The Theatre of Pompey: the first permanent theatre in Rome
The inauguration of the Theatre of Pompey was remembered by ancient writers not for the magnificence of spectacles, but for the tragic death of some elephants
56 BC — Three men shared the world
Today Lucca is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy.
In the 56 BC Lucca was a municipium of Cisalpine Gaul, but was near the Roman territory; was used as a base for expeditions in the Po Valley or beyond the Alps. Here there was a meeting among the most powerful men of Rome.
Julius Caesar arrived in Lucca from the Gallia Transalpina, where he had defeated the Belgicae tribes. Caesar met a delegation from the Senate in which there were also Pompey the Great; Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos Iunior; Marcus Licinius Crassus and Appius Claudius Pulcher. The reason for this meeting was the explanation from the Senate about the gold sent to Rome by Caesar. The gold earned with the victories in Gaul was been used by Caesar to support friends and clients for access to minor magistrates; to persuade the Senate to promulgate his proconsulship in Gaul and to not listen to the complaints of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Marcus Porcius Cato. Domitius Ahenobarbus was been running for the consulship and had declared that he would take away the proconsulship and the legions to Caesar. Cato had even declared that the Senate should consigne Caesar to German kings, because guilty of having offended the Roman honor by killing the German ambassadors and by massacring innocent women and children. Indeed this meeting legitimized an alliance secured three years ago: Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus — the first Triumvirate — , three private citizens, three warlords, had shared the weak Republican institutions and they were preparing to reap the benefits of their own work.
55 BC — Laws and extensions
As established by the meeting in Lucca Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls. They had two laws approved by the Senate: the lex Pompeia Licinia de provincia C. Iulii Caesaris and the lex Trebonia de provinciis consularibus. The lex Pompeia Licinia renewed the proconsulship of Caesar in Cisalpine Gaul, in Narbonensis Gaul, and in Illyricum for another five years. The lex Trebonia, which was supported by Gaius Trebonius the plebeian tribune and a trusted friend of Julius Caesar, granted an exceptional proconsular imperium in Syria to Crassus and in Hispania Ulterior and in Hispania Citerior to Pompey.
In the meantime, Julius Caesar stabilized his conquest of Gaul by repulsed a new incursion of Germanic tribes, who had crossed the Rhine for the second time. Immediately after the promulgation of the two laws, Crassus left for Syria. He had arranged an expedition against the Parthian Empire and their rich cities. The plebian tribune Gaius Ateius Capito cursed the expedition of Crassus: he did it because Crassus had declared war to Parthians due to his greed and his excessive ambition. Pompey delegated the supervision of Spanish provinces to his trusted legates. He remained in Rome to control the old man of Senate and the young lions, who wanted to carve out a position in the political life with violence. Pompey was aware that he could not just guarantee tranquility in Rome and just hope an error of his friends — rivals. He knew it was not enough to finance the political career of his friends and clients; or to have the people’s love through the grain supply, the feasts, the gladiator games and other magnificent ludi. He was aware that he need something extraordinary, better than the victories of Crassus and Caesar. Pompey had already decided to build the first permanent theatre in Rome long ago.
Something not easy…
155–154 BC — In defense of the Roman costumes
A hundred years before the censor Gaius Cassius Longinus had started to build a permanent theatre, which was suspended by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum. The consul, renowned for his victory on the Dalmatians, did not only suspend the building but also put up for auction and ordered its demolition. Scipio Nasica succeeded in making the Senate ban not only the construction of permanent theatre but the installation of temporary benches for the ludi within a radius of a thousand paces from Rome. The cause of this ban was the protection of sacrality of games and the protection of the virile Roman costumes from effeminate Hellenic decadence. For Scipio Nasica the protection of Roman costumes must also pass through the clemency towards Carthage. It was not necessary to destroy Carthage, as Cato the Censor said; because the Romans without the fear of the enemy would have become slaves of the luxury and the ambition as though would have turned towards the same Roman institutions.
179 BC — Roman people renovating temples
Thirty years before the construction ban, the censor and pontifex Marcus Aemilius Lepidus built a permanent cavea and proscenium. Not the construction of a theater, but the renovation of an ancient temple with the addition of permanent structures to facilitate the theatrical performances during the religious games. Only Livius mentions this first permanent theatre: maybe it was demolished by the fury of Scipio Nasica, maybe it was simply forgotten.
