A native of Magna Græcia, was the first who attempted to establish at Rome a regular theatre, or to connect a dramatic fable, free from the mummeries, the ballet, and the melodrama of the ancient satires108. Tiraboschi asserts, that when his country was finally subdued by the Romans, in 482, Livius was made captive and brought to Rome109. It is generally believed that he there became the slave, and afterwards the freedman of Livius Salinator, from whom he derived one of his names: these facts, however, do not seem to rest on any authority more ancient than the Eusebian Chronicle110. The precise period of his death is uncertain; but in Cicero’s Dialogue De Senectute, Cato is introduced saying, that he had seen old Livius while he was himself a youth111. Now Cato was born in 519, and since the period of youth among the Romans was considered as commencing at fifteen, it may be presumed that the existence of Livius was at least protracted till the year 534 of the city. It has been frequently said, that he lived till the year 546112, because Livy113 mentions that a hymn composed by this ancient poet was publicly sung in that [pg 55]year, to avert the disasters threatened by an alarming prodigy; but the historian does not declare that it was written for the occasion, or even recently before.

The earliest play of Livius was represented in 513 or 514, about a year after the termination of the first Punic war. Osannus, a modern German author, has written a learned and chronological dissertation on the question, in which of these years the first Roman play was performed114; but it is extremely difficult for us to come to any satisfactory conclusion on a subject which, even in the time of Cicero, was one of doubt and controversy115. Like Thespis, and other dramatists in the commencement of the theatrical art, Livius was an actor, and for a considerable time the sole performer in his own pieces. Afterwards, however, his voice failing, in consequence of the audience insisting on a repetition of favourite passages, he introduced a boy who relieved him, by declaiming in concert with the flute, while he himself executed the corresponding gesticulations in the monologues, and in the parts where high exertion was required, employing his own voice only in the conversational and less elevated scenes116. It was observed that his action grew more lively and animated, because he exerted his whole strength in gesticulating, while another had the care and trouble of pronouncing. “Hence,” continues Livy, “the practice arose of reciting those passages which required much modulation of the voice, to the gesture and action of the comedian. Thenceforth the custom so far prevailed, that the comedians never pronounced anything except the verses of the dialogues117:” And this system, which one should think must have completely destroyed the theatric illusion, continued, under certain modifications, to subsist on the Roman stage during the most refined periods of taste and literature.

The popularity of Livius increasing from these performances, as well as from a propitiatory hymn he had composed, and which had been followed by great public success, a building was assigned to him on the Aventine hill. This edifice was partly converted into a theatre, and was also in[pg 56]habited by a troop of players, for whom Livius wrote his pieces, and frequently acted along with them118.

It has been disputed whether the first drama represented by Livius Andronicus at Rome was a tragedy or comedy119. However this may be, it appears from the names which have been preserved of his plays, that he wrote both tragedies and comedies. These titles, which have been collected by Fabricius and other writers, are, Achilles, Adonis, Ægisthus, Ajax, Andromeda, Antiopa, Centauri, Equus Trojanus, Helena, Hermione, Ino, Lydius, Protesilaodamia, Serenus, Tereus, Teucer, Virgo120. Such names also evince that most of his dramas were translated or imitated from the works of his countrymen of Magna Græcia, or from the great tragedians of Greece. Thus, Æschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of Ægisthus: There is still an Ajax of Sophocles extant, and he is known to have written an Andromeda: Stobæus mentions the Antiopa of Euripides: Four Greek dramatists, Sophocles, Euripides, Anaxandrides, and Philæterus, composed tragedies on the subject of Tereus; and Epicharmus, as well as others, chose for their comedies the story of the Syrens.

Little, however, except the titles, remains to us, from the dramas of Livius. The longest passage we possess in connection, extends only to four lines. It forms part of a hymn to Diana, recited by the chorus, in the tragedy of Ino, and contains an animated exhortation to a person about to proceed to the chase:—

This passage testifies the vast improvement effected by Livius on the Latin Tongue; and indeed the polish of the language and metrical correctness of these hexameter lines, have of late led to a suspicion that they are not the production of a period so ancient as the age of Livius122, or at least that they [pg 57]have been modernised by some later hand. With this earliest offspring of the Latin muse, it may be curious to compare a production from her last age of decrepitude. Nemesianus, in his Cynegeticon, has closely imitated this passage while exhorting Diana to prepare for the chase:

As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the Ino are the only passage among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved a second perusal123. They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry. It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature, there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better models existed:

But although Livius may have been too much read in the schools, and too much admired in an age, which could boast of models so greatly superior to his writings, he is at least entitled to praise, as the inventor among the Romans of a species of poetry which was afterwards carried by them to much higher perfection. By translating the Odyssey, too, into Latin verse, he adopted the means which, of all others, was most likely to foster and improve the infant literature of his country—as he thus presented it with an image of the most [pg 58]pure and perfect taste, and at the same time with those wild and romantic adventures, which are best suited to attract the sympathy and interest of a half-civilized nation. This happy influence could not be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian verse, which led Cicero to compare the translation of Livius to the ancient statues, which might be attributed to Dædalus125.

