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NAEVIUS After Livius Andronicus, Naevius1 Was the Second

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NAEVIUS After Livius Andronicus, Naevius1 Was the Second CHAPTER THREE NAEVIUS Dispositio. The Clash of Myth and History Double Identity: Campanian and Roman After Livius Andronicus, Naevius1 was the second Latin epic poet. He was of "Campanian" origin (Gellius 1. 20. 14), which, according to Latin usage, means that he was from Capua,2 a city allegedly founded by Romulus, and his thoughts and feelings were those of a Roman, not without a large admixture of Campanian pride. Capua in his day was almost as important economically as Rome and Carthage and its citizens were fully aware of this (though it was not until the Second Punic War that it abandoned Rome). Naevius himself tells us (Varro apud Gell. 17. 21. 45) that he actively participated in the First Punic War. The experience of that great historical conflict led to the birth of the Bellum Poenicum, the first Roman national epic. Similarly, Ennius would write his Annales after the Second Punic War and Virgil his Aeneid after the Civil Wars. In 235 B.C., only five years after the first performance of a Latin play by Livius Andronicus, Naevius staged a drama of his own. Soon he became the greatest comic playwright, unsurpassed until Plautus. He did not restrain his sharp tongue even when speaking of the noblest families. Although he did not mention anyone by name, he unequivocally alluded to a rather unheroic moment in the life of the young Scipio (Com. 108-110 R), and his quarrel with the Metelli (ps.­ Ascon., Ad Cic. Verr. 1. 29), formerly dismissed as fiction,3 is accepted today as having some basis in fact. In addition, when Plautus (Mil. 1 All translations quoted in this chapter are adapted from: E.H.Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, Vol.2 (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1936). 2 H.T.Rowell, "The 'Campanian' Origin of Cn.Naevius and its Literary Attesta­ tion", MAAR 19 (1949): 17-34. 3 G.Wissowa, "Naevius und die Meteller", in: Genethliakon far C.Robert (Berlin, 1910): 51-63. For a criticism of the biographical tradition: H.B. Mattingly, "Naevius and the Metelli", Historia 9 (1960): 414-439 (with bibl.); see also T.Frank, "Naevius and Free Speech", A]Ph48 (1927): 105-120; H.D.Jocelyn, "The Poet Cn. Naevius, P. Cornelius Scipio, and Q. Caecilius Metellus", Antichthon 3 (1969): 32-47. 46 CHAPTER THREE 210-212) speaks of a poet sitting in jail, his chin resting meditatively on his hand and forearm, as if on a column, in all likelihood we are meant to see an allusion to Naevius who, according to Varro (apud Gell. 3. 3. 15) wrote two plays containing excusatory passages while in prison. The seeming conventionality of the story is not, in itself, proof against its veracity; for, if the lives of dissident authors of all periods are similar, this is not necessarily the fault of their biographers. On the other hand, since it is hard to imagine a jolly prison inspiring an author to write comedies, it is reasonable to assume that Varro combined two independent pieces of evidence, the information that Naevius had been in prison and the extant excusatory passages in two comedies. That Naevius left the city because certain members of the nobility hated him sounds believable, though we are not allowed to project onto the poet the fate of famous exiles of later times. He died in Utica some time after 204 B.C. 1 Between Epic and Drama Naevius' dramas are mentioned here only as far as they are relevant to the Bellum Poenicum. First of all, his tragedies naturalized Greek myths at Rome, particularly-and not accidentally-the Trojan legends; King Pyrrhus of Epirus, for example, would fight against Rome as if against a new Troy. Similarly later, in the Bellum Poenicum, the events of contemporary history would be seen against the back­ ground of Rome's Trojan origins. The dramas, therefore, seem to have paved the way for Naevius' s epic which linked Roman history to its mythical roots. On the other hand, in the titles of the plays there are several female names: Danae, Hesione, Iphigenia. Far from dwelling uniquely on male heroism, Naevius the tragedian was not blind to the suffer­ ings of women, and even in the Bellum Poenicum he would reveal the emotions of the women leaving Troy (Frg. 4 Morel = 5 Blansdorf). In additon to myth, Naevius discovered Roman history as a subject for his dramas. He was the first to write serious historical drama at Rome, the so-called praetexta. Though (as early as Aeschylus' Persae) there had been predecessors in classical Greek and Hellenistic drama, it is important to keep in mind that Naevius, before writing the Bellum 1 Probably the latest date of a performance, cf. Varro apud Cic., Brut. 60; Jerome, Chron. 145th Olympiad, ad annum 201 B.C. .
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