by the gladiators in Ephesus was medical
attention so good it would impress even today's doctors.
A fracture on a radius, the
thicker and shorter bone of the forearm,
that was found in the cemetery had healed so
perfectly with the help of physiotherapy that it is almost
invisible to the naked eye. This is testimony to the skills
taught by Galen of Pergamum, to the north of Ephesus, one of
the most renowned doctors of his day, who had acquired vast
anatomical experience by specializing on gladiators in Asia
Minor, and had then become personal doctor to the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius. From writings of the time, we know that
gladiators often had their own private doctor and masseur.
The worst wounds, especially those inflicted by animals,
were described and analyzed at length in medical treatises.
The Ephesus remains also show
that gladiators were heavily built: they ate heartily to
increase body weight and to protect themselves against deep
wounds, and were nicknamed 'barley eaters' because of their
diet of pulses and barley porridge, rich in carbohydrates.
Dr Galen, however, was concerned that the barley made their
flesh soft. On the day before battle, they were given
special meals to steel them for the task ahead.
The epitaphs that described
the gladiators' feats did not guarantee them lasting
respect. Some three centuries after their burial, their
resting places were disturbed when the sarcophagi were
opened and reused to bury more dead - sometimes without even
removing the remains of the first occupants. The
inscriptions were amended to bear the name of the latest
arrival.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries,
gladiatorial games became fewer and farther between,
replaced by cheaper animal hunts. The sport so many men had
died for was itself killed off in AD404 by the Emperor
Honorius, when he closed what remained of the gladiator
schools. No longer would gladiators, in Byron's words, be
'butchered to make a Roman holiday'.
The Gladiator -- History and
Interpretation of Gladiatorial Games
http://abacus.bates.edu/~mimber/Rciv/gladiator.htm
The Romans believed that
they inherited the practice of gladiatorial games from the
Etruscans who used them as part of a funeral ritual
(servants would duel to the death for the right to provide
companionship to their owners in eternity). We don't have
any evidence, however, that the Etruscans, in fact, did any
such thing. Conversely, we do have evidence of gladiators in
Campanian society, perhaps of Samnite origin. The early
Christians interpreted the gladiatorial games as a type of
human sacrifice. While it is true that gladiatorial games
involved the attempted killing of one person by another, and
that the Romans associated them with funeral rituals, in
fact, the analogy by the Christians seems to have been more
a brilliant rhetorical move in the service of a larger
anti-pagan polemic than a fair description of how Romans
themselves understood the games.
The first gladiatorial
games were offered in Rome in 264 BCE by sons of Junius
Brutus Pera in their father's honor after he had died.
Gladiatorial combat became a very popular form of public
spectacle very quickly in Rome. Those who offered games
began to compete in terms of the numbers of matches offered.
Whereas the sons of Brutus Pera offered three matches, a
century later, Titus Flamininus offered 74 pairs in games in
honor of his father that lasted over three days. Julius
Caesar promised 320 matches in funeral games for his
daughter, Julia, but the Senate passed legislation limiting
the amount of money that could be spent on gladiatorial
games to stop him. Thus, during the Republic, gladiatorial
combat was associated in Rome with a) a death and b) elite
competition. Such displays provided members of the elite
with a vehicle by which to advertise the newest generation
in a family which sought to rule
Romans.
The funeral association is
as important for our analysis as the association with
competition within the elite. Not merely were the games
linked to a specific person's death, but they were also very
much about death (during the Republic they were only held
around the time of the winter equinox; Augustus later
permitted gladiatorial games at the spring equinox as well).
Gladiators entered the arena with the intent to kill each
other. Roman spectators thus observed men facing death, and
attempting to overcome it. In a metaphorical sense as well,
gladiators were socially dead - they were infamis under
Roman law (typically slaves, prisoners of war and convicted
criminals who had a much more restricted set of rights under
Roman law than ordinary citizens). If they fought well
enough, however, they might, with the crowd's support, win
both their lives (crowds could and did urge the editores,
the sponsors of the games, to spare a defeated gladiator
before the kill) and their social identities (crowds urged
emperors to free gladiators who were popular). Thus,
gladiators, from a Roman's point of view (if not a
Christian's) offered at least the opportunity to observe
death defeated and transcended.
What gladiators did (indeed
what they were trained to do) was kill and die well. These
were tasks of extraordinary urgency for Romans. On the one
hand, Romans (as most premodern societies and impoverished
modern societies) faced daunting mortality rates. They did
not have the opportunity to "grow into their deaths" as a
matter of course (as moderns in materially successful
societies do). A Roman at the
age of 20 knew he would probably die before he was 30, and
he wanted to meet death with honor and dignity. He could
observe gladiators do it in the arena. Conversely, as
members of a relentlessly militaristic culture, Romans
valued the art of killing in a way we simply don't
understand. Roman soldiers, moreover, enjoyed a much greater
autonomy in their line of battle than Greeks did. In fact,
the success of the Roman battle line often depended on the
courage of individual soldiers in hand
to hand combat. Thus the ability of an ordinary
citizen to kill single handedly was a skill that the entire
empire depended on to survive.
Gladiatorial games proved
immediately and immensely popular within the Roman Empire.
There are reports, for example, of people in towns where
prominent citizens died virtually extorting promises of
gladiatorial games from the survivors. Eventually, the
emperors had to regulate how much could be spent on
gladiatorial performances to prevent members of the elite
from bankrupting themselves. As Rome expanded, so did the
performance of the games. We have evidence of gladiatorial
performances in virtually every part of the Roman Empire.
The games themselves became a vehicle for the Romanization
of the empire. On the one hand, Roman soldiers liked to
observe gladiatorial matches. Thus, lanistae (owner/managers
of gladiatorial troops) would follow the troops to new
quarters and offer matches for entertainment. This could be
a highly profitable enterprise and it was not unusual for
members of the elite to invest in gladiatorial troupes.
Cicero's friend, Atticus, for example, made back his
investment in a troupe after two performances. The games
themselves provided ways for Rome to demonstrate the power
of their empire. The sheer cost of the producing games was
stunning. Contests involving animals from distant provinces
demonstrated in a material way how far Rome's dominance
reached. Inhabitants of towns in lands conquered by the
Romans built amphitheaters and sponsored competitions as a
way of demonstrating their Romanness. Historians
traditionally had a great deal of difficulty accepting that
the Greeks, for example, enthusiastically embraced the games
(cf. Japanese enthusiasm for baseball), but, in fact, the
Greeks loved gladiators. The Greeks were not alone. Mosaics
and wall paintings from North Africa and other parts of the
empire routinely use depictions of gladiatorial combat for
their themes.
There are a number of
reasons why gladiatorial combat proved so enthralling for
Romans. The arena was a liminal site where fundamental human
conflicts were symbolically fought. The gladiator as outlaw
confronted the forces of civilization and law. Contestants
who specialized in the fighting of animals fought in the
guise of bears, leopards and lions - wild and, to folks
living then, daunting forces of nature. Finally, at issue in
every gladiatorial contest, was the most basic question of
life and death.
Format of gladiatorial games
The Romans, throughout the
history of the Republic, drew a sharp distinction between
gladiatorial contests and other forms of spectacular
entertainment. Games that the state sponsored were called
ludi, were held quite frequently, never involved armed
single combat, were associated with the worship of a god and
were paid for (at least in part) by the public treasury.
Gladiatorial shows, which the Romans
called munera, in contrast, were sponsored by private
individuals, were held very infrequently, were
associated with funeral rituals, and were paid for
privately. The change in Roman government initiated by
Augustus blurred some of these distinctions (e.g. funding).
Augustus, in fact, was quick to take control of the
infrastructure of the gladiatorial entertainment business
(the Roman states, for example, owned the schools where
gladiators trained).
