These days few scholars really believe that Roman literature magically emerged in September, 240 BCE with a production of a play by Livius Andronicus at the Ludi Romani. Although Cicero may endorse such a view (Brutus 72-3), scholars such as Wiseman, Feeney, and others have stressed that there were many other forms of literature and performance percolating in the third century BCE and earlier.[1] Even Livy, when recounting events from 364 BCE, mentions how a plague in Rome led to stage games being instituted with Etruscan actors and pipe-players doing a sort of song and dance to ward off the plague (7.2.3-9).
Jessica Clarke’s new monograph likewise stresses the rich theatrical tradition that existed in the Italian peninsula and Magna Graecia before the third century BCE and aims to move the focus away from Rome to other areas. She does this through a close examination of theatrical material culture especially from the fourth to first centuries BCE, and her analysis moves from a time when Rome was still a nascent power to Augustus’ principate, when Rome assumes much more importance for setting the tastes and transforming what exactly theatrical culture may mean to the people. The goal of Clarke’s project, then, is to decenter Rome from the theatrical experiences that occurred in Italy for much of the Republican period and to utilize the archaeological evidence to explore “the development of theatre chronologically, identifying the various and nuanced cultural engagements which occurred in the Italian peninsula over the course of four centuries” (10). I found aspects of Clarke’s argument very convincing, especially her thorough reexamination of the relevant material culture, but I found myself wishing for more of a holistic perspective that incorporated literary, historical, and other material in a more thorough and critical manner.
Clarke begins by surveying theater buildings from the seventh to third centuries BCE, which takes the reader especially to Sicily and Magna Graecia. She highlights how theatrical culture and theater construction may have been steered by tyrants, a point she stressed in BMCR 2026.03.04. Following the work of Kate Bosher as well as Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson, she believes that “the construction of a theatre building … may have been a mechanism for legitimizing autocratic rulership on the fringes of the Greek world” (20).[2] A further deep dive into smaller finds such as terracotta figurines and masks shows how connections with the larger Greek world influenced local production as well as the vibrant trade in goods associated with the theater. Clarke further investigates how the range of comic masks found in Lipari shows a degree of specificity that will soon go out of style in the second half of the third century BCE, but indicates that there was an audience sensitive to the variety of comic mask types in fourth-century Sicily.
Moving to the peninsula, Clarke examines the evidence for the beginnings of Roman theater and the expansion of festivals where theatrical productions would happen. She finds, however, that the lack of a permanent theater in Rome attests to the fact “that the city didn’t have a theatrical culture that justified the labour and money required to build one” (68). This feels like an overstatement to me, especially with Livy’s statements that there were attempts to build a permanent theater in Rome in the second century BCE and the known expansion of ludi in the later third and early second centuries BCE. While Clarke cites the relevant passages of Livy, she does not take into consideration the various dramatic writers of the period. One scans the book for any engagement with Caecilius, Naevius, Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius, all of whom are passed over briefly or not mentioned at all. While it is difficult to know why there is no evidence for a stone theater in Rome at this time, there is plenty of evidence for dramatic festivals, plays and other theatrical “happenings”, and spectacle entertainment.[3] When Clarke turns to the evidence of theatre buildings in Italian peninsula in the third and second centuries BCE, she highlights how the buildings often have ties with the earlier theaters of Sicily and Magna Graecia, as well as the material evidence for comic visual culture. She does not, however, give a sense of what would be performed at these theaters—would troupes put on the latest comedies of Naevius or Plautus or lean on Greek classics like Menander? What about tragedies—would there be productions of the plays of Andronicus and Ennius or rather the Athenian tragedians? Clarke sees connections with Greece in the figurines, masks, and mosaics and posits that such items or décor would highlight the homeowner’s philhellenism and elitism, but most critics would stress that Rome at this point (and certainly Latin tragedy) was already appropriating Greek mythology and culture to a large degree.[4]
Clarke stays in the Italian peninsula in the following chapter in which she surveys comic stock-characters found in the archaeological material from the late third and second centuries BCE. She highlights how the masks found represented in terracotta figurines and mosaics come from a much smaller number of characters than found previously. This reduction of roles is true of the plays of Plautus as well, but Clarke believes that the influence moves from the general tastes (and pre-Plautine productions) to Plautus: “It seems that Plautus may have been responding to and recording elements of his contemporary theatrical culture, which he could have experienced in multiple areas of the Italian peninsula, rather than inventing his own simplified repertoire of characters” (120). The increased number and importance of enslaved persons in Plautine comedy is likewise mirrored in material finds from Italy and Sicily, where enslaved characters are represented more frequently. Clarke believes this reflects the profound societal change in the third century with the influx of enslaved peoples coming to Italy. One area where this influx was experienced was in the kitchen, and Clarke shows that the increase in cook characters in Plautus can be paralleled with an increase in their representation in the material remains from 250—150 BCE. This chapter dances around the chicken-and-egg question—were the explosion of cook figurines and masks because of the hilarious scenes in Plautine comedy or because people had more experience with enslaved persons as coqui in their homes? While Clarke admirably surveys the evidence about slavery in Plautus, her conclusion is ultimately rather banal and undertheorized. She concludes that “the popularity of the slave should not be viewed as a change exclusive to the textual record but common to multiple areas of the Italian peninsula from the middle of the third century BCE” (139).
