Slave theater in the Roman republic: Plautus and popular comedy PDF
Preview Slave theater in the Roman republic: Plautus and popular comedy
i SLAVE THEATER IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC Roman comedy evolved early in the war- torn 200s BCE. Troupes of lower- class and slave actors traveled through a militarized landscape full of displaced persons and the newly enslaved; together, the actors made comedy to address mixed-c lass, hybrid, multilingual audiences. Surveying the extant fragments of early comedy and the whole of the Plautine corpus, where slaves are central figures, this book is grounded in the history of slavery and integrates theories of resistant speech, humor, and performance. Part I shows how actors joked about what people feared ‒ natal alienation, beatings, sexual abuse, hard labor, hunger, poverty ‒ and how street-t heater forms confronted debt, vio- lence, and war loss. Part II catalogues the onstage expression of what people desired: revenge, honor, free will, legal personhood, family, marriage, sex, food, free speech; a way home, through memory; and manumission, or escape ‒ all complicated by the actors’ maleness. Comedy starts with anger. Amy Richlin is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a path-b reaking historian of Roman sexuality. From the time of her first book, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (1983), she has searched for the sub- cultures of muted groups and outgroups outside the literary canon. An outspoken feminist, she edited Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (1992) and co- edited Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993); her essays on Roman women’s history are collected in Arguments with Silence (2014). Since 2000, she has been working on Roman comedy, and addressed the need to teach about ancient Orientalism in Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus (2005). Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy advances her endeavor to find the forgotten, bringing slave voices back to history. ii iii SLAVE THEATER IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC Plautus and Popular Comedy AMY RICHLIN University of California, Los Angeles iv University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06- 04/ 06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ 9781107152311 DOI: 10.1017/ 9781316585467 © Amy Richlin 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Richlin, Amy, 1951– author. Title: Slave theater in the Roman Republic : Plautus and popular comedy / Amy Richlin. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017. Identifiers: LCCN 2017037837 | ISBN 9781107152311 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Theater – Rome – History. | Latin drama (Comedy) – History and criticism. | Actors – Rome. | Theater and society – Rome – History. | Slavery – Rome – Social conditions. | Civilization, Classical. Classification: LCC PA6073 .D86 2016 | DDC 792.0937090/14–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037837 ISBN 978- 1- 107- 15231- 1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third- party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. v For Sandra Joshel vi vii Contents List of Tables page x Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Note to Readers xvi 1 History and Theory 1 Prologue 1 Models of the Palliata 9 History of Slavery 21 History of the 200s bce: War, Poverty, Class Conflict 34 Free Speech 40 Humor Theory 43 Performance Theory 47 Plautus and Theories of Popular Culture 50 The Politics of Reading Plautus 58 Ancient Slavery and Current Ideology 66 PART I: WHAT WAS GIVEN 69 2 The Body at the Bottom 71 Names 72 Addressing the Body of the Audience 84 Beating 90 Sex 105 Hunger 126 The Comedian’s Body 136 3 Singing for Your Supper 138 Cheerleading 142 Verbal Dueling 151 Flagitatio, Occentatio, Quiritatio 171 vii viii viii Contents Debt and Shame, Fides and Credit 184 Actors and Audience in the Wartime Economy 196 PART II: WHAT WAS DESIRED 199 4 Getting Even 203 Putting the Owner Down 204 Raising Up the Slave 224 Claiming Good Things 237 The Dream of a Free Place 250 5 Looking like a Slave- Woman 252 Object into Subject 256 Slave- Woman Drag 281 Abusing the Era 303 “I will still be some mother’s daughter” 306 When the Fat Lady Sings 309 6 Telling Without Saying 311 Double Meaning 314 Face- Out Lines 318 Normative Statements and Exploding Cigars 325 Turning Object into Subject 327 Grumbling 330 Editorials 340 “Good Slave” Speeches 342 Telling Without Saying 349 7 Remembering the Way Back 351 Human Trafficking and the Road Home 357 Traffic 357 Road Maps 366 Family Reunion and the Memory of Freedom 387 Remember Your Orders 389 Remember Where You Came from 398 The Way Back and the Way Out 414 8 Escape 417 Manumission 418 Kings 434 Birds and Cages 451 Getting Off the Grid 458 The Isles of the Blest and the Isles of the Damned 464 Conquest 469 Heaven 474 Over Jordan 476 Conclusion: From Stage to Rebellion 478
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