Despite an overhaul of its infrastructure in the second century BCE, the city of Rome lacked a permanent stone theatre until Pompey had his magnificent complex built in 55. This was no accident. No doubt aware that other Italian cities had long enjoyed grand permanent theatres, the censors of 154 had in fact commissioned a theatre but, prior to its completion, it began to draw criticism. P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum convinced the senate that a permanent theatre was a threat to morals, and he successfully urged the passage of a broad decree that all seating be banned for spectacles within one mile of the city, lest the presence of seats compromise the virilitas of the Roman people.Footnote ¹ The theatre was demolished and all of its equipment sold at auction. Such violent resistance requires explanation, and scholars, though hampered by a poverty of sources for this period, have understandably turned to a range of cultural forces – aristocratic competition, concern for traditional mores, and resistance to Hellenisation, for example – in order to provide answers. Many of these explanations have shed considerable light on the problem of the demolished theatre, yet there is still room for further examination. In this paper, I will try to offer a new reconstruction which, though far from rejecting the work of previous scholars, provides a more specific context for the senate’s hostility. Instead of viewing the demolition through the broad lens of a decades-long cultural war or the clash of Greek and Roman civilizations, I will embed the event in its own precise circumstances and view it as the gambit of an ambitious, clever, and opportunistic politician making the most of the events around him.

The sources give a frank explanation for why the theatre was destroyed, and it appears that the problem revolved around the specific issue of permanent seating. Livy’s periochae maintain that Scipio Nasica led the senate’s charge, claiming that the theatre was ‘harmful and damaging to public customs’, and the text goes on to observe that ‘for some time (thereafter) the people watched the shows standing.’Footnote ² The issue of standing is even more explicit in Valerius Maximus’ report: the senate decreed ‘that nobody construct seating in or within one mile of the city and that nobody watch the games while sitting, presumably so that the virilitas of standing appropriate to the Roman race be renowned even when relaxing the mind.’Footnote ³ The most direct course at this point would simply be to accept the sources’ claim that Nasica was preserving the virilitas of the Roman people, and that the prospect of seated audiences threatened to contaminate the population with the dreaded effeminacy of the Greeks.Footnote ⁴ Wallace-Hadrill, for example, has argued that a senatus consultum outlawing any theatre seating reveals that sitting – not necessarily Greek drama per se – was in fact the problem: ‘it is that ban itself which is the securest argument for accepting that the moral objection to sitting was indeed at the heart of the debate.’Footnote ⁵ Unrelated evidence confirms that this sentiment did exist at Rome. Cicero, writing nearly a century later, criticised Greek assemblies for allowing audience members to sit.Footnote ⁶ There was undoubtedly a belief that the Greek custom of sitting when part of an audience was morally inferior to the Roman practice of standing.Footnote ⁷

Other scholars, however, have assumed that unspoken motivations lay behind the rhetoric of moral fortitude. Perhaps the aristocracy feared that a permanent theatre would become a venue for more democratic politics. For Frézouls, for example, ‘L’édifice théâtral avait prise dans toute la Grèce la valeur d’un symbole de le démocratie.’Footnote ⁸ A stone theatre might have been feared as the potential site of sedition, though, as Pedroni has pointed out, the same could be said of the uncontroversial wooden theatres.Footnote ⁹ Manuwald has suggested that, by drawing performances away from temples, the gravity of a stone theatre would have had a deleterious effect on Roman religion. Intriguing though this proposition is, it is unclear why the elite would have concealed such a noble goal behind the rhetoric of sitting and its corrosion of virilitas – religio, after all, was never something to be ashamed of at Rome.Footnote ¹⁰ Other scholars have blamed the aristocratic ethos of the protagonists. Gruen has put forward a persuasive argument that the real motivation was an elite desire to prevent an institutionalised theatre and to ensure that the stage remained part of the ad hoc spectacle of office-holding: ‘the ritual of erecting and then dismantling temporary structures gave annual notice that the ruling class held decisive authority in the artistic sphere. A permanent theater, whatever its advantages in cost and convenience, would represent a symbolic relaxation of that authority.’Footnote ¹¹ The Roman elite, according to this view, opposed the theatre because they guarded their control of dramatic production all the way down to the annual erection of theatres according to each leader’s own schemes and ambitions.

