Abstract
Thefabula praetextais a category of Roman drama about which we are poorly informed. Ancienttestimoniaare scanty and widely scattered, while surviving fragments comprise fewer than fifty lines. Only five or six titles are firmly attested. Scholarly debate, however, has been extensive, and has especially focused on reconstructing the plots of the plays.1 The main approach has been to amplify extant fragments by fitting them into a plot taken from treatments of the same episode in later historical sources such as Livy, Dionysius, or Plutarch.2 This method was extended by Mommsen and others in their efforts to identify new titles and plots by isolating passages in the historians which seem written in a dramatic style, and could therefore be interpreted as derivations from historical plays.3 Such a line of approach is both risky and subjective. It is based on the desire to recover a lost genre, which modern scholars feel must or should have existed. It is tempting to imagine that the Romans would have encouraged a thriving national theatre on historical themes. Such a genre, it is argued, would have been influential in shaping the average Roman's view of past events and the treatment of famous episodes by later historians.4 The conclusions reached have virtually no basis in the ancient sources we actually have. The result is largely a fiction created by the scholarly imagination.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Philosophy,History,Classics
Reference197 articles.
1. Zorzetti , op. cit. (n. 1), p. 56
2. The Roman Stage
Cited by
123 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献
1. Cato's Origines and Earlier Traditions of Self-Representation and Self-Commemoration at Rome;American Journal of Philology;2023-12
2. Living Theatre in the Ancient Roman House;2022-12-22
3. Early Latin Poetry;Brill Research Perspectives in Classical Poetry;2022-03-30
4. Index;The Cult of Castor and Pollux in Ancient Rome;2021-04-29
5. Bibliography;The Cult of Castor and Pollux in Ancient Rome;2021-04-29