In addition to the armed
individual gladiatorial contests, other spectacles became
associated with gladiatorial games. Venationes were usually
held in the morning of game days (but could be offered on
their own). Bestiarii, or combatants trained to fight
animals, were pitted against wild animals from all over the
empire (bullfights and rodeos are the modern heirs and/or
equivalents). The slaughter of wildlife in these contests
was astonishing. Hundreds of deaths in a day were routine.
At the games held by Trajan when he became Emperor, 9,000
were killed. Today we are appalled by scale of wanton
destruction. But to folks living 2,000 years ago, wild
animals were as much enemies as marauding Germanic tribes.
While there are occasional reports of audience sympathy for
the plight of animals (elephants in particular seemed to
have been troubling), Romans overwhelming sided with the
human combatants. The venationes symbolized the ability of
human society to protect itself from hostile forces of
nature and remained popular throughout the history of the
empire. The Christians, for example, never attempted to
outlaw venationes while they worked strenuously to end
gladiatorial combat.
After the venationes, a
typical spectacle would include a lunch interlude during
which humiliores (Romans of non-elite status - execution by
sword was a privilege reserved for the elite) who had been
convicted of capital crimes were executed. Typically, the convicted were killed by
burning at the stake or crucifixion (forms of capital
punishment that the Romans appeared to have adopted from
the Carthaginians) or ad bestias (in which the
convict would be left alone in the arena with one or more
wild - and hungry - animals). Romans had a somewhat
contradictory attitude towards these executions. On the one
hand, like the venationes, the executions were welcome
examples of the power of society, law and order, to restrain
and suppress forces that threatened it. Public executions
were popular. On the other hand, writers of elite status, seem to suggest that
gentlemen and women didn't indulge themselves too much in
this spectacle. The decent thing to do was go get lunch.
Some writers, for example, criticized the Emperor Claudius
because he routinely stayed in the stadium and observed the
executions. To ordinary Romans, however, Claudius' presence
indicated that the Emperor took his responsibility for
preserving law and order seriously. The people executed
were, by definition, wicked and dangerous. Their deaths were
something to rejoice in. During the Principate they become
something to revel in. Under Nero, the practice arose of
writing plays adapted from myths in which people died and
assigning the role of a character who would die to a
condemned man. The audience would watch the play, and the
actual killing of the condemned man in character's role (an
ancient variant on a snuff film).
It was at these lunch time spectacles that Romans
executed Christians when local or national officials were in
a persecuting mode. Public response to these executions
could vary dramatically. On the one hand, Christians who
refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods,
flagrantly rejected the norms of the society in which they
lived. There are plenty of examples of communities demanding
that their leaders send Christians to the arena for public
execution (cf. accounts of Jews demanding that Pilate order
the execution of Jesus). On the other hand, the "crime" of
Christianity was quite different than the crimes of others
executed in the arena (murder, temple theft, etc.).
Christian sources, at least, report that the dignity of
Christians in facing a spectacle intended to degrade and
humiliate them, often inspired respect among the crowds in
the stadium.
After lunch, the
gladiatorial contests were held. Originally, gladiators were
identified with ethnic names (e.g., Thracian or Samnite) which indicated the kind of
weaponry they used, not the actual ethnic identity. In fact,
the evidence suggests gladiators fought hard to resist the
pseudo-ethnic labeling (there's a famous example of a
gladiator of Samnite origin who fought as a "Thracian") and
took care on their tombstones to indicate their true ethnic
identities.
Samnites (later called
secutores) carried oblong shields and short swords and wore
plumed helmets with visors. Thracians carried small round
shields and curved daggers. Gladiators called retiarii ("net
men") carried nets to trip and hold their opponents and tridents which they used to finish
off a captured victim. A Retariius typically fought a
"Gallic" gladiator (also called a murmillo) who wore a
rectangular shield and a visored helmet decorated with a
fish (murmillo) or a Samnite. The vary names and distinctive
weaponry of the gladiators displayed a history of the
peoples Rome had defeated as her empire expanded.
Interestingly enough, as the empire expanded and
gladiatorial combat grew popular in the provinces, Romans
began to drop the ethnic identification of gladiators for
terms that described their costume or style of fighting
(e.g. Samnites became secutores).
Gladiatorial Demography
Romans "recruited"
gladiators from a number of population sources over the
course of their history. Captured soldiers were a popular
source, particularly in the years of Rome's imperial
expansions. Even when the geographical limits of the empire
had been established, soldiers of rebellious provinces
remained a fruitful source of gladiators. Titus and
Vespasian were able to eliminate extraordinary numbers of
rebellious Jews by organizing gladiatorial games after they
"pacified" Judea. Roman courts could sentence individuals
convicted of serious criminal offenses to gladiatorial
schools. Similarly owners of recalcitrant and/or fugitive
slaves could sell these slaves ad ludos (or condemn them to
death in public executions). Under the empire, however, laws
were passed requiring owners to establish some basis (e.g.,
criminal behavior) for such treatment of a slave.
Despite the fact (perhaps
because of the fact) that gladiatorial combat was so marked
by "outlaw" and servile combatants, free citizens could and
did become gladiators. To do so, they had to take an oath in
which they agreed that they would submit to a) being
branded; b) being chained; c) being killed by an iron
weapon; d) to pay for the food and drink they received with
their blood; and d) to suffer things even if they did not
wish to. To agree, voluntarily, to such conditions was a
renunciation of all the social benefits of citizenship in
the Roman world (libertas, the sanctity of the citizen's
body, etc.). Thus, the free citizens
who chose to enter the arena were viewed with grave
suspicion by members of the Roman elite. However,
there is evidence that a substantial proportion of the
gladiatorial forces (perhaps as many as half) were
originally of citizen status (who voluntarily entered the
gladiatorial schools) by the end of the Republic.
The choice for some citizens
can be explained by economic factors. Gladiators got three
square meals a day, decent medical care, and if they were
good, survived to freedom. They also had the opportunity to
win purses that editores would frequently offer as bonus in
competitions. If they survived they would win their freedom.
And although they could never be citizens, their children
could. For citizens of higher social status who had fallen
on hard times (scholars always posit the example of a Roman
who lost his fortune in the a lawsuit) or economically
marginal citizens without a trade, career options were
limited to the army (with a strict disciplinary system),
teaching (for the literate who were willing to fight for
fees) and the gladiatorial schools.
Another category of
gladiator that should interest us is women. Women fought as
gladiators. The author of an inscription from Pompeii boasts
that he was the first editor in his town to bring women into
the arena. The practice appears to have been widespread and
did not end until specifically outlawed by the Emperor
Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century, AD The female
gladiator is perhaps the most marginal symbol available and
there was no doubt some prurient interest aroused by these
spectacles. The presence of women in the arena, however,
suggests that Romans looked upon the particular virtus
[skill in killing and dying well] gladiators symbolized as
something that existed almost before gender.
There were also citizens,
particularly during the Principate, who fought as gladiators
as a political statement. Under the Republic, the marginal
social status of the gladiator reinforced Roman belief in
the superior status of citizens. As Rome suffered civil war
and then virtual monarchy, members of the elite would
sometimes choose to fight in the arena as a way of
demonstrating that the Augustan ideology of the "Republic
Restored" was so much bunk. All citizens, they suggested,
now were no better than slaves. Conversely, some Emperors,
themselves became obsessed with arena. Caligula forced free born citizens to fight as
gladiators. The Emperor Commodus is said to have fought as a
gladiator in 1000 contests. These "bad" Emperors, who were themselves liminal figures, marking
the line between divine and mortal, used the arena to
demonstrate their authority and diminish that of the elite.
Emperors who appeared as gladiators did
what no citizen should dare to do. Emperors who
compelled citizens to appear as gladiators demonstrated that
mere citizen status meant nothing when compared with
imperial status.
Romans accepted and
supported the Principate, however, because emperors
implicitly promised to maintain the integrity of Rome's
complex hierarchy of social status. "Good" emperors were
sensitive to the complexity of their power relations with
Romans across the penumbra of statuses within Roman society.
