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Ritschl's thesis that Roman theatres had no seats until the middle
of the second century B.C.E. has long fallen by the wayside.' After the
successive refutations of that thesis by Fabia, Fensterbusch, Duckworth,
and Beare, few would deny that seating was available for at least some
of the spectators for at least some of the original performances of
Plautine plays.2 Nevertheless, it remains unclear just who was likely
to have been sitting while watching Plautus' plays, and what the
distinction between seated and standing spectators meant to Plautus
and his audience. This article addresses these uncertainties through a
reexamination of the relevant passages of Plautus. I shall argue that
seating in the temporary theatres where Plautus' plays were first
performed was often insufficient for all who wished to see the play,
that the primary criterion for determining who was to stand and who
could sit was social status, and that this social distinction between
standers and sitters lies behind several Plautine jokes.
Passages from the Epidicus and the Mercator appear to imply that
at the first performance of those plays the entire audience was seated.
The epilogue of the Epidicus includes a request that the audience get
up and stretch (lumbos porgite atque exsurgite [Epid. 733]).3 In the
Mercator, Acanthio asks Charinus if he is afraid of waking the
sleeping spectators (160). While the joke could be thought particularly
funny if Acanthio imagined the spectators falling asleep even as they
stood, it appears more likely that the spectators mentioned were
sitting down.4 References to seated and standing spectators in the
'2F. Ritter in Allgemeine Schulzeitung (1830) 873 ff., cited in Ritschl (note 1 above)
212. Abel (note 5 above) 90 proposes that the passage could mean that the spectators
were divided into tribes, but there is no evidence for such division at this early a date.
It is not clear whether the senators are envisioned as sitting in the orchestra, as they
did in the later permanent theatres (Vitr. 5.6.2), or if they are in the front rows of the
cavea.