Fasces, symbol of magisterial imperium, on the side of the Theater
While the 1st century BCE was not notable for its production of Roman drama, political competition for popular favor focused on building public arenas in the Campus Martius to accommodate spectacles of all kinds. The decade of the 50's saw an intensification of engineering and material extravagances in temporary theater building; Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia.36.5, 114-116) censures the excessively opulent three-storey scaena, decorated with thousands of bronze statues, hundreds of huge imported marble columns, and mosaic and gilt walls by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus for his aedilician games in 58 BCE and the revolving double theater constructed by the tribune Gaius Scribonius Curio for funeral games for his father in 53 BCE (Naturalis Historia.36.117-20). Although Pliny writes that Scaurus' temporary theater would be in use for scarcely one month (Naturalis Historia.36.5), Curio's theater was still in operation in June, 51 BCE (see Caelius Rufus' letter to Cicero in Ep. ad familiares 8.2.1). These efforts were put to rest by Pompey's clever by-pass of the senatorial prohibition against permanent theaters in Rome; he disguised the seating area of his theater as a monumental stairway to the Temple of Venus Victrix, his patron deity.
Among Julius Caesar's plans for enhancing the city of Rome was the addition of another permanent theater, an idea formed shortly after his rival, Pompey the Great, built the Theatrum Magnum (55-2 BCE) in the Campus Martius. In his biography of Caesar, Suetonius writes that the dictator intended to carve a huge theater into the Tarpeian rock (theatrumque summae magnitudinis Tarpeio monti accubans, Vita Caesaris 44); in effect he rejected Pompey's precedent in preference for a Greek style theater (see the Theater of Dionysus, on the slope of the Athenian Akropolis). In preparation, Caesar bought land and cleared the area southwest of the Capitoline toward the Tiber of not only buildings but also temples. Before construction began he was assassinated in the Curia of Pompey on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. For those who were outraged by his rumored profit from moving the Temple of Pietas and his destruction of wooden statues of the gods, it was divine retribution.
Octavian, Caesar's heir in his will, carried out his uncle's plan for a second permanent theater in Rome, but in his own way and for his own purposes. In Res Gestae 21 Augustus writes: "I built the theater beside the Temple of Apollo on land for the most part purchased from private owners, which would be under the name of Marcus Marcellus, my nephew" (Theatrum ad aedem Apollinis in solo magna ex parte a privatis empto feci, quod sub nomine M. Marcelli generi mei esset). In fact, the name of the theater which is inscribed on the marble plan of Rome (the Forma Urbis Romae, carved under the Emperor Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century CE, hung on the wall of the Temple of Peace ) is Theatrum Marcelli. That the Romans commonly referred to it that way is evidenced by the 1/2nd century CE poet Martial, who, claiming his preference for Rome over another city, writes: " but neither the [theater] of Marcellus and the Pompeian [theater] is there...." (Sed nec Marcelli Pompeianumque, nec illic.... Epig. 10.51.11).
Despite the fact that the Theater of Marcellus was not yet completed, it served as one of the sites for the Ludi Saeculares, a once-in-a-lifetime 3-day solemn public celebration from May 31 to June 2, 17 BCE, featuring sacrifices, hymns (including Horace's Carmen Saeculare commissioned by Augustus), plays, games and races (see texts and schedule). Augustus even had special coins struck to mark the occasion of this opening of a new era for Rome.
Augustus presided over the ludi with which the theater was dedicated in 13 BCE (Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis 8.65 places the dedication ceremonies, which exhibited a tamed lion in a cage, on May 7, during the consulship of Quintus Aelius Tubero and Paullus Fabius Maximus; see the consular list, 11 BCE), the same year in which the Theater of Balbus was dedicated, giving Rome two more permanent theaters only one generation after it had witnessed its first; there would be no further theater building until, over 100 years later, the Emperor Domitian constructed his now lost Odeum, a small roofed theater for musical performances. In passing, Suetonius mentions two incidents connected with the early history of the theater: Augustus' curule chair collapsed under him during the opening of the dedicatory games; during the munera for his grandsons there was an outbreak of panic that the seating might collapse, so Augustus left his tribunal and sat in the area about which there was most fear (Vita Augusti 43.5).
The new theater challenged Pompey's in ways other than Caesar had intended. While it retained the Roman formula of the scaena, free-standing semicircular cavea, porticus, and adjacent temples, the Theater of Marcellus offered a new model of engineering (massive substructures beneath the cavea of internal stairs, ramps and corridors) combined with a graceful facade and compact footprint (the portico was incorporated into the building), perhaps necessitated by the limited space available between the Tiber and the Capitolium. Ancient commentators and modern scholars continue to debate the question of magnitude; since in neither theater is the cavea preserved and ancient estimates vary greatly, it's difficult to assess how many spectators each theater held. An unusual feature of the Theater of Marcellus were the two parallel aulae, basilica-like halls with internal columns, that closed the space between the cavea and the stage building on either side, and flanked the rear walled courtyard. A wide variety of materials were employed in the building, according to function: mainly Travertine marble was used on the facade, while inside marble, stucco, tufa, concrete, brick, and stone in opus reticulatum have been identified.
Damaged in the fire that ravaged Rome under Nero in 64 CE, the stage was restored by the Emperor Vespasian and rededicated (Suetonius, Vita Vespasiani 19.1). Although in the early 3rd century the Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211 CE) scheduled some events of his Ludi Saeculares in the theater and the Emperor Alexander Severus (222-235 CE) intended to renovate it, the theater suffered from neglect, looting, and the flooding of the Tiber in the following centuries. During the medieval period the building was converted into a fortress. In 1368 it was bought by the noble Savelli family, who, in the early 16th century, hired the architect Baldassare Peruzzi to build a palazzo on it; he set the foundations of the palace on the theater stage and lower tiers of the cavea, thus sealing off the corridors, seating area, and stage building. This mid-16th century drawing by Etienne Duperac shows the raised ground level, the shops built into the porticus, and, to the left, the significant remains of the eastern colonnaded aula, since lost. In 1712 the the Orsini family, who claimed descent from the Julio-Claudians, inherited the building. In the mid-18th century Giovanni Battista Piranesi captured it in a detailed engraving; by the early 19th century its deterioration is visible in the artist Luigi Rossini's drawing. In the early 20th century the Italian government had all the shops removed from the first storey, demolished the houses immediately surrounding the theater, and excavated the building almost 15 feet down to its original ground level. Today, the external remains of the theater are a carefully preserved state monument, while the internal structure is a multi-storey, privately owned, exclusive apartment residence, an interesting accommodation between archaeology and contemporary life. While the interior is closed to study, the Theater of Marcellus is the only one of Rome's three major theaters that survives to inspire the viewer with a glimpse of the magnificent structure it once was.
Click here for a virtual reconstruction of the Theater of Marcellus.