A "good" emperor appeared at the games, and attended to the
populace's expression of their will. A "good" Emperor
supported the spectacles as a way of demonstrating the
ability of Rome to protect its citizenry from internal
threats to its law and order, and the historic ability of
Rome to spread this protection across the Mediterranean
basin and beyond. A "good" Emperor,
thus enjoyed the games, but not too much.
How were they trained?
While the prospect of taking
the gladiator's oath no doubt horrifies us, relative to the
life Romans at the economic margin enjoyed, conditions in
gladiatorial schools were not that
bad. It is true that the conditions in the school where
Spartacus trained were bad enough to spark the worst slave
revolt in Roman history. However, this school was an
anomaly. Owners and trainers conceived of gladiators as an
investment. Skimping on the schools simply didn't make
sense. Gladiators received a reasonable diet (a high
protein/fat diet in training) and good (for the day) medical
care. They formed enduring relationships with women that
resulted in children, and if they survived to freedom,
legally recognized marriages and families. Within the
community of gladiators they, like all Romans, formed
collegia and shared a cult worship of the god Hercules. In
fact, in a bizarre way, the gladiatorial schools seem to
have provided their inhabitants with a vital, united and
committed community (admittedly predicated on the
possibility that one might have to kill another). Gladiators
were trained not merely how to fight well, but how to make
an efficient killing blow and, if defeated, how to offer
one's body for the most effective coup de grace. In cases
where gladiators or bestarii were mortally wounded in the
arena, the accepted practice seems to have been to remove
them from public view before executing the killing blow.
Typically gladiators fought a handful of matches a year, and
would, if they survived, win there
freedom after a number (which varied widely depending on
time and place) their freedom. Even gladiators who lost a
match could survive if the audience pleaded their case to
the editor.
Despite their servile and
"outlaw" legal and social status, gladiators often enjoyed
great social prestige. Young Roman boys liked to hang out at
gladiator schools and even take lessons there (parents hated
this). Roman matrons particularly enjoyed having affairs
with gladiators (or at least Roman men often worried that
they did). The 'pop' celebrity of gladiators, like the 'pop'
celebrity of athletes today, indicates the extraordinary
importance of the battles they fought in the arena to the
construction and maintenance of Romanitas.
1001Titus.doc
Heavy
Seneca:
his Influence on Shakespeare's Tragedies
Brian Arkins
CLASSICS IRELAND
1995 Volume 2
University College Dublin, Ireland
1
Immensely popular throughout
sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, Seneca's eight
tragedies influenced not only Racine and Corneille, but also
Shakespeare - as this essay sets out to show. Whether or not
Seneca's plays were originally designed for performance in
the theatre, they have been and are being performed: Ted
Hughes' version of Oedipus is a case in point. Seneca's
tragedies, like those of the Athenian dramatists in the
fifth century, deal with Greek myth: Hercules Furens,
Agamemnon, Thyestes, Oedipus, Medea, Phaedra, The Trojan
Women, The Phoenician Women. But
Seneca is radically different from his Greek predecessors:
since his play The Trojan Women puts on stage the murder of
both Polyxena, and Astyanax, and since it adds a sinister,
supernatural element, it is very unlike Euripides' play of
the same title and must be examined on its own terms.
Which brings us to the
crucial point about Seneca's tragedies: the Roman dramatist
uses Greek material to comment obliquely on the outrages of
Nero's court and describes a world that is radically evil.
These plays are therefore much more pessimistic than most
Greek tragedies and might almost be termed religious drama.
Typically in a Senecan tragedy, we begin with a Cloud of
Evil, then witness the defeat of
Reason by Evil, and finally experience the Triumph of Evil -
as in The Trojan Women. It is therefore no surprise that a century which has witnessed the Holocaust,
the Gulags, Hiroshima and much else should be
engaged in the rehabilitation of Seneca's tragedies. Far
from being contemptible as drama, these tragedies speak
directly to our experience.
2
'No author exercised a wider
or deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or upon the
Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca'.(1) So, rightly, T.S. Eliot. That
influence is seen most obviously in Kyd's The Spanish
Tragedy of 1586, in Webster's The Duchess of Malfy of 1614
and in the plays of Marston, but Seneca (2) is also crucial
to Shakespeare,(3) who may well
have read his plays in Latin at Stratford grammar school.
The revenge tragedies Titus Andronicus and Hamlet derive
from Seneca, as do those plays of vaulting ambition Richard
III and Macbeth; and Seneca is extensively burlesqued in the
comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream.
For the dramatists of the
Renaissance in France, in Italy, and in England, Classical
tragedy means the ten Latin plays of Seneca, not Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides; as the Martindales say, 'Seneca
was the closest Shakespeare ever got to Greek tragedy'.(4) Indeed Francis Meres sees
Shakespeare as a new Seneca: 'As Plautus and Seneca are
accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins;
so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in
both kinds for the stage'.(5) No wonder, then, that
Shakespeare himself, when he satirizes contemporary
dramatists who mix the four recognized types of drama to the
customer's taste, uses Seneca as a touchstone: 'Seneca
cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light' (Hamlet
2.2.396-97).
For Seneca was in the
Elizabethan air. Between 1551 and 1563 Cambridge was very
Senecan, with two performances of The Trojan Women, two
performances of Medea, and one of Oedipus; a landmark was
clearly the staging of The Trojan Women, one of Seneca's
best plays, in 1551. Then the first English tragedy
Gorboduc, performed in 1562, was clearly Romanizing and was praised by Sidney
as 'climbing to the height of Seneca his style'. And, not
least, the Tenne Tragedies of Seneca
were translated into English by Jasper Heywood and others
between 1559 and 1581, when they were published as a single
book. These translations, which, as Eliot says, have
'considerable poetic charm and quite adequate accuracy, with
occasional flashes of real beauty',(6)
exercised a substantial influence on Elizabethan dramatists.
3
Shakespeare's most Senecan
plays are Titus Andronicus, Hamlet ,
Richard III, and Macbeth, and the plays of Seneca that most
contribute to these are The Trojan Women, Phaedra, Thyestes,
Agamemnon and Hercules Furens. What Shakespeare derived from
Seneca are the following seven general features, mediated,
in part, through Italian Senecan plays such as the Orbecche
of Cinthio (1541):
1. An
obsession with scelus
(= crime).
2. A
preoccupation with torture, mutilation, incest and corpses -
as in Titus Andronicus.
3. A stress
on witchcraft and the supernatural - as in Macbeth.
4. The
existence of vaulting ambition in the prince - as in Richard
III and Macbeth.
5. The ghost
that calls for revenge - as in Hamlet and Macbeth.
6. The
self-dramatization of the hero, especially as he dies - as
in Hamlet and Macbeth.(7)
7. The
frequent use of stichomythia in dialogue, which derives from
passages like Medea 168 - as in Richard III and Hamlet .
4
Seneca's influence is
paramount in two of Shakespeare's revenge tragedies, Titus
Andronicus and Hamlet . Widely
regarded as Shakespeare's most Senecan play, Titus
Andronicus, whose historical background is largely that of
the fifth and sixth centuries AD, moves, like the plays of
Seneca, 'towards a disaster for which the cause is
established in the first minutes of action'.(8) First produced in the years
1590-92 and virtually absent from the London stage for
centuries because of its horrors, Titus Andronicus invites
us to contemplate multiple murders, human sacrifice, the
cutting off of Titus' hand, the severed heads of Titus'
sons, the rape, murder, and dismemberment of Lavinia, and a
cannibal feast, in which Titus' mad cookery of Tamora's sons
comes straight out of Seneca's Thyestes;(9) as Muir says,
'It is a nice irony that Shakespeare's most shocking play
should be closest in spirit to the classics'.(10)
Here Seneca is teaching
Shakespeare how to make scelus, crime, a
word that occurs more than 200 times in Seneca's plays, 'the
central principle of tragic action and design, how to focus
on the crime, the perpetrators, the victims, and on the
moral framework violated'.(11)
Indeed two of the most common tags from Seneca in
Elizabethan drama deal with scelus: 'for crimes
the safe way always leads through more crimes' (Agamemnon
115) and 'Great crimes you don't avenge, unless you outdo
them', which comes, significantly, from Thyestes (195-96).
