Roman theater may have been nonexistent under the period of kings, having been born from religious celebrations and contact with other cultures, including Greek culture, sometime in the first two centuries of the Roman Republic. Roman legend has it that theatrical performances of dance and music were instituted in the fourth century BC as part of the Lectisternium a festival, lasting several days, meant to propitiate the gods. In time these performances developed into theater and were included as a regular part of the Ludi Romani celebration. In 240 BC, the author Livius Adronicus first translated and adapted Greek plays into Latin to be performed in Rome. At some point, he began to produce original works for the Roman stage. A few years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write original plays in Latin, although none of the works of either playwright has survived to modern times.
The ruling class of ancient Rome long held the belief that the frivolity of theatrical performances would have a corrupting influence on the moral character of the Roman people. As a result, it remained illegal until 55 BC for permanent theater structures to be built. The temporary nature of the structures used to stage plays led to a very simple presentation. The "theater" was composed of a stage and an area for the audience, often standing, from which to watch the play. The setting of the play was shown by a heavy cloth painted backdrop called the scaenaefrons. The stage in front of the backdrop was called the proscaenuim and this was the space in which the actors performed.
The ancient Romans recognized two genres of theater, comedy and tragedy. The only surviving ancient Roman comedies are attributed to Publius Terentius Afer and Titus Maccius Plautus and none are original works but are, rather, works adapted from Greek drama. Plautus, in particular, writing at the end of the second century BC, popularized comedic plays through witty dialogue and finely crafted poetry.
One convention of ancient Roman comedic plays was the use of stock characters and plot twists. Two of the stock characters that appear in the plays are the virgo, or young maiden, the matron, the wife and mother. Others are the miles gloriosus, the brash soldier based on a character of the same name from ancient Greek comedy, the parasitus, the deceitful lackey of the miles gloriosus, and the leno, a pimp or slave trader. Two prominent characters in Roman comedy are the adulescens, a young single man wrapped up in a complicated love affair, and the senex, the young man’s father.
No tragedies survive from Caesar's time or prior. Only three early tragedians are known through historical references. They are Lucius Accius, Quintus Ennius, and Marcus Pacuvius. Later tragedies that have survived indicate that the tragic plays, like the comedies, were adapted from Greek drama.
The structure of Roman plays differed significantly from Greek plays. Roman plays made no use of the chorus to provide background information or the separate the "acts" of the play. Another innovation was the addition of music to accompany the action on the stage. While clearly different from modern drama, the beginnings of what we understand theater to be can be seen in the ancient plays.
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