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WERE THERE SLAVES IN THE AUDIENCE OF PLAUTUS’ COMEDIES?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2020

Peter Brown
Peter Brown*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence commonly claimed to show the presence of slaves in the audience of Plautus’ comedies (above all the evidence of his prologue to Poenulus) and to argue that it more probably shows the opposite, that slaves were not present, or at least were expected not to be. The question is given some urgency by the appearance of Amy Richlin's new book, which takes the presence of slaves in the audience for granted and builds on it to develop a view of Plautine comedy as addressing the experiences, hopes and fears of those slaves. Richlin cites the Poenulus prologue at pages 89–90, accepting it without detailed discussion as indicating the presence of slaves in the audience; and it has been cited similarly in standard handbooks from which I quote a representative sample of remarks below. Some scholars have said things in passing which suggest a different conclusion, but they too have not discussed the question in detail or examined the other evidence that has been thought relevant to the issue. I think that the time is ripe for closer scrutiny of all this evidence.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 654 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence commonly claimed to show the presence of slaves in the audience of Plautus’ comedies (above all the evidence of his prologue to Poenulus) and to argue that it more probably shows the opposite, that slaves were not present, or at least were expected not to be. The question is given some urgency by the appearance of Amy Richlin's new book,Footnote 1 which takes the presence of slaves in the audience for granted and builds on it to develop a view of Plautine comedy as addressing the experiences, hopes and fears of those slaves. Richlin cites the Poenulus prologue at pages 89–90, accepting it without detailed discussion as indicating the presence of slaves in the audience; and it has been cited similarly in standard handbooks from which I quote a representative sample of remarks below. Some scholars have said things in passing which suggest a different conclusion, but they too have not discussed the question in detail or examined the other evidence that has been thought relevant to the issue. I think that the time is ripe for closer scrutiny of all this evidence.

As will be seen, the discussion has sometimes involved consideration of other questions such as the size of the audience and whether some of them stood rather than sitting. So I shall say something about these matters too, and I shall also discuss the evidence claimed for other categories of people in the audience besides slaves, partly because they too are mentioned in the Poenulus prologue, and partly because there is little enough such evidence altogether that I hope it will be found helpful to assemble it all in one place. The main focus of interest will be the presence of slaves, but that will not be the exclusive focus throughout. While the primary focus will be on the audience of Plautus, evidence for later periods will also be adduced and assessed where it exists.

The texts of Plautus’ plays that have been transmitted to us appear to have been designed for performance at Rome,Footnote 2 and there is no reason to doubt that the same applies to the prologues of those plays that have them. Although we can sometimes detect interpolations or alternative versions, for the most part we believe that the manuscripts transmit a fixed text. That text may well have evolved in the processes of rehearsal and of repeated performance; the text may have been more fluid in Plautus’ lifetime than it has subsequently become.Footnote 3 Actors were presumably not restricted to appearing at the major Roman festivals and must have spent much of the year performing in less formal contexts, both in Rome and in the surrounding countryside.Footnote 4 In addition to performances at local festivals, we can easily imagine companies travelling from town to town and setting up their stall in a public space where they might hope to catch the attention of all and sundry; and they may sometimes have performed a fabula palliata (the sort of play written by Plautus and Terence), or something based on one, in any of these circumstances. But we can make only intuitive guesses about the audiences they are likely to have attracted on their travels. Whatever the occasion for which the prologue of Poenulus was written, it is the evidence most commonly cited in discussions of the Plautine audience, and there is not a great deal of other evidence to which we can turn.

It might be thought likely that the prologues would be particularly liable to adaptation to different occasions of performance; the transmitted prologues may be the record of just one such occasion (which we normally cannot identify with any precision) and may tell us nothing about any other occasions, nor indeed about any performance of any other play. The passages I shall be examining are those regularly cited in support of general claims about the audience, but perhaps scholars have been too ready to generalize from them. However, it may still be worth scrutinizing them to see what they actually say. It was once fashionable to regard the prologues as heavily interpolated (and at least Plaut. Cas. 5–20 were clearly written after Plautus’ death), but there is no reason not to accept the passages I shall be examining from Captiui and Poenulus as Plautine.Footnote 5 They are thus evidence for what Plautus made his prologue-speaker say (or subsequently wished he had made him say) on at least one occasion in the case of each play.

Here are quotations from three authoritative handbooks published since the Second World War which give what I think could be called the standard view of the composition of theatre audiences at Rome in the time of Plautus and Terence:

(a) Dignified senators and unruly populace, harlots and slaves, crying infants and gossiping women—these made up the spectatores of Roman comedy.Footnote 6

(b) All classes went to the theatre. … The prologue to the Poenulus contains injunctions to married ladies (matronae), nurses with their infant charges, prostitutes, slaves (who are forbidden to occupy seats), lackeys (pedisequi), attendants on the magistrate (lictores).Footnote 7

(c) Audiences therefore must have been mixed as to background, social class, age, sex and occupation. Comic prologues (esp. Plaut. Poen. 5–35, Ter. Hec. 28–48) mention free citizens (liberi), slaves (servi), married ladies (matronae), nurses with infants (nutrices and pueri infantes), prostitutes (scorta), attendants on the magistrates (lictores) and ushers (dissignatores) as members of the audience, even though, due to their humorous nature, these passages might not give an accurate portrait.Footnote 8

Some scholars give a rather different emphasis, insisting that the target audience of the plays was predominantly upper class, even if they did not constitute the majority of the actual audience:

(d) Any audience consisted theoretically of the whole Roman citizen body but in fact selected itself. Even if members of the upper orders were not numerically dominant, it was they who received the most attention from the festival managers, and it would have been they whom the playwrights sought most assiduously to please.Footnote 9

(e) I therefore conclude that Plautine comedy was performed for a small and predominately aristocratic audience, an audience that was ipso facto interested in theater. If this aristocratic core of the audience did not constitute an absolute majority or plurality, then it certainly served as the focal point and constituency to whom Plautus would cater and whom he would strive to please.Footnote 10

(f) Since Plautine comedy was both traditional and public entertainment, and since it was funded by the aediles, I think it improbable that it expressed viewpoints at odds with those accepted as mainstream.Footnote 11

Against these latter views, and accepting the standard view of the composition of the audiences, Richlin insists that we cannot simply ignore the reactions of the non-aristocratic or non-mainstream audience members; rather than accepting that the entire performance of a play was targeted at one segment of the audience, she believes that different remarks were designed to appeal to different segments. She is particularly concerned to bring out the importance of remarks addressed to slaves in the audience, saying, for instance,

(g) For, if the Poenulus prologue is read straightforwardly, along with the thousands of lines in the plays that address slave experience, there were people in the audience who had experienced the beatings—and the rapes—that went along with ancient slavery. Students really need to think about this.Footnote 12

In principle Richlin must be right that different members of the audience will have reacted in different ways to the performances, but I shall disagree with her (and others) over what we learn from a ‘straightforward reading’ of the Poenulus prologue about who the audience members actually were, particularly (as I have already indicated) with regard to the presence of slaves. I do not regard this as entirely fatal to her approach, since it ought to be enough for at least some of her purposes that audience members were sensitive to the possibility of enslavement; as she well brings out,Footnote 13 some may have experienced it themselves in the past (at Rome or elsewhere), some may have known people who had been enslaved, and all must at least have been aware that in the circumstances of ancient warfare people who were free one day could very easily find themselves enslaved the next. All, then, were in a position to respond to ‘the thousands of lines in the plays that address slave experience’, whatever their own current status.

