The Origin and Development of Applause

common way to end a play was for the chief actor to yell, “Valete et plaudite!” (“Goodbye and applause!”), thus signalling to the audience that it was time for them to give praise by striking hands and making explosive noise. It is no surprise, then, that this became a means of crowd manipulation. Rome saw the rise of a professional class of laudiceni, or “people who clapped for their dinner”, hired to infiltrate crowds and manipulate their reaction to performances. Actors would hire a dozen or so people to spread out among their audiences and prolong the applause, or, if they were feeling especially bold, to start “spontaneous” chants and shouts of praise. Paragraph 2 The Roman Republic came to an end and was replaced by the Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD), where applause became a way for leaders to interact directly with their citizens. One of the chief methods they used to estimate their standing with the people was gauging the greetings they got when they entered the arena. Leaders became astute at reading the volume, the rhythm, and the length of the crowd’s claps for clues about how well they were doing as officials and lawmakers. “We should think of it as an ancient type of opinion poll,” says Greg Aldrete, a…