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1 results

  • Chapter Three - Playing Romans: Representations of actors and the theatre

  • Catharine Edwards, Birkbeck College, University of London
  • Foreword by Caroline Vout, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025, pp 98-136

  • Summary

    Disapproval of acting and the theatre was a distinguishing Roman characteristic, in the eyes of many ancient authors. The significance Romans attached to the different ways actors were viewed in Greece and in Rome is indicated by Cornelius Nepos, in the preface to his Lives, where he sets out some of the principal contrasts between Greek and Roman culture ... While Greeks admired actors, according to Nepos, to display oneself on stage, to make a spectacle of oneself, was considered by Romans to be shameful. Other writers, too, saw differing attitudes to the theatre as a significant indicator of the contrast between Greek and Roman culture.