Dramatic Identities

The question of whether tragedy was performed in late antiquity and, if so, in what form, has provoked considerable scholarly debate. Much of this work has been influenced by the Gibbonesque model of decline and fall. Culture as an articulation of society mirrors the political decline of the Empire. Even scholars who attempt to distance themselves from such a model find it hard not to portray theatre in the middle and late Empire as a pale reflection of the dramatic glories of the past. 1 Tragedy becomes a stagnant elite literary exercise which even the educated classes approached in a half-hearted manner, whilst the rest of the populace indulged in the intellectually vacuous pleasures of the pantomime and mime. 2 Scholarship has made a careful distinction between the activities of the tragic pantomimes and tragedy, between late antiquity and the ‘Classical world’, and ultimately between text and performance.