My concern here is not so much with the target audience as with the evidence that has been claimed to show that certain categories of people were included in the audience, whether or not they were the target of the plays.

2. AUDIENCE NUMBERS: SITTING AND STANDING

First, a discussion of the probable number of spectators at the Roman festivals and of the evidence that some stood rather than sat.Footnote 14 The audience for many of the plays of Plautus (and also Terence) may well have sat on the steps leading up to the entrance of a temple. Sander Goldberg argues that they must have done so in the case of plays put on at the Megalesian Games in front of the temple of Magna Mater (the Great Mother) on the Palatine from 191 b.c.e. onwards; to our knowledge, these included at least Plautus’ Pseudolus and four of Terence's six comedies.Footnote 15 Goldberg shows that the area available here for the spectators allowed seating for an absolute maximum of 2,000 spectators, if they were very tightly packed in, and perhaps more reasonably about 1,600—not a small audience by most modern standards, but none the less a very small proportion of the total population of Rome, which may have numbered some 350,000 in the time of Plautus, and a great deal smaller than the maximum audience in the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens, which by this time was probably about 17,000. Against this, Peter Wiseman argues that plays were generally staged in less cramped venues and that even those put on at the Megalesian Games may have been performed at some distance from the temple of Magna Mater, though still within view of it:Footnote 16 ‘the Great Mother looked out over the Circus from her temple 250 metres away and 30 metres above’.Footnote 17 As far as the Megalesian Games are concerned, this seems a rather desperate interpretation of Cicero's statement that the Games were originally held ‘in front of the temple, in the very sight of the Great Mother’.Footnote 18 Of course other festivals and performances took place in other venues, and it may have been normal to erect temporary wooden seating in such venues rather than seating everyone on temple steps; but the Magna Mater temple is the only venue for which anyone has yet been able to calculate the maximum size of the audience in the time of Plautus (admittedly, only towards the end of his career) and Terence. Wiseman talks of ‘a big crowd’,Footnote 19 but he sensibly refrains from offering an estimate of its size. We also know very little about repeat performances at the Games, which may have given more people an opportunity to see the plays or may have given the original audience a chance to see them more than once.

However, Goldberg's calculations are for the seated audience. Was there also room for a substantial number of standing spectators, as has been claimed for the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens before it was remodelled in the fourth century, most recently by David Kawalko Roselli? Roselli writes: ‘The available space above the wooden benches … would have perhaps accommodated a few thousand eager spectators. … [P]erformances that did not take account of the interests of the many metics, slaves, women, and poorer citizens watching from the poplar [that is, higher up the hill, above the benches on the lower slope] ran the risk of having their unchecked clucking and hissing disrupt the show.’ He goes on to suggest that the same arrangements obtained in the deme theatres elsewhere in Attica: spectators sat on the slope of a hill, and above the official sitting area there was room for quite a number of people to watch without paying. But the stone theatres built from the fourth century onwards went higher up the hill, at Athens and elsewhere, and, as Roselli says, ‘eliminated many of the free viewing spaces’.Footnote 20

Roman spectators did not sit in auditoria built up the slope of a hill, and in the time of Plautus and Terence, as far as we know, attendance at dramatic performances was free for everyone. No doubt there was room to stand behind or beside those who were sitting, but perhaps not for very large numbers—in the case of the Megalesian Games certainly not for the ‘few thousand eager spectators’ Roselli speaks of for Athens in the fifth century, and probably not at any other likely venue either. However, there is a small amount of evidence normally taken to refer to standing at the back, and it has been suggested that that is where slaves in particular are likely to have watched the performances from.

The strongest piece of evidence for standing (though it says nothing about slaves) is in the prologue to Plautus’ Captiui, lines 10–16:Footnote 21

iam hoc tenetis? optume est.   10
negat hercle illic ultimus. accedito.
si non ubi sedeas locus est, est ubi ambules,
quando histrionem cogis mendicarier.
ego me tua causa, ne erres, non rupturus sum.
uos qui potestis ope uostra censerier,   15
accipite relicuom: alieno uti nil moror.
Have you got it now? That's excellent.   10
No, the man at the back there says he hasn't.Footnote 22 Come closer:
if there's no room for you to sit, there is room for you to go for a walk,
since you're forcing an actor to take up begging.
Just to put you right, I'm not going to bust a gut for your sake.
You people, whose means entitle you to be rated on the censor's list,   15
receive what's outstanding: I don't care to be in debt to anyone.

The prologue-speaker seems to distinguish between a man standing at the back (or at the edge—see n. 22 below), who has not found anywhere to sit, and others who have some wealth and by implication are sitting where they can easily hear; by further implication, the man at the back (or edge) does not have as much wealth as they do.

There is also evidence in the prologue to Poenulus (lines 21–2) that latecomers had to stand, though we cannot say where, and this time there are no clues to their wealth or status:

diu qui domi otiosi dormierunt, decet
animo aequo nunc stent uel dormire temperent.
Those lazybones who overslept at home will now have
to put up with standing or else refrain from sleeping in.

The last words are a not entirely logical addition, given that these people have already overslept,Footnote 23 but that is not the only joking absurdity in this prologue, as we shall see. I shall also come back to the question of who these oversleeping latecomers might be; in any case, they will have to stand.

Finally, it has been suggested that the opening three lines of the Captiui prologue support the idea that slaves stood at the back, if we accept the change of qui to quia in line 2 and slightly modify Lindsay's interpretation of the passage:

hos quos uidetis stare hic captiuos duos,
illi quia astant, hi stant ambo, non sedent;
hoc uos mihi testes estis me uerum loqui.
2 illi qui astant BD, illi qui stant VEJ, illi quia astant Lindsay
These two captives whom you see standing here
are both standing, not sitting, because those people are standing;
you are my witnesses that I am speaking the truth.

As Lindsay paraphrases it, ‘the prisoners on the stage are standing up as a compliment to our friends at the back of the theatre’.Footnote 24 Lindsay took illi to be latecomers; Timothy Moore sees a sharper point if they are slaves or very low class: ‘The two captives, like many of the standers, are slaves; and the actors, like all those forced to stand, are either slaves or others of the lowest classes. By calling upon the sitting spectators (vos) to witness the connection, Plautus makes a rare acknowledgement of the slaves and other standers who are usually ignored,Footnote 25 an acknowledgement most appropriate for this play, the plot of which revolves around slavery and freedom.’Footnote 26 Although he mentions ‘others of the lowest classes’, Moore's point in the context of Captiui is most interesting as a point about slaves, and it would work very nicely if we had firm independent evidence for slaves standing at the back; but this passage could hardly be said on its own to constitute such evidence, even if the text and the interpretation of line 2 were absolutely secure. That line does seem to suggest that some audience members are standing somewhere, and it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that those who stood were for the most part socially inferior to those who sat, an idea also supported by lines 10–16 of this prologue, as we have seen; but none of these three passages clearly says anything about the presence of slaves in the audience, nor is it clear how many standers there were.