57 BC — I am building a temple, not a theatre
Pompey knew how to bypass this ban: he would build a temple, not a theatre, where its cavea would simply be the steps for the temple. The temple would build outside the pomerium — the sacred boundary around Rome — in order to avoid any legal problem. Pompey designed his theatre inspired by that of Mytilene, when had seen during his return voyage from Asia Minor after the Third Mithridatic War. The theatre would build on the Campus Martius, near the Circus Flaminius. It would have a capacity of forty thousand seats (like Arsenal Stadium), a diameter of about hundred and thirty meters, and a scene ninety meters long. There would be the best paintings and the best statues, like the depiction of a woman who gives birth to an elephant, or another woman accompanied by her children on the stake, or the representation of the twelve nations defeated by Pompey; these last statues had been the work of the famous Coponius. Artificial canals would bring the water for the fight the oppressive summer heat. There would be a huge quadriporticus decorated with magnificent statues chosen by an art expert as Titus Pomponius Atticus; there would even be a little Curia for extraordinary assembly of Senate (in case a senator could not cross the pomerium for a little legal problem) and for assassinate Julius Caesar, but this is another story.
The construction of theatre started around the 57 BC as witnessed by Cicero: first the Roman people had contested him near the theatre due to the lack of grain then they had contested Pompey near the Senate. We can date the inauguration of the theater between the end of September and the beginning of October because some days before in the Senate Cicero had replied to provocations of Calpurnius Piso Censorinus.
Make experiment of this excessive and universal hatred if you dare. The most carefully prepared and magnificent games within the memory of man are just at hand, games such as not only never have been exhibited, but such that we cannot form a conception how it will he possible for any like them ever to be exhibited for the future. Trust yourself to the people, venture on attending these games. Are you afraid of hisses? Where are all the precepts of your schools? Are you afraid that there will be no acclamations raised in your honour? Surely it does not become a philosopher to regard even such a thing as that. You are afraid that violent hands may be laid on you. For pain is an evil, as you assert. The opinion which men entertain of you, disgrace, infamy, baseness, — these are all empty words, mere trifles. But about this I have no question. He will never dare to come near the games.
55 BC — The Greatest Ludus of All Time!
This enthusiastic wait of Cicero did not coincide with his words in a letter to Marcus Marius. We do not know much about Marcus Marius: he was a sophisticated man, maybe an epicurean; he lived quietly in a villa near Stabiae, although he did not suffer the Osci of Nuceria. He hated such the Greeks that he abstained from going on the Greek Road, the road that connected Stabiae with Sorrentine Peninsula. Most likely Marcus Marius was a whiny hypochondriac. He complained that he could not see the inaugural ludi, although he could certainly hate them. Cicero consoled his friend saying that the inaugural ludi had been as sumptuous as had been exaggerated.
Old actors were recalled on the scenes, although they were too old and voiceless. Six hundred mules used for the Clytemnestra of Accius and three hundred kraters for the Trojan Horse of Ennius (or Livius Andronicus); there was even a simulated battle with armed men. The Atellanes and the boxing matches were truly mediocre. The gladiator matches were so awful that Cicero attributed this sentence to Pompey: «operam et oleum perdidisse» («wasted both oil and toil»). The ten hunts should have been the main event of the inauguration. The people enjoyed them, but a sophisticated man like Cicero could not enjoy the savage bloodbath.
Pompey had counted on a particular hunt, but that backfired. The elephant hunting could have brought the people to glorify Pompey’s name, but they whistled and swore his name for having slaughtered such serene animals.
55 BC — Beware the elephants!
The ancient writers were inclined to divide the animals in two separate groups: the common animals (bestiae) and those animals as monstrous as they are human (belvae). There were copious stories about the goodness and the intelligence of the elephants: they lode the sun or protect the weakest or recognize the authority of a righteous emperor. Many Roman generals exhibited the elephants of enemy armies in their triumph. The consul Lucius Caecilius Metellus was most likely the first to show — and perhaps to slaughter— elephants in the Circus in the 250 BC. A century later the curule aediles Scipio Nasica (yes, mr. no permanent theatre) and Publius Lentulus organized an hunting with forty elephants. In the 99 BC, the curule aedile Claudius Pulcher organized the first fight between elephants. Twenty years later the Lucullus brothers organized the first fight between an elephant and a bull.
