LPVIUS, with his full name, LU'CIUS ANDRONI'CUS, was the first person who introduced a regular drama upon the Roman stage. (Liv., vii. 2.) lie is said to have been the slave and afterwards the freedman of M. Livius Salinator. The time and place of his birth are uncertain ; but his first play was probably exhibited B.C. 240, in the year before Ennius was born. (Cic., Brut.; c. 18; 'De Senect.,' e. 14; Tnercul.; i. 1 ; GelL, Noet. Attic,' evil 21.) We learn from Livy the historian, that he acted in his own pieces, and that after his voice failed him, in consequence of the audience frequently demanding a repetition of their favourite passages, he introduced a boy to repeat the words, while he himself gave the proper gesticulations. (Liv., vii. 2.) The fragments of his works, which have come down to ns, are too few to enable ue to form any opinion respecting them : Cicero says that they were not worth being read a second time. ('Brut.,' a. 18.)
They were however very popular at the time they were performed, and continued to be read in schools till a mach later period. (Hor., 'Epist.' ii., i. 69.73.) The hymns of Livius were sung on public occa sions, in order to avert the threatened anger of the gods. (Liv. xxvii. 37.) Festus informs us (under 'Scribes') that the Romans paid distinguished honour to Living, in consequence of the success which attended their arms in the second Picnic War, after the public recitation of a hymn which he had composed. Livius wrote both tragedies and comedies : they appear, if we may judge from their names, to have been chiefly taken from the Greek writers. The titles, which have been preserved, are—Achilles, Adonis, .tEgisthus, Ajax, Andromeda, Antiopa, Centauri, Equus Trojanus, Helena, Hermione, Imo, Lydius, Protesilaodamia, Screams, Tereus, Teucer, Virgo.