Theatre was an integral part of Roman civic, religious and political life for nearly a thousand years, but our understanding of it is skewed by the haphazard survival of usable evidence.
The widely accepted date for the beginning of Roman drama is 240 BC, but that is only the date of the first known dramatic works.
Theatre as a public spectacle was created in Athens and in Greek Sicily at the end of the 6th century BC, when the culture of Rome was itself Greek.
In “The Lost History of Roman Theatre,” T. P. Wiseman reexamines the often-obscured origins of Roman theater.
