We weren't there, can't come up with an answer absolute about what ancient Rome was really like . We don't really know how vivid the red color was in some people's clothing, or how dirty their streets were, or what the sources really tell us; in fact, "in a perfectly literal sense we don't know what we are talking about" when we talk about daily life in the Roman world.[ii]
Does not exist although we have invented it from written sources (textual, epigraphic, archaeological) and we have categorized it as such in a “watertight compartment” which we agree to call "Greece" or "Rome"; the passing of the centuries has thrown tons of earth on top and has breathed a certain patina of legend or of "this was how it was", and although it has recovered since the Renaissance, the "artists" of this time have in turn "interpreted" it according to their own "classicist" conventions... or what they considered "classical". If we follow this discursive thread, we could agree with David W. Griffith, who considered that historical cinema it was not necessarily “a cold instrument to reflect reality”, as an aseptic (which is also not) documentary could be, but especially “a powerful historical writing […] capable of creating more historical awareness than several months of study”.[ iii] Trying to elaborate a filmic vision of the historical past, no matter how distant, we could understand that a film (as in a certain way a written text) «offers multiple possibilities of “information” :the one of the time that it recreates, the one of the time from which it is recreated, and the one related to the ideology that the cinema imposes.”[iv]; information (objective? subjective?) about that piece of the past that is "recreated", "reconstructed" or, why not, "invented".
As we approach the films that try to «recreate» the underworld of ancient Rome, we come across a first obstacle:is it necessarily that imago , that «representation», a translation to cinematographic language of what the graffiti, the ruined streets or the bodies trapped by the lava have allowed to survive in Pompeii? Or, since we have left many remains of ancient Rome of its monumentality and urban planning but far fewer traces of those underworld that we seek, to what extent is what remains nothing but the imago , the “representation” What authors like Seneca, Marcial or Juvenal have left in writing? Are we to believe Seneca at face value when he complains about the noise that comes from the baths installed on the ground floor of the building where he lives ( Moral Letters to Lucilio , VI, 56, 1)... or perhaps it was that Nero's old tutor was too fussy at night... or it really was an ordeal to live next to some baths (in which to noise we must add a lack of hygiene, if we take into account that the pool water was not renewed several times a day?Do we give Juvenal credibility when, in the mouth of Umbricio who leaves the city, he makes a speech about how hateful it is to live in a city invaded by foreigners –«the Syrian Orontes has flown into the Tiber for a long time»–, the ostentatious luxury and bad taste of the servile –«clients are forced to pay tribute and thus increase the income of elegant slaves»–, the noise night of carriages and young people partying –«In which rented apartment can you fall asleep?»– or the insecurity of the streets –«there will be someone who fleeces you when the houses are barricaded and the shops are silent, their doors closed by chains» – if one occurs to sa lir at night… or do we come to the conclusion that you like to exaggerate? (Satires , III).
But we will have to take something seriously, since graffiti, frescoes and the texts themselves are not limited solely to constructing a "representation" of a reality. If for some reason a television series like Roma has triumphed (HBO-BBC-RAI, 2005-2007) It is because of the realistic "image" that already in the opening credits announces its intention to show a balance between the great historical figures who star in it and those elements of a popular nature, or of the underworld if you prefer, that range from the "real" Pullo and Vorenus to the fictitious Timon; although the music evokes more the exoticism typical of an oriental bazaar than the most popular Rome... of course, how is the underworld of Rome supposed to "sound"? How did the streets smell? To sweat, food and excrement? Would we urbanites of the 21st century survive in those streets? In any case, think of the "low life" of modern cities, with a mixture of cultures and ethnic groups that has little to envy that of ancient Rome, with noise in the streets, dirt, strong smells, children who play and mothers who call out to them, "waters" that are thrown from the windows, prostitutes who offer their services and a certain "orderly chaos" according to a lifestyle in which words such as law, justice and order are conjugated in another way way.
Perhaps that is why another television series has also been successful , Plebs (ITV, 2013–) , as "realistic" as Rome by showing a popular city in the time of Augustus, but from another angle:in Plebs from the outset it is played with anachronisms sought after and a "contemporary" point of view, both in some attitudes and in the language used, based on the experiences of three young people from lower class (Marcus, Stylax and Grumio, the latter a slave to the former). The plots that are told revolve around clichés about the Roman world –from orgies to chariot races, from gladiators to Saturnalia festivals, from slavery to “local” electoral struggles–, but already the same tune of the opening tune ("When in Rome do as the Romans do") reminds the viewer that, after all, this is the Rome he knows... or that he has been "known" [see also the reader/ listener in which the music of that tune does not seek either turns out to be symphonic and... "Roman"; in fact, the musical style evokes a certain multiculturalism of London that underlies that "reconstructed" Rome].