The Latin Odyssey commenced—

There have also been three lines preserved by Festus, which are translated from the 8th Book, expressing the effects produced on the mind by a sea-storm—

From the æra in which the dramatic productions of Livius appeared, theatrical representations formed the object of a peculiar art. The more regular drama, founded on that of Magna Græcia, or Sicily, being divided into tragedy and comedy, became, in a great measure, the province of professional players or authors, while the Roman youths of distinction continued to amuse themselves with the Fabulæ Atellanæ, and Exodia, a species of satirical medley, derived from the ancient Etruscans, or from the Osci, the nature and progress of which I shall hereafter have occasion more particularly to examine.

A native of Campania, was the first imitator of the regular dramatic works which had been produced by Livius Andronicus. He served in the first Punic war, and his earliest plays were represented at Rome in the year 519127. The names of his tragedies, from which as few fragments remain as from those of Livius, are still preserved:—Alcestis, (from which there is yet extant a description of old age in rugged and barbarous verse)—Danae, Dulorestes, Hesiona, Hector, Iphigenia, Lycurgus, Phœnissæ, Protesilaus, and Telephus. All [pg 59]these were translated, or closely imitated from the works of Euripides, Anaxandrides, and other Greek dramatists. Cicero commends a passage in the Hector, one of the above-mentioned tragedies128, where the hero of the piece, delighted with the praises which he had received from his father Priam, exclaims—

Nævius, however, was accounted a better comic than tragic poet. Cicero has given us some specimens of his jests, with which that celebrated wit and orator appears to have been greatly amused; but they consist rather in unexpected turns of expression, or a play of words, than in genuine humour. One of these, recorded in the second Book De Oratore, has found its way into our jest-books; and though one of the best in Cicero, it is one of the worst of Joe Miller. It is the saying of a knavish servant, “that nothing was shut up from him in his master’s house”.—“Solum esse, cui domi nihil sit nec obsignatum, nec occlusum: Quod idem,” adds Cicero, “in bono servo dici solet, sed hoc iisdem etiam verbis.”

Unfortunately for Nævius, he did not always confine himself in his comedies to such inoffensive jests. The dramas of Magna Græcia and Sicily, especially those of Epicharmus, were the prototypes of the older Greek comedy; and accordingly the most ancient Latin plays, particularly those of Nævius, which were formed on the same school, though there be no evidence that they ridiculed political events, partook of the personal satire and invective which pervaded the productions of Aristophanes. If, as is related, the comedies of Nævius were directed against the vices and corporal defects of the Consuls and Senators of Rome, he must have been the most original of the Latin comic poets, and infinitely more so than Plautus or Terence; since although he may have parodied or copied the dramatic fables of the ancient Greek or Sicilian comedies, the spirit and colouring of the particular scenes must have been his own. The elder Scipio was one of the chief objects of his satiric representations, and the poetic severity with which Aristophanes persecuted Socrates or Euripides, was hardly more indecent and misdirected than the sarcasms of Nævius against the greatest captain, the most accomplished scholar, and the most virtuous citizen of his age. [pg 60]Some lines are still extant, in which he lampooned Scipio on account of a youthful amour, in which he had been detected by his father—

The conqueror of Hannibal treated these libels with the same indifference with which Cæsar afterwards regarded the lines of Catullus. Nævius, however, did not long escape with impunity. Rome was a very different sort of republic from Athens: It was rather an aristocracy than a democracy, and its patricians were not always disposed to tolerate the taunts and insults which the chiefs of the Greek democracy were obliged to endure. Nævius had said in one of his verses, that the patrician family of the Metelli had frequently obtained the Consulship before the age permitted by law, and he insinuated that they had been promoted to this dignity, not in consequence of their virtues, but the cruelty of the Roman fate:

