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Updated: June 2, 2025
Stirred up by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius, the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after the precedent of the Homeric grammarians.
To scan a line of Livius or Naevius, in the strict sense of the word, is by no means an easy task, since there was not the same constancy of usage with regard to quantity as prevailed after Ennius, and the relative prominence of syllables was determined by accent, either natural or metrical.
Then Wolf confessed that just at that time, as a pupil in the school of poets, he had come under the influence of the scholar Naevius, whose evangelical views Erasmus knew, and related how difficult it had been for him to take the oath which, nevertheless, now that he had once sworn it, he would keep, even though life and his own intelligence would not have taught him to prefer the old faith to every new doctrine, whether it emanated from Luther, from Calvin, or from Zwingli.
Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to the Greek culture of the day, he seemed from the very first destined for the vocation of giving back to the new Attic comedy that cosmopolitan character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in some measure lost.
The earlier national epics of Naevius and Ennius had framed certain lines for Roman epic poetry, which it was almost bound to follow.
Poeta, which we find as early as Naevius, is Greek; and vates, which Zeuss traces to a Celtic root, meant originally "soothsayer," not "poet." Only in the Augustan period does it come into prominence as the nobler term, denoting that inspiration which is the gift of heaven and forms the peculiar privilege of genius.
It was quite possible, nevertheless, that there might arise among them individuals of lively and vigorous talent, who were able at least to repress the foreign and factitious element in poetry, and, when they had found their fitting sphere, to produce pleasing and even important creations. Naevius
And, however unsuitable such a consecutive narrative might be for a heroic poem, there was something in it that corresponded with the national sentiment, and in a changed form it re-appears in the Aeneid. Naevius had been contented with a single episode in Rome's career of conquest.
In his advanced years, Naevius took a step of even greater consequence. Turning from tragedy to epic, he did not now, like Andronicus, translate from the Greek, but launched out on the new venture of a Roman epic. The Latin language was not yet ductile enough to catch the cadences of the noble Greek hexameter; and the native Latin Saturnian was the only possible alternative.
Do you wonder that no one tenders you the affection which you do not merit, since you prefer your money to everything else? "What therefore do you persuade me to? That I should lead the life of Naevius, or in such a manner as a Nomentanus?" When I bid you not be a miser, I do not order you to become a debauchee or a prodigal.
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