LIVIUS ANDRONICUS (c. 284-204 B.C.), the founder of Roman epic poetry and drama. His name indicates that he was a Greek, a manumitted slave of the Livian family, and thus typical of the early influences in Latin literature, and of the interest of the enlightened aristocracy in Greek culture. He is supposed to have been a native of Tarentum, and to have been brought, while still a boy, after the capture of that town in 272, as a slave to Rome. He lived in the household of a member of the gees Livia, probably M. Livius Salinator. He determined the course which Roman literature followed for more than a century after his time. To judge, however, from the insignificant remains of his writings, and from the opinions of Cicero and Horace, he can have had no pretension to original genius. His real claim to distinction was that he was the first great schoolmaster of the Roman people. We learn from Suetonius that, like Ennius after him, he obtained his living by teaching Greek and Latin ; his trans lation of the Odyssey into Saturnian verse was probably always intended as a school-book and was still used as such in Horace's time; although faultily executed, it satisfied a real want by intro ducing the Romans to a knowledge of Greek. The Romans and Italians had an indigenous drama of their own, known by the name of Satura. This, however, lacked a definite plot. In 24o Andron
icus produced at the Judi Romani a translation of a Greek play (it is uncertain whether a comedy or tragedy or both), and this representation marks the beginning of Roman dramatic literature (Livy vii. 2).
Livius himself took part in his plays, and introduced the cus tom of having the solos (cantica) sung by a boy, while he himself represented the action of the song by dumb show. In his transla tion he discarded the native Saturnian metre, and adopted the iambic, trochaic and cretic metres. He continued to produce plays on Greek mythical subjects (Achilles, Equus Troianus, etc.). In the year 207, when he must have been of a great age, he was ap pointed to compose a hymn of thanksgiving, sung by maidens, for the victory of the Metaurus and an intercessory hymn to the Aventine Juno. As a further tribute of national recognition the "college" or "gild" of poets and actors was granted a place of meeting in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine.
See fragments in L. Muller, Livi Andronici et Cn. Naevi Fabularum Reliquiae (1885) ; also J. Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin ; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, bk. iii. ch.