The solemnities began at the second hour of the night, and the emperor opened them by the river side with the sacrifice of three lambs to the Parcæ upon three altars erected for the purpose, and which were sprinkled with the blood of the victims. The lambs themselves were burned. A temporary scene, like that of a theatre, was erected in the Tarentum, and illuminated with lights and fires. In this scene festive hymns were sung by a chorus, and various other ceremonies, together with theatrical performances, took place.

During the morning of the first day the people went to the Capitol to offer solemn sacrifices to Jupiter; thence they returned to the Tarentum to sing choruses in honor of Apollo and Diana. On the second day, the noblest matrons, at an hour fixed by an oracle, assembled in the Capitol, offered supplications, sang hymns to the gods, and also visited the altar of Juno. The emperor and the quindecimviri offered sacrifices, which had been vowed before to all the great divinities. On the third day, Greek and Latin choruses were sung in the sanctuary of Apollo, by three times nine boys and maidens of great beauty, whose parents were still alive. The object of these hymns was to implore the protection of the gods for all cities, towns, and officers of the empire. One of these hymns was the Carmen Sæculare by Horace, which was especially composed for the occasion, and adapted to the circumstances of the time. During the whole of the three days and nights, games of every description were carried on in all the circuses and theatres, and sacrifices were offered in all the temples.

The first celebration of the ludi sæculares in the reign of Augustus took place in the summer of the year B.C. 17; the second took place in the reign of Claudius, A.D. 47:2 the third in the reign of Domitian, A.D. 88;3 and the last in the reign of Philippus, A.D. 248, and, as was generally believed, just one thousand years after the building of the city.

CHAPTER XXI.

ROMAN GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS.

THE DRAMA (LUDI SCENICI).—THEATRES.-ACTORS.

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I. DRAMATIC entertainments or stage plays (ludi scenici) were first introduced at Rome on account of a pestilence, to appease the divine wrath, B.C. 364. On this occasion, according to Livy, Tuscan players (ludiones) exhibited a sort of pantomimic dance to the music of a pipe, without any song accompanying their dance, and without regular dramatic gesticulation. The amusement became popular,

1 Tac., Ann., xi., 11.

3 Suet., Domit., 4; Ernesti, ad loc.

5 Liv., vii., 2.

2 Suet., Claud., 21.
4 Jul. Capitol., Gord. Tert., 33.

and was imitated by the young Romans, who improved upon the original entertainment by uniting with it extemporaneous mutual raillery, composed in a rude irregular measure, a species of diversion which had been long known among the Romans at their agrarian festivals under the name of Fescennina. They regulated their dances so as to express the sense of the words, Those who had an aptitude for this sort of representation set themselves to improve its form, supplanting the old Fescennine verses by more regular compositions, which, however, had not as yet any thing like dramatic unity or a regular plot, but, from the miscellaneous nature of the subjects introduced, were called Satura.

II. Those who took part in these exhibitions were called histriones, the term hister being an Etrurian one, answering to the Latin ludio. It was one hundred and twenty-three years after the first introduction of these scenic performances before the improvement came in of having a regular plot. This advance was made by Livius Andronicus, a native of Magna Græcia, in B.C. 240. His pieces, which were both tragedies and comedies, were merely adaptations of Greek dramas. The first imitator of the dramatic works of Andronicus was Nævius, and the most distinguished successors of Nævius were Plautus and Terence.

III. Plays (fabula) among the Romans were divided into different classes. Thus, when the story and characters were Roman, they were called fabulæ togata, because the costume was the Roman toga. When the story and characters were Greek, they were called fabulæ palliate, from the Greek pallium. The fabulæ togate again were subdivided into two classes, namely, the trabeate and tabernaria, according as the subject was taken from high or low life. There was another class of plays termed prætextata; these, however, were not so much tragedies as historical plays. It is a mistake to represent them as comedies.

IV. Another species of dramatic exhibition among the Romans was the Mime (mimus), not, however, to be confounded with the Greek uiuoc. The Roman mimes were imitations of foolish and mostly indecent occurrences, and scarcely differed from comedy, except in consisting more of gestures and mimicry than of spoken dialogue. The dialogue, indeed, was not excluded, but was only interspersed in various parts of the representation, while the mimic acting continued along with it and uninterruptedly from the beginning to the end of a piece. Mimes became, at a subsequent period,

1 Liv., vii., 2; Val. Max., ii., 4, 4; Plut., Quæst. Rom., p. 289, c.

2 Hermann, de fabula togata, Opusc., vol. v., p. 254, segg.

3 Orid, Trist., il., 5, 15; Val. Max., ii., 6, 7; x., 11.

a very popular species of performance, and in the gradual march of improvement lost much of their original grossness. The most distinguished writers of mimes were Laberius and Publius Syrus.