The Metelli, however, did not confine their vengeance to this ingenious and spirited satire, in the composition of which, it may be presumed that the whole Roman Senate was engaged. On account of the unceasing abuse and reproaches which he had uttered against them, and other chief men of the city, he was thrown into prison, where he wrote his comedies, the Hariolus and Leontes. These plays being in some measure intended as a recantation of his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes of the people.130 He soon, however, relapsed into his former courses, and continued to persecute the nobility in his dramas and satires with such implacable dislike, that he was at length driven from Rome by their in[pg 61]fluence, and having retired to Utica131, he died there, in the year 550, according to Cicero132; but Varro fixes his death somewhat later. Before leaving Rome, he had composed the following epitaph on himself, which Gellius remarks is full of Campanian arrogance; though the import of it, he adds, might be allowed to be true, had it been written by another133;

Besides his comedies and the above epitaph, Nævius was also author of the Cyprian Iliad, a translation from a Greek poem, called the Cyprian Epic. Aristotle, in the 23d chapter of his Poetics, mentions the original work, (τα κυπρια,) which, he says, had furnished many subjects for the drama. Some writers, particularly Pindar, have attributed this Greek poem to Homer; and there was long an idle story current, that he had given it as a portion to his daughter Arsephone. Herodotus, in his second Book, concludes, after some critical discussion, that it was not written by Homer, but that it was doubtless the work of a contemporary poet, or one who lived shortly after him. Heyne thinks it most probable, that it was by a poet called Stasinus, a native of the island of Cyprus, and that it received its name from the country of its author135. Whoever may have written this Cyprian Epic, it contained twelve books, and was probably a work of amorous and romantic fiction. It commenced with the nuptials of Thetis and Peleus—it related the contention of the three goddesses on Mount Ida—the fables concerning Palamedes—the story of the daughters of Anius—and the love adventures of the Phrygian fair during the early period of the siege of Troy—and it terminated with the council of the gods, at which it was resolved that Achilles should be withdrawn from the war, by sowing dissension between him and Atrides136.

A metrical chronicle, which chiefly related the events of the first Punic war, was another, and probably the last work of Nævius, since Cicero says, that in writing it he filled up the leisure of his latter days with wonderful complacency and satisfaction137. It was originally undivided; but, after his death, was separated into seven books138.—Although the first Punic war was the principal subject, as appears from its announcement,

yet it also afforded a rapid sketch of the preceding incidents of Roman history. It commenced with the flight of Æneas from Carthage, in a ship built by Mercury139; and the early wars of the Romans were detailed in the first and second books. To judge by the fragments which remain, the whole work appears to have been full of mythological machinery. Macrobius informs us, that some lines of this production described the Romans tost by a tempest, and represented Venus complaining of the hardships which they suffered to Jupiter, who consoles her by a prospect of their future glory—a passage which probably suggested those verses in the first book of the Æneid, where Venus, in like manner, complains to Jupiter of the danger experienced by her son in a storm, and the god consoles her by assurances of his ultimate prosperity140. Cicero mentions, that Ennius, too, though he classes Nævius among the fauns and rustic bards, had borrowed, or, if he refused to acknowledge his obligations, had pilfered, many ornaments from his predecessor141. In the same passage, Cicero, while he admits that Ennius was the more elegant and correct writer, bears testimony to the merit of the older bard, and declares, that the Punic war of this antiquated poet afforded him a pleasure as exquisite as the finest statue that was ever formed by Myron. To judge, however, from the lines which remain, though in general too much broken to enable us even to divine their meaning, the style of Nævius in this [pg 63]work was more rugged and remote from modern Latin than that of his own plays and satires, or the dramas of Livius Andronicus.

Several writers have supposed that the Saturnian measure was borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks142, having been used by Euripides, and particularly by Archilochus; but others have believed that it was an invention of the ancient Italians143. It was first employed in the Carmen Saliare, songs of triumph, supplications to the gods, or monumental inscriptions, and was afterwards, as we have seen, adopted in the works of Livius Andronicus and Nævius. In consequence of the fragments which remain of the Saturnian verses being so short and corrupted, it is extremely difficult to fix their regular measure, or reduce them to one standard of versification. Herman seems to consider a Saturnian line as having regularly consisted of two iambuses, an amphibrachys, and three trochaës—

A dactyl, however, was occasionally admitted into the place of the first or second trochaë, and a spondee was not unfrequently introduced indiscriminately. It also appears that a [pg 64]Saturnian line was sometimes divided into two—the first line consisting of the two iambuses and amphibrachys, and the second of the trochaës, whence the Saturnian verse has been sometimes called iambic, and at others trochaic.