Ancient Roman theatre: everything you wanted to know

Summary

---

Ancient Roman Theatre: Everything You Wanted to Know

History Extra Podcast • Host: Emily Briffett • Guest: Dr. Jessica Clarke
Date: September 20, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this lively and deeply informative episode, host Emily Briffett welcomes Dr. Jessica Clarke, an expert in ancient Roman theatre, to answer listener questions and illuminate the fascinating world of Roman drama. Together, they explore the origins and evolution of Roman theatre, its key genres and themes, the social and political landscape of performance, the experience of both actors and audience, and the legacy that Roman theatre has left behind. Along the way, Dr. Clarke shares colorful anecdotes, essential context, and a critical lens on how performance both reflected and reinforced Roman society.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of Roman Theatre [02:24–04:14]

• Complex Beginnings:
  Roman theatre didn’t arise from a single source; it evolved through a blend of Greek, Etruscan, and other Italian influences.
• Greek Foundation:
  Greek theatre, especially from Athens, served as a major inspiration. Plays and genres were often directly translated from Greek to Latin.
• Italian Local Culture:
  Theatre developed in Sicilian and southern Italian cities (e.g., Pompeii, Praeneste, Gabi) before taking root in Rome proper. Large theatre buildings existed in Italy long before Rome constructed its own.
• Etruscan Influence:
  While traditional accounts (e.g., Livy) claim Etruscan actors brought theatre to Rome, these sources are often unreliable and motivated by Roman-centric narratives.

“Rome tends to absorb cultural influences rather than inventing its own. And it makes kind of its own jigsaw puzzle, hodgepodge of all these different influences. And theatre’s no different, really.” — Emily Briffett [03:40]

---

2. Greek, Etruscan, and Other Influences [04:14–08:15]

• Direct Play Translations:
  Classical Greek tragedies and comedies by playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Menander were translated and adapted for Roman audiences.
• Popular Visual Culture:
  Theatrical imagery was widespread in everyday Roman life, seen in mosaics, figurines, and wall paintings.
• Skeptical Use of Sources:
  Ancient writers (e.g., Livy) are valuable but should be read critically, given their agendas and the retrospective nature of their accounts.

---

3. Golden Age and Evolution of Roman Theatre [08:15–10:32]

• Augustan Era as the Golden Age:
  The reign of Augustus marked extensive theatre-building (hundreds across the empire) and the formal introduction of new genres like pantomime and mime.
• State-sponsored Expansion:
  Theatre became a tool of imperial spectacle and political messaging, with Augustus himself championing new festivals and forms.

“...what he builds for himself is a web of entertainment venues that Rome is in charge of.” — Emily Briffett [09:10]

---

4. Genres: Tragedy, Comedy, Mime, Pantomime [10:32–12:18]

• Tragedy:
  Reserved for significant political occasions, such as theatre dedications or funerals (e.g., tragedies at Pompey’s theatre opening and Julius Caesar’s funeral).
• Comedy:
  Hugely popular, ongoing across centuries, featuring stock characters and bawdy, farcical plots.
• Mime:
  Spoken, often improvised comic performances—rude, topical, and improvised.
• Pantomime:
  Danced, silent shows, with a single masked performer enacting mythological stories, widespread appeal across the empire.

“Mime was spoken and was these little improvised comic vignettes. Pantomime, conversely, was a silent performance...a danced rendition of a well-known, usually mythological story.” — Emily Briffett [09:41]

---

5. Stock Characters & Recurring Themes [12:18–15:59]

• Stock Characters:
  Audiences expected recognizable roles—irate fathers, haranguing wives, disobedient sons, lovesick boys, conniving prostitutes, and especially the clever slave.

“The most popular was the trixie slave, who was very clever. ...This character is kind of the main fascination of a lot of scholars for Roman comedy, because he’s so significant, he’s so popular...” — Emily Briffett [13:19]

• Social Themes:
  Plots often played with role reversals, particularly of slaves and masters, but typically reinforced the status quo rather than challenging it.
• Problematic Humor:
  Comedies often included violence toward slaves and women, normalization of slavery, and misogyny, depicted as comic, not critical.

“...these are comedies. It’s meant to be amusing that a slave could have a role where they are able to control their own destiny...it is ultimately a joke, in my opinion.” — Emily Briffett [14:38]

---

6. Pushing—Or Not Pushing—the Boundaries [17:32–18:56]

• Conventional, Not Radical:
  Most Roman comedies supported the prevailing social and political order—plays were chosen, staged, and censored by politicians.
• Contemporary Relevance:
  Some plays touched on very current themes (e.g., Roman wars, slave status), but rarely as critique.

“My own opinion is that the comedies didn’t push much of the status quo, really. They were presenting and enforcing the status quo.” — Emily Briffett [17:47]

---

7. Theatre as Political Institution [18:56–22:00]

• Controlled by Politicians:
  Theatres operated only at public or aristocratic events, never independently. Politicians chose, funded, and directed plays as part of their political careers.
• Career Advancement:
  Organizing popular games and theatre was essential for politicians, as a step in the cursus honorum.

