User:Cynwolfe/Parasites of Apollo

The Parasites of Apollo (Latin Parasiti Apollinis, singular Parasitus Apollinis) was a prestigious theatrical guild in ancient Rome, an association primarily of mime artists and pantomimes.^[1] It was formed during the Hannibalic War in 211 BC, the second year the Ludi Apollinares (Apollonian Games) were held.^[2] Although it existed in Republican Rome, most evidence for the organization comes from the Imperial era.^[3]

The Parasites are known mainly from inscriptions, with only two direct references in literary sources.^[4] Their motto was "All's well, the old man's dancing" (Salva res est, saltat senex).^[5]

The parasitus and Apollo

In ancient comedy, the parasitus was a stock character, a professional dinner guest or "hanger-on" who attaches himself to a social superior, offering flattery, amusement, and the running of errands in exchange for meals or other sustenance. As with the biological parasite named after the ancient figure, the parasitus depends on a host. In Latin the word is uncommon outside a theatrical context, but in a Roman social setting becomes a symbol of the patron-client relationship.^[6]

The guild name may be a play on the theatrical role and the word's original Greek meaning of "dinner guest": the Parasiti Apollinis presented themselves as banquet-companions of Apollo, a god associated with the performing arts^[7] particularly in Imperial cult.^[8] Mimic performance featured prominently among the events (ludi) of the Apollonian Games.^[9] Other inscriptions not mentioning the Parasites associate mime actors and pantomimes with various cults of Apollo,^[10] and theatrical personnel hold cult titles such as archiereus synhodi in Greek and sacerdos Apollinis ("priest of Apollo") in Latin.^[11] The poet Martial refers to the guild in Epigram 9.28, addressed to the actor Latinus, when he says "call me the parasite of laurel-wearing Phoebus."^[12] A confused remark by St. Augustine about the "parasites of Jove" may allude to the Parasiti; Augustine connects these "parasites" to mime-acting and the epulones, the Roman priesthood that oversaw sacrificial feasts in honor of Jove (epulum Iovis), originally for the Plebeian Games (Ludi Plebeii).^[13]

The guild

Membership in the Parasites is noted on gravestones or other commemorations of several theatre professionals,^[14] found mainly in Latium, Campania, Etruria and Apulia.^[15] In all, twelve inscriptions mention the guild.^[16] Similar organizations were the Society of Greek Singers, the Corporation of Tragedians and Comedians, and various collegia of pipers, harp players, Roman pipers, musicians, and mime artists.^[17] There was a complex local network of theatre associations, as indicated by the several named on a monument from Bovillae that honors a wealthy mime actor for his benefactions.^[18] The Parasites of Apollo was probably formed in response to the exclusion of mime actors from the more exalted guild of tragedians, the Artists of Dionysus.^[19]

Motto and origin

The guild's motto was supposed to have dated from their founding during the Hannibalic War, the second of the three Punic Wars. Theatrical performances were part of the Ludi Apollinares, the annual games instituted in honor of Apollo in 212 BC in the climate of wartime crisis. During the ludi the following year, a mime performance was taking place in a temporary theater before the Temple of Apollo in the Circus Flaminius. Both Servius^[20] and Festus^[21] tell the story. As a veteran mime-dancer^[22] performed to the music of a piper (tibicen), word arrived that Hannibal was about to attack the Colline Gate. The male citizens rushed out of the theatre to take up arms, and headed into battle. The Romans were victorious, but the fighters became concerned that the sacred continuity of the ludi had been violated.^[23] They returned to the theatre, and were relieved to find that no disruption of their religious obligation had occurred after all—the old man and the piper had never stopped: "All's well, the old man's dancing." The new mime guild took Salva res est, saltat senex as their motto.^[24]

The saying soon had become a catchphrase: Plautus plays on it in The Bacchides (ca. 189 BC^[25]) when a character remarks "I'm safe, the old man's angry" (Salvus sum, iratus est senex), an "angry" scene being expected from the stock character of the senex.^[26] Servius gives an alternative form of the proverb as Omnia secunda, saltat senex, a variation in wording that has little effect on the English translation. The Renaissance dramatist Ben Jonson alludes to the proverb in The Epicene (1609):

Dauphine: How now, Cutbeard, succeeds it or not?
Cutbeard: Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have prayed to have had it so well: saltat senex, as it is i' the proverb, he does triumph in his felicity; admires the party!^[27]

The anecdote from which the motto is derived may be an invented aetiology.^[28] No major battle with Hannibal's troops nor any event in 212 corresponds with the date.^[29]

Notable Parasiti

Marcus Iunius Maior was a freedman and archimimus from Praeneste during the Imperial era.^[30]
Lucius Aurelius Pylades was a pantomime during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (185–192 AD). He was a patron and priest (sacerdos) of the Parasites at Puteoli, as well as the only freedman known to have been an augur.^[31]
Lucius Acilius Pompteius Eutyches was an archimimus and a decurion at Bovillae. In 169 AD, Eutyches became the first member of the Commune of Mimes to be named a Pater ("father") as their benefactor, having given each of his fellow members a gift of 25 denarii.^[32]

Other Parasiti known by name are Lucius Faenius Faustus^[33] and Gaius Fundilius Doctus,^[34] both recorded at the Grove of Diana (Nemus Dianae).

DYK

… that All's well, the old man's dancing was the motto of the ancient Roman theatre guild known as the Parasites of Apollo?

