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In 55 B.C. the triumphant general Pompey the Great persuaded the authorities to allow him to construct Rome’s first permanent theatre – the largest the Romans ever built, anywhere – and to name it after himself. This was no ordinary theatre and it has long fascinated and intrigued scholars. It served as the prototype for the many hundreds of theatres which the Romans constructed subsequently throughout their empire.

Who was Pompey the Great?

Opposition to a permanent theatre

Traditionally the provision of a permanent theatre in Rome had been vehemently opposed on moral, political, and security grounds. The nobility had resisted a permanent site perhaps primarily because its existence would compromise their ability to manipulate patronage to their advantage. For centuries ambitious politicians in Rome had erected temporary stages for a particular festive occasion, and which were torn down afterwards. The more extravagant and sumptuous the theatre, and the more spectacular and memorable the entertainment staged in it, the better chance the politician had of winning and retaining high office. But in the increasingly volatile conditions of the late Republic, Pompey recognised that he could assert his political pre-eminence in a highly effective and lasting manner by co-opting for himself a prominent form of display and patronage. A theatre could raise his prestige by, in effect, providing a continuous 'triumph'.

Pompey conceived his theatre on a monumental scale; extravagant, costly, and enormous. He had the means to realise these audacious plans as he had accumulated a vast war booty, much of which he had invested lucratively. Apart from the glory from such conspicuous and extravagant magnificence, the provision of a theatre also appealed to Pompey on an intellectual level. He was well trained in Greek and Latin literature, and he had a circle of artists and intellectuals as friends. Such people were greatly interested in Greek art and literature, and for them a theatre represented one means by which Rome (which had conquered Greece) could itself attain artistic and cultural pre-eminence. What grander gesture or more extravagant demonstration of Pompey’s status and ability to exploit Hellenic culture for the greater glory of the Roman people (and himself) could there be than to adorn the city with the most striking and venerable icon of all, a magnificent and permanent theatre?

More than just a theatre

Pompey’s sumptuous and grandiose edifice comprised in addition to the theatre itself (crowned by a temple of the goddess Venus Victrix), an extensive 'leisure-complex' of gardens enclosed within a colonnade, and galleries displaying rare works of art. It also included a Curia available for meetings of the Senate, which allowed individuals (such as Pompey himself) whose pro-consular status prevented them from crossing the formal boundaries (pomerium) of the City, to attend with impunity. It was in this Curia that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

Public portico gardens

Cicero - an eyewitness account

In a letter to his friend Marcus Marius, Cicero wrote (Ad. Fam. 7.1),

“If you ask me, the games were of course most magnificent; but they would not have been to your taste; that I infer from my own reactions. For in the first place those actors had returned to the stage out of respect for the occasion, who had, I would have thought better left it out of self-respect. Indeed, your favourite, our friend Aesopus, was such a failure that no one in the world would have regretted his staying away. When he began to swear the oath, his voice failed him at the crucial point… why should I tell your anything further? You know what the rest of the games were like. Why, they were not even as attractive as games on a modest scale often are. For any feeling of enjoyment was destroyed by the spectacle of such magnificence – a magnificence that, I am sure, it will not bother you in the least to have missed seeing. For what pleasure can there be in the sight of six hundred mules in the Clytaemnestra, or of three thousand bowls in the Trojan Horse, or of the varied accoutrements of cavalry soldiers in some great battle scene? All of which excited the admiration of the people, but would have haven you no pleasure at all...

There remains the wild-beast hunts, two each day for five days – magnificent, to be sure. But what pleasure can it possibly be to a man of refinement, when either a puny human being is torn apart by a powerful beast, or some splendid animal is killed with a hunting spear? And even if all this is worth seeing, you have seen it more than once; and I, who was a spectator, saw nothing new it in. The last day was that of the elephants, and on that day the mob and crowd were greatly impressed, but demonstrated no enjoyment. In fact, the result was a kind of compassion and fellow feeling that such a huge beast has a kinship with the human race.”

The significance of the site in antiquity

Although aspects of the theatre’s architecture and formal layout were influenced by earlier practice in the Hellenistic world, Pompey’s theatre is the first major example of what became the standard prototype for later Roman theatres widely constructed thought the Empire. The Roman architect Vitruvius, in his detailed description of Roman theatre architecture, probably took the theatre of Pompey as his example.

Unlike the earlier Greek examples, the building was free-standing (not built into a hillside like most Greek Theatres), and architecturally unified by linking together the stage, orchestra and auditorium into a single structure. The site was also the first major example of 'imperial' architecture in Rome, decisively influencing the style of much subsequent building as well as Rome’s urban development. Throughout its history it was one of the great showplaces of the city of Rome as well as the venue for many of its most momentous events. A special government official, the 'Procurator operis theatri Pompeiani' oversaw the theatre’s maintenance.

The last record of private benefaction for a public building at Rome in late antiquity is that noting the comprehensive repair of the theatre carried out by a member of an old Senatorial family around AD 500. The last recorded games in Rome were given in 549 AD.

The decline of the site

The theatre remained in use longer than any of Rome’s other theatres, and was last restored and refurbished under the Ostrogoths in the sixth century AD. Its subsequent legacy of re-use has determined much of how we perceive the centre of Rome to this day. In the Middle Ages, the local inhabitants built houses and palaces into the theatre, buildings which even today preserve its very substantial remains in their cellars and walls.

In the sixth century AD Cassiodorus, Roman Chancellor to King Theodoric, viewed the theatre – which, by this time, had been standing for over half a millennium – with awe, and described its “caves vaulted with hanging stones, so cleverly joined into beautiful shapes that they resemble more the grottoes of a huge mountain than anything wrought by human hand.” Struck by the lamentable state of the building, he asked “old age, can nothing resist you, since you can shatter even this solid structure? One would have thought it more likely for mountains to subside, than this strong building be shaken.”
(Cassiodorus, Variae 4.51.)