“How good your shows were that you put on as a politician could have a huge impact on how successful your political career was.” — Emily Briffett [19:45]

---

8. Entertainment in Roman Society [22:00–23:31]

• Part of a Broader Festival Culture:
  Theatre competed with gladiator fights, wild beast hunts, acrobatics, and more, sometimes all at the same festival.
• Demanding Audiences:
  Spectators were mobile, rowdy, and had many distractions; playwrights used prologues to beg attention.

“At a Roman festival...there’s a vibrant entertainment culture of all sorts of different things being presented to audiences. And audiences could very happily express what they were most interested in.” — Emily Briffett [22:30]

---

9. Audience & Inclusivity [23:31–25:22]

• Diverse Attendance:
  Unlike Greek theatre (which was exclusively for male citizens), Roman audiences included men, women, children, slaves, and even prostitutes.
• Atmosphere:
  Performances were noisy, outdoor, free to attend, and bustling with vendors and distractions.

“We don’t want to think about ancient theatre as being anything like a quiet, dark auditorium of paying spectators. First of all, it’s free to go to the theatre...it’s outdoors, it’s rowdy, it’s busy...” — Emily Briffett [23:40]

---

10. Actors, Status, and Gender [25:22–28:52]

• Male-Dominated Stage:
  Only men performed; male actors played female roles using masks. Very rare exceptions for certain female performers, especially in mime or dance.
• Actors’ Status:
  Acting was a low-status profession, classified with slaves and prostitutes, and actors lacked voting or legal rights.
• Celebrity Exceptions:
  Noteworthy actors could become famous—such as Clodius Aesopus, a renowned tragedian—yet the profession remained disreputable.

“An actor was in the class known as infirmaise, which would be the same class as a slave, same class as a prostitute. You would have no voting rights. You also don’t have bodily autonomy...” — Emily Briffett [26:41]

---

11. Performance Style, Staging, and Technology [28:52–32:31]

• Masked Acting:
  Heavily mask-driven and physical, with exaggerated gestures and movement to communicate the character’s emotions.
• Staging Innovations:
  Theatres featured retractable sails for shade, trapdoors, rotating scenery, water jets to cool and deodorize the crowd, and lavish costumes.
• Role of Mask Makers and Producers:
  Behind-the-scenes artists were integral; producers coordinated with politicians to mount productions.

“For example...if it was a very intellectual character, they might lead with their head. ...If it’s a very sort of greedy or maybe a lusty character, they might lead with their hips.” — Emily Briffett [29:20]

---

12. Actors, Troupes, and Playwrights [32:31–38:59]

• Troupe Structure:
  Likely included both established companies in cities and traveling troupes; evidence is fragmentary.
• Famous Playwrights:
  Plautus and Terence are best-known; their work shaped the repertoire, especially expanding the role of the clever slave.

“A key thing that is different about the Plotine texts is the expansion of the role of the slave. He really expands the centrality of that character within his plot lines.” — Emily Briffett [38:13]

---

13. Venues & Contexts [34:57–37:38]

• Architecture:
  Roman-built theatres (freestanding, semicircular orchestras, integrated stage and seating) differed from older Greek hillside models.
• Performance Settings:
  Early performances used temporary wooden stages, often at festivals, in marketplaces, or before temples, reflecting a strong link with religion.

“The festivals are taking place to honor the deity and the theatre shows are part of worshipping the deity. ...It’s got a very important religious component.” — Emily Briffett [37:31]

---

14. Legacy of Roman Theatre [38:59–40:00]

• Limited Modern Appeal:
  Few Roman plays receive modern stagings due to their themes (slavery, violence), unlike Greek classics.
• Lasting Influence:
  The key legacy is in the intertwining of entertainment, political messaging, and public life—a tradition that endures.

“Entertainment, it’s never something that’s neutral, it’s always something that’s got a message that it wants to convey and that obviously makes it quite susceptible to political manipulation...” — Emily Briffett [39:45]

---

Memorable Quotes

• “Always be cautious with your ancient sources.” — Emily Briffett [06:57]
• “We don’t have independent theatres... all of these performances are put on by politicians... theatre is one of theatre and also other types of shows... it’s a really good opportunity to improve your political career.” — Emily Briffett [19:05–19:54]
• “An actor was in the class known as infirmaise, which would be the same class as a slave, same class as a prostitute.” — Emily Briffett [26:41]
• “Theatre is never neutral; it always carries a message and is susceptible to political manipulation.” — Emily Briffett [39:45]

---

Notable Moments & Timestamps

• [02:39] — The complex, multi-regional origins of Roman theatre
• [10:32] — Description of the rise and evolution of comedy, tragedy, mime, and pantomime
• [13:19] — The importance and depiction of the clever slave character
• [14:38] — The debate over whether Roman comedy was radical or conservative in its social commentary
• [19:03] — The political control of theatre and its role in the political ladder (cursus honorum)
• [23:40] — A vivid portrait of the raucous, inclusive Roman audience
• [26:41] — The low social status but occasional celebrity of Roman actors
• [29:20] — The highly physical, mask-driven style of Roman performance

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a vivid tour behind the scenes of ancient Roman theatre—a world at once grand and gritty, deeply political, riotously entertaining, and full of contradictions. Richly detailed, critical, and packed with memorable stories, Dr. Clarke’s insights reframe Roman theatre as a key lens through which to understand the empire’s society, politics, and legacy.