In a previous blog post we dealt with the image of Rome in the cinema , focusing on that white and pristine Rome of luxurious (and recognizable) monuments:the so-called «Hollyrome» , with the triumphal parade as the central axis. Then we saw a colossal Rome, typical of that spectacular "Roman cinema" of yesteryear, in which more always meant bigger. For the remainder of this text we will focus on the representation of Rome's underworld in three films that deviate from the Hollywood canon and that show three images of a "popular" Rome. ranging from a certain comic decadence to forced ugliness or even an "expressionist peplum":Golfus de Roma (Richard Lester, 1966), Fellini-Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969) and Caligula (Tinto Brass, 1979).
Based on a Broadway musical that premiered in 1962, Gulf of Rome (A funny thing happened on the way to the forum , in its original title) baby from three plays by Plautus –Pseudolus , Miles Gloriosus and Mostellaria – and stands by itself in a «cinematic palimpsest»[v], an idea that in turn refers to a synergy of plots and narrative elements. The plot is typical of a fabula palliata Roman, with impossible love affairs and diverse adventures of characters of very varied social backgrounds:the love between Philia, a Thracian slave, and Hero, a young man from a more or less respectable "middle-class" family (Senex and Domina); the wanderings of Pseudolus, Hero's slave, whom he promises to help in exchange for his freedom; the dealings of Lycus, the pimp who owns Philia; the arrival of a Braggart Soldier (Miles Gloriosus), who claims Philia as her future wife; Erroneus' search for his two sons, kidnapped by pirates long ago (eventually Philia and Miles Gloriosus); the slave Hysterium, whom Pseudolus convinces to pose as the deceased Philia, dead from the effects of an (invented) plague. The plot takes place in the suburbs of Rome –the abandoned sets of The Fall of the Roman Empire are used (Anthony Mann, 1964), shot on the outskirts of Madrid– and in the time of Nero, but the setting is clearly “popular”:slaves, ruffians, soldiers and lower-middle class citizens, with exaggerated rictus, typical of the Plautian comedy, and that play with social conditioning. Thus, the love of Philia (innocent and loyal) and Hero (naive and adolescent) is impossible, as she is a slave, but when it is finally discovered that she is the daughter of the wealthy Erroneus, Hero's parents, with social airs, bless the union.; Pseudolus is the prototype of the ingenious and resourceful slave, who will finally achieve the long-awaited freedom, while Hysterium is clumsy and submissive, and although he tries to blackmail Pseudolus, he is soon bossed around by him, who “transvestites” him to trick Pseudolus. Miles Gloriosus; in turn, this Braggart Soldier, back from the conquest of Crete, imposes "military force" but is easily fooled by Pseudolus and Hysterium; Senex, in turn, is no less a copy of "old green" who goes after the skirts of beautiful slaves like Philia.
The slapstick , the sketch and the use of facial expressions are constant in the development of the plot as well as a succession of songs which, not coincidentally, evoke in the viewer the idea that he is watching a Roman comedy... and as such musical numbers must appear. The background of the film is, therefore, light, comic (already from the musical prologue [version dubbed into Spanish]) and with brushstrokes about life in a popular suburb:be it the brothel, a gladiator fight sequence or an improvised beam race. It is the spirit of Saturnalia, of slaves smarter than their masters, of social subversion (up to a point), and of a vaudeville setting:"tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight."
Fellini-Satyricon [vi] ( Spanish dubbed version), as Golfus de Roma , also uses the underworld of Rome as a leitmotiv plot and narrative (how not to do it starting from Petronio's incomplete novel), but it accentuates with greater emphasis the Saturnalian/carnivalesque element. . The 'non-elite' participated in the 'little tradition' - folklore, proverbs, festivals, songs, oracles, humor - which was in some ways radically different from the 'great tradition' of classical education, mastery of the Greek, attachment to philosophy, elite acquisition of works of art.[vii] Roman Saturnalia embodied the fun of the people, which reversed the social order and the ways of the elite:the ordinary and the coarse instead of the refined; the exaggerated and extravagant instead of the subtle and sublime. Laughter, the physical, the profane and the unofficial.[viii] The film version of the Satyricon Petroniano by Fellini is a good example of"immersion in the underworld" –some would say “descent to hell”– and the subversion of the social order (like the slaves who occupy the space of the masters in Saturnalia for a short period of time) by three rogues.