The word scelus,
crime, occurs 38 times in Seneca's play Thyestes, which is
an important influence on Titus Andronicus.
The revenge play, which is
launched by scelus,
comes in three phases, consisting of:
1. the appearance of the ghost or Fury;
2. the making of the revenger; and
3. the ritual revenge itself.(12)
Shakespeare adapts this
pattern in Titus Andronicus by sharing the revenge among
three people, Tamora, who impersonates Revenge, Titus and
Aaron. The most obvious representative of evil in the play -
he is called by Waith 'an embodiment of evil'(13)
- the Moorish barbarian, Aaron, clearly recalls the hateful
figure of Atreus in Seneca's Thyestes. But Titus, who, as a
noble Roman father, contrasts with Aaron, turns into an
avenger himself and serves up her children for Tamora to eat
in a cannibal feast; 'Rome is but a wilderness of tigers'
(3.1.54). For, as we see from Orbecche, Gordobuc, and The
Misfortunes of Arthur, the spectacle of Kindermord haunted
the Renaissance.
For Titus Andronicus and for
other plays, what Seneca offers Shakespeare, above all else,
is an inimical universe in which evil triumphs(14)
- as the two direct quotations from Seneca's Phaedra attest.
For Demetrius adapts Phaedra 1180 on the subject of Hell to
articulate 'his consuming lust for Lavinia; his hell is
emotional and psychological, a product of unruly passion',(15) while Titus' outburst about the
rapists' actions adapts Phaedra 671-72 to question God's
tolerance of evil.
5
Discussion of Seneca's
influence on Hamlet must begin with the remarks of Thomas
Nashe:
Yet English Seneca read by
candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud is a
beggar, and so foorth; and, if you intreate him faire in a
frostie morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should
say handfulls of tragicall speaches. But O griefe! tempus edax rerum, what's that will
last alwaies? The sea exhaled by droppes will in continance
be drie, and Seneca led bloud line by line and page by page
at length must needes die to our stage.(16)
It is not indeed that
specific plays of Seneca's lie behind Hamlet
, but that the whole tone of the play is Seneca; as
Doran puts it, 'Hamlet is certainly not much like any play
of Seneca's one can name, but Seneca is undoubtedly one of
the effective ingredients in the emotional charge of Hamlet
. Hamlet without Seneca is inconceivable' (17).
Thematically, what Seneca
gives to Hamlet is the general theme of revenge for a great
wrong done; the ghost of Hamlet 's father that seeks such a
revenge and the extreme passion that characterizes Hamlet
himself. Stylistically, what Seneca gives to Hamlet is the
meditative soliloquy and stichomythia. There is therefore a
general Senecan atmosphere in the play; as Miola says, 'The
ghosts of Senecan drama - Atreus, Hercules, Pyrrhus,
Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Orestes, Electra - and of
neo-Senecan drama - Hieronimo, Titus, Lucianus - hover in
the background of Hamlet ,
providing perspective on character and action'.(18)
Central to that perspective
is the fact that Senecan conventions are often transformed
in Hamlet . For example, Hamlet
himself is not an avenger of the Senecan type who ruthlessly
pursues his victim, but is something quite different, a man
who, notoriously, wavers constantly before committing
himself to revenge. Here Shakespeare exploits the
Renaissance topos of an opposition between passionate action
on the one hand and the Stoic ideal that passion is an
infirmity on the other ('Give me that man that is not
passion's slave'); at times, Hamlet sets out to be the
Senecan avenger, at other times, he regards revenge with
extreme misgivings. On the other hand, Claudius who displays
lust, vengefulness, and greed for power is straight out of
Seneca's Aegisthus.(19)
The Senecan conventions are
altered in other ways. While the ghost of Hamlet's father
derives from the ghosts in Seneca's Agamemnon and Thyestes,
unlike them, Hamlet's father modifies the call for revenge;
'nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother ought'.
Again, Hamlet 's famous meditative soliloquy 'To be or not
to be' derives from a choral ode in Seneca's The Trojan
Women lines 371-81. (20)
6
Two of Shakespeare's plays of
vaulting ambition in the prince, Richard III and Macbeth are
also strongly influenced by Seneca. Richard III is called by
Muir 'the most Senecan of Shakespeare's plays'(21)
and the play is clearly indebted to Hercules Furens, Phaedra
and The Trojan Women. Richard himself is a typically Senecan
tyrant, a gloomy, introspective, self-dramatizing hero, 'a
spectacular character who dares scelus',(22) he exemplifies extremely well
the fact that evil is most potent when it lodges in the
heart of the prince - as with Thyestes. Significantly, he
revises that famous Senecan tag to 'But I am in / so far in
blood that sin will pluck on sin' (4.2.63-4).
One of the main Senecan
features of Richard III is that Gloucester's wooing of Anne
derives from Lycus' wooing of Megera in Hercules Furens;(23)
as Hunter says, 'The whole Lycus/Megera situation in
Hercules Furens - the usurping monarch seeking to strengthen
his rule by forcing marriage on the wife of the vanished
ruler - seems to be echoed in this scene'.(24)
To be specific: in both plays, there are similar
preparations for entrance; appeals to general principles;
the tyrant's wish for a softer answer, after a bitter one;
his justification for past slaughter; and the violent
reaction of the women who, clad in mourning, want the
tyrant's death.
The climax of the wooing
scene, the sword sequence, comes from Seneca's Phaedra. Just
as the outraged Hippolytus holds a sword at the breast of
the self-confessed criminal lover, Phaedra, who invites the
stroke, so the outraged Anne holds a sword at the breast of
the criminal lover, Gloucester, who invited the stroke.
Faced with an eroticization of the situation, both
Hippolytus and Anne drop the sword.
Finally, another important
Senecan element in Richard III is found in the kommos
(lamentation) of Act 4, scene 4: the lamenting women, led by
Margaret, who seeks to revile the tyrant, derive from the
lamenting women in The Trojan Women, led by Hecuba.
7
Macbeth, which was probably
first performed at the Globe in 1606 and is one of the
shortest of Shakespeare's plays, is 'a sophisticated
recension of Senecan elements(25)
and so exemplifies what Hazlitt called 'the wildness of the
imagination'. The Martindales usefully sum up Seneca's
influence on Macbeth: 'There are a number of features in
Macbeth - the heated rhetoric, the brooding sense of evil,
the preoccupation with power, the obsessive introspection,
the claustrophobic images of cosmic destruction - which
recall Seneca's manner and interest, together with an
unusually high number of passages which seem to derive from
his plays.(26) Indeed the play
constitutes Shakespeare's 'most profound and mature vision
of evil(27) and Macbeth himself is a criminal, an immoral
man in a moral universe, whose 'choice of evil unleashes
catastrophic consequences which inflict the whole
cosmos'(28) - a typically Senecan scenario. But Macbeth
differs from Richard III: whereas Richard is the villain as
hero, Macbeth is a hero who becomes a villain.(29)
Detailed analysis of how
Seneca's plays influence Macbeth must begin with
Shakespeare's appropriation of two epigrams of Seneca that
haunt the Elizabethan imagination; as Eliot says of Seneca,
'again and again the epigrammatic observation on life or
death is put in the most telling way at the most telling
moment'.(30) At Agamemnon 115
Clytemnestra says per scelera semper sceleribus tutum est
iter, which Studley translates as 'The softest path to
mischiefe is by mischiefe open still'; this becomes
Macbeth's 'Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill'
(3.2.55). At Phaedra 607 Phaedra says curae leves loquuntur,
ingentes stupent ,which Studley
translates as 'Light cores have words at will, but great doe
make us aghast''; this becomes Malcolm's 'the grief, that
does not speak,/Whisters the o'er fraught heart, and bids it
break' (4.3.209-10).
