USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY

Abstract: In the original performances of Roman comedy, actors sang to the accompaniment of
the two-piped tibia. Although complete reconstruction of this practice on the modern stage is
impractical, participants in the 2012 NEH Summer Institute on Roman Comedy in
Performance demonstrated several ways of incorporating music into modern performances,
including hip hop-style performance; spoken dialogue with incidental music; a cappella singing
to rhythms suggested by Plautus’ and Terence’s meters; accompanied singing of stichic meters to a
repeated melody; and accompanied singing of a polymetric scene. Each of these approaches can be
reproduced in the classroom to great pedagogical benefit.

R oman comedy is one of the most musical genres of ancient literature. In

the times of Plautus’ and Terence’s comedies, actors sang extensive
portions of each play—generally between 50% and 80%—to the
accompaniment of the double-piped tibia. 1 Understanding these plays involves
more than simply translating the text; to access a vivid sense of original
performance conditions, students must engage with the music of Roman
comedy. A full-scale recreation of the Roman experience of musical comedy
would require a replica tibia, native fluency in Latin, expert coordination between
actors and accompanist, and melodies that have been irretrievably lost.
Nevertheless, we offer here feasible ways the collegiate or secondary-school
teacher can introduce the musicality of Roman theatre into the classroom.
The 2012 NEH Summer Institute on Roman Comedy in Performance
provided an opportunity to experiment with elements of Roman practice
through several scenes and to witness how music reflects and reinforces
interpretive decisions about characterization and plot. We discuss here five
musical approaches used at the Institute, all of which can be employed with
adventurous good will: (1) hip hop-style performance, (2) spoken dialogue with
incidental music, (3) a cappella singing to rhythms prescribed by Plautine and
Terentian meters, (4) accompanied singing of a stichic meter to a repeated

1
Moore (2008); (2012a) 92–104.
THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 111.1 (2015) 37–51
38 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

melody, and (5) accompanied singing of a polymetric scene. We discuss these

approaches in order from least to most complicated, from adaptation of
contemporary musical idioms to use of newly-composed melodies and
instrumental accompaniment. All can be adapted effectively to classroom
settings or for performance. 2

Hip Hop: Pseudolus 133–234 in English

One way to instill some appreciation of the effect of Roman theatrical music is to
perform scenes using modern musical idioms. At the NEH Summer Institute,
Patrick Gray translated his group’s version of Pseudolus 133–234, in which the
pimp Ballio delivers a long tirade against all the members of his household, using
the rhyme and rhythm of rap. 3 Given its long association with subversive or
marginalized cultures in our own society, and its own hierarchy-formation
through battles, rap remains especially apt for this function despite its
incorporation into the cultural mainstream.4
Although Ballio performs almost all the rap, the enslaved men he is berating
initiate the shift from spoken dialogue to this musical mode with their
percussion, rendering their musical contribution an expression of their resistance
to Ballio’s tyranny. In the first part of the scene, they produce the underlying
rhythm with improvised percussion using buckets, pans, a cowbell and a
tambourine (video timestamp 0:50). The percussion stops dead when Ballio
threatens, “Well that is how your backsides will be: bloody” (2:35–2:45). As
Ballio starts a new threat, one of his minions renews the percussion on a cowbell
(2:46); he stops when Ballio hits him (3:01). The cowbell-ringer is a
troublemaker: he talks back to Ballio, and his fellows briefly celebrate his
witticism, until he is struck again (3:58–4:23). In fact, both musical moments of
resistance are stopped only by Ballio’s most brutal violence. Despite the enslaved
men’s incursions, Ballio is determined to control them and the scene, as is clear

2
We recommend that readers watch the performances while reading this essay. See
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmBs1K1ruw2i48CmDku1HrQ. See also the Institute’s
blog, http://romancomedyinperformance.blogspot.com/.
3
In the Institute blog, this is under the label “Ballio,” the video “04-PseudolusHipHop” on
YouTube.
4
Thus, for example, Richlin has translated Plautus’ Curculio, Persa, and Poenulus using language
and rhythms reminiscent of those used by rap singers (2005). Richlin’s translations could make a
good starting point for classes interested in following the lead of the “hip hop” NEH Summer
Scholars.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 39

from his repeated cracking of the whip in response to percussive outbursts.

