THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIV - Literature and Art

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Page 18

Of course all reputable persons kept aloof from such an occupation. The manager of the company (-dominus gregis-, -factionis-, also -choragus-), who was ordinarily also the chief actor, was generally a freedman, and its members were ordinarily his slaves; the composers, whose names have reached us, were all of them non-free. The remuneration was not merely small--a -honorarium- of 8000 sesterces (80 pounds) given to a dramatist is described shortly after the close of this period as unusually high--but was, moreover, only paid by the magistrates providing the festival, if the piece was not a failure.

With the payment the matter ended; poetical competitions and honorary prizes, such as took place in Attica, were not yet heard of in Rome--the Romans at this time appear to have simply applauded or hissed as we now do, and to have brought forward only a single piece for exhibition each day.(16)

16. It is not necessary to infer from the prologues of Plautus (Cas. 17; Amph. 65) that there was a distribution of prizes (Ritschl, Parerg. i. 229); even the passage Trin. 706, may very well belong to the Greek original, not to the translator; and the total silence of the -didascaliae- and prologues, as well as of all tradition, on the point of prize tribunals and prizes is decisive.

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