ABSTRACTS > Raffaella VICCEI

“Balsama et crocum per gradus theatri fluere iussit” (Vita Hadr. 19,5). The Smells and Senses in the Roman Theatre and their Contemporary Reception.

In the Roman theatres of the Imperial age, the heat and, above all, the absence of toilets made it necessary to spread fragrant essences (“balsama”) or scented sprinklings of water enriched with saffron (“crocum”) on actors and audience, packed in the cavea.

We get the information about this custom from literary sources and archaeological evidence –hydraulics and fountain-figures (Fuchs 1987) –.

So, the above mentioned smells, as well as many others, were a significant part of the theatrical atmosphere.

However, scholars have not yet devoted sufficient attention to this important element of Roman theatre culture.

Neverthless archaeologists and architects who work on the valorization of the Roman theatres neglected to restore this distinctive feature of the fruition of ancient theatrical space and today’s visitor can understand the history of a theatre only by watching its ‘ruins’, its archaeological remains.

Therefore, the way an ancient theatre is presently known, interpreted, sensed, re-imaged, is above all entrusted to our sight.

The theatre, though, wasn’t only a building to be seen.

It was a sound place, where words of drama, music, lively din of the audience echoed; a place where various smells mixed together and even affected the sight of the performances, thus a place where the visual perception was activated along with the auditory perception and olfactory.

Is a reception of sensoriality in ancient theatre possible today?

This paper wants to show it is and so the purposes of my conference paper are

to provide a picture, as complete as possible, of the smells, both fragrant and foul, which were felt in the theatre during the plays and then to reconstruct the impact of the smells on the performances and on their ancient audience, by sifting through literary sources and archaeological evidence, following a historical and anthropological approach (Gusman 2004);

to inquire into the contemporary reception of smells in Roman theatres by placing the following question as a starting point: do we have a change to experience a reenactment of the smells spread right across the Roman theatres? An affirmative answer comes from the olfactory plate in the ‘Museo sensibile’ of Milano Roman theatre (Viccei 2009), which lets the visitor understand the history of monument also through the senses. On the basis of this concrete proposal and of some hypotheses on the ‘valorization’ of smells in Roman theatres, we will reflect on their contemporary reception.

Therefore, my paper is framed in point 1 of the Cfp – The materiality of smell – and intends to respond in particular to the question: What new technical means are now mobilized to make modern audiences ‘smell’ and sense Antiquity (for instance in museums and multi-media productions)?

A. Gusman, Antropologia dell’olfatto, Roma-Bari 2004

M. Fuchs, Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung römischer Theater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum, Mainz am Rhein 1987

R. Viccei, L’area archeologica del teatro romano di Milano. Monumento e valorizzazione, «Stratagemmi», X (2009), pp. 9-56.

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