Finally, he stops the music for another threatening address to an individual
(6:33), after which he chases them off the stage.
Ballio’s control of the music increases with the entrance of the meretrices. At this
point, offstage percussionists provide the primary rhythmic support, though the
meretrices clap and play a tambourine (8:59). The music stops as Ballio proclaims
“all such laziness ends today!” (9:56), and its absence creates tension until it
restarts with “You pack of worthless whores!” A brief pause gives Ballio full
attention while he imitates the meretrices’ clients (11:40–11:45), but music
returns with the introduction of individual meretrices (12:20): a different
percussion riff as Ballio calls out each name and a recorder playing soft melodies
throughout his admonishments to them. Clappers and the tambourine reinforce
several individual pronouncements.
In the end, Pseudolus and Calidorus, who have been eavesdropping, take over
the rapping. The percussion resumes while Pseudolus makes asides (14:01),
stopping very briefly as Calidorus tries to interrupt him (14:40–14:43). Finally,
after Ballio and the meretrices have left the stage, the rap beat resumes for
Calidorus and Pseudolus’ final dialogue (18:14), stopping briefly as Pseudolus
rejects Calidorus’ plan to approach his father (18:29–18:33) and then ending at
Pseudolus’ final statement (19:11). The movement of rapping parallels the
struggle for control of the meter in the Latin version of this scene, where
Pseudolus and Calidorus slowly undermine Ballio’s control of the meter,
foreshadowing how Pseudolus will outwit Ballio in the rest of the play. 5
The hip-hop production’s music also contributed significantly to
characterization. For instance, music distinguishes each of the meretrices: a
drumroll underscores the naming of the first two, a zing by the flexatone
announces the sexier third, and the most important, Calidorus’ beloved
Phoenicium, gets a tambourine shake. Meanwhile, the recorder plays a different
melody for each meretrix. So too Plautus and Terence frequently differentiated
characters through metrical, and therefore musical, variation. 6
The hip-hop Pseudolus also highlights how music and, even more
conspicuously, the lack of music call attention to important words. Percussion

5
Moore (2012a) 318–26. Compare, e.g., Plautus’ Casina, where Cleostrata’s control of meter
underlines her continuing power over her husband, and Terence’s Adelphoe, where Demea takes
control of the meter from his brother Micio as he takes charge of the plot.
6
Moore (1999); (2012a) passim.
40 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

effects emphasize moments like the introduction of each meretrix and Ballio’s
desire to be identified with Cato the Censor (13:09). Music stops when Ballio
quotes the words of the clients, just as unaccompanied spoken iambic senarii
often join reported discourse in the Latin versions of the plays. 7 Music stops for
two of Ballio’s scariest threats, echoing how music throughout Roman comedy
often stops—that is, the meter changes to (spoken) iambic senarii—at moments
of shock.8 So too music stops for important announcements throughout Plautus’
and Terence’s Latin texts. 9
The hip-hop Pseudolus thus diverges from the specifics of Roman comedy’s
original music, but it shows how any style of music can produce similar effects,
reinforcing both Plautus’ and Terence’s metrical choices and the performers’
own interpretations of scenes and plays. The NEH Institute hip-hop scene uses
rhythm and music in complex ways, but its basic principle is in fact the easiest
way music can be applied in the Roman comedy classroom. Students need not
produce an extensive translation as the NEH Summer Scholars did; they can
simply be asked, in a one-day homework assignment, to make a short part of a
Plautine or Terentian scene musical, using whatever musical idiom they are most
comfortable with. Hip hop is likely to be the choice of many students; they can
use whatever improvised percussion instruments (hands, erasers, desks) they
find effective and chant the words as a rapper might do. Others may choose
simply to sing all or part of a scene, using melodies they know or have
improvised. 10 After producing their musical scenes in class, students can discuss
how the presence of music changes the scene, and what effects musical variation
within the scene produce. A class in Roman civilization or world literature could
stop here: this exercise alone will give them a good sense of the importance of
music to Roman theatre. For a Latin class spending a semester on Roman
comedy, placing this exercise early in the semester would be an excellent way of
getting the students to think of Roman comedy as a musical genre from the
beginning.

