Abstract

AbstractThis article aims to shed fresh light on the meaning of the term togata. It conducts an analysis of the term as it appeared in ancient sources,1 investigating in particular both how and why ancient authors across several periods focussed their attention on the togata. The paper will also distinguish between the attestation of the term togata in ancient writers, who are likely to have actually watched these theatrical performances in person and known more directly what they were talking about, and the usage of the term by later grammarians, who would have had no opportunity to watch such performances. These later authors, rather, were simply guessing what kind of theatrical representation could have been performed onstage (much as we do nowadays) and did so by adopting obvious differences in terminology.

Highlights

  • This article aims to shed fresh light on the meaning of the term togata. It conducts an analysis of the term as it appeared in ancient sources,[1] investigating in particular both how and why ancient authors across several periods focussed their attention on the togata

  • The paper will distinguish between the attestation of the term togata in ancient writers, who are likely to have watched these theatrical performances in person and known more directly what they were talking about, and the usage of the term by later grammarians, who would have had no opportunity to watch such performances

  • The fragmentary corpus which makes up this literary genre is attributed—not always unproblematically—to Titinius, Afranius and Atta, all of whom are mentioned by ancient writers as togata playwrights

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Summary

Cicero

The quotation of Afranius’ lines, the use of the Roman name Titus—not attested in the palliata, where we find instead Greek and invented names—and, above all, the usage of the term togata itself suggest that Cicero was alluding to something far removed from the Greek world and more closely related to the Latin world; for these reasons, he used the term togata to refer to the play Simulans. In his De lingua Latina, Varro reports that a togata was staged in the city of Rome during the Ludi Apollinares In the technical usage, where togata is a broader term, the kind of comedy not based on a Greek original would be called tabernaria (...)’.22

Horace
Seneca the Younger
Quintilian
II.1. Diomedes
II.2. Donatus
II.4. John the Lydian
II.5. Evanthius
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