---

Transcript

[Emily Briffett]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling, and when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee welcome to only Murders in the Building the Official Podcast. Join me, Michael Ciro Creighton as we go behind the scenes with some of the amazing actors, writers and crew from Season five. The audience should never stop suspecting anything. How can you not be funny crawling around on a coffin? Yeah, that's true. Catch Only Murders in the Building Official Podcast now streaming wherever you get your podcasts and watch Only Murders in the Building streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers terms apply. This episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu. An all new season of Futurama is back, blending heartfelt moments with razor sharp humor while accidentally saving the day. The Planet Express crew is back, defying gravity and common sense. From the creator of The Simpsons comes 10 new episodes where the romance is hotter, the threats are bigger and the action hits harder. Don't miss the all new season of Futurama. Watch it Mondays on FXX or stream it on Hulu. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine who went to the theatre in ancient Rome? What kind of spectacle would they have seen and did the drama performed on stage reflect the politics, society or culture of the day? Emily Brifitt and historian Jessica Clarke peer behind the metaphorical curtain of ancient Rome theatres to explore the play, playwrights and performances that entertain the empire today.

[Jessica Clarke]

We have lots of lovely listener questions for you, Jessica. We are going to be talking all about ancient Roman theatre and we need to start where the Romans started. What were the origins of theatre in ancient Rome?

[Emily Briffett]

So this sounds like a nice simple question. It's actually quite a difficult question really, finding the origins of Roman theatre because they're not particularly straightforward. Certainly we've got. Ancient Greek theatre is a very important starting point for Roman theatre. We want to think about Athenian theatre on the slopes of the Acropolis. And this theatre emerges long before theatre ever appears in Rome. And our traditional narrative, most scholarship will tell you that you have Greek theatre and then you have, a few centuries later, Roman theatre emerges and it basically translates Greek theatre. It's slightly more complicated than that. And also a lot of my research has been about finding the nuances of how theatre does actually get to Rome, because what we can find is theatre arriving in Sicily and South Italy around the same time that it appeared in ancient Greece and then spreading up through the Italian peninsula, moving into Campania, moving into central Italy and becoming a really important part of Italian culture before really, it gets to Rome, certainly before Rome ever builds itself a theatre. There are huge theatre buildings built across Italy long before Rome decides to build itself one. So the origins of Roman theatre are Greek, they're Italian, and there's probably a complicated web of all of those. Rome tends to absorb cultural influences rather than inventing its own. And. And it makes kind of its own jigsaw puzzle, hodgepodge of all these different influences. And theatre's no different, really.

[Jessica Clarke]

And this is a question we've had from one of our listeners, and they've asked, can we see the influences of ancient Greece and perhaps the Etruscans in Roman theatre?

[Emily Briffett]

So, absolutely, you can see ancient Greek influences in the actual plays themselves, first of all. So the tragedies of ancient Greek theatre written by Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, who's my personal favourite, these get translated into Latin to be performed in Rome and in different theatres in Italy. We can also see it in the comedies as well, being translated from Greek Comedy. Greek comedy, we've got Old Comedy, which is Aristophanes, who wrote lots of anthropomorphised plays called things like Birds and Frogs. We then have quite a murky period called Middle Comedy that we don't really know too much about. We haven't really got much source material. Then we have Greek New Comedy with Menander and other playwrights like Philemon and New Comedy. Greek New Comedy is hugely influential on the theatre of Italy and Rome. Later on, Menander's plays get translated. These translations are hugely popular. And then also we've got lots of visual culture as well. Images of Greek theatre are very popular in Italy in general public. These comedies of these tragic performances, we've got lots of, like, little pieces of merchandise, like figurines. We've got Mosaics, we've got wall paintings with images of theatre, all of that which is influenced by Greece and also transforming into something unique and original once it gets into Italy and into Rome as well. And then also, to answer your point about Etruscans, so if your listener specifically has asked about Etruscan influences, our knowledge of how much Etruscan theatre specifically influenced Rome comes from a passage by our ancient writer called Livy, who wrote this kind of monumental history of ancient Rome, and we've got some books of it surviving. There's a passage in Livy that talks about how actors from Maturia came to Rome and that's how theatre arrived in Rome. That passage is rather problematic. It's a bit convoluted the way it's written. It doesn't really make sense in the way he draws a very neat line from actors arrived in Rome. And then this is how we have Roman theatre, which doesn't really make sense. And it also doesn't really make sense if we think about the amount of theatrical culture that was already existing in other areas of Italy and just how important that theatrical culture was. Also, Livy is writing about that period of time about two centuries later, so he's not a very good source. Essentially, he's got his own motivations. He wants to make Rome the centre of his narratives. So certainly Etruria was an important influence on Rome, as were many other areas of Italy. But we do need to be a little bit careful sometimes with some of our ancient sources, like Livy. So always be cautious with your ancient sources.