3. THE POENVLVS PROLOGUE

Of the passages quoted in my Introduction, (a), (b), (c) and (g) explicitly cite the prologue to Poenulus as evidence for the composition of the audience. That certainly does mention the various categories of people listed in those passages, but they are not all mentioned as members of the audience, as I shall now try to show. I shall go through the relevant part of the prologue (lines 16–43) section by section.

‘bonum factum est, edicta ut seruetis mea.’
scortum exoletum ne quis in proscaenio
sedeat, neu lictor uerbum aut uirgae muttiant,
neu dissignator praeter os obambulet
neu sessum ducat, dum histrio in scaena siet.   20
diu qui domi otiosi dormierunt, decet
animo aequo nunc stent uel dormire temperent.   (Poen. 16–22)
‘It is proper for you to observe my edicts.’
No superannuated old queen (scortum exoletum)Footnote 27 is to sit on the stage,
no lictor or his rods is to utter a word,
no usher (dissignator) is to walk in front of people's faces
or conduct people to their seats while an actor is on stage.   20
Those lazybones who overslept at home will now have
to put up with standing or else refrain from sleeping in.

Can we conclude from this passage that superannuated male prostitutes were in the habit of preening themselves on the stage at performances of plays, or of trying to do so unless prevented, or is it just a gratuitous dig at them, a joke at the expense of people who may well not have been present anyway? If they were present, I see no way to tell whether they stayed to watch the play once they had been removed from the stage. So I do not think that this passage shows them necessarily to have been members of the audience while the play was being performed.

The lictores are presumably there to keep order at the Games at which the play is being put on, some no doubt accompanying the presiding magistrate;Footnote 28 the dissignatores are clearly ushers who show members of the audience to their seats. In this case, they are not to show latecomers, who will just have to stand. It is debatable whether we should regard either of these groups as members of the audience: they are there because they have a job to do. As for the identity of the latecomers, Moore believes that they must have been members of the senatorial class, because they apparently have seats reserved for them, and he believes that only members of that class had reserved seats at this time. If so, the prologue is quite cheeky in telling them off for oversleeping and saying that they will have to stand, as Moore acknowledges.Footnote 29 But even if seating for everyone else was on a ‘first come, first served’ basis (as suggested by Beare and Manuwald),Footnote 30 it does not follow that there was no scope for stewards to help people to find a seat or to try to squeeze people in wherever they could. So I think these latecomers who are going to have to stand could be almost anyone.

serui ne obsideant, liberis ut sit locus,
uel aes pro capite dent; si id facere non queunt,
domum abeant, uitent ancipiti infortunio,   25
ne et hic uarientur uirgis et loris domi,
si minus curassint, quom eri reueniant domum.   (Poen. 23–7)
Slaves (serui) are not to occupy the seats, so that there's room for free men,
or else they must pay cash for their freedom: if they can't do that,
they must go home and avoid the double disaster   25
of being coloured up by the rods here and also by straps at home
if they've neglected their duties when their masters come home.

The notion that slaves could acquire their freedom on the spot by handing over their peculium is probably not realistic (another joking absurdity),Footnote 31 but is it likely that there were slaves who turned up on the off-chance that they might be able to take a seat and see the show? The prologue does not tell the slaves that they should stand and not sit; rather, it tells them to go home:Footnote 32 it is not just a question of not depriving free men of their place, since they have work to do at home. Does this mean that there was a clear understanding that slaves were not supposed to be present at all? Were they automatically beaten by the lictors with their rods if they were detected? Just as we cannot tell whether the scorta exoleta stayed to watch the show, so I do not think we can safely conclude that, if there were any slaves present, they simply ignored the instruction to go away.Footnote 33

Some slaves may have been freer than others to decide how to spend their time: perhaps not all had work to do at home that they would get into trouble for neglecting for an hour or two. But the prologue distinguishes only two categories, the domestic slaves here and the pedisequi at lines 40–3 below. There is no suggestion that the presence of others would be more acceptable.

nutrices pueros infantis minutulos
domi ut procurent neue spectatum afferant,
ne et ipsae sitiant et pueri pereant fame   30
neue esurientes hic quasi haedi obuagiant.   (Poen. 28–31)
Nannies are to look after their teeny little babies
at home and should not bring them to the show—
otherwise they themselves will go thirsty, and the children will die of hunger
and be so desperate for a feed here that they'll be wailing like goats.

Nannies are a category of slave, but the point here is not their status but the danger of disturbance. Does this passage show that going to the theatre in Plautus’ lifetime was as bad as going to a wedding nowadays, with a constant danger that screaming babies would interrupt the proceedings? Or (once again) is this a fanciful prohibition of something that is not very likely to happen anyway? When it says in line 29 that the nannies should not bring babies to the show, that most naturally suggests that they are not currently there with the babies. If they are there, they should clearly go home, just like the slaves previously addressed.Footnote 34

matronae tacitae spectent, tacitae rideant,
canora hic uoce sua tinnire temperent,
domum sermones fabulandi conferant,
ne et hic uiris sint et domi molestiae.   35   (Poen. 32–5)
Married women should look on in silence and laugh in silence;
they should refrain from letting their tuneful voice ring out here,
and they should take their chit-chat and tittle-tattle home,
so that they're not a nuisance to their husbands here as well as at home.

This clearly suggests that at least some married women could be present. They are not told to go home but to sit quietly (though they will later be free to chatter at home).

At 36–9 instructions are given to the people in charge of the Games about fairness in the distribution of prizes,Footnote 35 and then finally:

et hoc quoque etiam quod paene oblitus fui:   40
dum ludi fiunt, in popinam, pedisequi,
inruptionem facite; nunc dum occasio est,
nunc dum scriblitae aestuant, occurrite!   (Poen. 40–3)
And there's this too, which I almost forgot:
while the Games are on, footmen (pedisequi), off you charge to the local
eatery; now, while you have the chance,
now, while the cheese tarts are hot, in you run!

These pedisequi have doubtless accompanied their masters to the Games and will be expected to continue escorting them once the show is over; in the meantime, they have the chance to go and get a bite to eat. They seem to be different from the serui to whom instructions were given at 23–7, who had tasks to perform back home, but they are a class of slave, and there is no suggestion that they would even want to stay and watch the play. Moore makes the following claim: ‘The fact that the pedisequi are envisioned as getting food during the performance implies not that they will be absent from the theatre throughout the play, but rather that they stand in the back … pedisequi may come and go as they please.’Footnote 36 But where is the hint that they will return as spectators once they have eaten their cheese tarts? Moore admits that ‘The lines do assume that the pedisequi will not be all that interested in the play’; so what would motivate them to come back and watch it at all?

