Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1151

Rh NAEVIUS. til is was by no means a settled point, and that Varro, diligentissimus investigator antiquiiatis, ex- tended his life rather longer, it may be safer to place his death, with Plieronyraus (in Euseb. Ckron. 01. cxliv. 3), in b. c. 202, which was pro- bably tile date of Varro. The epitaph which he composed upon himself, preserved by Gellius in the passage alluded to at the beginning of this notice, runs as follows : — Mortales immortales flere si foret fas, Flerent Divae Camenae Naevium poetam. Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro Obliti sunt Romani loquier Latina lingua. Naevius seems to have transmitted an hereditary eiimit}'- against the nobility, if, indeed, the tribune Naevius, who accused Scipio of peculation in B.C. 185, was of his family. (Liv. xxxviii. b% ; Gell. iv. 18.) [See above, Nabvius, No. 4.] Naevius was both an epic and a dramatic poet. The work which entitled him to the former appel- lation was his poem before alluded to on the first Punic war, of which a few fnigments are still extant. It was written in the old Saturnian metre ; for Ennius, who introduced the hexameter among the Romans, was not brought to Rome till after the banishment of Naevius. The poem appears to have opened with the story of Aeneas's flight from Troy, his visit to Carthage and amour with Dido, together with other legends connected with the early history both of Carthage and of Rome. Originally the poem was not divided into books, and we learn from Suetonius (Z)e III. Gramm. 2), that Lampadio distributed it into seven. It was extensively copied both by Ennius and Virgil. The latter author took many passages from it ; particularly the description of the storm in the first Aeneid, the speech with which Aneas con- soles his companions, and the address of Venus to Jupiter. (Cic. Brut. 1 9 ; Macrob. Sat. vi. 2 ; Serv. ad A en. . 198.) A translation of the Cypria Ilias has been as- cribed to Naevius ; but the heroic metre in which it is executed is a sufficient proof that it was the production of some later writer, probably Laevius, whose fragments seem to have been frequently con- founded with those of Naevius. (Pontan. ad Macrob. Sat. i. 18.) His dramatic writings comprised both tragedies and comedies; and, among the latter, that more peculiarly Roman species of composition, the Co- moedia Togaia. Welcker, however, doubts about his claims to be considered as a tragic poet, and altogether denies that he wrote Togatae. {Die iiriech. Tragodien^ pp. I. '545, 1372.) Among his tragedies have been reckoned Andromache sive Hector Projiciscens, Danat, Hesione, Iphigenia, Lycurgtis (by some thought to have been a comedy), the Equus Trojanus (also ascribed to Livius), and the Dolus, a title variously spelt (see Miiller, ad Varr. L. L. p. 163). Klussmann (p. 100) holds the Equus Trojanus and Dolus to be one and the same play. Several other tragedies seem to have been wrongly ascribed to Naevius, whose dramatic fragments have been frequently confounded with those of Livius, Ennius, and other writers. Of his Togatae the titles of two only can be cited; the Romulus., & Praeteociata^ and the Clas- tidium, probably a Tabernaria. (Donat. ad Ter. Adelph. iv. 1, 21; Varr. L. L. p. 163, Miill.) In addition to these, we find the titles of be- VOL. IL NANNII. 1187 tween thirty and forty comedies, many of which, from their names, seem to have been taken from the Greek, but were probably adapted to Roman manners with considerable freedom, in the fashion of Plautus rather than of Terence. Of most of these comedies, as well as of the plays before enumerated, seTeral short fragments are extant. Besides these regular dramas, Naevius seems to have written entertainments called Ludi or Satirae (Cic, Cato, 6) ; and it was probably in these that he attacked the aristocracy. The remains of Naevius are too insignificant to aflford any criterion of his poetical merits, concern- ing which we must therefore be content to accept the testimony of antiquity. That he was so largely copied by subsequent poets, is a proof of his genius and originality. Plautus alludes to him more than once ; and Terence, in the prologue to his Andria^ ranking him with Ennius and Plautus, prefers even his more careless scenes to the obscure dili- gence of his own contemporaries. Cicero {Brut. 18) sets his Punic War as much above the Odyssey of Livius Andronicus as Myro surpassed Daedalus in the art of sculpture. His antiquated style did not* suit the fastidious refinement of the Augustan age. Yet he was still a favourite with the admirers of the genuine old school of Roman poetry ; and the lines of Horace {Ep. ii. 1. 53) show that his works, if not so much read as formerly, were still fresh in the memories of men. The fragments of Naevius have been published, together with those of other Latin poets, by the Stephani, 8vo. Paris, 1564 ; but in this collection many are wrongly attributed to Naevius. There is another collection by Almeloveen, 12mo. Am- ster. 1686. The fragments oi the. Bellum, Punicum^ together with those of Ennius, were published by P. Morula, 4to. Leyden, 1595; and by Spangen- berg, 8vo. Leipzig, 1825. They have also been collected by Hermann in his Elemeiiia Doctrinae Metricae (iii. 9), and by Diintzer and Lersch, in a treatise entitled De versu quern vacant Saturnio^ 8vo. Bonn, 1839. The dramatic fragments by Delrio, Syntagma Tragocdiae Latinae, 4to. Paris, 1619 ; Maittaire, London, 1713 ; Bothe, Poetarum Lata seenicorum /ragmenta, Ijcipzig, 1834. The most convenient collection of the entire fragments is that of Klussmann, 8vo. Jena, 1843, accom- panied with a life of Naevius, and an essay on his poetry. See also Weichert, Poetarum Latinorum Reliquiae; and Neukirch, De fabula togata Ro- manorum^ Leipsig, 1833. [T. D.] NAE'VIUS SERTO'RIUS MACRO. [Macro.] NAIADES. [Nymphae.] NAMU'SA, AUFPDIUS, one of the mimerous pupils of Serv. Sulpicius. There were ten of the pupils of Sulpicius who wrote books, and from tho works of eight of them Namusa compiled a work which was distributed into one hundred and eighty parts or divisions (libri). The work of Namusa is cited by Ulpian (Dig. 13. tit. 6. s. 5. § 7), Java- lenus (Dig. 35. tit. 1. s. 40. § 3), and Paulus (Dig. 39. tit. 3. s. 2. § 6) ; and we are thus made ac- quainted with some of the legal opinions of Servius. As to the expression " his auditoribus," used by Pomponius (Dig. 1. tit. 2 s. 2. § 44) see Grotius, Vitae Jurisconsult, and Zimmern, Geschichte des Rom. Privatrechts, vol. i. p. 293. [G. L.] NANNII or NANNEII, persons of property prescribed by Sulla. (Cic. de Pet. Cons. c. 2.) 4d