References

^ Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 241, 375.
^ Robert E.A. Palmer, Rome and Carthage at Peace (Franz Steiner, 1997), p. 68.
^ Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 241.
^ In Martial, Epigrams 9.28, and Festus, referencing Verrius Flaccus, 436 in the edition of Lindsay (= 326 Müller); Christer Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary (Uppsala: S. Academiae Ubsaliensis, 1998), p. 153.
^ E.J. Jory, "The Drama of the Dance: Prolegomena to an Iconography of Imperial Pantomime," in Roman Theater and Society (University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 25; T.P. Wiseman, The Myths of Rome (University of Exeter Press, 2004), pp. 171, 339; George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994, 2nd ed., originally published 1952 by Princeton University Press), p. 13 (without naming the guild). Wiseman translates "It's all right"; "all's well" is the translation of Duckworth. The text of Festus that preserves the proverb is problematic: alternate readings include Salva res est dum saltat senex ("The matter is saved while the old man is dancing") and Salva res est dum cantat senex ("The matter is saved while the old man is singing"); that "dance" is correct is indicated later in the passage, where the old man is said to dance. Servius also preserves the proverb in his note to Aeneid 8.110, and gives an alternative form as Omnia secunda, saltat senex ("All is proceeding in due course, the old man is dancing") at Aeneid 3.279.
^ Cynthia Damon, The Mask of the Parasite: A Pathology of Roman Patronage (University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 1–16: "The parasite is in fact a conveniently compact personified form of something quite abstract, of a complicated nexus of social irritants including flattery, favoritism, and dependency" that "existed in both Greek and Roman society" (p. 7).
^ Damon, The Mask of the Parasite, p. 16.
^ Jean Gagé, "Apollon impérial: Garant des «Fata Romana»," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 593.
^ Summary of Müller, "Parasiti Apollinis," in American Journal of Philology 26 (1905), p. 351; Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 104.
^ Gagé, "Apollon impérial," p. 594; J.P. Waltzing, Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles chez les Romains (Louvain, 1900), vol. 4, pp. 112–113.
^ Ludwig Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire (Routledge, 1913), vol. 4, p. 545.
^ Martial, Epigrams 9.28.9: Me laurigeri parasitum dicite Phoebi; Ludwig Friedländer, M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton Libri (Leipzig, 1886), vol. 1, p. 64.
^ R.W. Dyson, Augustine: The City of Gods against the Pagans (Cambridge University Press, 1998, 2002), p. 252; Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 100–101; Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times (Routledge, 2001, originally published in French 1998), p. 55; Rudolph Merkel, P. Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum Libri Sex (Berlin, 1841), p. ccxxxiv.
^ Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 375.
^ Summary of Albert Müller, "Parasiti Apollinis," Philologus 63 (1904), in American Journal of Philology 26 (1905), p. 351.
^ Henriksén, Martial, Book IX: A Commentary, p. 153.
^ Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 241; Waltzing, Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles, pp. 112–113.
^ Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 375.
^ Anne Duncan, Performance and Identity in the Classical World (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 196; Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 371.
^ Servius, note to Aeneid 8.110: "While the Circus games of Apollo were being celebrated, it was announced that Hannibal was massing at the Colline Gate. The men all took up arms and rushed there together. They returned thereafter, anxious about an expiation, but found a certain old man dancing in the Circus. When asked, he said that he had not interrupted his dancing; it is said that this [is the origin of] the proverb 'All's well, the old man's dancing."
^ Festus, 436 Lindsay (= 326 Müller): "Verrius, in his fifth book, reports why 'All's well while the old man's singing' [sic] is the saying of the Parasites of Apollo in the theatre. When Gaius Sulpicius and Gaius Fulvius were consuls, and the praetor Marcus Calpurnius Piso was putting on games, the approach of the enemy was announced, and they rushed out to the field. When they returned as victors to the theatre, they were concerned that they had brought about a breach of their religious obligation (religio), only to discover there the freedman Gaius Pomponius, a mime of great age, who was dancing to the aulist. Thus in their joy at not interrupting their religious obligation they uttered the saying that is celebrated also at present." Festus errs in naming the consuls of 211 BC: they were Publius Sulpicius Galba Maximus and Gnaeus Fulvius Centumalus Maximus.
^ Festus identifies the mime artist as the freedman (libertinus) of a Gaius Pomponius.
^ Servius explains this concern as a potential piaculum, an occurrence requiring an expiation.
^ Wiseman, The Myths of Rome, pp. 170–171; Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy, p. 13.
^ Erich S. Gruen, "Plautus and the Public Stage," in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (University of California Press, 1996), p. 137, though he and others doubt that the play can be dated so precisely.
^ Niall W. Slater, Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind (Harwood, 2000), p. 89.
^ Ben Jonson, The Epicene, Act II, scene vi, lines 10–14 in the edition of Richard Dutton (Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 171 (with note on the proverb).
^ R.W. Reynolds, "Verrius Flaccus and the Early Mime at Rome," Hermathena 61 (1943), p. 58.
^ Reynolds, "Verrius Flaccus and the Early Mime," p. 58; Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy, p. 13. For Hannibal's activities at the time, see Livy 26.10.2–8 and 26.23.3, as noted by Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1990), p. 287, referencing A. Otto, Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Rômer (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 317–318.
^ ILS 5209a; Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 375.
^ Roy Merle Peterson, The Cults of Campania (Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, 1919), pp. 105, 117.
^ Eutyches also gave five denarii to each the other decurions of Bovillae, three to each of the Augustales, and one denarius to the wives of the recipients and perhaps each resident; CIL 14.2408 = ILS 5196; Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 375.
^ CIL 14.4198 = ILS 5200; Edward Courtney, Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions (Scholars Press, 1995), p. 329.
^ CIL 14.4273, as cited by Albert Müller, "Parasiti Apollinis," Philologus 63 (1904), p. 344.