For all of its insight and its illumination of the aristocratic mindset, however, even Gruen’s reconstruction shares a weakness with all those mentioned above. The theories all suffer from an atemporal generality. They explain why Nasica would oppose a theatre at some point, but not why he opposed this particular theatre at this particular time. Such specificity might at first seem pedantic, but it is essential, given the curious chronology of the theatre’s construction and demolition. Although the theatre must have been commissioned in 154 or 153, Livy (Per. 48) implies that the demolition occurred in or after the year 151, since its mention is preceded by the political events of that year. This late date is supported by the fact that the theatre was almost finished when Nasica took his stand: Appian specifically states that the structure was all but complete, while Livy’s term destructum would make little sense if the project was just a hole in the ground.Footnote ¹² The strangest element of this entire episode, therefore, is that Nasica and his supporters waited two to four years – until after contracts had been issued, the money spent and construction well and truly initiated – before sallying forth with objections.Footnote ¹³ This is especially true given that Nasica was definitely in Rome in 154 thanks to his triumph over the Dalmatians, and so any reconstruction needs to account for his passivity during the censorship itself. Moreover, as North has pointed out, Nasica probably participated as pontifex in overruling Cassius’ attempt to rededicate the curia as a temple to Concordia.Footnote ¹⁴ This means that Nasica successfully opposed the censor in 154 or 153 on one measure, but then waited two or three years to oppose him on another, allowing the project to consume more funds and encouraging the people to become more attached to their prospective new theatre. Astin finds nothing odd in this chronology, but such flippancy is difficult to sustain.Footnote ¹⁵ Given that Nasica did not object to this particular theatre – as if seeing it almost complete suddenly revealed some hitherto concealed danger – a reconstruction with real historical traction needs to be able to explain why there was such delay. Something happened between 154 and 151/150 which led Nasica to oppose any permanent theatre seating. What could it have been?

Morgan offers a reconstruction which addresses this question. Linking Nasica’s attack on the theatre with his contemporaneous calls to preserve Carthage and the metus hostilis, Morgan argues that the theatre fell victim to Nasica’s well-known rhetoric of preserving the virilitas of the Roman youth. Only with Carthage looming across the Mediterranean, and apparently only with a populus Romanus free of the corrosive effect of sitting, could the Roman people be kept strong: ‘the first attempt to build a stone theatre, in other words, fell victim to a very specific set of circumstances, fears of Carthage . . . which justifiably provoked concern over Roman virilitas.’Footnote ¹⁶ The obvious response to this is that concentration on discipline and character was alive and well before 151. Morgan himself foresaw this potential criticism. Concentrating on Polybius’ claim that the Romans had fought a Dalmatian war in 156-5 to prevent the softening of the Italian people – a war which Nasica himself brought to conclusion – he dedicated two pages to showing that Polybius was wrong and that the war was provoked purely by the usual politics and diplomacy. The concern with virilitas, Morgan argued, was solely linked to the question of what to do with Carthage in the late 150’s.

Morgan asks the right question – what was occurring in 151 which might explain the theatre’s destruction? – but the answer he provides is ultimately unconvincing. Leaving aside Morgan’s bravery in overruling Polybius’s account of what was said behind closed doors in Rome of the 150’s, the case relies on Nasica making the same point about virilitas precisely when the theatre was demolished. There is, however, no way to know when Nasica first applied this rhetoric to the Carthaginian problem. He was certainly involved in the debate by 152, when he mediates between Carthage and Numidia, but there is no way to ascertain whether he was already employing the issue of Roman discipline. The claim that he preserved Carthage for Rome’s own sake might not have emerged until the brink of hostilities in 150, when the drums of war beat louder and Nasica needed new arguments. Perhaps the resort to virilitas was needed to offset his decidedly dovish tone on Carthage. If this was the case, then Morgan’s argument can be turned on its head: it would be the demolition of the theatre which inspired his rhetoric in the Carthaginian debate, and not vice versa. The evidence, unfortunately, cannot confirm either chronology. Morgan’s case has the additional problem that, even if Nasica had adopted the rhetoric of mores around 152, it was hardly an innovation requiring such tangible demonstration. Given that Rome was already steeped in such ideology, did he really need to destroy the censors’ great (and no doubt popular) monument in order to exhibit what discipline meant? His point about Carthage and the metus hostilis would surely have been understood even without depriving the people – and the ex-censors – of their new theatre. Why such an ostentatious performance?