But the Senecan play that
most influences Macbeth is Hercules Furens, which
Shakespeare must have re-read at this time. When, after the
murder of Duncan, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth vainly hope to
cleanse their blood-stained
hands they draw not only on Phaedra 715-18, but also on
Hercules Furens 1323-26. In Phaedra Hippolytus cries out
after being polluted by his stepmother's attempted
seduction:
What Tanais will wash me or
what Maeotis
pressing barbarous floods into the
Pontic sea?
Not the mighty father himself
with all his Ocean
will expiate such a crime.
In Hercules Furens Hercules
cries out after killing his children:
What Tanais or what Nile or
what Tigris
raging with Persian water or what
fierce Rhine
or Tagus flowing swollen with
the golden sand of Spain
will cleanse this hand?
Compare Macbeth's soliloquy
(2.2.59-62);
Will all great Neptune's
ocean wash this blood
clean from my hand? No, this my
hand will rather
The multitudinous seas
incarnadine
Making the green one red.
and Lady Macbeth (5.1.48-49):
'There's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'.
Then Macbeth's famous
soliloquy at the end of the play certainly derives from a
passage in Hercules Furens, in which Hercules confronts the
ruin of his life (1258-61):
There is no reason for me to
hold, to delay my life
longer in this light; I have lost
all my advantages,
mind, arms, fame, wife,
children,
even my madness. No one can be
cured of a
polluted mind; crime must be cured
by death.
This becomes (5.3.22-26)
I have lived long enough: my
way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the
yellow leaf;
And that
which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience,
troops of friends,
I must not look to have ...
and (5.3.40)
Canst thou not minister to a
mind diseas'd?
Next, Macbeth's assertion
(1.7.7) that 'We but teach /
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return / To plague
th' inventor' echoes Theseus' dictum in Hercules Furens that
'What each has done he suffers; the crime seeks out the
author and the guilty one is crushed by his own form of
guilt. And, finally, Macbeth's reflection on Sleep in Act 2,
scene 2, is based on the Chorus' reflections on Sleep in
Hercules Furens 1065-81 (as well as in Ovid); with Macbeth's
'Sleep that knits up the revell'd sleeve of care, / The
death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, / Balm of hurt
minds, great Nature's second course, / Chief nourisher in
Life's feast', compare, in Heywood's translation 'And then O
tamer best / O sleep of toyles, the quietnesse of mynde / of
all the lyfe of man the better parte'.
In yet another debt to
Seneca, Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth find a paradigm for
atrocious masculine daring in the character of Medea.(31) Amid a framework of ritual
incantation, Lady Macbeth's countenancing of infanticide
recalls Medea's murder of her children, and her command to
the Spirits to 'unsex me here' recalls Medea's invocation to
her own soul to 'Exile all foolish female feare and pity
from thy Minde' (Studley). Finally, behind the secret, black
and midnight hags who seek to bring about the damnation of
Macbeth, lie the Furies of Greek mythology and of Seneca's
Thyestes, terrible avenging sisters who are synonymous with
witches and devils.(32)
This astonishing catalogue of
Senecan influence means that Macbeth rather than Richard III
is 'the most Senecan of all Shakespeare's plays',(33) and, since it is also one of
Shakespeare's greatest plays, we can see that Seneca's
influence was enormously beneficial.
8
To conclude, the appeal of
Seneca's plays for the Elizabethan age and for the modern
age is not far to seek: Seneca studies evil with great
diligence and, in particular, evil in the prince, and both
those ages are very well versed in evil. In Seneca's plays
and their Elizabethan recensions, in the revenge plays Titus
Andronicus and Hamlet , and in
the plays of vaulting ambition Richard III and Macbeth, evil
is a palpable presence and lodges especially in the heart of
the prince. In Seneca and in Shakespeare, we encounter first
a Cloud of Evil, then the defeat of Reason by Evil, and,
finally, the triumph of Evil.
All this is caviar to the age
of Dachau and Auschwitz, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of
Kampuchea, Northern Ireland, Bosnia.
Horror does not turn us off, as it turned off the
Victorians, who could not handle Seneca. Nor did horror turn
off the Elizabethans, who lived in an age with its own
uncertainties, with the Tower, the bear-baiting,
the mob. Consequently, Shakespeare could embrace with Žclat
what has been called the Kingdom of Violence, could give us
the horrors and crimes of Titus Andronicus, revenge,
filicide, cannibal feast.
The significance of Seneca
for Shakespeare and for our time can be gauged from the
following quotation from Peter Brook, who directed a
landmark production of Titus Andronicus at Stratford in
1955, with Lawrence Olivier as Titus:(34)
The real appeal of Titus
(over theoretically "greater" plays like Hamlet and Lear)
was that abstract - stylized - Roman classical though it
appeared to be, it was obviously for everyone in the
audience about the most modern of emotions - about violence,
hatred, cruelty, pain - in a form that because unrealistic
transcended the anecdote and became for each audience quite
abstract and thus totally real.
FOOTNOTES
1 T.S.Eliot, Selected Essays
(1951),65.
2 For Seneca's plays, see
esp. L.J. Herington Arion 5 (1966), 422-71, A.J. Boyle,
Ramus 16 (1987), 78-101.
3 For Seneca and Shakespeare
see esp. R.S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy - The
Influence of Seneca (1992), also C. & M. Martindale,
Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity (1990), 29-44.
4 Martindales (n.3), 44.
5 Elizabethan Critical
Essays, ed. G.Gregory Smith (1971), vol.2, 317-318.
6 Eliot (n.1), 65-66.
7 For this self-dramatization
see T.S. Eliot 'Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca' in
Selected Essays (n.1), 126-140.
8 E.M. Waith, Titus
Andronicus (1984) 69.
9 Cf. Martindales (n.1), 47:
'Especially close to Titus in atmosphere is Thyestes, with
its brooding sense of evil and its climax in a cannibal
feast.'
10 K.Muir, The Sources of
Shakespeare's Plays (1977) 23.
11 Miola (n.3), 16.
12 P. Mercer,
Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge (1987).
13 Waith (n.8), 64.
14 Cf. Herington (n.2).
15 Miola (n.3), 14.
16 Elizabethan Critical
Essays (n.5), vol. 1, 312.
17 M. Doran, Endeavours of
Art: A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama (1954)16.
18 Miola (n.3), 52.
19 W.A. Armstrong, Review
of English Studies 24 (1948), 34.
20 Cf. Miola (n.3), 38.
21 Muir (n.10), 37.
22 Miola (n.3), 91.
23 H.G. Brooks, Modern
Language Review 75 (1980), 728-37.
24 G.K. Hunter, Richard III
(The Revels Plays), 138.
25 Miola (n.3), 93. He deals with Macbeth at pp.
92-121.
26 Martindales (n.3), 37.
27 G. Wilson Knight, The
Wheel of Fire (1961),140.
28 Martindales (n.3), 38.
29 K. Muir, Macbeth (1957),
lxi.
30 Eliot (n.1), 74.
31 I-S. Ewbank,
Shakespeare Survey, 19 (1966) 82-94.
32 A.R. McGee, Shakespeare
Survey, 19 (1966) 55-67.
33 See n.21.
34 Quoted in Waith (n.8),
55-56.
COPYRIGHT: all material
published in Classics Ireland is copyright. Responsibility
for, and ownership of, copyright remains with the author of
each article.