[Jessica Clarke]

Good lesson. Are there any other important influences that we should be talking about?

[Emily Briffett]

I think really an influence that doesn't get spoken about at all. And this is something my research, again, has really tried to target, is these different Italian cities. We talk about Greece a lot. It's kind of been covered extensively by scholarship. But we have theatre buildings appearing in cities like Pompeii, Praeneste, Gabi, all of these kind of different Italian towns, centuries before Rome ever builds itself a theatre. And these theatres are huge buildings. They're very important in the civic life of these Italian communities. We don't know much about this theatre because the literary sources don't record anything about them. But if you look at these buildings and if you go and visit them and you get to stand in them, you can see that these are huge constructions and clearly very important at the time. And so obviously there is a very important influence on Roman theatre from what's going on in these different local Italian communities.

[Jessica Clarke]

So we've completed the bookends. Then what was the golden age of ancient Roman theatre? And then when did it start to decline? Let's sort of situate ourselves with the timeline.

[Emily Briffett]

So when we talk about a golden age, when we're talking about Rome, we tend to be talking about the Emperor Augustus's reign. We tend to be talking about the beginning of the Roman Empire. This was a period with new cultural, religious and political structures being implemented. And certainly for theatre, it's a moment of big change. So we've had the very beginnings of theatre, with Greek and Italian influence spreading in the second century. We've got very important playwrights like Plautus and Terence, who I'm sure we'll circle back to and talk about a bit more in that second century. But then by the time we get to the end of the first century bc, we've got the Emperor Augustus. Augustus builds hundreds of theaters across the Roman Empire, all following the design of the theatre that he also builds for himself in Rome. These theatres are enormous, they're spread across all of the provinces. And essentially what he builds for himself is a web of entertainment venues that Rome is in charge of. At the same time, he introduces new festivals with new performances. Often these festivals are celebrating himself. At the same time, we get two new genres appear as well. So we've talked about tragedy and comedy a little bit, and I'm sure we'll talk about them a little bit more as well. But we also have pantomime and mime start to emerge at this period as well. Confusingly, the names of these two are the opposite, way round from what we'd say now. So mime was spoken and was these little kind of improvised comic vignettes. Often they were probably extremely rude and maybe about a political event that was happening at the moment, and kind of little improvised moments, but spoken. And then pantomime, conversely, was a silent performance and it was a danced performance with a single performer wearing a mask doing a danced rendition of a well known, usually mythological story. And this emerges under Augustus during this golden age. These two genres become extremely popular both in Rome and across the empire, because by this point, Rome is having a huge cultural influence across its provinces.

[Jessica Clarke]

Can you tell us more about the genres you've mentioned? I think four so far. What was the crowd pleaser? What were the crowd favorites?

[Emily Briffett]

Oh, that's an excellent question. So, in terms of the popularity of these genres, each of them seem to have had their own place. So if we start with tragedy, for example, we know that tragic performances were put on at Very important political events in Rome. For the opening of Pompey's Theatre in 55 BC, the first theatre in Rome, it was a huge construction and it was a huge event to be opening this building. Pompey chose to have two tragedies performed. He chose to have the Clytemnestra and the Trojan Horse. So two plays translated from Greek tragedies obviously had the Latin ones performed. We also know that for Julius Caesar's funeral, again, tragedies were chosen to present to the crowd. We had contests for the arms of Achilles and also the Electra. So tragedy seems to have had a place in high moments of political tension. But comedy was certainly an incredibly popular genre. We're talking about a genre of. With stock characters, stock plot lines, masked performances. We've got quite a few comic scripts that have been preserved to us today, as well as all of this imagery of these comic performances as well. And certainly this genre was incredibly popular over a very large time span as well. So from Greek new comedy across through the third century, second century, first century, and continues to be very popular into the empire as well, into the first century CE as well. And similarly, pantomime appears under Augustus. And it, based on the quantity of visual culture we have, showing pantomime performances, also became incredibly popular with audiences.

[Jessica Clarke]

And what do you mean when you say stock characters?

[Emily Briffett]

Yeah, so that's a great question. With stock characters, we're talking about set character types who, when you arrive at the theatre to watch a performance, as an audience member, you have a pretty good idea of which characters you're going to see, roughly what kind of plotline they're going to enact. To give you an example of the type of characters that you might have irate fathers, miserly old men, haranguing wives, disobedient sons, lovesick boys, sort of innocent young girls, conniving prostitutes. These were kind of the ones that you would expect to see. And then crucially also you would have the slave character. And this is probably the most important stock character of comedy. You've got a couple of different types of this slave character. You've got like the country bumpkin slave or the sort of beaten down old man servant. But the most popular was the trixie slave, who was very clever. And often he. In the plot lines, he would often outwit his master, or he might be the one who comes up with the solution for how to get his young master his love interest or help him win back the money that he's lost through his gambling debts. And this character is kind of the main fascination of a lot of scholars for comedy, for Roman comedy, because he's so significant, he's so popular, he's represented in numerous images. He's actually the most popular character type to be represented in all of the visual culture of theatre in Italy. If you went to the theatre to watch a comic performance, you would always expect to see this slave character represented in some capacity.