Spoken Dialogue with Incidental Music: Pseudolus 133–234 in Latin

Another musical idiom familiar to our students, primarily from film and
television, is incidental music. For one version of Ballio’s canticum performed at

7
Moore (2012a) 175.
8
Moore (2012a) 176.
9
Moore (2012a) 175–6.
10
Moore has had students sing through whole plays in extracurricular play readings.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 41

the NEH Summer Institute, T. H. M. Gellar-Goad composed a clarinet melody

in eleven repeatable parts, each cued by one of Ballio’s lines. These melodies were
designed as incidental music underneath, but not in rhythm with, the dialogue. 11
This music was analogous to modern-day scoring of film and can accompany
performance of the scene in either Latin or English.
The clarinet accompaniment played an important role in how the performers
of this scene responded to a key question for interpretation of the Pseudolus
passage: its tone. With its extraordinarily exuberant language, lively movement,
and broad humor, Ballio’s canticum could be a boisterous romp. Yet it includes
some of Plautus’ scariest threats of torture and even some on-stage beating. The
NEH Summer Scholars who chose to perform Pseudolus in Latin and with
incidental music emphasized the scene’s darker aspects: with the enslaved male
characters terrified and cowering, the meretrices veiled, and an especially
loathsome Ballio. The dark melody reinforced this tone, incorporating variations
on three basic motifs: a fast, rhythmic drive with prominent use of the unsettling
tri-tone interval (sometimes called “the Devil’s interval”); a static but irregular
pulse; and a slower, haunting air written using serial (twelve-tone) techniques
that formally eschew traditional tonalities and tend to unsettle Western listeners.
Clarinetist Tony Sprinkle played each section as a “vamp,” repeating it ad
infinitum under the dialogue, before a particular line cued him to move to the next
section.
Gellar-Goad also composed a second, more slapstick piece of incidental music
with more regular rhythms and more tonal melodies, a klezmer-like clarinet part,
and more ornaments (e.g. trills, grace notes). As in the dark setting, the
instrumentalist would “vamp” one section of the music until the cue to switch. In
this setting, four themes were cycled through twice, the first of which alludes to
Dukas’ famous Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This score was not used in the NEH Institute
performances, but is available for free from Gellar-Goad.
This method of producing music adds one complication to the hip-hop
version above: it requires an instrumentalist. Many if not most high school or
college classes will include at least one instrumentalist of some type. In other
respects this style of musical performance is very easy. No one needs to sing, and
the only coordination required between actor and instrumentalist is that the

11
In the Institute blog, this video appears under the label “Ballio,” the video “01 Pseudolus Latin”
on YouTube. Scores for this scene and those discussed below are available from Gellar-Goad upon
request at tedgellar@gmail.com.
42 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

latter respond to the former’s cues in making melodic changes. Any class that
includes an amateur instrumentalist would benefit from trying this background
music. If the class also includes a budding composer, he or she could write the
melodies. Lacking a composer, students could select melodies from well-known
films and pop songs, changing melodies as the scene progresses; these tunes
could be played on an instrument, or pieces of recorded music could be spliced
together. Though the Institute’s performers used this method for a Latin scene, it
could be applied just as easily to a performance in translation. Again, this can be a
one-day assignment, and it can replace or supplement the “make it musical”
exercise described above, preferably early in a semester-long course on Roman
comedy. After performing for each other, students can compare the effects of
music in this scene with a scene from a contemporary movie or TV show and ask
themselves how music can help make a comic scene work.

