ABSTRACT
The judgement and will of the Roman people in public affairs can be made most manifest in three places: at a political meeting, in the assemblies, at a gathering for plays or gladiators. The Collegium Poetarum met in the temple, seems, unlike the earlier Guild of Writers and Actors, to have been reserved only for poets to the exclusion of actors and other theatrical personel. In the dying years of the Roman republic it seems to have been virtually impossible to write, produce or even cite a tragic drama without contemporary political meaning. The famous Roscian law of 67 bce, introduced by the Tribune of the People, Lucius Roscius Otho, assigned the first fourteen rows of seats at the theatre to members of the equestrian order. The location of the Theatre of Scaurus was presumably in the Campus Martius, where five years later, in 53 bce, Rome received another extraordinary temporary playing space: the Theatre of Gaius Scribonius Curio.
