Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (review)

Theatre was arguably the most ephemeral cultural product of the ancient world. Its fragmentary remains record only the libretti of a complex art that included recitation, instrumental and vocal music, dancing, and gesture. Consequently, it is easy for philologists to forget that these texts, which we subject to microscopic inspection, were embodied by actors whose techniques can only be imperfectly known. There have been attempts at recreation: theatre practitioner Peter Meineck argues that masks prevented actors from interacting in the realistic manner of modern Western theatre, compelling them to address the audience directly. Most contemporary productions of ancient drama, however, even with masks, rely on contemporary conventions. We may no more want to recreate an authentic version of a Greek tragedy or Roman pantomime than follow an ancient recipe for fish stew; the results might be far too strange for modern tastes. Still, the questions surrounding ancient acting are intriguing and important, and as this impressive collection of twenty essays demonstrates, can be answered with a fair degree of ingenuity and insight.

This is not a comprehensive reference work, as the editors admit, but rather a collection of essays which complement and enhance each other. Themes and resonances throughout the collection produce a cohesive and wide-spanning view of an ancient lost art. There are three sections: "The art of the actor"; "The professional world"; and "The idea of the actor." The first two essays treat the musical aspects of acting. Little remains of ancient music, although Greek tragedy was more like an opera than anything else, and two thirds of Roman comedy featured cantica, or songs. Edith Hall's exemplary "The singing actors of antiquity" combines artistic representations with textual and epigraphic evidence (inscriptions, etc.) for a historical overview of vocal techniques from Greek tragedy to later Roman theatrical productions. Peter Wilson continues with a discussion of the social roles of musicians who were such an integral part of theatre, the flute players or auletes of tragedy, including stars like Pronomos and Antigeneidas, who enjoyed wealth and prestige. Wilson's essay is characteristic of this collection with its focus on one aspect of ancient performance (including such details as the changing styles in musicians' footwear) and a thorough examination of diverse and recondite evidence.

Kostas Valakas's theoretically nuanced essay considers relationships between the dramatic text and the voice and body of the actor. Richard Green interprets vase paintings, terracotta figurines, and references in contemporary literature to offer a reconstruction of gestures in tragedy and comedy. Reading what seem to be dramatic scenes on Greek vases is a dicey matter, but Green expertly compares a series of depictions of Sophocles' lost Andromeda, among other plays, to deduce the gestures employed in the original performances. Eric Csapo considers the question of realism in classical performance styles, with specific attention to vocal mimicry and the linguistic portraiture of, for example, barbarians and women. Csapo's discussion leads quite naturally into chapters by G. M. Sifakis, Eric Handley, and Richard Hunter, which also explore issues of realism.

Jane Lightfoot, starting off the second section, disassembles the prevailing notion of a theatre in decline during the Hellenistic period by bringing to light the professionalism of the actors' guilds or technitai of Dionysus. Peter Brown follows with "Actors and actor-managers at Rome." One of the most stimulating aspects of this collection is its venture into noncanonical types of performance. John Jory uses the theatrical masks of the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias (a Roman colony in Asia Minor) to investigate an extremely popular genre, the pantomime. This lavish entertainment, originating in the mid-third century BCE and favored by the emperor Augustus, featured dancing and tragic, comic, and satyric themes. Using evidence that is generally overlooked, theatrical graffiti, Charlotte Roueche discusses the same masks. Richard Hunter explores the production of mime, yet another form of entertainment in the Hellenistic world and Rome, by considering papyrus fragments of surviving productions, descriptions from ancient...