ISSN 0791-9417
--------------------------------
From Insights, 1990
Titus Andronicus: Writing What
Was Selling
Titus Andronicus, written at
least by 1594, represents one of the first plays by a young
playwright struggling to gain a reputation. London theatre
audiences of the time were enamored with gory ÒrevengeÓ
plays, and it is entirely logical that Shakespeare would try
his hand at writing what was selling.
For source materials and
inspiration, the aspiring playwright had a long list from
which to choose. OvidÕs Metamorphoses provided many of the
legends adapted for Titus Andronicus; SenecaÕs Thyestes, and
KydÕs The Spanish Tragedy, as well as the phenomenal stage
successes of MarloweÕs The Jew of Malta and Tamburlaine,
were before the young Shakespeare, who paid them all the
flattery of imitation.
Titus Andronicus also foreshadows
elements Shakespeare later developed more fully in Hamlet
(revenge upon his fatherÕs killer); Coriolanus (ingratitude
of Rome toward its honored general); Julius Caesar (Roman
political factionalism); Othello (the Moor Aaron, exulting
in evil for the sheer joy of it prefigures Iago); and King
Lear (infirm old age confronted by human bestiality).
Titus Andronicus, however, does
not address these issues with the compassion and humanity
offered by the later, more mature plays. Rather it evokes
pathos on behalf of gruesome suffering. It is a revenge play
in the sensational vein of ShakespeareÕs immediate
predecessors, focusing on violence, gore and horror. And it
sold.
It was given twice within ten
days in 1594, a sure evidence of its popularity. It did well
enough, in fact, to elicit a sour comment from Ben Jonson,
who was appalled with the success of what he took to be a
bloody and sensational piece of bombastic rhetoric.
Productions were recorded
throughout the 1600s, and adaptations in the 1700s made
Aaron the Moor into the playÕs dominating figure. By the
time of Queen Victoria, a play with so much onstage violence
was certain to encounter resistance, and Titus Andronicus
was seen only once during the 1800s, in a version in which
Òevery expression calculated to offend the ear has been
studiously avoided.Ó In our own time, and viewed as a
political allegory or a period piece, Peter BrookÕs striking
1955 production at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Laurence
Olivier as Titus and Vivien Leigh as Lavinia, was deeply
moving.
A difficulty of putting this play
on the stage is that its pure goriness can become comic. The
play contains a dozen killings, most of them on stage. It
adds multiple mutilations. Detached heads, hands, and stumps
are much in evidence, and a white empress has a black baby
by her Moorish paramour. The sight of Lavinia walking around
with two stumps for hands and her tongue cut out and Titus
with his stump of a hand, and the baking of human pies at
the end, can make the audience laugh because it all seems so
Ògross.Ó
Be reminded the revenge drama was
popular when Shakespeare began to write. Even todayÕs motion
pictures capitalize on the proven (if temporary) audience
appeal of a particular genre, and twenty years later
Shakespeare would likely have agreed Titus Andronicus was an
old-fashioned play. Gruesome though much of its action is,
it far transcends most of the plays Shakespeare was
imitating.
The allegory for Elizabethans,
and perhaps for our time, may be that even golden ages come
to an end, in blood, torture and barbarism. Rome, the
greatest civilization the world had known, had fallen. How
could subsequent empires, no matter how splendid, evade the
same fate?
Titus Andronicus: "And I Will Be
Revenged on Them All"
By Jane S. Carducci
From Souvenir Program, 1990
Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus (c. 1594) is so full of cruelties that the modern
theater-goer may find it hard to
disagree with T. S. Eliot's view of this melodrama as "one
of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written."
One critic, S. Clark Hulse, has even calculated the
accumulated horrors in Titus: ÒIt has 14 killings, 9 of them
on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on
how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of
cannibalism--an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one
for every 97 lines.Ó
More generously, we might
consider Titus in its immediate literary context: that of
the Revenge Tragedy, popular during the Age of Elizabeth.
This genre followed the dramatic design of Seneca's Roman
tragedies, especially his drama Thyestes (c. 65 AD)--which
included the horrors of rape, murder, severed hands, and
cannibalism. In England this tradition began with The
Spanish Tragedy (c. 1586) by Thomas Kyd, who first
accommodated Seneca to the Elizabethan stage. Kyd inspired
numerous spin-offs other than Titus Andronicus: Antonio's
Revenge (1599) by John Marston, Hamlet (1601) by William
Shakespeare, Bussy d'Ambois (c. 1604), The Revenge of Bussy
d'Ambois (c. 1610) by George Chapman, The Revenger's Tragedy
(1607), and The Atheist's Tragedy (c. 1611), both of which
are attributed to Cyril Tourneur.
Ideally, these revenge plays
would consist of three elements: first, firm character
development; second, a well-constructed
plot; and third, complete action (i.e., a beginning, middle,
and end). In the beginning is murder, the end, vengeance;
the job of the dramatist is to skillfully bridge the gap.
Alas, the ideal revenge tragedy was reached only once with
Shakespeare's masterpiece, Hamlet. Most of the revenge plays
degenerated from complete action to episodic structure and
from Aristotle's "pity and terror" to "pity and horror."
The dramatic pattern of Titus
Andronicus closely follows that of the other revenge plays.
Titus, as avenger, must become a villain because, according
to the Elizabethan view, vengeance properly belongs to God
alone. Marcus, Titus's brother, strengthens this view by
insisting on the wickedness of vengeful acts. Besides the
motive of revenge, other features of this genre include
pretended or actual madness, delay in the action, blood and
sensationalism, stoicism, hyperbole, soliloquy, and
stichomythic dialogue (a rhetorical device where characters
speak alternate single lines).
For example, Titus goes mad
after he leaves the forest in II.iii. and
never recovers his sanity. Second, the action in Titus is
delayed: Titus knows his enemies from the beginning of Act
IV, but waits until Tamora's plot for his chance to serve
her the Thyestean banquet. Additionally, Shakespeare
displays in Titus the most brutal of Senecan horrors with
"murders, rapes, and massacres,/
Acts of black night, abominable deeds,/ Complots of
mischief, treason, villainies/ Ruthful to hear, yet
piteously performed" (V.i.63-6). Fourth, these Roman men,
while in Rome, represent a Senecan stoic silence, similar to
the "real" men of today who are often defined as men of
action, yet personally mute.
Furthermore, Shakespeare
adopts some of Seneca's rhetorical devices. Titus consists
of many long, didactic speeches in a florid and hyperbolic
style (N.B. Marcus's reaction to Lavinia's mutilation in
II.iv,11-58 or Titus's apostrophe
to the earth III.i.12-26). Sixth, stichomythia fills the
play and can be experienced more recently in the familiar
verbal parry between the television characters Mattie and
David on Moonlighting. In Titus, for example, Aaron spars
with Demetrius and Chiron:
Demetrius: Villain, what hast
thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst
not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our
mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done
thy mother.
Demetrius: And therein,
hellish dog, thou hast undone her. (4.2.73-77)
Even though it follows in the
Senecan tradition of bombast and brutality, Titus is
especially savage. Again T. S. Eliot comments: "No doubt. . .Titus Andronicus. . .would
have made the living Seneca shudder with genuine aesthetic
horror." Finally, we feel relief and even comfort in
returning to the court and the civil order of Rome. Lucius
assures us that he will "govern so/ To
heal Rome's harms and wipe away her woe" (V.iii.147-8). But,
even as a modern audience accustomed to horror movies (and,
indeed, even the revenge themes found in Chuck Norris's
karate movies or Charles Bronson's Death Wish series), we
wish that the playwright would reverse frame, knitting
"these broken limbs again into one body" (V.iii.72). Since,
of course, this cannot happen, we must settle, like Titus's
grandson, to "leave these bitter deep laments" and to be
made "merry with some pleasing tale" (III.ii.46-47).-
Julie Taymor's Titus: Deciding Not
to Cut
Literature Film Quarterly, 2004 by Marti, Cecile
The first time I saw Julie
Taymor's Titus, I was both fascinated and horrified:
fascinated by the boldness and cleverness of the iconography
and horrified by the various forms of violence to which the
characters' bodies were submitted. This reminded me of the
early modern literary genre of the anatomical blazon and of
the spectacular dissections that took place in the anatomy
theatres during the second part of the sixteenth century and
the first part of the seventeenth century throughout Europe. All Renaissance
artists were strongly influenced by the mixed feelings of
fascination and horror inspired by those public dissections,
and Shakespeare was no exception to the trend insofar as
various appropriations of and references to the blazon are
disseminated in his sonnets (cf. sonnets 20, 23, or 145) and
plays (Twelfth Night, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet,
Julius Caesar, or Titus Andronicus). As David Hillman and
Carla Mazzio state: "Parts of the body are scattered
throughout the literary and cultural texts of sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Europe." A few centuries later, the
everlasting craze for hemoglobin, scattered limbs, and big thrills is given full
satisfaction on the screens.