As we have seen, the injunction given to the prostitutes is that they should not sit on the stage; the injunction given to the nurses with their infant charges is that they should stay at home; the slaves who are forbidden to occupy seats are told to go home; the pedisequi are told to go and get something to eat; and it is not at all clear that the lictores and the dissignatores are to be seen as part of the audience, exactly. The only group who are clearly envisaged as staying for the show, apart from free men, are the married women, who are told to keep quiet. We cannot know what would have happened to any prostitute, nurse or slave who obstinately refused to move, but the lictores and the dissignatores were available to put pressure on them if necessary, and it seems unlikely that they would have resisted. This prologue may perhaps be evidence that such people were likely to be attending the Games in a general way, but it does not show them to have been present for the theatrical performances in particular.

Gregor Maurach makes the point that what we are left with as the ‘normal audience member’ after all these injunctions is the free man, who has not been made the object of mockery and has been given the chance to have a laugh at everyone else's expense: ‘Theatre for the privileged free man’ is the motto with which he ends his commentary on this section of the prologue.Footnote 37 Similarly John Henderson: ‘The playdrome belongs to the collectivity of the free adult male.’Footnote 38 In the same vein Niall Slater has written: ‘The message of order is made palatable by being directed ostensibly at everyone except the majority of the audience’,Footnote 39 and Florian Hurka takes a very similar approach.Footnote 40 William Fitzgerald tries to give the matter a more positive spin from the perspective of the slaves and others addressed: ‘Suddenly, the clearing of space for the free adult male has been diverted by another agenda, the licensing of those excluded from the spectacle to give uninhibited rein to their appetites and steal a march on the orderly rows of seated spectators, some of whom must now be satisfied with drama rather than food’; but he does still speak of ‘the clearing of space for the free adult male’ and of the others as being ‘excluded from the spectacle’.Footnote 41 Richlin too tries to give a positive spin: ‘Both Maurach 1988 and Slater 1992 point out that there is one type of person who is not restricted by the speaker's orders; this is what Maurach calls “theater for the privileged free man.” But it's also a privilege to be addressed from the stage, and the free man is here excluded from that address.’Footnote 42 I wonder, though, how great a privilege it is to be told to go away.

Taking a different tack altogether, Fontaine (taking it for granted that Goldberg's calculations for the Megalesian Games are valid for all performance venues) argues as follows in claiming that the audience was predominantly aristocratic: ‘The reason we know that it was predominately elite is that in 194 b.c., a year that falls in the center of Plautus’ heyday, the Roman senate passed legislation that reserved the best seats at performances of the palliata for themselves.’Footnote 43 At the time, he points out, there were 300 senators: if seats were reserved for all of them and their wives, and if we also assume that some members of the non-senatorial élite attended, there may not have been a great deal of room left for the lower classes in a theatre holding perhaps 1,600 people. However, Fontaine admits that we do not actually know if there was enough reserved seating for all the senators and their wives, nor how many of them would have wanted to attend anyway. His arithmetic may be too neat (and lower on the same page he allows that the élite may not actually have been in the majority—see passage (e) in my Introduction above).

4. FURTHER PLAUTINE PASSAGES POSSIBLY (BUT NOT NECESSARILY) INDICATING THE PRESENCE OF SLAVES IN THE AUDIENCE

(a) There are two passages in Plautus in which a slave claims to have seen comic actors performing:

non res, sed actor mihi cor odio sauciat.
etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam aeque ac me ipsum amo,
nullam aeque inuitus specto, si agit Pellio. (Bacch. 213–15, Chrysalus speaking)
It's not the material but the performer that's making my heart bleed with  boredom.
Even Epidicus, a play I love as much as myself,
is my least favourite viewing if Pellio is performing in it.
spectaui ego pridem comicos ad istunc modum
sapienter dicta dicere, atque is plaudier,
quom illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo:
sed quom inde suam quisque ibant diuorsi domum,
nullus erat illo pacto ut illi iusserant.   (Rud. 1249–53, Gripus speaking)
I've seen comic actors before now
making wise remarks in that manner and getting applauded for them,
when they showed the public how to behave wisely like that;
but when the audience broke up and each went back to his own home,
not one of them behaved the way the actors had told them to.

If Chrysalus and Gripus have seen actors performing in the theatre, does this show that it was perfectly normal for slaves to be among the audience? I think not. These are standard metatheatrical jokes, combined in the case of Rudens with a dig at the audience and in the case of Bacchides just possibly incorporating an extra element of fun if Pellio himself was playing the part of Chrysalus.Footnote 44 If we think about the implications at all, we could reasonably conclude that this is the actor rather than the character speaking.Footnote 45

(b) There is also a passage in Mostellaria (354–61) which I have not seen cited in this context and which might at first sight appear to be a strong piece of evidence for the presence of slaves in Plautus’ audience:

ecquis homo est qui facere argenti cupiat aliquantum lucri,
qui hodie sese excruciari meam uicem possit pati?   355
ubi sunt isti plagipatidae, ferritribaces uiri.
uel isti qui hosticas trium nummum causa subeunt sub falas,
ubi quinis aut denis hastis corpus transfigi solet?
ego dabo ei talentum primus qui in crucem excucurrerit;
sed ea lege ut offigantur bis pedes, bis bracchia.   360
ubi id erit factum, a me argentum petito praesentarium.
Is there anyone who'd like to make a little bit of money,
who could bear to take my place in the torture chamber for today?   355
Where are those sons of the whip, those men who wear out chains of iron,
or those who go under the enemy's siege-towers to earn three sesterces,
where it's normal for a man's body to be run through by five or six spears?
I'll give a talent to the first man to run up on to the cross,
but on condition that his feet and arms are nailed to it with two nails each: 360
when that's been done, let him ask me for the money in cash.

Here the slave Tranio believes that disaster has struck because his master has returned from abroad, and he asks if anyone is willing to take his place and face the consequences. (There is quite a lot of uncertainty about the details of the text, but I think the overall point is clear.) Fraenkel calls this ‘the completely Roman passage Most. 356–61, where certain groups of outcasts [bestimmte Gruppen desperater Leute / individui che vivono ai margini della società] are appealed to, in direct address to the audience’ (my emphasis),Footnote 46 and commentators are agreed that Tranio singles out two groups in particular, at line 356 slaves, who are used to being whipped and put in chains, at lines 357–8 mercenary soldiers, who are used to risking their lives for the sake of financial reward. Fraenkel refers to other passages in Plautus where the idiom ubi sunt isti or something similar is found, including Amph. 287–8, which he says is ‘also addressed directly to the audience’, and Men. 128–9, which Gratwick in his commentary believes to be similarly directed at the audience:Footnote 47

ubi sunt isti scortatores qui soli inuiti cubant?
haec nox scita est exercendo scorto conducto male.   (Amph. 287–8)
Where are those fornicators who hate to sleep alone?
This is a brilliant night for putting a prostitute through her paces when you've   paid a fortune to hire her.
ubi sunt amatores mariti? dona quid cessant mihi
conferre omnes congratulantes quia pugnaui fortiter?   (Men. 128–9)
Where are the married lovers? Why don't they all hurry up
and bring me presents and congratulate me for fighting bravely?

