Theodor Mommsen - The history of Rome. Book V

These "Greek entertainment" in Rome seem not to have been properly scenic, but rather to have belonged to the category of composite exhibitions - primarily musical and declamatory - such as were not of rare occurrence in subsequent times also in Greece (Welcker, Griech. Trag., p. 1277). This view is supported by the prominence of flute-playing in Polybius (xxx. 13) and of dancing in the account of Suetonius regarding the armed dances from Asia Minor performed at Caesar's games and in the epitaph of Eucharis; the description also of the citharoedus (Ad Her. iv. 47, 60; comp. Vitruv. v. 5, 7) must have been derived from such "Greek entertainments". The combinations of these representations in Rome with Greek athletic combats is significant (Polyb. l. c.; Liv. xxxix. 22). Dramatic recitations were by no means excluded from these mixed entertainments, since among the players whom Lucius Anicius caused to appear in 587 in Rome, tragedians are expressly mentioned; there was however no exhibition of plays in the strict sense, but either whole dramas, or perhaps still more frequently pieces taken from them, were declaimed or sung to the flute by single artists. This must accordingly have been done also in Rome; but to all appearance for the Roman public the main matter in these Greek games was the music and dancing, and the text probably had little more significance for them than the texts of the Italian opera for the Londoners and Parisians of the present day. Those composite entertainments with their confused medley were far better suited for the Ionian public, and especially for exhibitions in private houses, than proper scenic performances in the Greek language; the view that the latter also took place in Rome cannot be refuted, but can as little be proved.

45.V. XI. Sciences of General Culture at This Period.