Morgan was right to search for a contemporary context which might best explain the decision to demolish the theatre, but the Carthaginian debate is not the strongest candidate. An improved explanation requires at least one other watershed political event in the years 154-151 which could explain the delayed outrage of the senators. Two emerge.

The first is the so-called ‘fiery war’ being fought in Spain.Footnote ¹⁷ In 152, M. Claudius Marcellus received his third consulship and was sent west to conquer Rome’s obstinate Iberian foes, but so eager was he to conclude the war, that he offered unacceptably generous terms to all. The senate rejected his peace deal. The war was resuscitated under the new consul of 151, L. Licinius Lucullus, but neither he nor his colleague found that young men were willing to enrol for service in Spain, since, according to Polybius, veterans from earlier campaigns had spread word of endless fighting and high casualties. Easy to believe, given that even the mighty Marcellus seemed to lack the stomach for the fight. Qualified veterans hesitated to enlist as military tribunes. The consuls were forced to push the levy so hard, according to Livy’s epitomator, that they were incarcerated by the tribunes of the plebs, and though reports of imprisonment may be an exaggeration, the degree of resistance must in any case have come as a shock.Footnote ¹⁸ As Lily Ross Taylor emphasised, this was only the second attested act of ‘tribunicial intransigence’ in sixteen years, and few bystanders could have mistaken the gravity of the situation.Footnote ¹⁹ An event of social conflict in late 152 and early 151, occasioned by a mass refusal to serve in a difficult war, is an excellent candidate for the sort of spectacle which might have turned Nasica’s mind to the tepid discipline of the population. Only now, with the proof of Rome’s softening before his eyes, did he appreciate all that this new theatre represented.

Surely Nasica did not actually believe, however, that tearing down the theatre would make an appreciable difference to the hardiness of the Roman people. The ban on seating after all was only within one mile of the city, while any effect on the vast recruitment pool of the legions would have to penetrate those rural areas which not only supplied the bulk of the citisen and allied legionaries, but which had long enjoyed stone theatres. These had clearly had no deleterious effect on the all-conquering legions. Given the happy coexistence of Italian theatres and military success, and given the strict limitation of Nasica’s measures to the city of Rome itself, the statement must have targeted domestic politics. In this, it was a potent act. The debate and demolition offered a withering statement about the population’s mores and they marked Nasica’s own bravura performance as the guardian of the public character.

It is in this light that the second watershed event becomes relevant. The year 152 saw the end of an era when M. Aemilius Lepidus, the man who combined the positions of pontifex maximus and princeps senatus for a record 27 years, died. ‘Probably the most distinguished man of his day’, Lepidus first thrust himself onto the public stage as a teenager, when he slew an enemy in battle to save the life of a citizen and earned a statue on the Capitoline.Footnote ²⁰ He was ‘the handsomest man of his time’, according to Polybius, and Diodorus Siculus adds that he possessed greater intelligence than other men.Footnote ²¹ Even before he had held any senior office, he was sent as an envoy to the East where he famously displayed the temerity to cut off Philip V mid-speech.Footnote ²² A spat with M. Fulvius Nobilior resulted in a delayed consulship – a sting for which he strove to gain revenge in 187, when as consul he tried to deprive his nemesis of a triumph – but his stature only grew as the years passed. He and Nobilior mended their relationship to conduct a successful censorship together in 179, he held a second consulship in 175 and, in part by building the Via Aemilia, he left such a mark on northern Italy that Emilia-Romagna still bears his name.Footnote ²³ Given that Patavium’s calendar seems to have been organised around his intervention in a civil disturbance there in 175, his second consulship can be described as literally epochal.Footnote ²⁴ He was a legend of his time, and so his death and funeral arrangements earned mention at Liv. Per. 48. It is difficult to overstate how important a moment this was in the senate. Lepidus was already well entrenched as the ranking senator and chief priest by the time Nasica had run in his first election, and his inevitable death had no doubt figured prominently in many politicians’ career aspirations. With Lepidus now gone, Rome faced the task of appointing a new princeps senatus and new pontfex maximus for the first time in a generation. His absence not only freed up space for other voices, it demanded an audition from anyone with ambition to replace him.Footnote ²⁵ Nasica’s outspokenness makes sense in this context.

