Quintus Roscius

Quintus Roscius (c. 126 BC[1] – 62 BC) was a highly renowned Roman actor during the 1st century BC. He was known for the immense quality of his acting, especially in comedy, which earnt him a large fortune. Promoted to the equestrian order by the dictator Sulla in the late 80s BC, he avoided infamia – the status of reduced civil rights in Roman law for performing on stage for pay – by performing without pay.

A friend and mentor of Cicero in Cicero's youth, Roscius also trained other actors, mentored people in oratory and rhetoric, and wrote treatises on performance. Cicero, for his part, supported Roscius and his family when they came under suit; two speeches from two trials – Pro Quinctio and Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo – survive from this advocacy work.

Life

Roscius was born in Lanuvium, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from Rome.[2] The cognomen Gallus is dubious, as it appears only once as a scholia (manuscript comment) by the Bobbio Scholiast (who lived over half a millennium after Roscius's lifetime) in a manuscript of Cicero's Pro Archia.[3][4] While some sources have described Roscius as having been a slave due to the reputed cognomen Gallus leading some authors to conclude he was a freedman, this is probably in error, and he was likely freeborn and came from a fairly well-off family.[5] Cicero, moreover, strongly associates him with the elite of the Italian town Lanuvium from his infancy there.[6] His sister's marriage to one of Cicero's freeborn defendants also makes claims of servile origin very unlikely.[7][8]

Roscius was recognized for his heavily practiced and naturalistic character performances, with his gesturing being particularly well regarded.[9] He especially excelled in comedy, though also performed in tragedy.[10] Roscius was renowned as a teacher, and Cicero took lessons from him early on in his career and subsequently became his friend. The two often engaged in friendly rivalry to try whether the orator or the actor could express a thought or emotion with the greater effect, and Roscius wrote a treatise in which he compared acting and oratory. The dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla (died 78 BC) presented him with a gold ring, denoting his promotion to the equestrian order, a remarkable distinction for an actor in Rome, where the profession was held in contempt and actors marked with infamia.[1][9] Roscius afterwards performed without payment, which allowed him to preserve his status as an equestrian, since infamia attached to the taking of pay for performances.[11][12]

Like his contemporary Aesopus, Roscius amassed a large fortune. Macrobius relates that Roscius' popularity was so great that he received daily 1,000 denarii a day from public funds. Late in his life, he was earning 300,000 sesterces per year.[13] He also was an educator and mentor, training slaves in acting as well as a mentor in dramatic oratory to members of the aristocratic elite such as Cicero.[14] He also established a formal school for acting and had written treatises on acting and oratory.[15] In 62 BC, Roscius died, as evidenced by Cicero's remarks of his artistic excellence in a speech that year.[16][17]

Trial

Most of what is known about Roscius emerges from a civil trial where Cicero defended him from suit by a Gaius Fannius Chaerea for 50,000 sesterces. The date of the trial is not well established. Estimates place it between 76 and 68 BC,[18] with the classicist Andrew R. Dyck preferring 72 or 71 BC.[19] Evidence for the date of the trial is focused on at least three things: that Roscius had acquired a farm during a time of economic uncertainty fifteen years before the trial; that Roscius had stopped taking pay for his acting for ten years; and Cicero argued the trial in his youth.[20] Dyck associates the acquisition of the farm with the end of the Social War c. 87 BC and the end of his acting for pay with Roscius' elevation by Sulla to the equestrians c. 82 BC.[21]

The legal dispute centred on the joint ownership between Roscius and Fannius of a slave called Panurgus, who had been bought by Fannius and trained in acting by Roscius. Some fifteen years before the trial, Panurgus had been slain by a third party (a certain Quintus Flavius[22]) and in compensation for Panurgus' death, Roscius had received from that third party a farm. Fannius alleged that Roscius had held the farm, taking all profits from it, for twelve years without his knowledge and thereby misappropriated Fannius' share of compensation for Panurgus' death.[23] According to Fannius, Roscius had already settled with Fannius Fannius for 100,000 sesterces, of which only 50,000 had been paid; Fannius therefore brought suit for the remaining 50,000.[24]

Cicero's speech now called Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo comically played up Roscius' theatrical excellence and made references to well known comedic tropes,[25] also referencing a legend Roscius had been found "sleeping wrapped in the embrace of snake" as an infant.[26] He also argued that Roscius' compensation to Fannius was already sufficient since the value of the farm as it had been received was far less than the already-paid 50,000 sesterces.[27] Cicero also denied the settlement between Fannius and Roscius existed on the grounds of poor documentation.[28]

