Roman Tragedy and Philosophy

Abstract

The study of tragedy and philosophy in the Roman world presents several difficulties. For many today, the great philosophical thinkers and dramatists of the antiquity were Greek. The modern philosophers who have looked to tragedy, from Hegel and Schopenhauer, to Nietzsche and Bernard Williams, have all mined Greek tragedy for insights and inspiration.1 The Romans would likely not be particularly surprised or bothered by this fact. Both tragedy and philosophy were imports from the Greek world that came to Rome as part of the city's growing political and military domination of the Mediterranean. To many Romans, the acceptance of drama and philosophy ran the risk of corrupting what they saw as their native and superior traditional society. During the middle of the Republican period, Cato the Elder went so far as to say that Rome would lose its empire if it ever allowed Greek literature to become part of its society (Plutarch Cato Maior 23.2). In reality, the opposite proved to be true. The more Rome conquered, the more it integrated Greek culture and ideas. As victims of a reverse form of cultural imperialism, the Romans would remain deeply suspicious of both practices. The 'origin' of tragedy at Rome likely came soon after Rome's victory over Carthage in the First Punic war with a performance of a Greek play translated by the former slave Livius Andronicus in 240 BC for the Roman Games (Ludi Romani) honoring Jupiter Optimus Maximus.2 Throughout the Republican period, several more festivals were added to the calendar, during which dramas would be performed along with several other forms of entertainment.3 Unlike classical Athens, where tragedies were only staged as part of the yearly competition at the festival of Dionysus each spring, there came to be several opportunities for drama to be performed in Rome, in both public and, particularly