Julie Taymor, in her
adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, has composed a
strikingly visual reworking of Renaissance "Baroque
fantasies of the imagination." The trope of fragmentation at
the root of the anatomical blazon initiated by Clement Marot
in 1535 is here particularly analogous to the rhetoric of
film editing developed in Titus. Originally, the poetic
partition of the female body and the subsequent praise or
denigration of the selected body parts were
the constituting elements of the anatomical blazon. As far
as Titus and Lavinia are concerned, the anachronism implied
in a cinematic emblazoning of some of their body parts
involves a fracture of bodily and gender representations as
well as a shift in intention from the blasonneurs' point of
view. Depriving the human body (most often female) of its
wholeness in an attempt to objectify it, annihilating any
trace of identity (here again feminine), and eventually
subduing it was the profession of faith of the early modern
blazoners. The desire to dissect a body discursively and
impose a dominion upon a selected body part stems mainly
from assumptions that: ". . .
the part, in the early modern period, becomes a subject,
both in the sense of being 'subjected'-of being isolated and
disempowered-and of being 'subjected'-imagined to be endowed
with qualities of intention and subjectivity."
Advertisement
Representations of
corporeality are also central to Titus Andronicus where the
body's fragmentation and its loss of coherence acquire a
collective perspective and become a synecdoche of political
havoc and social dismantlement. It is thus through the
disintegrated bodies of Titus and Lavinia that the politics
of national threat and racial invasion get worked out. On
the other hand, the emblazoning process of the editor of
Taymor film, Francoise Bonnot, does not obey the same early
modern imperatives of bodily conquest and dominion in
Titus-the sadistic load contained in a Renaissance blazon is
not here clearly perceptible-for if film editing is
essentially based on deconstructive, paradigmatic methods
(cutting), most of the time it aims at constructing coherent
narratives and characters.
As far as Titus is concerned,
the repeated shots of body parts (mostly close-ups) stand
for the anaphora upon which the anatomical blazon is based
and which is so prominent in Shakespeare's text (becoming a
kind of throbbing and haunting litany). The selected body
parts emblazoned in Taymor's Titus are self-evidently the
hand and the head. As the film unfolds, alternations of
praise and blame in the representations of these body parts
closely coalesce with the modulations of Titus's identity as
his masculinity or masculine attributes (reason, courage,
honor, virtue, and virtus amongst others) are ruthlessly
assaulted from all sides. The whole interest or purpose of
anatomical blazons residing mainly in the second constituent
of the genre, the deconstruction of Titus's praise and
masculine gendering that is established in his first
sequences, will occupy the rest of the film.
If we now move on to the
sequence corresponding to the second part of the play's 3.1,
a radical change has occurred in the way Titus's body is
edited. Not only has the cutting rhythm been modified, but
also the camera work has undergone a spectacular
transformation as far as the eponymous character is
concerned. The sequence I am referring to displays how Titus
accepts the loss of his left hand in an attempt to save his
sons' lives.
It is quite
fascinating how the carnivalesque suddenly breaks into the
household of the Andronici, confined as it has been within the
limits of the Goths' sphere of influence until this sequence.
Various images of carnival and grotesque that are akin to the
texts by Marot, Rabelais, or Nashe also pervade Shakespeare's
Titus Andronicus and are exacerbated in Taymor's Titus. The
"kitchen sequence" in particular is both gruesome and
grotesque. Setting Titus's dismemberment in an antique-looking
kitchen is in itself a direct reference to Renaissance
grotesque -- this kitchen has nothing to do with a
contemporary sterile one where the food is hidden away in
storage spaces. In fact, Titus's kitchen could not possibly be
more Rabelaisian: all kinds of vegetables and other provisions
are spread abundantly on the massive wooden tables while
different sorts of poultry as well as hams hang from butcher's
hooks.
"Now is a time
to storm": Julie Taymor's Titus (2000)
Literature Film Quarterly, 2002 by Walker, Elsie
If you think you know
Shakespeare...think again.'
Julie Taymor's Titus is a
quintessentially postmodern adaptation: playful,
selfconscious, heterogeneous Like other postmodern
directors, Taymor plays with the make believe or illusionist
conventions of cinema. featuring
"stagy" scenes, editing discontinuity, and subjective
camerawork rather than filming straight, "objective"
reality. Such Brecht Ian, distancing devices are typical of
demystificatory postmodern art.2 But Taymor describes Titus
in anti-postmodern, perhaps mystificatory terms. as a total, cross-cultural narrative
encapsulating the violence of the last two centuries. Also,
the ending of Taymor's Titus, pointing toward a world beyond
her postmodern mise-en-scene, is (tentatively) Romantic. I
will focus on the postmodern form of Titus as well as the
Romantic conviction behind its making. I shall also explore
how Taymor combines "theatrical" and "filmic" modes of
presentation, collapsing distinctions between the artificial
and the real because, for Taymor, Shakespeare's "timeless"
work prefigures twentieth-century events.
Like Luhrmann's William
Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1997), Taymor's Titus is an
eclectic collage--she features heterogeneous film
iconography, an international cast, and her hybrid
mise-en-scene emphasizes temporal and cultural differences
rather than cultural homogeneity. Rather than "re-creating
Rome, 400 A.D." Taymor's mise-en-scene evokes various
epochs, an ancient world of ritual, mausoleums and orgies
along with elements of modern America. Tanks. horses and carriages, limousines,
bows and arrows, machine guns, and electric Olympics-style
torches are shown in close-up. Taymor and her production
designer, Dante Ferretti, feature
imposing monoliths. Roman aqueducts along with
twentieth century fascist architecture, the government
buildings of Mussolini's time built to "recreate the glory
of the ancient Roman empire." The costumes by Milena
Canonero are not the "clothes for a costume drama," but an
anachronistic combination of togas and runway chic, business
suits and leathers, ancient and ultra modern. Titus (Anthony
Hopkins), for example, begins wearing ancient battle dress
and war paint, changes to an Eisenhower jacket, to a baggy
gray jumper and corduroy pants, to his all-white cook's
outfit-the clothes mark his changing role from austere
victor (vulnerable in assuming his invulnerability), a
politician, an "avuncular old man," to a picture of
professionalism executing revenge. By contrast, Lavinia
(Laura Fraser) is first dressed "like a Grace Kelly from the
1950s" or an "Italian Katherine Hepburn," a "good girl" in
little black gloves and a full bell skirt," but after she is
ravaged, Lavinia's torn and bloodied petticoats and her
painterly beauty evoke Degas's ballerinas (Taymor 181 ).
