Abstract
The Emperor Nero (37 bc – ad 68) was notoriously known, as ‘imperator scaenicus’,1 a patron and practitioner of theatre so excessive in his espousal that his personality and reign came to be seen (then and later) as theatricalism ‘run rampant’; wrought up to encompass painting, architecture, public ceremony, political rhetoric, and all manner of both public and private expression. Of course, with a performing Emperor, such a cult of theatricalism was endorsed at the highest level, and emulation (and condemnation) followed. Seneca lamented how ‘Throughout the whole City the private stage (privatum pulpitum) resounds; ‘it is danced upon by both men and women; wives and husbands compete over which displays a more sensuous thigh’ (Nat. Quaes. 7.32.3). Dio, recounting elite behaviour during the reign of Nero, notes dramatic performances, music, pantomimes, and choral presentations, enacted by people of both sexes and all ages, ‘everyone displaying to best advantage whatever talent they possessed, with all the most distinguished people … and everyone taking instruction for the purpose’ (61.19.2). Taking his show on the road, the Emperor undertook a grand tour to Greece, performing (and winning 1808 victories) in the cycle of sacred agons: great competitive festivals comprising (in addition to athletic contests) theatre, poetry, and music.
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Notes
Peri Automatopoietikes (On Automaton Building), 2.20–30: Book Two ‘On Stationary Automata’. Heron’s date is securely established by his reference to a lunar eclipse known to have taken place in AD 62. It is at least possible that Heron’s work was known to Nero. In his book Pneumatics, he describes a hydraulic organ; a topic in which Nero was keenly interested. Suetonius records how Nero ’spent the day exhibiting some water-organs of a new and hitherto unknown form, explaining their several features and lecturing on the theory and complexity of each of them; and he even declared that he would presently produce them all in the theatre’ (Suet. Nero. 41) On the vexed question of whether ancient performances were actually customarily composed and presented in discrete scenic units, see R. Ferri, ‘Scenes in Roman Drama: A Lexical Note’, Classical Quarterly (New Series) 58:2 (December 2008), 675–81.
These are cited and described in W. Schmidt, Heron Alexandrinus, Opera, Vol. I, Druckwerke und Automatentheater Griechish und Deutsch Herausgegeben LI-LXIX (Leipzig: Teubner, 1899), 53–6.
See Sharkey, who notes, ‘A program is simply a set of instructions that tell a machine what to do. They don’t have to be written out; they can be hard-wired into a machine. The important point is that these instructions can be changed without having to dismantle or rebuild the entire mechanism — in other words, the program has to be separate from the rest of the machine’s workings’ (32). He claims that in effect, Heron employed a ‘mechanism [that] provides the basis of a simple programming language’ (35). N. Sharkey, ‘I Ropebot’, NewScientist, 7 July 2007, 32–5.
The evidence is considered by C. W. Marshall, ‘Sophocles’ Nauplius and Heron of Alexandria’s Mechanical Theatre’, in A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Shards from Kolonos: Studies in Sophoclean Fragments (Bari: Levante Editori, 2003).
Cf., however, Formigé who, exceptionally, believed that Heron’s Book Two provides important evidence for Hellenistic staging conventions. J. Formigé, ‘Note sur les machines des décors mobiles dans les theâtres antiques’, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (1921), 190–5.
Brockett, Mitchell and Hardberger, Making the Scene, 80–1. The development of such scenery is detailed in a great many historical theatre books, most recently and comprehensively by Brockett et al., 62–109. The first translation into Italian of Heron’s work on automata was by Baldassare Baldi, published in 1589. Leclerc believes moveable scenery first appeared with experiments to create the Roman scaena versilis and scaena ductilis; H. Leclerc, Les origines italiennes de l’architecture théâtrale moderne: l’évolution des formes en Italie de la Renaissance à la fin du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Droz, 1946).
The earliest known sketch by Jones showing a proscenium arch is for The Masque of Queens, 1609. See S. Orgel and R. Strong, Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 138, and fig.15.
See Richard Beacham, Adolphe Appia: Theatre Artist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 57–8.
All translations used here from Heron are quoted from S. Murphy, ‘Heron of Alexandria’s On Automaton-Making’, in G. Hollister-Short and F. James (eds), History of Technology, Vol. 17 (London: Mansell Publishing, 1995), 1–44.
See Richard Beacham, ‘The Emperor as Impresario: Producing the Pageantry of Power’, in K. Galinsky (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 151–74.
