Some Old Theaters

Playhouses That Flourished In Ancient Greece and Rome.

You may wonder what there could be injurious to public morality in a theater made of stone. Consul P. Cornelius Scipio Naseia knew, but history doesn't tell. The first attempt to build a stone theater in Rome was made a short time before he was elevated to his office. It was sanctioned by the censors and was nearing completion when Scipio persuaded the senate to command it to be pulled down, advancing as his reason solicitude for public morality. 

The Romans did not possess a regular stone theater until a very late period, and, although dramatic representations were very popular in early times, it appears that a wooden stage was created when necessary and was afterward pulled down again, and the plays of Plautus and Terence were performed on such temporary scaffoldings. In the meanwhile many of the neighboring towns of Rome had their stone theaters, as the introduction of Greek customs and manners was less strongly opposed in them than in the city of Rome itself. Wooden theaters, adorned with the most profuse magnificence, were erected at Rome even during the last period of the republic.

A magnificent wooden theater planned by M. AEmilius Scaurus was built in his aedileship 58 B.C. It's scena consisted of three stories, and the lower of them was made of white marble, the middle one of glass and the upper one of gilt wood. The cavea contained 80,000 spectators. In 55 B.C. Cn. Pompey built the first stone theater at Rome, near the Campus Martius. It was of great beauty and is said to have been built after the model of that of Mytilene. It contained 40,000 spectators. 

C. Curios built in 50 B.C. two magnificent wooden theaters close by one another, which might be changed into one amphitheater. After the time of Pompey, however, other stone theaters were erected, as the theater of Marcellus, which was built by Augustus and called after his nephew Marcellus, and that of Balbus, whence Suetonius used the expression, "Per trina theatra." - Cincinnati Commercial