V. Pantomimes were representations by dumb show, in which the actors, who were called by the same name with their performances, namely, pantomimi, expressed every thing by dancing and gesture, without speaking. This representation, therefore, nearly resembled that of the modern ballet dancers. The pantomimic art, however, was not carried to any degree of perfection until the time of Augustus.

THEATRES.

VI. In the earliest times, theatres (theatra) among the Romans were erected only of wood, and were taken down after the exhibition was over. The plays of Plautus and Terence were performed in such temporary structures. A magnificent wooden theatre was erected by Emilius Scaurus, in his ædileship, B.C. 58, capable of containing eighty thousand persons. The first stone theatre, however, was erected by Pompey, near the Campus Martius, B.C. 55.2 Other stone theatres were subsequently erected, as the theatre of Marcellus, which was built by Augustus, and called after his nephew Marcellus; and that of Balbus; whence Suetonius uses the expression per trina theatra. Pompey's theatre could contain forty thousand spectators.

VII. In their general form the theatres of the Greeks and Romans were said to have resembled a horse-shoe, the seats of the spectators being at the curved end. These seats consisted of rows, rising one above another, forming parts of concentric circles, and were divided at intervals into compartments by one or more broad passages, running between them and parallel with the rows. These passages were called by the Romans præcinctiones. In the Roman theatres, the rows of seats formed semicircles; but in the Greek theatres, nearly three fourths of a circle. Across the rows of benches ran stairs, by which persons might ascend from the lowest to the highest. But these stairs ran in straight lines only from one præcinctio to another; and the stairs in the next series of rows were just between the two stairs of the lower series of benches. By this course of the stairs the seats were divided into a number of compartments called cunei, and resembling cones from which the tops are cut off.

VIII. The whole of the place for the spectators was in the Ro2 Id. ib., xxxvi., 24, 7.

1 Plin., H. N., xxxvi., 24, 7; xxxiv., 17.

Suet., Aug., 44.

K

man theatres called carea. Above the highest row of benches there rose a covered portico, which, of course, far exceeded in height the opposite buildings by which the stage was surrounded, and appears to have also contributed to increase the acoustic effect. The entrances to the seats of the spectators were partly under ground, and led to the lowest row of benches, while the upper rows must have been accessible from above.

IX. In the Greek theatres, the orchestra (ópxýσrpa) was a circular level space extending in front of the spectators, and somewhat below the lowest row of benches. But it was not a complete circle, one segment of it being appropriated to the stage. Here the chorus performed its evolutions and dances, for which purpose it was covered with boards. In the Roman theatre, on the other hand, the orchestra did not form more than a semicircle, the diameter of which formed the front line of the stage. The Roman orchestra, moreover, was not destined for a chorus (Latin comedies having no chorus, and in Latin tragedies the chorus appearing on the stage), but here were the seats for the senators and other distinguished persons, such as foreign ambassadors, and these were called primus subselliorum ordo. The whole theatre lay under the open sky; a roof is nowhere mentioned.

X. In B.C. 68, the tribune L. Roscius Otho carried a law which regulated the places in the theatre to be occupied by the different classes of Roman citizens: it enacted that fourteen ordines or rows of benches were to be assigned as seats to the equites. Hence these quatuordecim ordines are sometimes mentioned without any further addition as the ordinary seats of the equites. They were close behind the seats of the senators and magistrates, and thus consisted of the rows of benches immediately behind the orchestra.

XI. The Stage. Steps led from each side of the orchestra to the stage. The rear of the stage was closed by a wall called the scena, from which, on each side, a wing projected which was called a parascenium. The whole depth of the stage was not very great, though larger in the Roman than in the Greek theatres. The whole space from the scena to the orchestra was termed the proscenium, and was what we would call the real stage. The part of it which was nearest the orchestra, and where the actors stood when they spoke, was the pulpitum, and was, of course, raised above the level of the orchestra. The scena represented a suitable back-ground, or the locality in which the action was going on. Before the play began it was covered with a curtain called in Latin aulæa or siparium. When the play began this curtain was let down, and was rolled up on a 1 Liv., Epit., 99; Ascon., ad Cornel., p. 78, ed. Orelli.

roller underneath the stage. The proscenium and pulpitum were never concealed from the spectators. The following is a plan of a Roman theatre.

ACTORS.

XII. The word histriones, by which the Roman actors were called, has already been explained (page 216). It is clear, from the language of Livy, that the histriones were not citizens; that they were not contained in the tribes, nor allowed to enlist as soldiers in the Roman legions. If any citizen, moreover, entered into the profession of histrio, he on this account was excluded from his tribe.1 The histriones were, therefore, always either freedmen, strangers, or slaves, and many passages of Roman writers show that they were Compare Cic., pro Arch., 5; Corn. Nep., Præf., 5; Suet., Tib., 35.