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Updated: June 2, 2025
These quarrels, apparently, drove him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his example one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius.
It is true that we do not find in the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of the Punic wars.
Gnaeus Naevius, the first native Latin poet of consequence, beginning to produce plays a few years later than Andronicus, continued to write busily till after the end of the second Punic War, and left the Latin drama thoroughly established. Only inconsiderable fragments of his writings survive; but it is certain that he was a figure of really great distinction.
Having undertaken to perform what they wished, he sent two thousand chosen armed men in ships of war to the mouth of the river, under the command of Quintus Naevius Crista, praefect of the allies, a man of enterprise, and experienced in military affairs.
The introduction of the Greek drama increased the demands on the dramatic staff, and there seems to have been no redundance in the supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs.
We find named as painters, one Theodotus who, as Naevius scoffingly said, -Sedens in cella circumtectus tegetibus Lares ludentis peni pinxit bubulo;
He continued: “There was the soul of Cratinus passable: Aristophanes racy: Plato exquisite not your Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus faugh! Then let me see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius.
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.
Quintus Ennius, the first of the great Roman poets, and a figure of prodigious literary fecundity and versatility, was born at a small town of Calabria about thirty years later than Naevius, and, though he served as a young man in the Roman army, did not obtain the full citizenship till fifteen years after Naevius' death.
Even the rude and unpolished Orations of Cato are a proof of this; as are likewise all our poets, except in particular instances, in which they were obliged to admit a few breaks, to preserve their metre. Thus we find in Naevius, "Vos QUI ACCOLITIS histrum FLUVIUM ATQUE ALGIDUM." And in another place, "Quam nunquam vobis GRAII ATQUE Barbari." But Ennius admits it only once, when he says,
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