The first sequence, in an almost «futuristic » shows Encolpius, broken with pain by the betrayal of Ascyltus –«rented as a woman even when they guessed him as a man»–, who has stolen Gitón, transfigured into a «wife» –«on the day of the virile toga he wore a woman's stole , his mother had already induced him not to be a man»–; Ascyltus also makes Gitón a «wife»:«sheathing my sword[ix] I told her:“if you are Lucrecia, you have found your Tarquinio”». The two former friends "fight in the arena" of some huge baths, with stairs that lead to nowhere, barely crowded. Ascilto has sold the boy to the actor Vernacchio, which brings us to the world of theater in the following sequence:farce, laughter, scatology, mockery and parody (of justice, with the amputation of a wretched hand). , which is followed by a "miracle" of Caesar), the muttering and phrases in a "popular" Latin by buffoons and Vernacchio's troupe (a speech very much to Fellini's liking, which he was always looking for. Encolpius demands Vernacchio to return Gitón, but the actor refuses ("Are you a senator, are you a nobleman?", he blurts out.) The dispute turns into an auction for the boy ("This young man is better than a wife") between several attendees at the performance, until a nobleman intervenes:Vernacchio's buffoonery, insolence, has reached a limit, and the praetor demands that Githon be returned to Encolpius.
Spa, theater… and brothel. After recovering Gitón, Encolpio returns with him to the insula where they reside, an opportunity for the viewer to walk the streets of those underworld, with night and treachery. Calpurnia encourages them to enter her brothel:the tour is a trip to the grotesque , the ugly, the sexually depraved (apparently), the exaggerated. Encolpio acts as guide in a museum of women and men who offer themselves, in which dirt mixes with misery , brutality and a linguistic variety in some residents who speak Latin, Greek or unrecognizable languages but that sound "exotic". Like a particular tower of Babel or a ziggurat that rises to the heavens (an eye, as in the Pantheon, is the only opening that allows light to pass through); a tower, which, like the Hebrew one, will finally succumb to the ravages of an earthquake (in the same way that Encolpius sinks when Gython chooses Ascyltus as his lover). Trimalchio's dinner, the best-known episode of Petronius's novel, is recreated in detail in a long sequence, after Encolpius had met Eumolpus in an "art gallery", and both attended as guests of the most famous freedman of the ancient world . Trimalchio, so rich that he does not know what he owns and so ignorant as to confuse a few lines of Lucretius with those of another poet, is the epitome of that "elite of the non-elite" that some freedmen could reach. Ostentatious, vain, cruel, capricious, theatrical and excessive – as is everything in Fellini's film – Trimalción was seen by Petronio (who was indeed part of the elite) as that sign of moral decadence that he perceived in Nero's Rome , the one that allowed a common freedman to own immense rural properties and tens of thousands of slaves but deny him any hint of social recognition:after all, he is nothing more than a former slave who inherited from his two masters through rape.
Fellini shows low depths without pretense of realism or to carry out a reliable archaeological restoration; the baths and the cavernous theater of Vernacchio, not to mention the Felicles Island, are part of a "recreation" and not a "reconstruction" that seems to come out of a science-fiction story . Those underworlds exist in the film, they could have existed in the historical past... but we are not sure that they were. Petronio's novel travels through a Rome of ragamuffins and prostitutes, runs through some cities in southern Italy, the Neapolitan "Riviera" where the villas of the rich and powerful accumulate. The popular environment that the Italian director "invents" has a clear dreamlike, magical, "alternative" dimension; he underlies the idea that we must «mark the distance that separates us from the individuals of that time, individuals who […] were so different, that they had not yet known the influence of Christianity. […] The dresses, the setting, the light, the gestures are carefully different from the current ones, provoking a sought after enigmatic and even disturbing atmosphere at times»[x]. Everything had to look different , both in streets and in rooms and corridors, so that in those fellinian underworld there remains a feeling of anguish, far removed from that "white marble Rome" of the great Hollywood pepla.