[Jessica Clarke]

And similarly, this is a question we've had from flustercluckduck on Instagram. Were there any common themes or topics? And if so, what were the most recurring themes?

[Emily Briffett]

Yeah, I think that links nicely to the fact that these are stock performances. Themes that you often get with the slave character is this reversal of a slave and master dynamic. So often the slave would seemingly be in a slightly more autonomous position within a comic plot. Now, scholars differ very greatly on how we should be interpreting this. Some scholars think that this means that the comedies were a way of kind of communicating almost emancipatory messages. It was a way of sort of pushing against the status quo and giving. Giving slaves a much more autonomous role. I personally belong to the other body of scholarship and I'm quite sceptical of that view, primarily because ultimately these are meant to be funny. These are comedies. It's meant to be amusing that a slave could have a role where they are able to control their own destiny or control the destiny of other characters in the play. It is ultimately a joke, in my opinion. And then also there's quite a lot of. And in answering the question from the listener about recurrent themes, there is a lot of violence towards slaves in the plays as well. There's a lot of violence towards women, again, expressed as a joke. It's seen as something that's amusing. Women are raped within these comic plot lines as well. And that is often a sort of a plot point in the male characters narratives rather than having anything to do with the female character. And so whilst these comedies are. They're bawdy, they're rowdy, they're quite raucous, I think we also, when we're talking about them, do need to just be aware that we're also talking about a form of theatre that comes from a society where slavery is institutionalized and violence towards slaves and towards women is normalized and is part of the comic narrative. And so that's really quite an important part of these recurring themes.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

I think if you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know, that purple shop pay button you see at checkout. The one that makes buying so incredibly easy. That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling [e-mail] promo. Go to shopify.com prom I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie. Broke the Internet last year and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

[Emily Briffett]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with endpoint encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] Did Roman Theatre ever push.

[Jessica Clarke]

The boundaries either in terms of dealing with what was socially unacceptable or in terms of what we might think? Something that's a little bit more progressive prime push forward new ideas.

[Emily Briffett]

So again, different scholars will give you slightly different answers to that question. Everyone's got a slightly different opinion. My own opinion is that the comedies didn't push much of the status quo, really. They were presenting and enforcing the status quo. And I think again, if we're talking about and I'm sure we'll we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about who's putting on these plays. But plays are politically controlled in Rome and are put on by politicians. Therefore the plays themselves are very likely to subscribe quite closely to the types of narratives that the ruling elite are wanting to put forward. So whilst we've got themes to do with slavery, to do with women, we also have quite a lot of plays that deal with issues around prisoners of war and the legitimacy of foreign conquest, etc. So we've got a play by Plautus called the Little Carthaginian, for example, that deals with characters who are Carthaginian. And this is just after Carthage has been destroyed by Rome. So certainly they're Dealing with these very contemporary themes, whether or not they're challenging these norms and status quos, I personally am quite sceptical of. But again, different scholars will give you different opinions.

[Jessica Clarke]

You mentioned there that politicians were the ones in charge of the plays. Why was this?

[Emily Briffett]

Yeah. So in Rome, we don't have independent theatres, we don't have shows being put on outside of politically controlled events. So you could have a theatre show at a religious festival, at a Roman funeral as well, which seems slightly strange to us now, but you could have performances being put on at organized aristocratic funerals and also to celebrate triumphs of Roman generals as a way of entertaining the crowds who had come to watch it and return triumphant from his conquest to the city. Crucially, though, all of these performances are put on by politicians. They would have overseen rehearsals, they would have selected the plays, potentially. There may have been some censorship involved as well. We don't know for sure, but it's very likely within this context. And then certainly by the time we get to the late Republic and the civil wars, certainly plays are being chosen that work with the political narrative that a politician wants to put forward. Also, how good your shows were that you put on as a politician could have a huge impact on how successful your political career was. It was an excellent opportunity, if you were the politician putting on the show, to win popular favor, to entertain the people, to bring interest to your cause, to get your name known in Rome. It was a really important moment. And so the theatre is one of theatre and also other types of shows as well, like gladiatorial shows. It's a really good opportunity to improve your political career, and it holds a really important place within the political structures. It's not a neutral cultural institution. We might think of theatre today, we think of Shaftesbury Avenue and Broadway, and it kind of belongs to a cultural sphere, Ancient Rome, it belongs to an incredibly political sphere.

[Jessica Clarke]

This perfectly links to something that Max Quigley on Instagram has asked. He was asking about the political role. So it would certainly be fair to say I had a really strong political role in the Roman world. This.

[Emily Briffett]

Yeah, absolutely. It holds a very important place within the structure of a political career. So in a traditional political career in Rome, you would work through the cursus honorum, which is essentially the political ladder, sort of a political obstacle course, really, that you have to work through in order to get to the highest position. And one of those early rungs of the ladder was something called the aedileship. That was the position as a magistrate where you were responsible for putting on games within the city, along with a couple of other responsibilities, but primarily putting on. On the shows. And so early on in a political career, that was a good opportunity for you. And again, towards the end of the late Republic, we know that increasingly individuals were pouring huge amounts of their own money and their own resources into making these shows as splendid as possible, as it was a great opportunity.

