Gnaeus Naevius

Biography

Much of the information concerning the life of Naevius is coloured by uncertainty. Aulus Gellius describes the epitaph of Naevius as demonstrating "Campanian arrogance," based on which statement it has been suggested that Naevius was a native of Campania. The phrase "Campanian arrogance" seems, however, to have been a proverbial or idiomatic phrase indicating boastfulness. Further, the fact that there was a plebeian gens Naevia in Rome, makes it quite possible, even likely, that Naevius was a Roman citizen by birth. He served either in the Roman army or among the socii in the First Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before 241.

His career as a dramatic author began with the exhibition of a drama in or about the year 235, and continued for thirty 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 insistence he was imprisoned. After writing two plays during his imprisonment, in which he is said to have apologized for his former rudeness, he was liberated through the interference of the tribunes of the commons; but he had shortly afterwards to retire from Rome (in or about 204) to Utica. It may have been during his exile, when withdrawn from his active career as a dramatist, that he composed or completed his poem on the First Punic War. Probably his latest composition was his own epitaph, written in saturnian verse:

Immortales mortales si foret fas flere,
flerent diuae Camenae Naeuium poetam.
itaque, postquam est Orchi traditus thesauro,
obliti sunt Romani loquier lingua Latina.

Translation:

If immortals were allowed to weep for mortals,
the divine Muses would weep for the poet Naevius.
And so after he was delivered to the strongbox of Orc[h]us,
Romans forgot how to speak the Latin language.

If these lines were dictated by a jealousy of the growing ascendancy of Ennius, the life of Naevius must have been prolonged considerably beyond 204, the year in which Ennius began his career as an author in Rome. Unlike Livius Andronicus, Naevius was a native Italian, not a Greek; he was also an original writer, not a mere adapter or translator. If it is due to Livius that the forms of Latin literature were, from the first, molded on those of Greek literature, it is due to Naevius that much of its spirit and substance was of native growth.