Music of ancient Rome

• 1. Introduction

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  Music of ancient Rome was woven into the fabric of daily life so thoroughly that Romans considered a sacrifice without it unimaginable. At the Secular Games in 17 BC, the poet Horace's Secular Ode was performed by a mixed children's choir, commissioned by the emperor Augustus himself. That moment captures something essential about how Rome understood music: not as private pleasure, but as a civic and sacred act.

  The questions this documentary will pursue reach into every corner of Roman life. Why did priests dance through city streets beating drums? What did Nero do to his body in the name of vocal training? And how did a hydraulic pipe organ, driven by water pressure, end up accompanying gladiators in the arena?

• 2. Roots and Influences

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  Etruscan music was the first major current to flow into Roman musical culture, and then ancient Greek music shaped what came after. Cicero recorded that Roman musical tradition was adapted during the reign of Numa Pompilius, placing its formative period in Rome's earliest monarchy. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras identified the first seven pitches of a scale, and that knowledge traveled into the Roman world.

  Under the influence of ancient Greek theory, Romans came to believe that music reflected the orderliness of the cosmos itself. It was linked particularly to mathematics and to knowledge as a discipline. During the Imperial period, Romans carried their musical practices outward into the provinces. At the same time, traditions from Asia Minor, North Africa, and Gaul flowed back into Roman culture, making the exchange a two-way current.

• 3. Music in Religion and Ritual

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  Ancient Roman art depicts tibicines, the players of the tibia, standing behind altars in a toga with a head covering while an animal is sacrificed. The tibia, which was the Roman name for the Greek aulos, was likely the most important instrument in the Roman Imperial cult. Players were also stationed to drown out any distracting noise that might disrupt a ceremony.

  Cymbals and drums served the cult of Cybele. Rattles were central to the cult of Isis, whose temple in Rome drew female musicians, dancers, and singers for her festival and for the festival of the Bona Dea. The Salian priests danced and sang while moving through the city to honor Mars, and the Arval Brethren danced and sang for the goddess Ceres.

  Titus Livius recorded a striking episode in which flute players were barred from eating and drinking in the temples. The musicians withdrew to Tivoli in protest. The Senate reversed course only after recognizing that no musicians remained available for religious services, and the players were allowed back.

• 4. Entertainment and Public Life

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  Gladiatorial fights opened with a blast of horns and were accompanied by music throughout. The tibia drew the viewer's attention during triumphal ceremonies, while a trumpet announced the presence of the triumphator. Musicians, usually players of the tuba or large aerophones, performed during military triumphs.

  In the theatre, actors, pantomimes, and tragedians were backed by a chorus of singers and an orchestra of wind or percussion instruments. The tune of those instruments signaled the emotions and traits of characters and set the pace of the story. A musician could be driven off the stage for even a small error.

  Private concerts known as symphoniaci also existed, though ancient sources associated them with debauchery. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who served as consul in 58 BCE, was known to host such gatherings; his house was described as filled with singing and cymbals. Domitian established contests combining music, gymnastics, and riding. Nero founded the Quinquennial Neronia, a festival of musical competitions, and the Actian games of Apollo also held such contests.

• 5. Voice Training and Education

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  Musical training was widespread among the Roman upper class, and ancient sources suggest it may have been especially common among upper-class women. The Roman term for a music or speech teacher was phonascus, whose primary work was developing a student's vocal flexibility.

  Cicero recorded that musicians would lie in bed and gradually arouse their voices before rising, then sit up and run the voice from its highest to its lowest range, joining both extremes together. This was a daily discipline, not an occasional one. According to The Twelve Caesars, Nero trained his voice by avoiding certain foods and drinks, using vomiting and enemas to purge himself, and lying on his back with a lead sheet placed on his chest.

  Quintilian held that maintaining good physical health through diet and exercise was essential for a proper voice. He also believed that abstaining from sex was important for a singer. Other ancient texts describe singers performing warm-up exercises of vocalized successive sounds before any performance. There may also have been music schools for musicians of lower social standing.