It would surely be natural for the actor in these two cases to look along the rows of spectators in search of fornicators and adulterers—not because he really hopes to identify any, but because it is a good joke to pretend that he does. Tranio's speech in Mostellaria is different in ethos, in that it is a desperate appeal, but I think it is similar in that it only appears to imply that there are slaves or mercenary soldiers in the audience, if it even does that: Tranio may well scan the rows of spectators in the hope of finding some, but he searches in vain. In any case he gives up rather quickly on the idea that he will find a slave volunteer. If commentators are right to say that uel at the beginning of 357 means ‘or rather’,Footnote 48 this would perhaps convey Tranio's realization that after all he is not likely to find a slave in the audience, though I do not know how likely he is to find mercenary soldiers there either. Overall I regard this passage as being as inconclusive as those from Bacchides and Rudens. But it is perhaps worth bringing into the debate.

5. YOUTHS AND CHILDREN IN THE AUDIENCE: PLAUTUS AND LATER

(a) Plautus in Merc. 1025–6 rounds the play off with an address to the adulescentes (youths) in the audience, clearly identifying their interests with those of the adulescentes in comedies:

bene ualete; atque, adulescentes, haec si uobis lex placet,
ob senum hercle industriam uos aequom est clare plaudere.
Farewell; and, young men, if you like this law,
in return for the hard work of the old men it's clearly right for you to give us    your loud applause.

(b) At Pseud. 1081–2 Ballio has been taken to imply that the audience would regularly include children when he refers to ‘theatrical trifles, the words that are normally said to a pimp in comedies, words which boys know’ (nugas theatri, uerba quae in comoediis | solent lenoni dici, quae pueri sciunt);Footnote 49 but he is probably saying only that the abuse heaped on him was puerile. In addition, Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 215 refers to Curc. 644, where ‘Planesium remembers she went to the Dionysia with her nutrix’, the occasion on which she was kidnapped; but Planesium does not say she went to see any plays,Footnote 50 and wherever this took place in the background to the drama it was not at Rome.Footnote 51

(c) Cicero in Fin. 5.48 suggests that by his lifetime even younger children might be present at the Games, when he says that they will put up with hunger and thirst in order to see processions, Games and other such spectacles;Footnote 52 but he does not specify dramatic performances. Suetonius in Aug. 44.2 tells us that Augustus assigned a special block of seats at all kinds of spectaculum to underage boys (praetextati) and the next block to paedagogi (particularly trusted slaves, to help keep the boys in order, no doubt); it is not clear how much he was tidying up established practices.Footnote 53

6. DISTURBANCES AT THE MEGALESIAN GAMES: TERENCE AND CICERO

(a) Several scholars, including Manuwald in passage (c) in the Introduction, have cited the second prologue to Terence's Hecyra (written for the play's third performance and outlining why the two previous performances had had to be abandoned) as additional evidence for the composition of the theatre audience; but in fact it is nothing of the sort. What it tells us about is people who came in from outside and disrupted the performance because they hoped to see some other sort of entertainment altogether, as Manuwald herself makes clear at another point: ‘close analysis [of the prologues to Hecyra] reveals that, at least according to Terence, the audience prepared to watch Terence's play did not leave on hearing news of other entertainments, but that other spectators who had heard the rumour of an alternative performance to be given in the same venue broke in, disrupted the ongoing performance and prevented its completion.’Footnote 54 This is at least clear in the account of the second performance at lines 39–42:Footnote 55

primo actu placeo. quom interea rumor uenit
datum iri gladiatores, populus conuolat,   40
tumultuantur, clamant, pugnant de loco.
ego interea meum non potui tutari locum.
The first part went down well; but then word got around
that a show of gladiators was going to be given: people flocked together, 40
there was an uproar, they were shouting and fighting for a place.
While that was going on, it was impossible for me to hold my place.

Ismene Lada-Richards argues that Terence's spectators may themselves have been ‘swept away by the excitement of the inrushing crowd: infected by the invaders’ frenzy, they could have been fighting to preserve their seats not out of unswerving loyalty to Terence or allegiance to the comic genre but, quite the opposite, out of anxiety lest they would miss the promised alternative delights’.Footnote 56 But this is only a possibility, and at least to start with it was the newcomers, people who had not been watching Terence's play at all, who demanded the other entertainment.

Terence's account of the first performance at lines 1–5 (written for the second performance)Footnote 57 and 33–6 (written for the third performance) is not quite so clear in that respect:

Hecyra est huic nomen fabulae. haec quom datast
noua, ei nouom interuenit uitium et calamitas
ut neque spectari neque cognosci potuerit.
ita populus studio stupidus in funambulo
animum occuparat.   5   (Hec. 1–5)
This play is called The Mother-in-Law. When it was put on
for the first time, it was overtaken by an unheard-of disaster and blight
that prevented it from being seen or known:
the foolish, fanatical public had become engrossed in a tightrope walker.   5
quom primum eam agere coepi, pugilum gloria
(funambuli eodem accessit exspectatio),
comitum conuentus, strepitus, clamor mulierum   35
fecere ut ante tempus exirem foras.   (Hec. 33–6)
When I first began to perform it, there was talk of a boxing match,
and there were also hopes of a tightrope walker too;
slaves were arriving [or ‘there were crowds of supporters’], there was a din,   women were screaming—
these things forced me to leave the stage before I'd reached the end.

Goldberg believes that this describes the behaviour of the original theatre audience: ‘it is easy to understand why the theatre audience of 165 could have been distracted by a tightrope walker within view or by the prospect of boxers.’Footnote 58 As far as I am concerned, these accounts are at least consistent with the idea that the comitum conuentus and strepitus of line 35 were (as on the next occasion) the behaviour of newcomers invading the auditorium. In any case, neither passage tells us much about the composition either of the theatre audience or of the invading horde (beyond the fact that some women started screaming), though the phrase comitum conuentus brings us back to the question of the presence of slaves: Donatus in his commentary asks ‘When he says comites, does he mean fans of the boxers or slaves accompanying their masters?’Footnote 59 Neither Donatus nor Goldberg in his more recent commentary can make up his mind between these alternatives. If the comites were slaves accompanying their masters (the pedisequi of the Poenulus prologue), perhaps they stayed to watch the boxers and the tightrope walker, but it is not at all clear that they had been watching the play.Footnote 60

(b) Just over 100 years later, when Cicero was denouncing the alleged desecration of the Megalesian Games by Clodius as aedile in 56 b.c.e., he claimed that when Clodius’ father and uncle had been in charge of the Games they had ordered slaves to depart from the auditorium, whereas Clodius had let them charge into it (Har. resp. 26):Footnote 61

istius modi Megalesia fecit pater tuus, istius modi patruus? is mihi etiam generis sui mentionem facit, cum Athenionis aut Spartaci exemplo ludos facere maluerit quam C. aut Appi Claudiorum? illi cum ludos facerent, seruos de cauea exire iubebant: tu in alteram seruos inmisisti, ex altera liberos eiecisti. itaque qui antea uoce praeconis a liberis semouebantur, tuis ludis non uoce sed manu liberos a se segregabant.