A Cappella Singing to Roman Comedy’s Meters: Bacchides 1117–1206

While incidental music can do a good job of getting students to think about
Roman comedy as musical comedy, the music of Plautus and Terence was not
incidental, but was sung by the actors. To get closer to the experience of Roman
musical comedy, therefore, students should sing, preferably in Latin, using
rhythms encouraged by the meter. Such singing helps students a great deal in
understanding how Plautus and Terence’s texts work. Performers at the NEH
Institute sang in three different ways.
We moderns can only guess about the specific melodies that accompanied
Roman comedy, but changes in the meter of the text were almost certainly
matched by changes in melody. 12 Therefore meter provides a key guide to
melody as well as to rhythm. This association of elements is especially clear in the
final scene of Plautus’ Bacchides (ll. 1117–1206). 13 Two old men (senes),
Nicobulus and Philoxenus, attempt to storm the house of the free sex-laborers
(meretrices) Bacchis and her sister, also named Bacchis. The senes are furious
because their sons, who are partying inside, have become enamored of the
meretrices. The sisters instead seduce the senes, transforming grumpy old men into
horny old men. The Institute performers sang the scene a cappella (without
instrumental accompaniment) in Latin.

12
See Moore (2012a) 137, 141.
13
This scene is under the label “Bacchides” on the Institute’s blog, the video “Bacchides 1 Latin”
on YouTube.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 43

One key to thinking about meter musically is to recognize that each meter
combined with melody to encourage different moods: cretics, for example, tend
to be bouncy; trochaic septenarii to get the action going; bacchiacs to be slower.
This variation of mood is key to understanding how meter and music underscore
the tug-of-war between the senes and the meretrices in the Bacchides scene. 14
Early in the scene the old men’s angry trochaic septenarii, supported by an
aggressive melody (ll. 1117–19; 0:06–0:19), contrast with the bacchiacs that the
meretrices sing in a relaxed melody (ll. 1120–20a; 0:21–0:27). 15 When Bacchis
proposes to her sister a plan to seduce the two senes, she changes the game by
switching the meter to anapestic septenarii, again with a gentler melody (l. 1149;
3:05–3:09). 16 The anapestic septenarii recur, along with her original melody, at
significant moments in the seduction, such as Philoxenus’ confession that he
loves the sister (ll. 1160–65; 4:20–5:05), Nicobulus’ moment of surrender (l.
1201; 10:06–10:12), and the entrance of the senes into the meretrices’ house at the
end of the scene (ll. 1204–6; 10:22–10:43). But when Nicobulus resists the
charms of Bacchis, a shorter anapestic verse followed by a long string of anapestic
feet motivates a harsher melody (ll. 1166–68a; 5:06–5:21).
The four members of the Bacchides group realized that since we have no
ancient score, the choice of tunes would be up to them; any would be fine, as long
as they followed the rhythm defined by the meter and by the scansion of a
particular line. One of the group’s members, Ada Palmer, used her experience
with mediaeval and Renaissance music to compose simple melodies for each of
the scene’s meters, which she taught to her fellow performers. The method of
peer teaching by ear likely recalls how actors learned melodies when Plautus and
Terence’s plays were first performed, and it was especially useful for the singing
performers in the Institute who did not read music. Palmer also took advantage
of technology not available in Plautus’ and Terence’s days: she used her laptop

14
Identifying the various meters is now easy with Questa’s Titi Macci Plauti Cantica (1995),
which provides scansion for all of Plautus’ passages in mixed meter.
15
The basic metrical unit of trochaic septenarii includes a long element followed by an element
that is of equal or shorter duration (each unit is —— or —  or the equivalent). Trochaic
septenarii thus tend to “fall” forward and encourage speed and excitement. The basic metrical unit
of bacchiacs is a short syllable followed by two long syllables (——). They therefore tend to
proceed in a slower and steadier manner. On the meters of Roman comedy and their effects, see
Moore (2012a) 171–209.
16
The basic metrical unit of anapestic meters is two short syllables followed by a long syllable
(— or the equivalent).
44 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