• 6. Cultural Tensions Around Music

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  Plutarch praised a man named Numerius Furius specifically for singing when it was appropriate, which hints at the anxiety Romans felt about when music was acceptable. Cornelius Nepos, in his biography of the fourth-century BC Greek general Epaminondas, described that general's skill at music and dancing as trivial, or rather contemptible.

  Cicero wrote that music could animate the indolent and calm the excited, and quoted Plato's worry that no art flows more easily into young and impressionable minds. In that same text, Cicero described how Sparta had reportedly ordered the strings above the number of seven to be cut from the lyre of Timotheus, fearing that musical complexity heralded political decay. Cicero himself described archaic Roman music as something that had civilized the barbaric, and believed musical education could help politicians listen more carefully to arguments.

  Nevertheless, numerous Roman writers, including Plato, Seneca, and Cicero, believed music could effeminize men. Female musicians were highly respected relative to male musicians, and skill at music could enhance a woman's attractiveness. Being too skilled, however, especially when combined with activities seen as disreputable, could diminish a woman's standing. Music was also considered inappropriate for married or older women. Among the early Christians and Late Antique church fathers, discussions about the meaning and significance of music were active and ongoing.

• 7. Instruments of Rome

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  The Roman tuba was a long, straight bronze trumpet about 1.3 meters in length, with a detachable conical mouthpiece similar to that of the modern French horn. It had a cylindrical bore and was capable only of a single overtone series, since it had no valves. In the military it served as a bugle, and mosaics show it accompanying games and spectacle events.

  The cornu curved around the musician's body in a shape resembling an uppercase G, with a conical bore and conical mouthpiece. The military signal officer who translated orders into calls on the cornu was called the cornicen. The tibia, usually played as a double pipe, used two double-reed pipes held steadily with a mouth-band called a capistrum; modern analysis suggests they produced a low, clarinet-like sound.

  Among string instruments, the cithara had seven strings and resembled the modern guitar. The lute, also known as the pandura or monochord, differed from the lyre by having fewer strings stretched over a solid neck or fretboard, allowing each string to produce a greater range of notes. Long-necked lutes are depicted in Mesopotamian art as early as the period spanning 2340-2198 BC, but in the Greco-Roman world the lute was far less common than the lyre or cithara.

  The hydraulic pipe organ, the hydraulis, operated by water pressure and was described as one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity. Air was pumped into a dome submerged in a tank of water, compressing the air and displacing the water; the resulting pressure provided a steady supply of air to the pipes. The hydraulis accompanied gladiatorial contests, arena events, stage performances, and was among the instruments Nero played personally.

• 8. Dance and Performance

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  The Salii and the Arval Brethren were priestly organizations whose religious duties included dancing at festivals. Varro, a Roman author, explained the rationale: no part of the body should be kept apart from religious experience. Roman soldiers could also hold dances before battle to honor Mars.

  Ovid described people dancing and singing drunk in the streets during festivals like the Anna Perenna. Female dancers known as crotalisterias performed using bells and clappers. Another widely practiced form was tripudia, a style involving three-foot rhythmic patterns. Pantomimists wore cloaks, masks with closed mouths, and costumes; Plutarch described them twisting, leaping, and suddenly holding completely still like a statue.

  Cicero stated that no sober person would dance unless they were a lunatic, though he likely objected not to entertainment dancing but to upper-class Romans practicing what he considered a lower-class profession. Scipio Aemilianus criticized dancers for improper display of their bodies. Elagabalus was heavily scrutinized by contemporaries for his use of foreign dances, reflecting the Roman insistence that improper dance was defined simply as being un-Roman. Private dance schools trained aristocrats, suggesting the line between respectable and unrespectable performance was contested territory throughout Roman history, as the recordings by the Ensemble Kerylos and the Synaulia group centuries later would attempt to reconstruct.