Is that the way your father put the Megalesian Games on? Is that the way your uncle did so? Does he actually mention his family to me, when he preferred to put the Games on in the style of Athenio or Spartacus rather than of Gaius or Appius Claudius? When they put the Games on, they ordered slaves to depart from the auditorium; you let slaves charge into one auditorium and drove free men out of the other. So those who used previously to be removed from the presence of free men by the voice of the herald were keeping free men away from themselves at your Games not with their voice but by force.

Whatever Clodius actually did or allowed in 56, this may perhaps—if we believe Cicero at all—be evidence for some sort of traditional formulaic clearing of the area at the beginning of the Megalesian Games. Admittedly, Claudius’ father and uncle were not contemporary with Plautus; but why did they order slaves to depart if it was not traditional to do so? Elizabeth Rawson argued that the ban perhaps did not apply to all festivals, and also that it perhaps barred slaves not from the entire theatre but only from the seats.Footnote 62 However, one would like to have positive reasons for believing such things before one accepts them. If there was some kind of formal announcement by the praeco (herald), as Cicero suggests, the instructions given by the prologue speaker of Poenulus appear to be a parody of it. He even gives instructions to a praeco at lines 11–15, apparently to introduce some comic byplay.Footnote 63

7. CONCLUDING REMARKS

At the beginning of Amphitruo Mercury addresses the audience as people who hope to make successful business deals (1–16); at Capt. 67–8 the prologue-speaker rounds off the prologue with the words ‘I'm off. Goodbye, you who are the justest of judges at home and the best of warriors in warfare’ (abeo. ualete, iudices iustissumi | domi duellique duellatores optumi).Footnote 64 These addresses ignore the women and adolescents in the audience, and any children who may be present, but such people are used to being ignored in such contexts. So too, of course, are slaves: addresses of this kind do not encourage the belief that Plautine comedy was in any significant way aimed at a slave audience, but they do not exclude the possibility. However, the Poenulus prologue (whatever the handbooks may say) argues more against the regular presence of slaves in Plautus’ audience than for it, and so does Cic. Har. resp. 26 if we can see Clodius’ father and uncle as maintaining an established tradition. This was essentially the view that Ritschl espoused in 1845,Footnote 65 but it has not been fashionable more recently, though Henderson and Fitzgerald agree with it for the Poenulus prologue, as we have seen. If this view is right, it remains possible that many in the audience were from the lower strata of Roman society, and no doubt all were aware of what slavery entailed. But it looks as if one thing it entailed was that you were expected not to be in the audience for dramatic performances at the Games. This rule may perhaps have been relaxed at a later date: both Rawson and Richlin invoke the evidence of Columella, Rust. 1.8.2 and of Dig. 21.1.65 for the presence of slaves.Footnote 66 It is, however, unclear where this evidence leads us. The Digest speaks of slaves with an incurable desire to see the Games, but does not specify what sort of entertainment attracted them; Columella does include theatres in a list of the vices to which slaves who have been corrupted by working in the city are liable, but gives no clue to the nature of the performances that they might hope to enjoy—by his time mime and pantomime had become the dominant theatrical genres. In other words, even if fabulae palliatae were still being performed (which is doubtful),Footnote 67 they may not have been the attraction for these urban slaves. We should perhaps also note Rawson's remark that ‘one can identify numerous passages in ancient literature where “theatre” is certainly used to cover “amphitheatre”’.Footnote 68 Thus, even if we take Columella's rant seriously, it is not clear that he tells us anything very helpful for our purposes. In any case, neither of these passages is evidence for the time of Plautus.

It is hard to believe that slaves were excluded from one type of dramatic performance rather than from another, so presumably the expectation that they would not be present applied to other types of drama besides the fabula palliata. It is also hard to believe that there was a religious reason for their exclusion that applied to dramatic performances and not to other elements of the Games. Drama with Greek antecedents may perhaps have been particularly prized (until it fell out of favour),Footnote 69 and if the auditorium had limited space that would be a good reason for restricting the audience to members of the citizen body. Later, when larger theatres were available,Footnote 70 there was no reason not to relax the restriction. It may be precisely because Plautus did not expect slaves to be present that he felt free to put on plays such as Bacchides and Pseudolus, in which the so-called ‘clever slave’ could be shown as triumphing over his citizen master. The available evidence does not provide an explanation for the exclusion of slaves, but it does suggest that slaves were excluded.Footnote 71

Footnotes

†

Peter Brown died in November 2018. His widow Lesley Brown is grateful to Costas Panayotakis for expert copy-editing and proof-reading.

References

1 Richlin, A., Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy (Cambridge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is a fuller account of views she had presented in publications to which I shall refer below: ‘Role-playing in Roman civilization and Roman comedy courses: how to imagine a complex society’, CJ 108 (2013), 347–61, and ‘Talking to slaves in the Plautine audience’, ClAnt 33 (2014), 174–226.

2 Richlin (n. 1 [2017]), 379–80.

3 See Goldberg, S.M., Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2005), 62–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marshall, C.W., The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge, 2006), 257–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Taylor, L.R., ‘The opportunities for dramatic performances in the time of Plautus and Terence’, TAPhA 68 (1937), 284–304Google Scholar, at 303–4; Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 214–15, 220.

5 Zwierlein, O., Zur Kritik und Exegese des Plautus I: Poenulus und Curculio (Stuttgart, 1990), 206–15Google Scholar argues convincingly for the genuineness of most of the Poenulus prologue, against the attempt of Jocelyn, H.D., ‘Imperator histricus’, YClS 21 (1969), 95–123Google Scholar to show that it was ‘an editor's conflation of several acting scripts’ (at 123). Jocelyn allowed that lines 3–49 ‘come from a poet of considerable skill and imagination’ (at 122), and he gave no reason for hesitating to identify that poet as Plautus himself.

6 Duckworth, G., The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, 1952; repr. Bristol, 1994), 82Google Scholar, citing the prologue to Poenulus.

7 W. Beare, The Roman Stage (London, 19643), 173.

8 Manuwald, G., Roman Republican Theatre (Cambridge, 2011), 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suitably cautious at the end about the accuracy of this view, but reproducing it all the same.

9 Jocelyn, H.D., ‘Code-switching in the comoedia palliata’, in Vogt-Spira, G. and Rommel, B. (edd.), Rezeption und Identität (Stuttgart, 1999), 169–95Google Scholar, at 169.

10 Fontaine, M., Funny Words in Plautine Comedy (Oxford, 2009), 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 McCarthy, K., Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton and Oxford, 2000), 17Google Scholar n. 27; in the same note she proceeds to argue against ‘the possibility that it voiced the viewpoint of slaves in some allegorical way’.

12 Richlin (n. 1 [2013]), 356.

13 Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 208, 218–19.

14 It is now accepted that sitting was the norm for audiences in the time of Plautus and Terence: see Manuwald (n. 8), 105–6.