both to notate the melodies and to record audio files for each of her fellow
performers. 17
This method of singing Roman comedy is easily transferable to the classroom.
If the class includes a teacher or student with skills similar to Palmer’s, one person
can create and record melodies, which all can use. As with incidental music, even
without a trained musician students and/or teachers can repurpose familiar
tunes by changing their rhythms to fit the meter. Given the opportunity to learn
the associated moods of various meters, and the freedom to use any fitting tune
no matter how simple or familiar, students will be pleasantly surprised at their
ability to produce a musical performance after a few class periods or even a single
class of practice. 18 After this exercise in performance they will no longer see
metrical patterns as troublesome mathematical puzzles, but rather as essential
elements of performance. The first such a cappella exercise would best be
introduced several weeks into the semester, after students have started to get a
feel for the language of Plautus and Terence. The exercise can then be repeated
on various types of scenes throughout the semester. The technique will work on
any scene, but teachers may wish to start with scenes such as Plautus, Cist. 203-
228, where the same meter type is used throughout, then move on through
scenes with “blocks” of meter types like Cist. 671-703 to scenes with many
metrical changes such as Plautus, Cas. 621-758.

Stichic Meter Sung with Accompaniment to a Repeated Melody: Truc. 775–853

Once a class realizes how accessible and fun adding a cappella music can be,
students may be motivated to try a more ambitious exercise: adding instrumental
accompaniment. This step will bring students as close as they can come to the
actual musical experience of Roman comedy’s actor-tibicen combination. Two
groups at the NEH Institute took this step. Truculentus presented the opportunity
to tackle a passage of lines in a stichic meter, where one meter is repeated in each

17
Any smartphone or computer has easy-to-use audio recording software; other free or
inexpensive software includes Audacity, FL Studio (Fruityloops) and GarageBand; professionals
use Peak and Pro Tools. For notation and for producing sheet music, professionals use Sibelius or
Finale; free options of varying quality include MuseScore, Noteflight and Musink. Many schools
will have recording and notation hardware and software available for student use at the media
resource center, in the library or in the music department.
18
This method of a cappella singing is a variation of the method proposed for classroom use by
Moore (2012b) 223–7.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 45

verse for an extended passage with no interruptions by other meters. There is

good evidence that the same basic melody would also be repeated for each line;
variety within the line—resolutions and other variable patterns of long and short
syllables—would bring rhythmic variety.19 The directors of the Institute selected
a scene in trochaic septenarii, the most common of sung verses, and Gellar-Goad
wrote a melody which was repeated eighty times by the performers. 20
While modern audiences are accustomed to the use of music to indicate the
tone of a scene, the musical landscape of the Truculentus scene needed to allow
for numerous interpretive paths in order to support the Institute’s interest in
exploring how some of the most troubling scenes of Plautus would have played
on stage. The young man Diniarchus has raped and impregnated the daughter of
Callicles. The girl and her mother have attempted to conceal the birth by giving
the baby to a woman enslaved to them. She has given the child to a woman
owned by the free sex-laborer Phronesium, who is pretending that the baby is
hers by a client in order to get gifts from him. Callicles has found out about the
ruse but not the baby’s whereabouts, and he viciously interrogates the two
enslaved women while Diniarchus eavesdrops. And yet, this is a comedy. Would
the humor have overridden any darker elements? Would different demographic
segments of the audience have reacted to the scene in profoundly different ways?
And what role would music play in accomplishing such tonal shifts?
Most modern Western melodies fall clearly into major or minor keys: major
keys tend to be brighter, minor keys darker. Gellar-Goad chose a tune that was
neither major nor minor, but somewhere in between. He thus left open to the
actors interpretive options regarding the tone of the scene. At the same time, the
melody’s position in between major and minor initially struck the composer,
performers, and audience members as quite uncomfortable because of its
indeterminate quality—particularly when it was repeated eighty times in a row.
The NEH Summer Scholars took advantage of this ambiguous and discomfiting
tonality by using it to generate irony, thus playing the scene as a parody of a
melodrama—in part to allow for metatheatrical jokes about the tune and its
nonstop repetition.