[Jessica Clarke]

How did theatre then fit alongside the broader Roman landscape of leisure, public entertainment, that kind of thing?

[Emily Briffett]

It's a crucial part of it, along with things like gladiatorial shows, gymnastic performances, wild beast hunts, all sorts of performances. And we know that sometimes at a festival, you could have multiple of these types of events all happening at once. We've got a really excellent prologue from one of the comedies by Terence. It's a play called the Mother In Law, which the title of which gives you an idea of maybe who the butt of the joke is in that play. But in the prologue. It's the prologue. Speaker comes onto the stage and he says, please, please, can you stay in your seats? We've tried to perform this three times now. First time we were interrupted by the tightrope walkers, then it was by the gladiatorial shows. Please can you keep your attention? We just want to get through this play. So we know from that that there is a. At a Roman festival and also these also festivals happening elsewhere in Italy as well. These are. This is not just specific to Rome, this is across the whole of the peninsula. There's a vibrant entertainment culture of all sorts of different things being presented to audiences. And also, audiences could very happily express what they were most interested in. And if your play wasn't capturing their interest, they would go to watch something else. So, again, coming back to these kind of comic plot lines and these stock characters, we know they were popular because they had to capture an audience who was not necessarily going to behave itself.

[Jessica Clarke]

What was it like to be in the audience? Presumably it was more sort of raucous and rowdy than quiet and civilised.

[Emily Briffett]

Absolutely. We don't want to think about ancient theatre as being anything like a quiet, dark auditorium of paying spectators. First of all, it's free to go to the theatre, which is very important. It's outdoors, it's rowdy, it's busy, there's probably merchandise salesmen moving around, there's probably food vendors. Also, there is a very broad audience in ancient Roman theatre as well. Whereas in the Greek world, theatre was for citizens, male citizens, in Rome and in Italy, we know that the audience could be a Mix of many different members of the population. We know this again from a prologue. We've got an excellent prologue. This is from, again, the little Carthaginian that I mentioned earlier. And the prologue speaker comes onto the stage and he says, all of you need to sit down, be quiet. And essentially tells him to shut up, please, because we're about to start. And he then works through different members of the audience and he says to them, you need to be quiet and you need to be quiet. He says to wives, please stop bothering your husbands. You do that enough at home. He says to mothers, please keep your children quiet. He says to slaves, please get up if you're sat down and give your seat to someone who's free. He also tells some of the prostitutes to get off the stage at the front. And this is excellent because it really gives us a picture of the variety of people who are present at the theatre and what the prologue speaker and the actors are contending with as well.

[Jessica Clarke]

So that gives us a sense of who was in the audience. But what about on the stage? We've had loads of questions from listeners about whether men and women could perform, or was it more something like that we'd expect from Shakespeare's day, where men filled female roles and that kind of thing.

[Emily Briffett]

So men and women did not both perform on stage. It was just men who were allowed to perform on stage in Rome and also in ancient Greece as well. So, yes, it is quite similar to Shakespearean rules around who is allowed to step onto a stage. Men would have played the female roles slightly easier than in a Shakespearean play because obviously they have masks on. So you would have had male actors wearing the costumes and the masks of the key female protagonists. But it was a profession that was limited to men. We have a couple of pieces of evidence. There's some inscriptions that indicate some female pantomime dancers, some female performers, and potentially there were certain types of mime performance that may have been exclusively female. Perhaps we have to be quite tentative when we make those assertions, but it's quite possible, particularly around the celebrations and performances for the Games of Flora, they may have been more female centric in the performances, but generally speaking, traditionally it's performed by men. However, for the audience, as we've already established, you could have women in the audience at a Roman show, which was not the case for ancient Greece.

[Jessica Clarke]

And how were actors perceived by society? Did they have this sort of celebrity status of today?

[Emily Briffett]

So that's a really interesting question, because in ancient Rome, acting and actors was an incredibly lowly profession. It was not something that was seen as an acceptable, an acceptable job for a Roman citizen to undertake. An actor was in the class known as infirmaise, which would be the same class as a slave, same class as a prostitute. You would have no voting rights. You also don't have bodily autonomy, so you don't have legal rights over your body. The kind of theory behind this for why Romans might have seen actors in this way is probably something to do with the fact that an actor is sort of selling their, their body and their performance for the pleasure of an audience. And they're being watched and they're. What they're doing is being observed. And within the Roman conception of things, that's not a dignified profession. That's not what a good Roman, especially a good Roman man, as all actors and men should be doing. But as to your question about celebrities, that doesn't mean that we don't know about some very famous actors. One actor, for example, we know called Clodius Aesopus, he was the most famous tragic actor in the late republic. Cicero was friends with him. We have a letter where Cicero refers to that as his friend Marius, favourite actor. He was kind of this renowned tragedian. One story goes that he got so immersed in his performance once that he took a club and he killed a stagehand who was crossing the stage in front of him because he hit him on the head. But he didn't know what he was doing. He was just so immersed in his role. And then we also know that by the time of Pompey's theatre opening in 55, Aesopas had retired. But Pompey convinced him to come out of retirement to perform in his big opening plays and his big celebration. And we know this again from Cicero's letter, because Cicero was in the crowd on the day and witnessed this. And Cicero is incredibly rude about his performance and he says, really, he should have stayed in retirement. His voice is not up to it. Cicero is just sort of mortified on behalf of this slightly aged actor who had this brilliant career but now has maybe slightly past his prime by 55 BC. So yes, we certainly know that there were celebrity actors, even though the actual official status of an actor was quite looked down upon.

