NAEVIUS, GNAEUS A ? 194 B.c.), Latin epic poet and dramatist. From a phrase in Gellius (i. 24. I.) it has been inferred that he was born in a colony in Campania, but it seems just as probable that he was a Roman citizen. He served in the First Punic War. His career as a dramatic author began with the exhibition of a drama in or about the year 235, and continued for 3o years. Towards the close he incurred the hostility of some of the nobility, especially, it is said, of the Metelli, by the attacks which he made upon them on the stage, and at their instance he was imprisoned (Plautus, mu. Glor. 211). After writing two plays during his imprisonment, in which he is said to have apologized for his former rudeness (Gellius iii. 3. 15), he was liberated through the interference of the tribunes of the com mons; but he had shortly afterwards to retire from Rome (in or about 204) to Utica. His epic may have been written during his exile. Probably his latest composition was the epitaph already referred to, written like the epic in Saturnian verse:— "Immortales mortales si foret fas Here, Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam; Itaque postquam est Orci traditus thesauro Obliti sunt Romai loquier lingua Latina"' Like Livius, Naevius professed to adapt Greek tragedies and comedies to the Roman stage. Among the titles of his tragedies are Aegisthus, Lycurgus, Andromache or Hector Pro ficiscens, Equus Trojanus, the last named being performed at the opening of Pompey's theatre (55). But he also produced at least two specimens of the fabula praetexta (national drama) one founded on the childhood of Romulus and Remus (Lupus or Alimonium Romuli et Remi), the other called Clastidium, which celebrated the victory of M. Claudius Marcellus over the Celts (222). But it was as a writer of comedy that he was most famous. He is placed in the canon of the grammarian Volcacius Sedigitus third (immediately after Caecilius and Plautus) in the rank of Roman comic authors. He is there characterized as ardent and impetuous in character and style. He is also appealed to as a master of his art in one of the prologues of Terence. His comedy, like that of Plautus, seems to have been rather a free adaptation of his originals than a rude copy of them, as those of Livius probably were, while the titles of most of them, like those of Plautus, are Latin. He used the stage, as it had been used at Athens, as a
political arena, and his sympathies are strongly popular and anti Senatorial. Among the few lines still remaining from his lost comedies, we seem to recognize the idiomatic force and rapidity of movement characteristic of the style of Plautus. There is also found that love of alliteration which is a marked feature in all the older Latin poets. In one considerable comic fragment at tributed to him—the description of a coquette—there is great truth and shrewdness of observation. But we find no trace of the exuberant comic power and geniality of his great contemporary.
He was not only the oldest native dramatist, but the first author of an epic poem (Bellum by combining the representation of actual contemporary history with a mythical background, may be said to have created the Roman type of epic poetry. The earlier part of it treated of the mythical adventures of Aeneas, and the later part of the events of the First Punic War in the style of a metrical chronicle. This poem is the first appear '"If it were permitted that immortals should weep for mortals, the divine Camenae would weep for Naevius the poet; for since he bath passed into the treasure-house of death men have forgotten at Rome how to speak in the Latin tongue." ance in Roman literature of the belief in the foundation of Rome by Aeneas. The few remaining fragments produce the impression of vivid and rapid narrative, to which the flow of the native Saturnian verse, in contradistinction to the weighty and complex structure of the hexameter, was naturally adapted.
Fragments (dramas) in L. Muller, Livi Andronici et Cn. Naevi Fabularum Reliquiae (1885), and (Bellum Punicum) in his edition of Ennius (1884) ; monographs by E. Klussmann (1843) ; M. J. Berchem 0860 ; D. de Moor (1877) ; F. Marx, Naevius (Leipzig, 1911) ; Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. iii., ch. 14. On Virgil's indebtedness to Naevius and Ennius, see V. Crivellari, Quae praecipue hausit Vergilius ex Naevio et Ennio (1889).