19
Moore (2012a) 136–7, 141.
20
This is under the label “Truculentus” on the Institute blog, the video “Truculentus 1 Latin” on
YouTube.
46 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

Gellar-Goad composed the following series of pitches that covered a single line
of trochaic septenarius, to be sung by the actors in unison with the clarinet and
modified as appropriate to fit the scansion of each specific line:
F D D♭ D♮ E C E♭ E♮ F D E♭ C B♭ B♮ C
In the simplest version of a trochaic septenarius verse, there would be constant
alteration between long and short notes, scanned thus:
‒  ‒  ‒  ‒  ‒  ‒  ‒  ‒.
One long is approximately twice the duration of one short. In modern Western
notation, such rhythms can be represented with quarter-notes for long syllables
and eighth-notes for short syllables:
F D D♭ D♮ E C E♭ E♮ F D E♭ C B♭ B♮ C
♩ ♪♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♩
Plautus rarely (if ever) produces a line like this; variety is the rule rather than the
exception in the scansion of Roman comedy. The opening verse of our
Truculentus scene, for example, reads (775):
egon tibi male dicam? at tibi te mavelim: ut animus meust
Should I revile you? I would rather you revile yourself:
in my opinion…
It scans as follows:
  ‒ ‒  ‒ ‒   ‒ ‒.
Figure 1 shows the verse with melody (to help the singers, elided letters have
been removed and divisions between elided words are ignored).

FIGURE 1

One of the most striking revelations of this performance was how much variety
and expressiveness could be produced using this repetitive melody. Roman
comedy offers considerable rhythmic variety, even without a change in meter,
and this rhythmic variety was reflected in the musical notation. Because so many
metrical elements in a trochaic septenarius can be either long (equivalent to a
quarter-note) or short (equivalent to an eighth-note), the measures in the
melody could be 6/8, 7/8, 4/4, or 5/8, depending on which elements were long
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 47

or short. Figure 2, for example, shows line 800, which is split between Callicles
and Syra and includes all four types of time signature:
CA. quid eo puero tua era facit? SY. erae meae extemplo dedit.
Callicles: What is your mistress doing with the child?
Syra: She gave it to my mistress right away.

FIGURE 2

This is a perfectly typical line of trochaic septenarius. It would have been entirely
straightforward to ancient performers and listeners, but it can seem unsteady or
rhythmically challenging to modern Westerners who, whether they listen to
Mozart or Missy Elliott, are used to melodies in which the basic pattern of beats
per time unit (i.e., the time signature) does not change from unit to unit (i.e.,
from measure to measure).
The performers introduced further variety. Diniarchus and the women sing
one octave higher than Callicles. The music stops and starts at several points to
underline stage action, as when Callicles orders that the cowering women move
apart from each other (l. 787; 3:23–3:37). The repeated melody emphasized the
distinction between the most usual pattern in Roman comedy’s dialogue, in
which changes of singer/speaker correspond with verse-ends, and passages like l.
800 in Figure 2, wherein performers split verses (e.g., ll. 789–805; 3:49–6:24).
The range of effects in this performance reinforces the plausibility of Moore’s
proposal that long stichic passages would have had the same melodic line
repeated from verse to verse, and suggests that ancient audiences would not have
balked at such a musical style. 21 At the same time, the repeated melody

