And thus turning himself into, ostensibly, one of the world's first human applause signs. As theater and politics merged -- particularly as the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire -- applause became a way for leaders to interact directly and also, of course, completely indirectly with their citizens. One of the chief methods politicians used to evaluate their standing with the people was by gauging the greetings they got when they entered the arena.
Cicero's letters seem to take for granted the fact that "the feelings of the Roman people are best shown in the theater.
This is how you poll their feelings. And they were, being humans and politicians at the same time, comparing their results to other people's polls -- to the applause inspired by their fellow performers.
After an actor received more favorable plaudits than he did, the emperor Caligula while clutching, it's nice to imagine, his sword remarked , "I wish that the Roman people had one neck. Caligula was neither the first nor the last politician to find himself on the business end of an opinion poll -- just as Shakespeare was neither first nor last to see the world and its doings as an ongoing performance.
In Rome, as in the republics that would attempt to replicate it, theater was politics, and vice versa. There, "even being a ruler is being an actor," Aldrete points out. So savvy politicians of the ancient world relied on the same thing savvy politicians of the less-ancient often do: oppo research. Cicero , the ur-politico, would send friends of his to loiter around the theater, taking notes to see what kind of greeting each politician got when he entered the arena -- the better to see who was beloved by the people, and who was not.
And his human clap-o-meters had a lot of information to assess. And particularly in the Greco-Roman world, crowds -- especially in cities -- were really good at communicating messages through rhythmic clapping, sometimes coupled with shouts. By the late days of the Republic and the early days of the Empire -- from around the first centuries BC to the first centuries AD -- those systems of applause became more and more elaborate.
As power consolidated under one person, passing from Caesar to Caesar to Caesar , plaudits became both more systematized and more nuanced. Applause no longer meant, simply, "claps. Plaudits thundered, but they also buzzed. They also trilled. Crowds developed ways to express degrees of approval of the person or persons before them, ranging from claps, to snaps of the finger and thumb , to waves of the edge of the toga.
The last gesture of which the emperor Aurelian decided would be replaced by the wave of a special handkerchief orarium -- a prop which he then helpfully distributed to all Roman citizens, so they would never be without a way to praise him. The applause rituals were influenced by Rome's expansion, as well. Nero, for his part, amended Rome's clapping style after a trip to Alexandria, where he found himself impressed by the Egyptian method of noise-making.
The emperor, per the account of the historian Suetonius ,. Not content with that, he selected some young men of the order of equites and more than five thousand sturdy young plebeians, to be divided into groups and learn the Alexandrian styles of applause These men were noticeable for their thick hair and fine apparel; their left hands were bare and without rings, and the leaders were paid four hundred thousand sesterces each.
What Nero wanted to replicate was the Alexandrians' varied style of noise-making, which texts of the time break down into three categories: "the bricks," "the roof tiles," and "the bees. The third type seems to refer to vocal rather than mechanical applause -- to the humming or trilling that would make an assembled crowd sound like an enormous swarm of bees.
So applause became, in its way, a political technology -- a tool used by rulers and ruled alike to communicate with each other. This would not be specific, of course, to Rome. Or, for that matter, to the ancient world. Attendees rose to greet the leader, leading to applause that lasted for ten minutes. Stalin's reputation had, of course, preceded him -- and nobody wanted to be the first to stop applauding for the dictator. Finally, the director of a paper factory sat down, allowing the rest of the crowd to follow suit.
After the meeting ended, the director was arrested. But Soviet-style dictatorship, from the dictator's perspective, is always difficult to maintain -- and that was especially so in an empire as widely distributed as Rome's. One reason Roman leaders so systematically built amphitheaters and racetracks throughout the lands they conquered was to, on the one hand, foster a sense of "Romanness" among their subjects.
But it was also, on the other, to offer a place where the public could become, publicly, "the governed. They offered the illusion, if not the reality, of political freedom. And applause -- medium and message at the same time -- became the vehicle for the performance. Using it, people answered back to their leaders, with buzzes that mimicked bees and claps that mimicked thunder. And the spectacle, in turn, ratified and then amplified Rome's power. It's no surprise, then, that the powerful began making a business of manipulating the crowds.
Which are, for all their wisdom , notoriously manipulable. Rome and its theaters, Aldrete told me, saw the rise of a professional class of public instigators -- laudiceni , or "people who clapped for their dinner" -- hired to infiltrate crowds and manipulate their reaction to performances. The practice seems to have started with actors, who would hire a dozen or so shills to disperse among their audiences and prolong the applause they received -- or, if they were feeling either especially bold or especially indignant, to start "spontaneous" chants of praise among the crowd.
Actors might also hire laudiceni to instigate boos and hisses following the performances of competitors. Did you know that the average speed of our claps ranges from 2. The meaning of clapping is recognized through every culture in the world, and is one of the most universal means of communication.
The action of clapping is actually a quite primitive one, initially being used in response to being aroused. It has more to do with the feeling of belonging in the group that someone has just experienced something with. In comparison to vocalizing approval through speech, clapping is easier, louder, and more anonymous especially in crowds. Clapping is even considered more democratic, since stomping your feet can be too disruptive, and not everyone can snap their fingers.
A few hundred years later, in the 4th century BC came the claquer. In the 4th century Athens, competition was fierce between comedians, and claquers became a common way to sway the decision of the judges and be awarded best performance. In the Roman Empire, the practice of using applause to influence was applied to politics, and claquers were found in both courts of law and private art demonstrations.
Why do we applaud a great performance? Why not stand on our heads or click our heels instead? Who started this hand-clapping stuff? Hear, hear! Excellent question. Superb, really. And ultimately unanswerable.
Cavemen and human ancestors — we don't know whether they clapped hands or not.
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