15 Goldberg, S.M., ‘Plautus on the Palatine’, JRS 88 (1998), 1–20Google Scholar, at 7: ‘It cannot be otherwise. There is no other place to seat the crowd.’

16 Wiseman, T.P., The Roman Audience (Oxford, 2015), 55–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with references at 207–9.

17 Wiseman (n. 16), 56, though at 102 he speaks of ‘an ad hoc theatre in the Forum’ for the Megalesian Games in the mid first century b.c.e.

18 Cic. Har. resp. 24: ante templum in ipso Matris Magnae conspectu.

19 Wiseman (n. 16), 56.

20 Roselli, D.K., Theater of the People (Austin, 2011), 74–5Google Scholar. See also Sommerstein, A.H., ‘How ‘popular’ was Athenian comedy?’, QUCC 116 (2017), 11–26Google Scholar, at 17–18.

21 Passages from Plautus are taken from the Loeb edition by Wolfgang de Melo (5 vols.) (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2011–13); translations are my own.

22 Isabel Ruffell has suggested to me that illic ultimus might alternatively mean ‘the man at the end there’.

23 Ritschl, F., Parergon Plautinorum Terentianorumque volumen I (Berlin, 1845), 224Google Scholar translates these words as ‘ist ihm das nicht recht, so möge er ein andermal nicht so lange schlafen’ [‘if he doesn't like that, he'd better not sleep in so late another time’] (cf. below, section 4[b], on Most. 357). But this reads rather a lot into uel.

24 Lindsay, W.M., The Captivi of Plautus (London, 1900; repr. Cambridge, 1961), 117Google Scholar.

25 Richlin would not agree that they are usually ignored!

26 Moore, T.J., ‘Seats and social status in the Plautine theatre’, CJ 90 (1994–5), 113–23Google Scholar, at 118; cf. Moore, T.J., The Theater of Plautus (Austin, 1998), 195Google Scholar.

27 See Panayotakis, C., Decimus Laberius: The Fragments (Cambridge, 2010), 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘exoleto: […] already in Plautus’ time the word had become almost a technical term for male prostitutes who had passed their prime.’ This is supported here by the masculine quis, since Plautus could have used the feminine form of the indefinite pronoun, even if ‘almost a technical term’ may be hard to justify. However, the sex of the prostitutes is not important for the purposes of this paper.

28 On the different categories of lector, see Wiseman (n. 16), 53, with the references at 206.

29 Moore (n. 26 [1994–5]), 116.

30 Beare (n. 7), 174: ‘Apart from the reservation of special places for the senators after 194 b.c., the rule seems to have been first come, first served.’ Manuwald (n. 8), 106–7: ‘Originally seats seem to have been allocated on a “first come, first served” basis.’

31 Ritschl (n. 23), 224 again translates as ‘ist ihm das nicht recht, so möge er aufhören Sklav zu sein (= sich frei kaufen)’ [‘if he doesn't like that, he'd better stop being a slave (= pay for his freedom)’].

32 Cf. the paraphrase by John Henderson, ‘Hanno's Punic heirs: der Poenulus-Neid des Plautus’, in Henderson, J., Writing Down Rome (Oxford, 1999), 3–37Google Scholar, at 11: ‘Slaves bagging the seats and squeezing out non-slaves. Scram, or else.’

33 Wiseman (n. 16), 54, 206 reports an unpublished suggestion by Michael Fontaine that the slaves were saving seats for their late-rising masters.

34 Cf. Henderson (n. 32), 11: ‘Children are not welcome.’ On the possible presence of children other than infants, see section 5 below.

35 Prizes were almost certainly awarded to actors rather than plays; see Manuwald (n. 8), 88 n. 161.

36 Moore (n. 26 [1994–5]), 117 n. 17.

37 G. Maurach, Der Poenulus des Plautus (Heidelberg, 19882), 53: ‘Theater für den priviligierten freien Mann’.

38 Henderson (n. 32), 11. Also 9–10: ‘The play does not describe, but prescribes the constitution of its audience. And as it goes on to proscribe the clutter of representative groups among its spectators, it outlines them as the butts of its humour.’

39 Slater, N.W., ‘Plautine negotiations: the Poenulus prologue unpacked’, YClS 29 (1992), 131–46Google Scholar, at 138.

40 Hurka, F., ‘Plautus und die Erschaffung des Zuschauers: Publikumsnormierung und narrative Perspektivensteuerung im Prolog des Poenulus’, in Moore, T.J. and Polleichtner, W. (edd.), Form und Bedeutung im lateinischen Drama / Form and Meaning in Latin Drama (Trier, 2013), 33–51Google Scholar, at 36–43.

41 Fitzgerald, W., Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 2000), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Richlin, A., Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2005), 253Google Scholar n. 44.

43 Fontaine (n. 10), 185. Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 217 n. 52 points out that it is wrong to talk of ‘legislation’ and that the separation of senatorial seats is attested for the Games as a whole, not specifically for dramatic performances; the latter point is also emphasized by Dwora Gilula in her fuller discussion of the matter: Gilula, D., ‘The allocation of seats to senators in 194 b.c.e.’, in Katzoff, R., Petroff, Y. and Schaps, D. (edd.), Classical Studies in Honor of David Sohlberg (Ramat Gan, 1996), 235–44Google Scholar.

44 This was the self-confessedly speculative suggestion of E. Fraenkel, Elementi Plautini in Plauto, transl. F. Munari (Florence, 1960), 431 = Plautine Elements in Plautus, transl. T. Drevikovsky and F. Muecke (Oxford, 2007), 417. Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 191–2 acknowledges the metatheatricality of Bacch. 213–15, but also sees the passage as an inspiration for slaves in the audience; see also Richlin (n. 1 [2017]), 224–5 on Chrysalus, 317 on Marx, Gripus. F., Plautus Rudens (Berlin, 1928; repr. Amsterdam, 1959), 213Google Scholar took Rud. 1249–53 to be incontrovertible evidence that slaves were allowed to attend theatrical performances in the Greek world in the time of Diphilus, the author of the Greek original.

45 The same perhaps applies to Naevius, Tarentilla fr. 1, where it looks as if a slave character speaks of having applauded something in the theatre, but since it is extremely uncertain what that is actually about I shall not discuss it here. There is a very full discussion of it in M. Barchiesi, La Tarentilla rivisitata: studi su Nevio comico (Pisa, 1978), 2–66. Richlin (n. 1 [2017]), 144–5 also adduces Plaut. Amph. 41–4, where Mercury claims to have seen tragedies; but Mercury here speaks as the son of Jupiter rather than as a slave (cf. 40 et ego et pater, 44 meus pater, 46 patri meo). Some knowledge of the theatre in a general way is also shown by slaves at Persa 465–6 and Poen. 581; and at Truc. 931–2 the (female, non-slave) prostitute Phronesium quotes a line she says was spoken by an actor in the theatre. In addition, the slave Sceparnio at Rud. 86 says ‘It wasn't a wind but Euripides’ Alcumena’ (non uentus fuit, uerum Alcumena Euripidi). No doubt a version of Euripides’ Alcmene had recently been put on at Rome (see Jocelyn, H.D., The Tragedies of Ennius [Cambridge, 1967], 6–7Google Scholar); Sceparnio does not claim to have seen it, but he shares the audience's knowledge of it as a cultural reference-point, just as (for example) Chrysalus is able to echo Roman tragedy at Bacch. 933. It does not necessarily follow from this evidence that real-life slaves or prostitutes went to the theatre at Rome.