21
Moore (2012a) 141.
48 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

challenged both performers and audience members, highlighting the differences

between ancient and modern musical tastes.
Although the process might sound complicated, this style of performance can
be approximated even with amateur singers. The instrumentalist can play
sustained notes under the vocal melody if matching up the rhythms between
singers and accompanist is too taxing. In our experience, the accompaniment
aided the performers in staying on pitch and on beat. The biggest challenge—
and the most intellectually rewarding—will probably be the rhythmic variation
between lines. Adhering to the particular scansion of individual lines and
ensuring that the relationship of long syllables to short syllables in general
remains constant, at 2:1, requires care. But strict metrical exactitude is less
important than the process of performing a scene in which the same melody is
repeated line after line. Whether rigorously precise or approximate, the
performance itself will vividly demonstrate to students of comedy how different
the living product was from the preserved texts, how different Roman comedy’s
aesthetic sensibilities are from our own, and how flexible and sophisticated the
musical and metrical idioms of Plautus and Terence were. For students of
comedy who have been trained to think musically through exercises like those
described above, production of a stichic scene with instrumental accompaniment
would make an excellent longer-range project, perhaps as a supplement to their
reading and research during the second half of the semester.

Accompanied Singing of a Polymetric Scene: Persa 753–57, 801–58

The most ambitious classes could build on their work performing a stichic scene
by attempting accompanied performance of a Plautine polymetric song. Whereas
the Truculentus scene employed the trochaic septenarius exclusively, the final
scene of Plautus’ Persa (ll. 753–57, 801–58) boasted the most elaborate use of
music in the NEH Summer Institute. 22 For the elaborate polymetry, raucous
stage action, and ensemble cast of this scene, Gellar-Goad composed a widely
varied melody to be sung to the accompaniment of the clarinet. The protagonist
Toxilus and his friend Sagaristio have brought economic ruin on the pimp
Dordalus and have won the release of Toxilus’ lover Lemniselenis from sex-
slavery. Along with their subordinate Paegnium, the three ruthlessly mock
Dordalus as the play ends. The combination of musical elements in this

22
This is the only video under the label “Persa” in the Institute blog.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 49

culminating scene illuminated the ways in which parts of Roman comedy

resemble modern opera.
Because in a polymetric passage meters change from verse to verse, the great
rhythmical variety of the scansion, with short syllables as eighth-notes and long
syllables as quarter-notes, was especially challenging for modern Westerners
accustomed to rhythmic consistency. But the tonal melodies, following the
rhythm of the scansion, are closer to standard major and minor harmonic
progressions than the one-line melody of the Truculentus scene. The melodies
associated with each character’s opening lines differ, creating a leitmotif-like
effect familiar from Wagner’s operas, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and Williams’
Star Wars soundtracks, for example. This melodic differentiation mirrors Plautus’
own vivid portrayals of the characters, whose opening lines are in different meters
and rhythmic patterns.
Both Toxilus’ and Dordalus’ entry motifs begin with a long rise and conclude
with a shorter fall. Toxilus’ theme (0:17–0:38) is filled with large intervals, like a
fanfare celebrating his triumph, while the defeated and dyspeptic pimp Dordalus’
themes (1:36–1:40, 7:51–8:00) are more plodding and incremental, using
smaller intervals and shifting keys downwards. Paegnium’s melodies, on the
other hand, are more consistently playful (his name means “plaything” or “boy-
toy,” after all), and they jump back and forth, following the patterns of major
chords (2:16–2:30). Lemniselenis sings a more lilting, waltz-like tune (6:24–
6:27). After she attempts to intercede on Dordalus’ behalf (l, 835; 6:25), Toxilus’
low, slow, minor melody matches his angry, darkly intimidating response (ll.
835–37; 6:27–6:52), followed by a dark but lively and open motif that
accompanies Toxilus’ switch to a stand-up comedian-like complaint about the
behavior of freedpersons (ll, 838–40a; 6:53–7:22).
In the composition as originally scored, the instrumentalist would play notes
distinct from those of the singers, providing harmonic and ornamental
accompaniment to their melodies. Onstage experimentation in the limited
rehearsal time suggested that by playing in unison with the performers the
clarinetist could provide both a rhythmic-melodic backbone and a unifying
element for the different characters’ singing parts. The accompanist, clarinetist
Tony Sprinkle, also inserted short, repeated, improvised motifs during comically
drawn-out moments of physical stage business (e.g. the beating of Dordalus,
9:35–9:50). The performers even decided to incorporate the clarinetist into the
action by offering him a drink. This metatheatrical bit, joined by a stop in the
music (l. 822; 4:24–4:30), derives from a similar scene of revelry at the end of
50 GELLAR-GOAD AND MOORE

