began at a temple and ended at a circus. Even dramatic performances took place on improvised stages in the large circuses, including the Circus Maximus and, from the end of the third century, also the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius.31 While the actual ritual space—the path of the procession and the circus—could be used in various ways and thus remained architecturally underdetermined, it was framed by several means.32 A large number of temple buildings were concentrated in the area around the circuses, and the most important paths for processions to and from the Capitol and the Forum Romanum were lined by statues, columns, and victory arches. Thus a specific “public” space was created from the rather bland architecture of the areas of political assembly—comitium, rostra, curia—which was increasingly monumental and whose monumentalization worked to relate the success of the overall community to the achievement and glory of specific individuals. Statues built in honor of individual victors, and especially sacred buildings, served as primary media, so that the characteristics of the ludi and the supplicationes meet in their architectural expression.
How was communication carried out within this framework? The default stance is one of passivity. The Roman citizen found himself in the role of a spectator. This is true first of all for processions: taking part in the triumphal parade of Aemilius Paullus meant standing on the side of the street for three days and admiring the display of booty. The victorious soldiers could march in the procession, the senators could hail the parade and join it, but the center of attention belonged to the victor and his display of booty, both living and dead. Agents without citizenship dominated the pompa circensis. While the magistrate sponsoring the games and hierarchically organized Roman youth led the parade, chariot drivers, dancers, musicians, and clowns followed. Even the gods were mere Roman citizens. On the one hand they were taken along at the end of the procession. The sacrifice, when the procession had arrived at its goal, was dedicated to them. Primarily, however, they were spectators of the games and competitions following the procession. They had a front-row seat, so to speak, even if the games were not carried out in front of a temple.
The gods were therefore the target audience of the ritual, and the Roman spectators were only second-class spectators. The latter point is clearly indicated by the fact that, unlike in Greek festivities, general participation in sacrificial feasts was not the norm at Rome. Only in very rare exceptions did the public as a whole get anything to eat. The variously integrated epula were, like the lectisternia, meals for the gods, in which specific groups of priests and the senators could participate.
Such multifaceted communication is typical of religious communication and should not be passed over too quickly. The games were sponsored as an effective means of alleviating tensions in relations with the gods and preventing further catastrophic military defeats or plagues. For this purpose the very best was just barely good enough. The developmental process that this ideological and social-material matrix impelled then demanded greater and greater extravagance overall, as well as the professionalization of the agents involved. Authors formed an official Roman club (collegium poetarum) in the second half of the third century, and even before that professional troupes of actors could be hired from the more intensely Hellenized areas of Italy. Similar processes of professionalization can be observed among the chariot drivers, even though evidence for a cult dedicated to the victors of chariot races can only be found in the imperial period. Scattered and mostly late sources for the late Republic reveal these professionals functioning as the groups to whom the spectators turned with their expressions of approval or disapproval.
I emphasize this point for a particular reason. In a recent study on gladiators,33 Georges Ville has set in the foreground of historical inquiry interactions that took place within the audience, such as the observation of senators or the applauding or booing of individual senators within a space that was increasingly divided according to social status.34 I would by no means deny the importance of these factors, but I find the assumption that secondary functions rather than primary intentions could explain the enormous proliferation of institutionalized “games” unsatisfactory. Beyond that, we must be mindful of the fact that the competitions, especially the chariot races, were the most successful element of the games in the long term. Chariot races completely dominated the games in the imperial period and into late antiquity. At a phenomenological level, we would have to say that their appeal probably arose not out of the unified opinion of the spectators but from differing preferences for specific drivers or parties. One could win points for supporting the favorite driver of one’s girlfriend, even if he was sure to lose. This is admittedly hypothetical, but one can imagine the satisfaction of proving one’s instinct and winning over against a patron’s bet.
The Content of Religious Communication
This leads us to the necessity of addressing the content of organized communication. The entire spectrum of Italic and Greek cultural production was received at Rome, but the meaning of every object, and every form, was radically changed by their relocation. If we consider the display of statues and paintings in triumphal processions, for example, we observe that Greek statues and other “works of art” there had entertainment value, torn as they were from any functional context. This goes for Greek libraries as well. However, Romans did not remain passive recipients only but had their own Greek material, as it were, created for themselves.35 Roman aristocrats were enthusiastic about the technique of bronze casting already at the end of the fourth century.36 Nor did their appetite extend only to objects of art. Dramatic performances of every kind were translated or adapted and staged at festivals, including the Oscan Atellana, New Comedy, tragedies with topics from Greek mythology as well as, soon enough, Roman history. The latter, the Praetexta, was a genre destined to play a subordinate role, which mostly disappeared with the Republic.37 The gods were thus offered more than just exotic animals as entertainment.
Surviving titles and texts from the late third century allow for a more precise view of their contents. Specific contemporary relevance or a close connection to the respective holiday does not at first view play any significant role. This differentiates this type of drama clearly from that of fifth-century Athenian theater. The titles and the few remaining fragments from the two earliest dramatists already mentioned in Rome, Livius Andronicus and Naevius, reveal mostly mythological material drawn from traditional Greek mythological cycles. The series of known titles of tragedies by Livius Andronicus are Achilles, Aegistus, Aiax mastigophorus, Andromeda, Antiopa, Danae, Equos Troianus, Hermiona, Ino, Tereus; for Naevius: Aesiona, Danae, Equos Troianus, Hector proficiscens, Iphigenia, Lycurgos. Naevius also staged plays with clearly Roman topics, such as Clastidium sive Marcellus, about a recent victory over the Celts, and a Lupus and Romulus. Thirty-five titles are known from Naevius’s numerous comedies, beginning alphabetically with Acontizomenos, Agitatoria, Agrynuntes, Appella, Ariolus, Astiologa, Carbonaria, Clamidaria, and Colax.38 The surviving pieces by Plautus or Terence from the following decades confirm the impression left by these titles: plots are set in a Greek world, even when the problems they treat are clearly marked by Rome.39 This mixture could become more Roman in the second century with comedies classified as togatae by Varro, but these did not achieve a lasting dominance.40
How can we interpret these findings? The forms and objects of entertainment are ethnically marked in a multitude of ways. It must have been clear to the majority of spectators that they were consuming Greek (in the broadest sense of the word) entertainment, products from a culture perceived as superior in this regard and therefore attractive. There is another side to this: Rome imported these products often enough against the will of their authors or makers. Art piracy and enslavement were central modes of cultural transfer, and the profits of war served to engage the best free theater troupes and artists.41 In most cases the entertainment was connected to the celebration or commemoration of a military victory.42 In all this, Rome presented itself as the center of the world.
And yet, Rome presented itself as the center of a world outside of Rome and older than Rome. That world was dominated by Greek narrative traditions, and it was above all Greek myth, with its gods moving about, its exiles founding cities, and
