S34 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[August, 



farthest from the ca\'ea fixes the front of the stage; hut in the 

 Roman theatre the diameter itself determines the front of the 

 stag-e, or jnilpitunt. The stai;e, tlierefore, in the Roman tlicatre, 

 is hrought nearer to the audience, and made deeper. Tlie lenj^jth 

 of the stage was two diameters of the orchestra. The increased 

 deptli was rendered necessary on account of tlie greater number 

 of persons assembled upon it ; for the Romans put both tlie 

 cliorus and the musicians upon their stage. The points from whence 

 Uie several staircases began to ascend the tocto were fixed by the 

 vertices of four equilateral triangles, inscribed within the circle 

 (when comjileted) of the orchestra. In the Roman theatre, as we 

 have already observed, the front of the stage was called the 

 jmljnium ; and it was from that part that the interlocutors s])oke. 

 Some think tliat the pulpitinn was a little elevated above the level 

 of the stage ; but at all events, the word has passed into use for 

 designating a place to speak from in our sacred edifices. The 

 lowest range of seats was raised abo\-e the area of the orchestra 

 (one-sixth of its diameter), and the seats themselves did not exceed 

 1 ft. 4 in. in height. The stage in the Roman theatre was only 

 elevated 5 feet above the seats in the orchestra : in the (ireek 

 theatre it was double that height. I have only hinted at the 

 geometrical precision with which all these things were defined, 

 and I shall relieve you from such dry details by a reference to the 

 drawings behind me. The postsceiiium speaks for itself : it was a 

 long narrow gallery behind the sceiia, where the actors retired, 

 and where apartments or compartments were provided for them. 

 From the pnstxccnium were jiassages into the porticoes or gardens, 

 which generally surrounded the theatres : hut to these I shall have 

 occasion to refer when I have finished the history and description 

 of the theatres at Rome, to which I now come. 



I have already remarked, that the earliest theatres at Rome, as 

 well as at Athens, were hut temporary erections of wood. The 

 Romans were satisfied with standing-room for 200 years, and no 

 seats wei-e allowed ; " lest," as Tacitus says, " if the people sat, 

 whole days might be spent in idleness." Notwithstanding this 

 prohibition to build permanent theatres, the temporary edifices 

 were constructed with a magnificence which surpasses all belief. 

 The wealth which supplied those theatrical exhibitions was gene- 

 rally the plunder of rich provinces : easily earned, and as easily 

 dissipated, merely to obtain favour with the people, and procure 

 still more lucrative appointments. All the bribery and corruption 

 that ever came before a committee of an English House of Com- 

 mons sink into insignificance compared with those times " when 

 Rome was free." The treating of our " worthy and independent 

 electors" at the open house of the candidate, was economy and par- 

 simony compared with the lavish expenditure of a candidate for 

 the honours and emoluments of a Roman governorship ; and we 

 cannot doubt, that whilst those worthy citizens were feasting for 

 whole days at the expense of a Scaurus or a Curio, they would be 

 loud in the praises of liberty ; and had they known how to put 

 their exclamations into the polite language of modern Europe, the 

 air would have resounded in the midst of those entertainments 

 with " Vive la Repuhlique !" It was not until the year of the city 

 699 (that is, within S3 years of the Christian era), that a theatre of 

 solid materials was built at Rome, and this was constructed by 

 Pompey on his return from Asia, at the close of the Mithridatic 

 war; but even Pompey found it expedient to pay a deference to 

 the popular feeling. " Therefore," says TertuUian, " Pompey the 

 Great, less great by his theatre only, when he erected that strong- 

 hold of wickedness, dreading lest tiie rebuke of the Censor might 

 injure his memory, he built a temple to Venus on the top of it, and 

 when he invited the people to come to the dedication, he did not 

 call it a theatre, but the Temple of Venus, to which, he said, ' we 

 have subjoined seats for seeing shows.' " The seats were therefore 

 considered as the steps by which to ascend to the temple. We may 

 call this either a pious fraud or a legal fiction. A piece of marble 

 was found, in 1525, near the site of Pompey's theatre, on which 

 Marliano read the words, " Veneris Victricis." This building was 

 erected in the third consulate of Pompey, and when the inscription 

 came to be placed on tlie frieze, a dispute arose whether it should 

 be COS. tertio or tertium. The matter was referred to Cicero, who 

 advised the disputants to settle the controversy by writing cos. 

 tert. 



At the dedication of his famous theatre, Pompey produced twenty 

 elephants ; and when he was accused in the seiuite of introducing 

 too much luxury into the city, he convinced the conscript fathers 

 that it was an economy to build a solid theatre at once instead of 

 raising a temporary structure on every occasion of giving shows. 