Plautus’ Stichus (762–68). The musical pause required prior coordination with
the clarinetist; so too such breaks in the flow of the meter in ancient
performances would have required prior coordination with (or masterful
extemporization by) the tibicen.
Dance likely featured in many of Plautus’ and Terence’s accompanied
scenes,23 and movement is closely aligned to the scene’s music, including dances
when first Paegnium (ll. 806–17; 1:57–4:07) and then Toxilus and Sagaristio (ll.
824–26; 4:39–5:05) mock and abuse Dordalus. These routines represent a type
of scene in which the text clearly indicates dancing; in such scenes, Roman
comedy’s Saturnalian inversion of everyday propriety reaches its highest levels as
characters referred to as cinaedi dance lewdly. 24 The brutality of some of the
rhythmic movement highlights the potentially disturbing nature of the ruthless
treatment of Dordalus (ll. 843-857; 8:26-10:20).
The epilogue, sung by all except Dordalus (858, 10:22-10:32), provides a vivid
demonstration of one possible response to an unanswered question in the
scholarship on Roman comedy: who delivered the epilogues of Plautus and
Terence’s plays. The manuscripts sometimes attribute these to a character,
sometimes to an anonymous cantor, sometimes to the grex or caterua, and once to
the poeta. 25
A fully musical performance of such a polymetric passage, with its fusion of
song, instrument, stage action, and dance, suggests potential similarities between
the original performance conditions of Roman comedy and modern Western
musical theater, even if the rhythms, melodies, and harmonic systems were vastly
different from those used on the Broadway stage. A class incorporating music in
this way might include such a comparative discussion, to clarify how this
experiment resembles and diverges from other traditions of theatrical music. 26
Of all the methods attempted in the Institute, this type of performance is most
challenging: to memorize lines of Latin, their rhythms, and a melody, and then to
incorporate acting, dance, and slapstick is no mean feat. In a class or performance
group with a composer, one or more competent instrumentalists, and some

23
Moore (2012a) 105–134.
24
Habinek (2005) 177–203; Moore (2012a) 106–14.
25
Moore (2012a) 73–4. Gellar-Goad chose the grex/caterua solution, and had the actors sing
harmony. This is a modern touch, as Greeks and Romans did not use harmony as it has come to be
used in Europe since the Renaissance, but it could certainly be incorporated in a classroom
performance if desired.
26
For further discussion of this topic, see Moore (2012a) 372–6.
 USING MUSIC IN PERFORMING ROMAN COMEDY 51

confident singers, the challenge is well worth taking on. It should be noted that all
of the Institute performances, including this most challenging one, featured some
performers with little to no musical or acting experience, and some who did not
read music and/or did not read Latin. Nevertheless, as the videos demonstrate,
they pooled their abilities and created successful productions in just four weeks.
Any motivated group of students could do the same as a final project in a
semester-long class.

Conclusion
The teacher of Roman comedy has a complicated task: to introduce students to a
peculiar genre of Latin adaptations of Greek plays in difficult and archaic
language, plays whose plots center on deception or rape, whose stock characters
and stock routines are unfamiliar to modern readers, whose humor is often
opaque or offensive, and whose texts conceal an extraordinarily lively and
sophisticated stagecraft. Introducing music brings even more complications.
Nevertheless, our students benefit immensely from being exposed to the joyous
musicality and exuberant metrical rhythms of Plautus and Terence, which were
an essential part of the plays’ dramatic effectiveness. The recorded performances
from the Institute demonstrate that any kind of musical performance—of any
degree of complexity or skill—is a priceless tool for achieving a greater
understanding of Roman comedy.
T.H.M. GELLAR-GOAD & TIMOTHY J. MOORE
Wake Forest University & Washington University in St. Louis,
thmgg@wfu.edu, tmoore26@wustl.edu