Nasica was a strong candidate for both positions. He was born of the highest stock and his career thus far had been stellar: he had offered spectacular games as aedile in 169, had then taken a demotion to distinguish himself as a military tribune at the Battle of Pydna in 168, and must have been praetor in 165; he was consul in 162, but had to resign from the office after religious flaws in his election came to light; after a successful censorship in 159, he was re-elected to the consulship of 155, when he won a triumph.Footnote ²⁶ As an existing pontiff in 152, he was one of eight men – nine minus the late Lepidus – from whom three would be candidates for election as the new pontifex maximus,Footnote ²⁷ To secure the post, however, he would need to establish his moral and leadership credentials and the destruction of the theatre, although it no doubt rankled urban voters, was a strong statement to the rural tribes that Nasica embodied the traditional values needed in a chief priest. The plan worked and he was elected in 150. To succeed Lepidus, however, he would also need to become the new princeps senatus, and this could not happen until the inauguration of new censors in 149 at the earliest and, as it turned out, 147 in fact. Nasica’s success here was certainly not guaranteed: an older convention appears to have granted the honour to the most senior living censor, but the last three principes had been incumbent censors when the decision was made, and so it must have appeared likely that one of the next censors would assume the position himself.Footnote ²⁸ Given that there would be several years, however, before the next censors could name their princeps, there was room for Nasica to exhibit his authority in the interim. By leading the senate to demolish the theatre and outlaw permanent seating, Nasica could show that he was in effect already the new princeps senatus. When it came time for the new censors to name Lepidus’ successor in the curia, they ratified what was already clear: Nasica, who by this point had already been appointed pontifex maximus, was the heir to the great Lepidus. He may have lost the debate about war with Carthage, but he had done enough to demonstrate his credentials.

Morgan was correct, then, that the demolition of the theatre was the result of specific political events in 152 and 151, but he was mistaken to hold that it was the debate about Carthage which was on Nasica’s mind. Instead, I would suggest that the death of Lepidus created a vacuum which Nasica was more than willing to fill, and so to prove his leadership credentials, he seized upon the great moral crisis of the day: the Romans’ failure to wage the Spanish War with full vigour. Having seen Marcellus pursue peace instead of victory and having witnessed a levy in which people went to extremes to avoid service, Nasica realised that there was great opportunity to define himself by his fidelity to publici mores, and so he led the senate to overturn the innovation of a permanent stone theatre. Through severitas, he demonstrated auctoritas.

Importantly, none of this is to deny the validity of earlier explanations for the demolition. After all, Nasica’s rhetoric appealed for a reason. His audience of fellow senators was indeed worried about the moral effects of the theatre and the institutionalisation of performance, just as so many scholars have argued – if this had not been the case, then Nasica’s call to arms would have fallen on deaf ears. Yet the delay between the censorship of 154/3 and the tearing down of the theatre in 151 or later is revealing. It shows that the issue was not urgent enough to spur immediate action. Doubts were nagging more than pressing. Nasica could activate them, however, because he took a position which was commendable to the point of being irresistible. Far from being swept up in the great cultural anxieties of the age, therefore, Nasica emerges as an empowered and discerning agent able to manipulate such consensus positions in order to manoeuvre support behind his own career. Once Nasica asked whether people advocated traditional discipline or Hellenistic innovation, it was extremely difficult not to rally to his cause. By championing publici mores, Nasica played out the role of moral custodian, of protector of ancient custom, of the strictest, most severe leader of the community. In the spectacle of morality, he made his own rectitude the baseline from which all moral degradation deviated, embodying the ideal of Roman leadership. Though cultural forces had been too weak to destroy the theatre before this, there was no doubt that defence of ancient custom was something to support, once Nasica took the unusually drastic step of destroying a grand censorial project right on the cusp of completion. Nasica seized the moment to demonstrate his values and his leadership credentials, to secure promotion to the positions of pontifex maximus and princeps senatus. It was the theatre which had to pay the price.