For references to the use of the pegma, a sort of scenic flying device, see Richard Beacham, The Roman Theatre and its Audience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 180–1. Juvenal (4.122) notes how it could ‘whisk boys away, up into the awning’.
In that regard, cf. R. Schöne, ‘Zu Hyginus und Hero’, Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts, Vol. 5 (1890), 73–7. He notes that Heron states he accepted most of Philon’s scenario ‘except Athena’s crane; here … he made the mechanism unnecessarily difficult, because it is quite possible for her to appear on stage, and then disappear again without a crane’ (2.20.2), going on to outline the method which he, Heron, subsequently includes (2.29.1) in his description of the fifth and final scene. And yet, as Schöne points out, elsewhere in the text of his treatise Heron nevertheless refers to the presence of a crane (in the ‘fly tower’ above the stage). Schöne takes this contradiction (or negligence) as evidence to suggest that in fact, apart from his description of scene 5, ‘the largest part of Book Two of the [Heron] text … is taken very faithfully, and perhaps verbatim, from Philon.’ (My translation from the German.)
Margarete Bieber, The History of The Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 283, fn. 31, cites Bulle, ‘Untersuchungen an griechischen Theatern’, 50 ff., who suggested that post holes associated with the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens were ‘for shelves, where rolls of painted canvases used for scenery were stored’.
Cf. Marshall, C. W., ‘Sophocles’ Nauplius and Heron of Alexandria’s Mechanical Theatre’, in A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Shards from Kolonos: Studies in Sophoclean Fragments. (Bari: Levante Editori, 2003), 263.
The best account of the Hellenistic theatre structure and the evidence for its scenic provision remains Bieber, chs 6 and 9. Leacroft presents some useful depictions of several Hellenistic theatres, including some with thyromata (which he dates to mid-second century BC. R. Leacroft and H. Leacroft, Theatre and Playhouse (London: Methuen, 1984), 16–26.
Varro also refers to scaenae ductiles. See Gino Funaioli, Grammaticae Romanae fragmenta collegit (Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1907), fragments 309–16.
The evidence for the use of changeable scenery in Roman theatres is presented by P. Kragelund, ‘History, sex, and scenography in the Octavia’, Symbolae Osloenses, 80:1 (2005), 112–13.
The evidence for the use of changeable scenery in Roman theatres is presented by P. Kragelund, ‘History, sex, and scenography in the Octavia’, Symbolae Osloenses, 80:1 (2005), 112–13. See also W. Beare, The Roman Stage, 3rd edn (London: Methuen, 1964), Appendices F and H.
Vitruvius (5.5.7): ‘Many theatres are built every year in Rome … our public theatres are of wood and contain a great deal of boarding.’ References to wooden theatres at Rome continue into the imperial period with examples cited in the reigns of Augustus, at the Ludi Saeculares of 17 BC, and later during the reign of Caligula, and of Septimius Severus in 204 BC. See the discussion in Beacham, The Roman Theatre and its Audience, 63–8, and ‘Playing Places: The Temporary and the Permanent’, in J. Walton and M. McDonald (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 202–26.
See Berryman for a discussion focused upon Aristotle and the role of automata (including the inventions of Heron) in Greek philosophical thought. S. Berryman, ‘The Imitation of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy’, in Jessica Riskin, (ed.), Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Schurmann (2002) 44 notes that ‘automatic and semi-automatic mechanical devices became an important part of private and public representation. Literature offers us many examples’ (44). He also suggests, ‘It is possible that during the third and second centuries BC — when mechanics was emerging as a new science — Philon’s little pneumatic scenarios and automatic theatres were presented at private symposia in addition to or in replacement of the puppets and marionette-shows’ (45). A. Schürmann, ‘Pneumatics onstage in Pompeii: Ancient Automatic Devices and their Social Context’, in J. Renn and G. Castagnetti (eds), Homo Faber: Studies on Nature, Technology, and Science at the Time of Pompeii (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002), 35–55.
For the philosophical and theological ‘role of puppets’ in antiquity, see the discussion in Scott Shershow, Puppets in Popular Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), ch. 1.
In later times a statue of the puppeteer Eurycleides was erected in the Theatre of Dionysus, see A. Haigh, The Attic Theatre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), 161.
For the significance of a chorus numbering 12, see D. Wiles, Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 94–6.
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Beacham, R. (2013). Heron of Alexandria’s ‘Toy Theatre’ Automaton: Reality, Allusion and Illusion. In: Reilly, K. (eds) Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319678_2
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