[Jessica Clarke]

What did acting actually look like? Are we talking sort of a very shouty type of acting, or was it a bit more stately or something like that?

[Emily Briffett]

Yeah, there's lots of interesting projects that get run to try and recreate ancient performances. And especially today, we have quite a lot of trouble imagining masked Performances, it's not something we're very familiar with. We kind of see masks as really. It's really separating the viewer from the actor. We're not used to it because also we're so used to cinema and sort of very close up intense shots of sort of micro emotions playing across actors faces. That's very much kind of what sets apart acting today. Sort of part of the Stanislavski tradition that emerged. Masked acting is a very different type of performance. It's very body driven. We pick up an awful lot of things through body language and mass performance really plays on that. So, for example, within comedy, different stock characters might lead with a different part of their body, depending on what they wanted to communicate to the audience. So if it was a very intellectual character, they might lead with their head. And when I say that they kind of, when they're walking, that's the part of their body that is kind of moving forward first. If it's a very sort of greedy or maybe a lusty character, they might lead with their hips. So the way that they move on the stage, the way that they communicate with the viewer is it's much more than just language. It's also how they're moving and that is communicating much more than we're often aware that we're picking up on. Tragic performances certainly had a stately element to them. Actors would be wearing enormous masks, huge sweeping costumes and also very high heeled shoes, big platform shoes. So they'd have been very tall and very grand and impressive. Which when you combine with the stage sets and the props and the very lavish staging of all these types of performances, it would have been quite a spectacle and definitely a sight to behold.

[Jessica Clarke]

Can you tell us more about the staging? Props, lighting, I guess, side of it, costume, how did that all contribute to a performance?

[Emily Briffett]

Starting with lighting, for example? Obviously these are outside performances. We know that what time of day a performance took place could affect like what show was put on. We know that a lot of theatres, for instance, had big sails that were put over the stands to keep the audiences safe from the sort of hot midday sun. And that would affect the lighting. We've got a really lovely quote actually from an ancient writer who talks about how the light, if it was a coloured piece of material that was across the stage, would refract the light around the auditorium and make this kind of glowing impression. Stage sets, we know from ancient Greek theatre there were mechanisms for lifting actors up and down. We have trapdoors, we have scenery that could change on like rotating cylinders for when A scene changed, the background could also change. We know that there were all sorts of other mechanisms in place to, for example, keep the crowd cool on a hot day. There were water jets that were placed around theatres to kind of spray the crowd with, like, a fine mist to keep everyone cool. And sometimes they put perfume inside those sprays to maybe mask some of the more unpleasant smells that might be coming from. Like if there were animals on stage or if it was a gladiatorial show, there would be a lot of blood, but to try and keep things a bit more sanitary. But certainly there's an awful lot of kind of technical mechanisms that are in place for Roman theatre, as also for Greek theatre. And the masks and the costumes are a big part of that. And also the mask makers were a very important part of acting troupes. Although we have stock characters, certainly there would be room for mask makers to put their own spin on things and to make the most beautiful or the most grotesque or the most interesting masks.

[Jessica Clarke]

When we're talking about, like a theatre troupe, are we talking like a local AM DRAM group? Are we talking about traveling troupes or is it more established production companies?

[Emily Briffett]

That's a really good question. Unfortunately, I'm going to give quite a frustrating answer to, in the sense that we don't really know. We don't have as much evidence as certainly I would like for who these actors were and how they were set up. Certainly there were traveling troops that moved around Italy. Certainly, as I mentioned, there were famous actors who were very well established. Based on the quantity of shows that were being put on, I think it's very safe to assume that there were established troops, established companies in cities and certainly in Rome. We do know that there were producers and that a politician could go to a producer to organize the play. We have a reference in Cicero's Letter, again, when he's talking about Pompey's Theatre and he refers to the producer that Pompey used, and he refers to him in quite an offhand way. So it does really imply that he's quite well known already. So we know there were producers, we know there were famous actors, we know that troops traveled round. Although, unfortunately, I can't give you a really satisfying answer for acting troops, because there's not as much evidence as we.

[Jessica Clarke]

Would like who else would have been involved as part of this group.

[Emily Briffett]

So certainly you'd have had mask makers. We've got a reference or two to some mask makers. We'd have the costumers, whether or not the playwrights travelled round with Their own troops or were attached to certain troops is difficult to say. Again, we can make a comparison to, like Shakespeare, who wrote for his own company. Scholars of the playwright Plautus tend to talk about Plautus. It's quite likely that maybe he was actor himself originally, before he wrote, started writing down the stock plays they were performing. So potentially writers were associated with troops. And then obviously the relationship between the troops and the politician is absolutely essential. So a key component when we're talking about these plays being put on is the politicians themselves, who are deeply connected to whatever the structures were within the producers, the actors, the mask makers, the prop makers, the set designers. Like all of these things would have existed. Again, unfortunately, we're sort of piecing together little pieces and then using a certain amount of logic from that point you.

