Didascaliae are a compilation of production notices for several stage works of
ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...
. This incomplete record was probably compiled some time around the 1st century BC, and contains notes on the ''Stichus'' and ''Pseudolus'' of
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the g ...
(in Manuscript A) and all the plays of
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...
(in the manuscript and in the commentary by
Aelius Donatus
Aelius Donatus (; fl. mid-fourth century AD) was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric.
Works
He was the author of a number of professional works, of which several are extant:
*Ars maior – A commentary on Latin grammar.
* Ars minor – ...
), after which they were sometimes called ''Didascaliae Terentianae''. The notes contain information about the first performance of the works, games that were played there, the plays' directors and producers (such as
Lucius Ambivius Turpio), musical composers, the nature of the musical score, the
Roman consul
A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politic ...
s that year, ''etcetera''. In some cases, details about subsequent revivals are also preserved.
[Jocelyn, H.D. CQ 1980, 387 ff]
See also
*
Didaskalia (theatre)
In theatre studies, didaskalia is anything written within a play text that is not directly spoken by a character. The term is the modern re-use of the theatrical term of the classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, ...
References
{{reflist
Ancient Roman theatre
1st-century BC Latin books