The eclecticism
of this Titus may be inspired by the famous drawing by
Henry Peacham, the only surviving Elizabethan illustration
of a Shakespearean play. The drawing, perhaps drawn
from a production of Titus, shows a mix of costumes and
postures, rather than revealing any attempt toward an
"authentic" holistic and unified presentation of ancient
Rome. Titus wears a toga but his soldiers are Elizabethan
men-at-arms with halberds, while Tamora's dress is vaguely
medieval. As Jonathan Bate writes (in his editorial
introduction to Titus Andronicus), "there could be no better
precedent for modern productions which are determinedly
eclectic in their dress, combining modern and ancient, the
present as well as the past". Bate also discusses the
illustration's emblematic quality, fitting with "the way in
which the characters in the play so often seem to become
emblems, to be frozen into postures that are the very
picture of supplication, grief or violent revenge". In
Taymor's film, the actors use Stanislavskian, method-acting
techniques (for example, in his DVD commentary, Hopkins says
that Titus's "super objective becomes revenge"), but they
are also sometimes shown frozen in emblematic gestures-this
combination of naturalistic and "stylized" acting is
discussed in more detail below.
Taymor's long-time
collaborator, composer Elliot Goldenthal, matches the
eclecticism of her mise-en-scene and characterization with
an eclectic musical lexicon. Goldenthal wrote diverse music
to play into the psychology of individual characters, rather
than bind things together in a wash of homogenous sound:
Titus is accompanied with orchestral and mass music-solemn
and complex like Monteverdi's choral works; Saturninus, the
neo-fascist who lives in Mussolini's palace, is associated
with 1930s jazz music; Chiron and Demetrius are associated
with "chaotic" rock and heavy metal.
Goldenthal's diverse musical
cues and Taymor's use of eclectic cultural styles and
referents to "anchor" the story-telling are especially
important considering that Titus Andronicus is one of
Shakespeare's lesser-known plays. Taymor also takes
Luhrmann's use of film intertextuality, incorporating
various generic and stylistic visual templates, to a
dizzying extreme, including everything from cartoonish
action to art-house horror. In the first sequence of Titus,
the entrance of the "clown" crashing through the wall of a
regular boy's kitchen alludes to both Loncraine's Richard
Ill (where Richard III crashes through Prince Edward's
study) and The Last Action Hero (1993) in which Arnold
Schwarzenegger, as the action-movie Hamlet, crashes into a
regular boy's life. Taymor's final scene, with its bright
colors, the tableaux vivants, and horrendous subject matter,
surely borrows from Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief
His Wife and Her Lover (1989)-in both films, nasty events
are portrayed in a stylish way. Taymor's mix of diverse
filmic iconography underlines the disconcerting mixture of
tone in Titus in a new way for her own generation, for a
primarily film-literate audience.
Appendix A
List of films set in ancient Rome
From
Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
This
page lists some films set in the city of Rome during the Roman
Kingdom, the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire. Where films
are only partly set in Rome, they are so noted.
The Roman Kingdom
Coriolanus:
Hero without a Country
The Roman Republic
á
Coriolanus (1984)
Second Punic War
á
Annibale
á
Hannibal
Ð Rome's Worst Nightmare
(2006)
á
Scipio
Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal
Jupiter's
Darling (1955), set in Rome
and its environs
The
Centurion
(1961)
Late Republic
Spartacus partly set in Rome (1960)
Spartacus (2004)
Spartacus:
Blood and Sand (2010)
Spartacus:
Gods of the Arena
(2011)
Julius
Caesar (TV miniseries) (2002)
Druids (2001)
Caesar
the Conqueror (1962)
A Queen
for Caesar (1962)
Carry On Cleo parody of Cleopatra,
set in the reign of Julius
Caesar (1964)
Cleopatra
(1934)
Cleopatra
(1963)
Cleopatra
(1999)
Julius
Caesar
(1953)
Julius
Caesar
(1970)
Empire (2005)
Rome (2005)
The Roman Empire
1st
century
BC
Empire
(TV Series) (2005)
1st
century
AD
Ben-Hur
(1925 film)
- this film is noteworthy for its color segments and for the
female nudity
in the parade sequence
Ben-Hur (1959)
partly set in Rome
Caligula (1979)
partly set in Rome
Demetrius
and the Gladiators
sequel to The Robe
I, Claudius (Never completed) (1937)
I,
Claudius
(BBC TV series) (1976)
The Life
of Brian (1979)
The Robe partly set in Rome (1953)
Reign of Nero
A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - a fleeting reference to the emperor is made
when the gladiatorial trainer in the Colosseum wants his
hulking student to drive his next victim "straight into Nero's
box".
Barabbas (1961)
Quo
Vadis
(1951)
Quo
Vadis
(2001)
Flavian Dynasty
▪
The Last
Days Of Pompeii (1935)
▪
The Last
Days Of Pompeii (1959)
▪
Pompeii:
The Last Day (2003)
▪
Up Pompeii (1971)
▪
Up
Pompeii!
is set in 79 AD, yet
anachronistically shows Nero
still reigning 10 years after his death (BBC TV Series)
(1969Ð1975)
▪
Titus
Andronicus (1985)
101-110 AD
Reign of Hadrian
▪
Centurion disappearance of the Ninth Legion
(2010)
▪
The Eagle disappearance of the Ninth Legion
(2011)
▪
The
Eagle of the Ninth
adaption of the novel
by Rosemary
Sutcliff. (2011)
Reign of Commodus
▪
The Fall
of the Roman Empire
latter half set in Rome (1964)
▪
Gladiator latter half set in Rome, partly a
remake of The Fall
of the Roman Empire (2000)
260-272 AD
Reign of Diocletian
310-315 AD
▪
Fabiola
Late Empire
Appendix B
|
|
Ancient
Rome Timeline |
|
753
BC |
Foundation
of Rome (according to the standard Roman creation
myth) |
|
600
BC |
The
Etruscans establish cities from northern to central Italy |
|
282
BC |
282-272:
War with Pyrrhus |
|
264
BC |
264-241:
War with Carthage (First Punic War) |
|
218
BC |
Hannibal
invades Italy |
|
135BC |
135-132
BC First Servile War prompted by slave revolts |
|
73
BC |
73
- 71 BC Slave uprising led by the gladiator called
Spartacus |
|
64
BC |
Pompey
captures Jerusalem |
|
45
BC |
Julius
Caesar defeats Pompey to become the first dictator
of Rome |
|
44
BC |
Julius
Caesar assassinated |
|
44
BC |
44-31BC
The Triumvirate of Marc Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian
(later known as Caesar Augustus) become the rulers of
Rome |
|
31
BC |
Antony
and Cleopatra are defeated by Octavian |
|
27
BC |
Octavian
becomes Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor
(ÒPrincepsÓ) until 14AD |
|
0 |
(conventional) |
|
14AD |
Death
of Augustus. Tiberius,
stepson of Caesar Augustus,
becomes emperor until 37AD |
|
29
AD (ca.) |
Crucifixion
of Jesus in Jerusalem and the origin of Christianity |
|
37 |
Gaius
(Caligula) crowned Emperor |
|
41 |
Caligula
is killed and Claudius proclaimed Emperor |
|
54 |
Emperor
Claudius dies (murdered?) and Nero is proclaimed
Emperor |
|
64 |
Fire
destroyed much of Rome - the Christians are blamed
for the destruction |
|
|
|
68 |
The
death of Nero ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty |
|
|
|
68
- 69 |
ÒYear
of Four EmperorsÓ followed by the beginning of the
Flavian Dynasty by Vespasian |
|
|
|
75
- 80 |
The
Roman emperors start to build the Colloseum in
Rome as a place of gladiatorial combat |
|
|
|
180 |
Commodus
succeeds his father Marcus Aurelius and gains
imperial power |
|
|
|
305 |
Constantine
becomes the first Christian emperor |
|
|
|
380 |
Christianity
is declared the sole religion of the Roman Empire by
Theodosius I |
|
|
|
410 |
The
Visigoths, led by Alaric, sack Rome heralding the total
decline of the Roman Empire |
|
|
|
455 |
The
Vandals, led by Gaiseric, sack Rome |
|
|
|
476 |
The
last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by
Odoacer, a German Goth |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|