Reputation

Roscius was so renowned for his talents that his name became a byword for someone who had become highly skilled within their field.[29][30][31]

By the Renaissance, Roscius formed the paradigm for dramatic excellence. When Thomas Nashe wanted to praise Edward Alleyn as the best actor of his generation, he called Alleyn a Roscius (Pierce Penniless, 1592); John Downes titled his history of Restoration drama Roscius Anglicanus (1708). David Garrick, the leading English actor of his day, was known as the English Roscius. The African American actor Ira Aldridge, who was born in New York in 1807 and died in Lodz, Poland in 1867, and one of the finest Shakespearean actors of his age, was known as 'The African Roscius'.

In literature

Roscius is mentioned by Hamlet in Act II, Scene II of Shakespeare's tragedy, and in Henry VI, Part 3 Act 5, Scene 6.

In the 1850 novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, the character Mr. Barkis calls the title character 'a young Roeshus', the misspelling apparently meant to reflect Barkis' rustic background.

References

  1. 1 2 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Roscius Gallus, Quintus" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 725.
  2. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1123.
  3. ↑ DGRBM 1870, p. 663. "A scholiast on Cicero gives the cognomen Gallus to Q. Roscius, but it does not occur elsewhere, as far as we know. (Schol. Bob. Pro Arch. p. 357, ed. Orelli.)".
  4. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 188.
  5. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 188. "It has sometimes been erroneously accepted that Roscius began life as a slave" (emphasis not in original).
  6. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, pp. 188–89.
  7. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 191. "Roscius's sister is married to Quinctius... a fact which essentially invalidates the hypothesis that Roscius was a former slave".
  8. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1123. "Daß er, wie die meisten Schauspieler, ursprünglich Sklave gewesen sei, darf man aus Plin. ... nicht schließen; da seine Schwester mit P. Quinctius vermählt war... so wird man lieber annehmen, er sei von Geburt an frei gewesen".
  9. 1 2 DGRBM 1870, p. 663.
  10. ↑ Horst-Dieter, BNP.
  11. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1123. "Daß er unbeschadet der Ritterwürde auch weiterhin öffentlich auftreten durfte, war eine Folge davon, daß R. in den späteren Jahren kein Honorar annahm".
  12. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 194. "Ten years prior to the case, Roscius stopped taking pay for his acting" and connecting this with the Digest's rationale for marking actors with infamia as their acceptance of pay for performance.
  13. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 194 n. 45, arguing (from Cic. QRosc., 23–24) that 300,000 per year would be consistent with the claim that he could have earnt sixty times 50,000 sesterces, the amount at issue, over ten years; von der Mühll 1914, col. 1124, instead giving 500,000 or 600,000 sesterces per annum from Pliny; DGRBM 1870, p. 663, asserting 50 million sesterces per year.
  14. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, pp. 191, 198.
  15. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1124.
  16. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 185, citing Cic. Arch., 17.
  17. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1125.
  18. ↑ Alexander 1990, p. 82 (Trial 166).
  19. ↑ Dyck 2025, p. 79, also rejecting (p. 728) the year 66 BC as impossible.
  20. ↑ Dyck 2025, pp. 727–28, among others; Alexander 1990, p. 83 n. 1.
  21. ↑ Dyck 2025, p. 728.
  22. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 185.
  23. ↑ Dyck 2025, pp. 79–80.
  24. ↑ Dyck 2025, p. 80.
  25. ↑ Dyck 2025, pp. 81–82.
  26. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 189.
  27. ↑ Dyck 2025, p. 82.
  28. ↑ Dyck 2025, p. 83.
  29. ↑ DGRBM 1870, p. 663. "He was considered... to have reached such perfection [in acting] that it became the fashion to call everyone on who became particularly distinguished in his own art by the name of Roscius".
  30. ↑ von der Mühll 1914, col. 1124. "Sein Name wurde typisch für einen vollendeten Künstler überhaupt".
  31. ↑ Čulík-Baird 2022, p. 184. "To call an individual 'a Roscius' was to refer to them as the most skilled practitioner in their field".

Bibliography

Modern sources

Ancient sources

  • Cicero. Pro Archia.
  • Cicero. Pro Roscio comoedo.
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