 The Temple of Venus served very well as a jirctext for making 

 seats, gradus upectaculurunt ; but it could not equally be alleged 

 for erecting a solid stage. It was not until the reign of Tiberius 



that this part of the theatre was added, and finally completed by 

 Caligula. It was dedicated anew by the Emperor Claudius, who 

 restored it after a fire, and it reached its greatest splendour in the 

 time of Nero. Two vanquished chiefs, who came from the north 

 of Germany to render submission to the emperor, were taken to 

 Pompey's theatre in order tliat they might see the greatness of the 

 peo|»le.' It contained, according to Pliny, 10,000 spectators; and 

 when Tiridates, king of Armenia, came to Rome, Nero caused the 

 whole to be gilded, to show oti' the magnificence of the Romans to 

 the vanquished Asiatic. It passed through a succession of events 

 until Theodorus<-ommissionedSymmachus to rebuild it; but not li>ng 

 after it shared tlie fate of the rest of the splendid edifices of Rome, 

 and finally came into possession of the Ursiui family, who occupied 

 that quarter of the city in the wars of the middle ages. In the 

 fifteenth century, an inscription, found with the name of Pompey, 

 directed the antiquary to find out its site. Another indication of 

 the place where this theatre stood was given in the finding of the 

 famous statue which is now in the Palazzo Spada. That statue 

 was found under the partition wall of a house, and lying across in 

 such a way as to gi\e two proprietors of the house a claim to the 

 treasure: not able to agree about dividing the spoil, they came to the 

 resolution of cutting Pompey in two, and each nuiii taking his own 

 half. The matter having reached the ears of Cardinal Capodifezzo, 

 he hastened to Pope Julius III. to inform him of the judgment 

 that had been pronounced u]ion the statue. The astonished pope 

 dispatched a messenger witii all haste, and sent 500 scudi to he 

 divided between the litigants, instead of Pompey. Flaminius 

 Vacca, who relates this anecdote, says the statue was found near 

 the Palazzo della Cancelleria, in the \'icolo dei Scutari. The 

 statue did not stand in the theatre, but in the Curia which Pompey 

 built as an appendage to it ; and the belief still obtains that it is 

 the statue at the feet of which Cfesar fell. Being thus directed to 

 the site of this famous building, we find ourselves in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the Church of St. Andrea della Valle. From 

 near that church to the Palazzo Pio, the site is marked by a gradual 

 rising of the ground, but no vestiges meet the eye. In order to 

 see the remains of Pompey's theatre, we enter the court-yard of 

 the Palazzo Pio, and descending into the vaults upon which the 

 Palazzo is built, we find ourselves, at the depth of JO Roman palms, 

 among the foundation arches. These have been originally hollowed 

 out of the natural rock, and they are pointed at the angles with 

 large blocks of ]ieperine stone. One of the cunei or sections of 

 the cavea belonging to the lowest tier, may be perfectly traced ; 

 and after ascending to the court-yard again, and upon entering 

 the stables, we see a second story of arches for supporting the 

 seats, the construction of which is remarkable for its solidity ; 

 and it would not be difficult to trace, among the modern buildings 

 and in the cellars of the Palazzo, at least one-half, perhaps two- 

 thirds, of the whole cavea. I will not stay to describe to you 

 the blocks of peperine and opus reticulatum, for the great point 

 gained Dy tracing the cioieu is the fixing of the position of the 

 scvna or stage. This appears to have reached very near the present 

 site of the church of St. Andrea. But the most remarkable cir- 

 cumstance attending an investigation of the buildings erected by 

 Pompey in this part of Rome, is the being able to present aground- 

 plan of them, although they have almost all vanished from oif the 

 face of the earth. In the sixteenth century there was found behind 

 the church of SS. Cosma and Damiauo a plan of ancient Rome, 

 done in marble, and which had served to encrust the walls of the 

 Temple (it is supposed) of Romulus and Remus. This marble map, 

 where the ground-j)lan of all the pul)lic buildings was laid down, 

 was found broken into fragments ; some of them irrecoverable ; 

 others, gathered up with care and put together, presented an idea 

 of a building. They now encrust the walls of the staircase of the 

 Capitoline Museum, and are known under the designation of the 

 Pianta Capitolina,"" The two fragments most perfect happen to 

 represent the Tlieatre of Pompey and the Portico of Octavia. By 

 a reference to that fragment of the Pianta, you will not only see 

 the ground-jilan of the theatre, but also of some other buildings 

 which were attached to it. Vitruvius cites the I'<u-ticus I'ompeiana 

 as an example of what a portico should be, when attached to a 

 theatre for the convenience of the actors, or for the people to take 

 shelter in, in case of rain. We know, from IMartial, that Pom- 

 pey's Portico had a hundred columns. Eusebius calls it, in conse 

 quence, " Hecatonstylon." The Pianta C^apitolina exhibits some 

 of those columns, but the fragment is imperfect. This celebrated 

 portico was painted by artists of renown — Antiphilus, Pausias, and 

 Nicias — the subjects being suited to the atmosphere which Ovid's 

 lovers breathed. About the portico were rows of plane trees, 



* These fragmeots were first engiaved End illustrated by Bellarlo, aud are reproduced 

 at the eod of t^m. iv. of the " Unevius' Bomaa Aaliquitles." 



