Ancient & modern
FOURTEEN people, including eminent classical scholars, have been arrested in Sicily for allowing the Mafia to run Syracuse's ancient Greek theatre with losses of billions of lire to the public purse. Silly old Mafia! They should have followed ancient Roman practice.
Romans adopted the theatre from the Greeks in the 3rd century BC. But permanent structures were not erected because Romans feared they might become places where large crowds would gather, without warning, for whatever fell purpose. For example, when Cicero was exiled by his enemy Clodius in 58 uc, the crowd at gladiatorial games staged in the open air in the Forum cheered Cicero's supporters and booed his enemies so loudly that 'they alarmed the gladiators and frightened the horses'. The senate promptly voted for Cicero's recall. So temporary wooden stages, seating and backdrops, of increasingly elaborate design, were put up to accommodate actors and audience.
Being part of the festival calendar, the plays were organised by the state. But the funds set aside were never adequate to satisfy the impresarios' extravagance or the spectators' lust for novelty. The officials in charge therefore took it upon themselves to ensure that the festivities went with a bang, and poured their own money into the productions. This obviously did no harm to their popularity, and it became standard practice for an ambitious young politician to help himself up the first rungs of the ladder by generous theatrical funding.
It was the dynast Pompey who turned the argument on its head. Instead of regarding a permanent meeting place as a danger to order, he saw the considerable advantages of a fixed, luxury location, dedicated to himself, where loyal followers could be stage-managed into hysterical displays of support. So in 55 BC he funded Rome's first stone theatre (for about 20,000 people), a fabulous and hugely popular building complex with colonnades, streams and fountains, and crowned with a temple dedicated to 'Venus the Conqueror'. This started the practice, eagerly embraced by emperors, of powerful individuals winning the right to indulge their desires by funding huge national monuments in their own name for all to enjoy.
If the Mafia had only paid attention during their Latin lessons, they would have poured billions into the theatre, not taken billions out. Basking in popularity, they could have proceeded to do whatever they wanted.
Peter Jones
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