Perhaps the common people were not used to see the elephant hunting. About this I leave the word to Pliny the Elder.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VIII, 7, 20–22:
«Also in Pompey’s second consulship at the dedication of the Temple of Venus Victrix, twenty, or, as some record, seventeen, fought in the Circus, their opponents being Gaetulians armed with javelins, one of the animals putting up a marvellous fight — its feet beign disable by wounds it crawled aganist the hordes of the enemy on its knees, snatching their shields from them and throwing them into tha air, and these as they fell delighted the spectators by the curves they described, as if they were being thrown by a skilled juggler and not by an infuriated wild animal. There was also a marvellous occurrence in the case of another, which was killed by a single blow, as the javelin striking it under the eye had reached the vital parts of head. The whole band attempted to burst through the iron palisading by which they were enclosed and caused considerable trouble among the public. […] But Pompey’s elephants when they had lost all hope of escape tride to gain the compassion of the crowd by indescribable gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing, so much to the distress of the public that they forgot the general and his munificence carefully devised for their honour, and bursting into tears rose in a body and invoked curses on the head of Pompey for which he soon afterwards paid the penalty.»
Let’s imagine the following situation: the spectators were seeing these huge animals that were trying to escape and were led in the middle of the theatre by Getulian hunters in order to be butchered. Some hunter was trying to cut a tusk for to show it to Pompey. The unbearable and desperate trumpetings would have shocked the spectators so much that Plutarch described it as a terrifying spectacle. Really the people would have understood the trumpetings as prayers to gods, or as curses on Pompey. Cassius Dio reports the description of Pliny added that the elephants cursed Pompey and the hunters because they had broken the pacts under oath which had drawn up in Africa before the boarding for Italy. On the basis of Pliny, Seneca, and Dio the main event of the inauguration of Pompey’s theatre became the prophecy of Pompey’s death.
The day (and century) after
The fate of Pompey is well known: he was defeated by Caesar in the Civil War and escaped in Egypt, where Ptolemy XIII assassinated him and then presented his severed head to Caesar in order to ingratiate him. Caesar did not grab well: he overthrown Ptolemy, he nominated the sexy Cleopatra new Pharaoh, and a year before the ides of March he defied Pompey.
Pompey consecrated his temple in the 52 BC, but he had got a problem with the dedicatory inscription. He had been elected consul for the third time and he did not know whether to write consul tertio or consul tertium, because the numbers were not used yet. Cicero solved the problem by recommending to write only tert.. Caesar’s assassination happened right in the Curia of the theatre. Octavian had the curia walled up, declaring it “Locus scelleratus”. The theater was restored several times over six centuries of history, the last restoration work was that which King Theodoric ordered to Cassiodorus.
The elephants? During the dictatorship of Caesar, there was a simulated battle with war elephants in the Circus; Caesar had a moat built all around the track to divide it from the spectators’ seats. Augustus was the first to organize the fight between an elephant and a rhino. Germanicus loved the spectacles with the elephant acrobatics. During the Principate of Tiberius and that of Caligula, the last fight of a gladiator was against an elephant. In the inauguration of Colosseum, there were other fights between elephants and bulls, and in addition, the elephants bowed down in front of Emperor Titus. Commodus showed off his herculean force by killing elephants and decapitating ostriches in the Colosseum.
The Crisis of the Third Century leaded to decrease of elephants: there was only a elephant for the celebration for the return of Septimius Severus from Britannia; For the Ludi Saeculares Philip the Arab had to plunder the enclosure of his rival Gordian III. At the end of the fourth century, the poet Claudian asserted that the elephants were being hunted for ivory and not for spectacles. Almost two centuries later Saint Isidore of Seville confirmed the disappearance of elephants and lions in North Africa. The Europeans of the Middle Ages did not see any elephants: their appearance was remembered through the old books.
Post scriptum
- For other information about the THEATRUM POMPEI click here.
- According to the various archaeological researches, the theater’s capacity was ten thousand places, not forty thousand
