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Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics also includes Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, art, mythology and society as secondary subjects.
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature flourished for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into several periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure,” for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber, also known as Liber Pater, was a god of viticulture and wine, male fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights attached to coming of age. His cult and functions were increasingly associated with Romanised forms of the Greek Dionysus/Bacchus, whose mythology he came to share.
A cloak is a type of loose garment worn over clothing, mostly but not always as outerwear for outdoor wear, serving the same purpose as an overcoat, protecting the wearer from the weather. It may form part of a uniform. People in many different societies may wear cloaks. Over time cloak designs have changed to match fashion and available textiles.
Lucius Livius Andronicus was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period during the Roman Republic. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family, producing Latin translations of Greek works, including Homer's Odyssey. The translations were meant, at first, as educational devices for the school which he founded. He also wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language. His comedies were based on Greek New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term comoedia palliata or fabula palliata, meaning "cloaked comedy," the pallium being a Greek-style cloak. The Roman biographer Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and Ennius. The genre was imitated by later generations of playwrights, and Andronicus is accordingly regarded as the father of Roman drama and of Latin literature in general; that is, he was the first man of letters to write in Latin. Varro, Cicero, and Horace, all men of letters during the subsequent Classical Latin period, considered Livius Andronicus to have been the originator of Latin literature. He is the earliest Roman poet whose name is known.
The toga, a distinctive garment of Ancient Rome, was a roughly semicircular cloth, between 12 and 20 feet in length, draped over the shoulders and around the body. It was usually woven from white wool, and was worn over a tunic. In Roman historical tradition, it is said to have been the favored dress of Romulus, Rome's founder; it was also thought to have originally been worn by both sexes, and by the citizen-military. As Roman women gradually adopted the stola, the toga was recognized as formal wear for male Roman citizens. Women found guilty of adultery and women engaged in prostitution might have provided the main exceptions to this rule.
The stola was the traditional garment of Roman women, corresponding to the toga that was worn by men. It was also called vestis longa in Latin literary sources, pointing to its length.
Gnaeus Naevius was a Roman epic poet and dramatist of the Old Latin period. He had a notable literary career at Rome until his satiric comments delivered in comedy angered the Metellus family, one of whom was consul. After a sojourn in prison he recanted and was set free by the tribunes. After a second offense he was exiled to Tunisia, where he wrote his own epitaph and committed suicide. His comedies were in the genre of Palliata Comoedia, an adaptation of Greek New Comedy. A soldier in the Punic Wars, he was highly patriotic, inventing a new genre called Praetextae Fabulae, an extension of tragedy to Roman national figures or incidents, named after the Toga praetexta worn by high officials. Of his writings there survive only fragments of several poems preserved in the citations of late ancient grammarians.
A theatrical culture flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. At its centre was the city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, and the theatre was institutionalised there as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres emerged there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies. Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements.
The Atellan Farce, also known as the Oscan Games, were masked improvised farces in Ancient Rome. The Oscan athletic games were very popular, and usually preceded by longer pantomime plays. The origin of the Atellan Farce is uncertain, but the farces are similar to other forms of ancient theatre such as the South Italian Phlyakes, the plays of Plautus and Terence, and Roman mime. Most historians believe the name is derived from Atella, an Oscan town in Campania. The farces were written in Oscan and imported to Rome in 391 BC. In later Roman versions, only the ridiculous characters speak their lines in Oscan, while the others speak in Latin.
Fabula may refer to:
The praetexta or fabula praetexta was a genre of Latin tragedy introduced at Rome by Gnaeus Naevius in the third century BC. It dealt with historical Roman figures, in place of the conventional Greek myths. Subsequent writers of praetextae included Ennius, Pacuvius and Lucius Accius. The name refers to the toga praetexta, purple striped, that was the official dress of Roman magistrates and priests. It was mainly a Roman garment. The toga praetexta was also worn by Roman freeborn girls before they came of age.
The architectural form of theatre in Rome has been linked to later, more well-known examples from the 1st century BC to the 3rd Century AD. The theatre of ancient Rome referred to a period of time in which theatrical practice and performance took place in Rome. The tradition has been linked back even further to the 4th century BC, following the state’s transition from monarchy to republic. Theatre during this era is generally separated into genres of tragedy and comedy, which are represented by a particular style of architecture and stage play, and conveyed to an audience purely as a form of entertainment and control. When it came to the audience, Romans favored entertainment and performance over tragedy and drama, displaying a more modern form of theatre that is still used in contemporary times.
Clothing in ancient Rome generally comprised a short-sleeved or sleeveless, knee-length tunic for men and boys, and a longer, usually sleeved tunic for women and girls. On formal occasions, adult male citizens could wear a woolen toga, draped over their tunic, and married citizen women wore a woolen mantle, known as a palla, over a stola, a simple, long-sleeved, voluminous garment that modestly hung to cover the feet. Clothing, footwear and accoutrements identified gender, status, rank and social class. This was especially apparent in the distinctive, privileged official dress of magistrates, priesthoods and the military.
Fabula palliata is a genre of Roman drama that consists largely of Romanized versions of Greek plays. The name palliata comes from pallium, the Latin word for a Greek-style cloak. It is possible that the term fabula palliata indicates that the actors who performed wore such cloaks. Another possibility is that the fabula itself is metaphorically "cloaked" in a Greek style. As in all Roman drama, the actors wore masks that easily identified which of the stock characters they represented.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
The history of theatre charts the development of theatre over the past 2,500 years. While performative elements are present in every society, it is customary to acknowledge a distinction between theatre as an art form and entertainment, and theatrical or performative elements in other activities. The history of theatre is primarily concerned with the origin and subsequent development of the theatre as an autonomous activity. Since classical Athens in the 5th century BC, vibrant traditions of theatre have flourished in cultures across the world.
A fabula crepidata or fabula cothurnata is a Latin tragedy with Greek subjects. The genre probably originated in adaptations of Greek tragedy beginning in the early third century BC. Only nine have survived intact, all by Seneca. Of the plays written by Lucius Livius Andronicus, Gnaeus Naevius, Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius, Lucius Accius, and others, only titles, small fragments, and occasionally brief summaries are left. Ovid's Medea also did not survive.
References
- ↑ Manuwald, Gesine (2011). Roman Republican Theatre . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 157. ISBN 9780521110167.
- 1 2 3 Boyle, A.J. (2006). Roman Tragedy. Oxon: Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 0415251028.
- ↑ Dutsch, Dorota; James, Sharon; Konstan, David (2015). Women in Roman Republican Drama. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. p. 155. ISBN 9780299303143.
- Peter Lebrecht Schmidt "Togata" in: Brill's New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. Consulted online on 21 July 2017
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