Chapter four tackles the stone theaters that were built in Rome, but Clarke aims to downplay the importance of Pompey’s theater and highlight instead the importance of the theaters built under Augustus. After a survey of Pliny the Elder’s comments on the temporary theaters of the late Republic that she finds hyperbolic and almost fictional, Clarke underscores that the primary difference between the Theater of Pompey and others found in Italy at this time was one of size. Other Italian theaters were associated with temples (like the temple of Venus at the top of the cavea in the Theater of Pompey), and others even had public buildings like the curia that Pompey included as part of his complex. She turns instead to the Theater of Marcellus as the best example of both novel political messaging vis-à-vis a building and as “a precedent for monumental spaces for entertainment in Rome and the Empire” (170). It was the Theater of Marcellus, not the Theater of Pompey, that was the largest theater in Rome at this time and it became the most important. This was a period of major growth in theatrical spaces in the Italian peninsula with over forty built during the Augustan and early Julio-Claudian period. Central Italy became dotted with theaters, and Clarke believes it was a part of a political strategy to tie these cities closer to Rome, and especially to Augustus. She details how Agrippa was responsible for the theater at Ostia and inscriptions and statuary found in theaters at Italian sites evoke Augustus and his family.
The final chapter continues to explore how the decoration of the Theater of Marcellus spread to other regions in Italy as well as to consider the frescos of painted stage sets and masks that proliferated at this time. Clarke posits that the visual culture of the theater became cultural capital at this time for wealthy Roman elites that would also highlight their connections with the Augustan Principate. The monumental marble masks that were affixed to the façade of the Theater of Marcellus would have made an impression on any bystanders, and Clarke ties this conspicuous use of Luna marble to Augustus’ famous claim, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble” (Suet. Aug. 28.3).
But does this necessarily make theater per se more politically prominent? Again, I was missing literary or other evidence from this period to help make this connection more persuasive. For instance, Augustus famously had a performance of Varius’ Thyestes as part of his triple triumph in 29 BCE and paid Varius handsomely for the play. Ovid’s Medea was famous in antiquity (Quint. I.O. 10.1.98), even if it is lost to us. Horace writes to Augustus about drama and what sort of drama appeals to him in his Epistles, and the Ars Poetica could be looked at as a document that highlights dramatic protocols in Augustan Rome. Augustus himself passed a law, lex Iulia theatralis, which dictated seating conventions in the theater, and he added ludi to commemorate himself, his reign, and his power (e.g. Ludi Saeculares in 17 BCE). Dio mentions that the Theater of Marcellus became a quasi-memorial to Marcellus with “a golden statue” of Marcellus carried into the theater at the Ludi Romani and set among the officials (53.30.6). None of this evidence appears in Clarke’s monograph and so it becomes harder to see how only the visual culture of theater at this time “points towards the increasing cultural and political importance of theater under the Augustan Principate” (181). Further historical, political, and literary context beyond the archaeological and visual remains would help Clarke make this point in a stronger and more cogent manner.
In spite of my caveats, this is a very useful book if one is interested in the material culture related to the theater, with numerous charts, tables, and databases about theatrical buildings in Italy and Sicily as well as other finds related to the theatre (some accessible here), in addition to numerous photographs and plans of various sites. Clarke challenges the very idea of “Roman Theater”, finding that Rome is not the center of it all that many may imagine it to be. While the archaeological material is handled skillfully with a keen eye and fine insights, in my view the book would have benefited from a more thorough engagement with the fragmentary tragic material as well as the Greek, Latin, and Etruscan performance traditions more broadly.
Notes
[1] See T.P. Wiseman’s recent collection, The Lost History of Roman Theatre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025), D. Feeney’s Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), and N. Horsfall’s “The prehistory of Latin poetry: Some problems of method.” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classcia 122: 50-75. 1994.
[2] K. Bosher Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021); E. Csapo et al. (eds.) Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World (Berlin: DeGruyter. 2022).
[3] Wiseman has given evidence for a number of these “happenings” in articles over the last two decades, which have been helpfully collected in his recent The Lost History of Roman Theatre.
[4] A.J. Boyle’s chapter on Livius Andronicus and Naevius is subtitled “The appropriation of Greece” in his An Introduction to Roman Tragedy (London: Routledge. 2006). The Hellenistic or at least Hellenizing vibe at Rome at this time has been well-developed by Feeney supra: 122-51 and M. Fontaine’s Funny Words in Plautine Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010).