We have yet to revisit Caligula , the provocative and misunderstood film that Tinto Brass shot during the day with the script by Gore Vidal, while at night the pornographic sequences were shot with a broad brush by Bob Guccione, producer of the film and owner of the empire Penthouse . Beyond the lurid sequence in Capri, in the cave in which the old Tiberius has created his particular world of depraved fun (the spintriae, the "little fishes", the deformed ones, the stallions and the "nymphs"), a priori the film does not affect the underworld of Rome. The scenarios are reduced to the Tiberius villa in Capri and the imperial palace in Rome, as well as occasional outings to temples or the mansion where Proculus and Livia get married, with an absence of the 'people' in practically the entire film. It should be remembered that we are dealing with a particular vision of the madness of Caligula's reign, the story of the craziest Roman emperor according to the canons of Suetonius and Tacitus, of his excesses and cruelties, of his incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla . It is precisely the death of Drusilla that leads Caligula to "come down" to a nocturnal Rome; Hidden under a cloak, the emperor attends a “performance” of the Roman social pyramid – literally – by the actor Mnester (who is transfigured into a parody of Caligula himself):slaves at the base, the people, the soldiers, the tribunes of the plebs, the senators, and the emperor on the next and successively higher echelons. Caligula perceives the mockery – evident with the singer who calls herself Drusilla – and he “rebels” against social subversion and tries to topple the mockery of the social pyramid:he knocks it down but he himself is “subdued” by force and transferred to a prison, into which he "falls" down a slide. Brutal violence and sexual oppression are the broth from which the prisoners drink, until Caligula is recognized by one of the jailers (the ring with his image) and, almost by magic, comes the formal bow and recognition of his authority. Caligula's return to the palace, to the space that corresponds to him, is also an occasion to announce his divinity before some senators who end up accepting it... as well as the umpteenth mockery of the emperor (the shouts of affirmation that turn into bleats of sheep) .
At the conclusion of this text, the imago decadent of the underworld of Rome in the cinema is as blurred as it is polyhedral, as phantasmagorical as it is diverse, as symbolic as it is unreal , invented… or recreated. Like the "non-elite," whose culture was not necessarily monolithic and static. Underlying a first image of exaggeration and crude simplicity, but from the festive, the playful, the sexual and even the eschatological, a second image of protest and rebellion also emerges, of colors and flavors, of noises and smells that end up forming a mixed bag. (or disaster) of the very notion of Romanity. The Roman loved the farce , rather than being carried away by the transcendence of the tragedy. Laughter made more sense than gravitas marbled His low cinematographic funds, in one way or another, pick up this Roman legacy.
[i] Francisco Salvador Ventura, “Two sources to recreate High Imperial Rome. The matron of Ephesus and the feast of laughter in the Fellini-Satyricon ”, in Habis , 42, 2011, 339-352; quote on p. 351-352.
[ii] Fergus Millar, “The World of The Golden Ass ”, in Journal of Roman Studies , 71, 1981, p. 63-75, cited on p. 63.
[iii] G MIRO GORI, «La storia al cinema:una premessa», in G. Miro Gori (ed.), La storia al cinema. Ricostruzione del passato, interpretations of the present , Rome, 1994, p. 12, quoted in Francisco Salvador Ventura, “The classical world in El Satirición de Fellini”, in María Consuelo Álvarez Morán and Rosa María Iglesias Montiel (coords.), Contemporaneity of the classics on the threshold of the third millennium:proceedings of the international congress of the classics. The Greco-Latin tradition in the 21st century (Havana, December 1 to 5, 1998) , Murcia, University of Murcia, 1999, p. 447.
[iv] Gloria Camarero, Beatriz de las Heras and Vanessa de Cruz, “History on the screen”, in Gloria Camarero, Beatriz de las Heras and Vanessa de Cruz (eds. .), A rear window:the story from the cinema , Madrid, Carlos III University, 2008, p. 79-85, cited on p. 84.
[v] Expression of Alba Romano Forteza in her article “ Golfus de Roma (A funny thing happened on the way on the forum ), a cinematographic palimpsest”, in Cuadernos de Filología Clásico. Latino studies , 9, 1995, p. 247-256.
[vi] The Italian director had to change the title because another film used the title of Petronio's novel.
[vii] Jerry Toner, Sixty million s of Romans. The culture of the people in ancient Rome , Barcelona, Critique, 2012, p. 15. We evoke here the classic studies of Mijaíl Bakhtin, Popular culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The context of François Rabelais , Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1987, and Peter Burke, Popular culture in modern Europe , Madrid, Editorial Alliance, 2014 (3rd rev. ed.).
[viii] Ibid ., . 137 and 143.
[ix] As in a much later sequence in the film, when Encolpius is left "impotent" ("I have lost my sword, Ascyl"), the virile member is transfigured into a metaphorical sword.
[x] Francisco Salvador Ventura, “The classical world in El Satirición of Fellini”, p. 450.