46 Fraenkel, E., Plautinisches im Plautus (Berlin, 1922) 141Google Scholar = (n. 44 [1960]), 134 = (n. 44 [2007]), 95.

47 Gratwick, A.S., Plautus Menaechmi (Cambridge, 1993), 149Google Scholar: ‘Men. addresses us directly, asking all the adulterers […] in the audience to “stand up, please”. This way of singling out sections of the audience is a specially Plautine comic ploy, cf. Fraenkel (1960) 134.’

48 ‘oder vielmehr’ (Lorenz, A.O.F., Ausgewählte Komödien des T. Maccius Plautus, zweites Bändchen: Mostellaria [Berlin, 1883 2]Google Scholar); ‘vel potius, atque adeo’ (Ussing, J.L., T. Macci Plauti Comoediae III pars altera, Epidicum, Mostellariam, Menaechmos continens [Copenhagen, 1888 2, repr. in Commentarius in Plauti Comoedias, vol. II, Hildesheim and New York, 1972Google Scholar], on line 349 in his numbering); ‘or rather’ (Sonnenschein, E.A., T. Macci Plauti Mostellaria [Oxford, 1907 2]Google Scholar). So too de Melo in his Loeb edition translates ‘or rather’.

49 Marshall (n. 3), 75, translating quae pueri sciunt as ‘as boys know’; cf. Richlin 2017 (n. 1 [2017]), 171–2.

50 At Cist. 89–90 (in a passage evidently modelled on Menander, fr. *337 K.–A.) Selenium is explicit that it was the Dionysiac procession that her mother took her to watch. The same could be true of the Curculio passage, in spite of Beare (n. 7), 243.

51 Similarly, at Men. 29 one of the Menaechmus twins was kidnapped at the age of seven after being separated from his father at the ludi at Tarentum; there is no suggestion that they had gone to watch plays.

52 ut pompa, ludis atque eius modi spectaculis teneantur ob eamque rem uel famem et sitim perferant (ed. Reynolds [Oxford Classical Texts] [Oxford, 1998]).

53 See Rawson, E., ‘Discrimina ordinum: the Lex Julia Theatralis’, PBSR 55 (1987), 83–114Google Scholar (reprinted in Rawson, E., Roman Culture and Society [Oxford, 1991], 508–45Google Scholar), at 91–2 (= 518–19).

54 Manuwald (n. 8), 100–1. See also Gilula, D., ‘Where did the audience go?’, SCI 4 (1978), 45–9Google Scholar; Sandbach, F.H., ‘How Terence's Hecyra failed’, CQ 32 (1982), 134–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker, H.N., ‘Plautus vs. Terence: audience and popularity re-examined’, AJPh 117 (1996), 585–617Google Scholar, at 592–601.

55 The Latin text is taken from the Loeb edition by John Barsby (vol. 2) (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2001); the translation is my own.

56 Lada-Richards, I., ‘Authorial voice and theatrical self-definition in Terence and beyond: the Hecyra prologues in ancient and modern contexts’, G&R 51 (2004), 55–82Google Scholar, at 58.

57 I am not quite convinced by Ricottilli, L., ‘Il cosiddetto primo prologo della Hecyra di Terenzio’, Dioniso 6 (2007), 108–25Google Scholar that lines 1–8 were not written for performance as a prologue but were an accompanying poem addressed to the aediles: in particular, line 8 seems more appropriately addressed to an audience. Ricottilli brings out well the ways in which these lines lack features found in Terence's other prologues; could this be because on this occasion Adelphoe (with a fuller prologue) was also being put on? (Raffaelli, R., Esercizi plautini [Urbino, 2009], 62Google Scholar n. 20 is also unconvinced.) It makes no difference to the question I am discussing, in any case.

58 Goldberg, S.M., Terence Hecyra (Cambridge, 2013), 16–17Google Scholar. At 17 n. 49 he adds: ‘There is no evidence, pace H.N. Parker (1996 [cf. n. 54]: 594–5), that, in the case of Hecyra, the populus intent on these activities at the Megalensia [i.e. at the first performance] was any other than the crowd already gathered for the play.’ J.L. Penwill, ‘The unlovely lover of Terence's Hecyra’, in A.J. Boyle (ed.), Rethinking Terence (Ramus [33.1–2], 2004), 130–49, at 149 n. 62 takes the same line as Goldberg.

59 utrum eos comites dicit, qui sunt pugilum assectatores an seruos qui dominos sequuntur? (Wessner's Teubner text, 1905).

60 Nor does Goldberg appear to believe that they had, since his note considers the possibility that they are ‘the retainers of an aristocrat (OLD 4b) whose entourage created a commotion as he made his way to a seat’ (Goldberg [n. 58], 93).

61 Text from Peterson's Oxford Classical Text (Oxford, 1911).

62 Rawson (n. 53 [1987]), 87–8 (= n. 53 [1991], 513–14).

63 See Gilula, D., ‘The crier's routine (Plaut. Asin. 4–5; Poen. 11–15)’, Athenaeum 81 (1993), 283–7Google Scholar.

64 Cf. also Amph. 75–7, Asin. 15, Cist. 197–202, Rud. 82, all wishing the audience success in war and/or celebrating its previous successes.

65 Ritschl (n. 23), 224–5. Ritschl believed the entire Poenulus prologue to be post-Plautine, for reasons no longer accepted by anyone, but did not think it showed slaves to be regular audience members at the time of its composition.

66 Rawson (n. 53 [1987]), 88 (= n. 53 [1991], 514); Richlin (n. 1 [2014]), 215. See also section 5 (c) above for paedagogi in the audience under Augustus. Rawson (this note at n. 26) also adduces Hor. Epist. 1.14.15 (to the slave who managed his country estate) nunc urbem et ludos et balnea uilicus optas; as with the passage from the Digest, we cannot tell which aspects of the ludi were the attraction.

67 See Manuwald (n. 8), 119.

68 Rawson (n. 53 [1987]), 86–7 (= n. 53 [1991], 512).

69 Manuwald (n. 8), 102 indicates briefly some reasons why such drama might have been particularly prized.

70 See Manuwald (n. 8), 62 on Pompey's theatre, completed the year after Clodius’ aedileship.

71 I am particularly grateful to Amy Richlin for her constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper, generously offered in spite of our coming to very different conclusions. I also thank Isabel Ruffell and CQ's two anonymous referees for their suggestions. An earlier version of this article is referred to in Richlin, Amy's Slave Theater in the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar as Brown (2013), with the different title ‘The Audiences of Roman Comedy’.