[Jessica Clarke]

Mentioned there are Barreth playwrights, and this is something we will come on to in just one moment. But first, just an important piece of context to make sure that we are fully situating ourselves. We've been talking about sort of an auditorium. What did an ancient Roman theatre look like? And were plays always performed in a theatre?

[Emily Briffett]

We have kind of two distinct types, if we're talking about the actual buildings themselves. Greek theatres followed a certain design where often the seating was built into a hillside, they had big circular orchestras, and often the stage building itself was separate from the seating by the time we get to the Roman period. And again, the theatres that are built in Italy for many centuries before Rome built a theatre, the design is very different by this point. We've got free standing seating, we've got stages that are connected to the seating and a much smaller orchestra that's about the semicircle rather than a full circle. So these theatres are a very different design. And this is eventually also the design that's followed when Pompey built his theatre in Rome. And then aside from that, certainly plays would have been put on temporary structures in Rome before a theatre is built, there would have been some kind of temporary stages that were put up, sort of wooden constructions that were put down and quite hastily taken down again after the event. But then the later Roman theatres, you can see quite a lot of the Augustan theatres, actually. You could go to somewhere like Orange in France, or there's an amazing theatre at Leptis Magna. You can go and see really quite. They're quite extraordinary how much of them survives, and you really get a sense of the magnitude of the buildings. We've got some evidence for traveling performers sort of setting up and likely performing, maybe in marketplaces. Or often in front of temples as well, because a lot of performances were connected with religious events. So perhaps performing in front of the temple of Apollo, if it was for a festival of Apollo, for example. Again, our evidence for temporary stages is. Is not as good as the permanent buildings. There's some references to it in our literature, but most likely they are perhaps in marketplaces, street corners, but normally in front of temples, because it's very much connected to the religious events of the Roman and Italian calendar.

[Jessica Clarke]

What were some of these events?

[Emily Briffett]

Just quickly through the year, you'd have a festival for the different deities. So you might have Apollo's festival. You had the Ludi Romanus, for example, which was the big festival of just the city of Rome itself. You had festivals for Flora, for all sorts of different deities. The festivals are taking place to honour the deity and the theatre shows are part of worshipping the deity. It's part of also an offering to that deity to entertain them as much as to entertain the audience. So not only is it a political event and a cultural event, it's got a very important religious component.

[Jessica Clarke]

I said that we'd come back to playwrights. J. Lee Buck on Instagram, has asked us whether there were any particularly popular playwrights in ancient Rome and what actually set their work apart.

[Emily Briffett]

So the most well known playwrights that we have are Plautus and Terence. So Plautus, we've got about. I think we have 21 of his plays surviving and then we know of many other titles that he wrote. Terence, we've got six of his plays. Their plays, they're excellent because they record for us this tradition of stock comedy and stock characters. What sets them apart is, again, different. Scholars will give different answers to this question. But a key thing that is different about the Plotine texts is the expansion of the role of the slave. He really expands the centrality of that character within his plot lines. He gives him the many, many more lines. Often in scholarship, that's credited as something that Plautus invents. But if we look at other evidence, particularly archaeological evidence, we can see that the slave character was probably very popular much, much earlier than Plautus was writing, and also very widespread. So he's probably reflecting that tradition rather than actually inventing it. But it's certainly a very key part of the originality of this period in the early second century, where unique elements of Italian and Roman theatre are emerging that's different from the Greek world.

[Jessica Clarke]

As a final question for you, then, how much has theatre since that time, since the ancient Romans owed to ancient Roman theatre.

[Emily Briffett]

So that's a really good question. I think Roman theatre is really important in our histories of theatre. Greek theatre today is still performed on the West End. You can go and see. Recently we've had Oedipus performed in two different productions. Electra has just been performed with Brie Larson. Roman theatre, the plays aren't performed today primarily because the themes just aren't appropriate for a modern day audience. With the slavery, with the depictions of violence etc, we just don't find that funny anymore. So I think that's a key part of why Plautus isn't performed. Crucially though, I think the biggest legacy is really this connection between theatre and entertainment and the political culture of Rome. So entertainment, it's never something that's neutral, it's always something that's got a message that it wants to convey and that obviously makes it quite susceptible to political manipulation because there's always something that you can say with a piece of entertainment. And I think that's quite an important legacy of the Roman theatre.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

That was Jessica Clarke speaking to Emily Briffett. Jessica has just finished her PhD specialising in ancient Roman theatre and is the Shortland Jones rome Scholar for 2026 working at the British School at Rome. Her upcoming book is A new history of Ancient Roman Theatre which is due to be published in late 2025. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Emily Briffett]

Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary underwritten by Liberty Mutual insurance company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac Extra Value meal for $8. That means two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun and medium fries. And a drink. We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary. This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturer manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.