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DRAMA
I. THE ORIGINS OF ROMAN DRAMA
The Hellenistic theatre and Italy
After Menander's death (292 B.C.) the Greek theatrical profession, which had
been primarily Athenian, became Panhellenic. Many Greek cities built or
renovated theatres on a grand scale, and it is the remains of these, not of theatres
of the classical period, that the traveller sees at such sites as Delos or Epidaurus.
In the generation during which the scholar-poet Callimachus worked at
Ptolemy's new 'Museum' in Alexandria, when the Sicilian Theocritus was
composing his pastorals, and when the future father of Roman literature, the
Greek Andronicus, was still a boy at Tarentum, the acting profession was
acquiring a new prestige, even political power. The actors, musicians, and
writers of tragedy and comedy were organized into 'chapels' or 'conventicles',
©(OCCTOI or cruvoSoi, and they called themselves 01 irepi TOV Ai6vuaov TEXVITOCI
'the Artists in the service of Dionysus'. Four 'Guilds' of the Artists emerged,
each corresponding to a region of the Greek world; apart from regulating
terms and rules for dramatic competitions, these organizations even behaved in
some ways like independent states, and would negotiate rights of safe passage
for their members with a city or federation. Thus the acting profession came to
depend and to thrive on a ' circuit' of musical and dramatic festivals among
which Athens was only one of several centres. New plays were still produced,
but the emphasis shifted to a repertoire of classics — in comedy, Menander,
Philemon, and Diphilus; in tragedy, Sophocles, Euripides, and the latter's
imitators.
Our knowledge of these developments of the years 290—250 B.C. is largely
due to archaeological discoveries, and, as is the nature of such evidence, it is
detailed (e.g. for Delphi and Delos) and patchy (e.g. for Sicily and South
Italy). 1 We hear first of the Artists at Rome only in the 180s B.C. (Livy 39.22.2,
10), when a Roman drama based on their repertoire was already two generations
old. In spite of the absence of direct evidence, it is likely that the Artists
1 Sifakis (1967), DFA (1968).
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