Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
The greater part of Naevius' plays, both in tragedy and comedy, were, it is true, translated or adapted from Greek originals; but alongside of these, the Danae, the Iphigenia, the Andromache, which even his masculine genius can hardly have made more than pale reflexes of Euripides were new creations, "plays of the purple stripe," as they came to be called, where he wakened a tragic note from the legendary or actual history of the Roman race.
We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations.
Metrical Annals Naevius The attempts at a metrical treatment of the national annals lay claim to greater poetical and historical importance.
TRAGIC POETS. Three separate eras produced tragic poets. In the first flourished Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius; in the second, Pacuvius and Attius; in the third, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies, the plots of which seem to have been taken from Roman history. Ovid attempted a "Medea," and even the Emperor Augustus, with other men of genius, tried his hand, though unsuccessfully, at tragedy.
We are not allowed to use our words in that manner, not even if we wish to; and this is shown even by those unpolished speeches of Cato. It is shown by all the poets except those who sometimes had recourse to a hiatus in order to finish their verse; as Naevius "Vos, qui accolitis Istrum fluvium, atque Algidam." And again "Quam nunquam vobis Graii atque Barbari." But Ennius does so only once
For making these settlements commissioners were appointed, who were to hold the office for three years; for Bruttium, Quintus Naevius, Marcus Minucius Rufus, and Marcus Furius Crassipes; and for the district of Thurium, Cneius Manlius, Quintus Aelius, and Lucius Apustius. The assemblies of election to these two appointments were held in the Capitol by Cneius Domitius, city praetor.
As Sophocles and Euripides preceded the historians and moralists of Greece, not only Naevius and Ennius, who wrote the Roman history in verse, but Lucilius, Plautus, Terence, and we may add Lucretius, were prior to Cicero, Sallust, or Caesar.
Naevius laid the foundation of the Roman epic; he left it at his death in spite of the despondent and perhaps jealous criticism which he left as his epitaph in the hands of an abler and more illustrious successor.
It was so far followed, that poems hitherto little known, the works either of deceased friends or other approved writers, were brought to light, and being read and commented on, were explained to others. Thus, Caius Octavius Lampadio edited the Punic War of Naevius , which having been written in one volume without any break in the manuscript, he divided into seven books.
Till then it may have been just possible that native metrical forms might still reassert themselves. Inscriptions of the last century of the Republic show that the saturnian still lingered in use side by side with the rude popular hexameters which were gradually displacing it; and the Punic War of Naevius was still a classic.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking