Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/174

Rh 162 N V I U S capable of assimilating the Greek culture, which was the formative element in the literary art of the Romans. Yet the racy popular spirit of Naevius gained for him admirers even in the Augustan age, and Cicero represents the great master of Latin oratory, Crassus, as the highest compli ment he could pay to the pure idiomatic speech of his mother-in-law, Lselia, comparing it to the style of Nsevius and Plautus. Though a richer vein of imaginative feeling was introduced into the Latin language and literature by Ennius, yet much was lost in their subsequent develop ment by the partial suppression of the aggressive boldness and freedom of Naevius, as well as of the exuberant mirth and humour of Plautus. There is great uncertainty in regard to the facts and dates of the life of Nsevius. From the expression of Gellius characterizing his epitaph as written in a vein of &quot; Campanian arrogance &quot; it has been inferred that he was born in one of the Latin communities settled in Cam pania. But the phrase &quot; Campanian arrogance&quot; seems to have been used proverbially for &quot;gasconade&quot;; and, as there was a plebeian Gens Na&via in Rome, it is quite as probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. The strong political partisanship which he displayed in his plays is favourable to this supposition, as is also the active interference of the tribunes on his behalf. On the other side weight must be given to the remark of Mommsen, viz., &quot; the hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a citizen of Gales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so un scrupulously the more easy of explanation.&quot; He served either in the Roman army or among the socii in the First Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before the year 241 B.C. We learn from Cicero that he lived to a good old age, and that he died in exile about the end of the 3d century B.C. The date of his birth may be thus fixed with approximate probability about the year 265 B.C. No particulars of his military service are recorded. Sicily was the great battlefield of the combatants during the latter years of the Avar. No important Sicilian city was without its theatre, and it seems legitimate to connect the new taste for regular dramatic performances (and especially for tragedy, to which there was nothing corresponding among the Italian races) developed at Rome immediately after the conclusion of the First Punic War with the Sicilian ex periences of the Roman and allied armies serving in the war. Another important influence in Roman literature and Roman belief which first appeared in the epic poem of Naevius also had its origin in Sicily, viz., the recognition of the mythical connexion of ^Eneas and his Trojans with the foundation of Rome. The origin of this belief may probably be attributed to the Sicilian historian Timaeus ; but the contact of the Romans and Carthaginians in the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx may have suggested that part of the legend which plays so large a part in the JEneid, which brings ^Eneas from Sicily to Carthage and back again to the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx. The actual collision of Phoenician and Roman on the western shores of Sicily, of which Nsevius may well have been a witness, if it did not originate, gave a living interest to the mythical origin of that antagonism in the relations of ^Eneas and Dido. The career of Nsevius as a dramatic author began with the exhibition of a drama in or about the year 235 B.C., and was carried on energetically for thirty years afterwards. Towards the close of this career he incurred the hostility of some of the nobility, especially, it is said, of the family of the Metelli, by the attacks which he made upon them on the stage, and at their instance he was imprisoned, a circumstance to which Plautus alludes in a passage of the Miles Gloriosus (211). After writing two plays during his imprisonment, in which he is said to have apologized for his former rudeness (Gellius, iii. 3, 15), he was liberated through the interference of the tribunes of the commons; but he had shortly afterwards to retire from Rome (in or about the year 204 B.C.) to Utica. The generally received accounts assigned his death to that year; but Cicero (Brutus, 15, 60) quotes Varro as an authority for the belief that his life was prolonged beyond that date. It may have been during his exile, when withdrawn from his active career as a dramatist, that he composed or completed his poem on the First Punic War. 1 Probably his latest composition was the epitaph already referred to, also written in Saturnian verse : &quot;Immortales mortales flere si foret fas, Flerent divae Camense Nsevium poetam ; Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro Obliti simt Romai loquier lingua Latina. &quot; 2 If, as has been supposed, these lines were dictated by a jealousy of the growing ascendency of Ennius, the life of Naevius must have been prolonged considerably beyond the year 204 B.C., as it was only in that year that Ennius first settled, and began his career as an author, in Rome. Like Livius, Nsevius professed to adapt Greek tragedies and comedies to the Roman stage. Among the titles of his tragedies are ^gisthus, Lycurgus, Andromache or Hector Proficisccns, Equus Trojamis, &c. We find in the letters of Cicero a reference to a representation of the last-named play at the opening of the theatre of Pompey in 55 B. c. ; but it seems to have retained its popularity so long not so much from its dramatic merits as from the scope it afforded for the gratification of the Roman taste for gorgeous spectacles. The few fragments preserved from the tragedies show the first rude beginnings of that artificial poetical phraseology and poetical word-formation which the impulse derived from Greek literature developed in the speech of Latium, and also the more native product of pithy sayings (such as the laudari a laudato viro,&quot; &quot; sero sapiunt Phryges &quot;) which had passed into proverbs in the age of Cicero. The national cast of his genius and temper was further shown by his deviating from his Greek originals, and producing at least two specimens oitefabulaprsetcxta, one founded on the childhood of Romulus and Remus (Romulus s. Alimonium Romuli ct Remi), the other called Clastidium, which celebrated the contemporary victory in which Marcellus carried off the spolia opima. But it was as a writer of comedy that he was most famous, most productive, and most original. While he is never ranked as a writer of tragedy with Ennius, Pacuvius, or Accius, he is placed in the canon of the grammarian Yolcatius Sedigitus third (immedi ately after Csecilius and Plautus) in the rank of Roman comic authors. He is there characterized as &quot;Nsevius qui fervet,&quot; a phrase expressive of his ardent, impetuous character and style. He is also appealed to, along with Plautus and Enuius, as a master of his art in one of the prologues of Terence. His comedy, like that of Plautus, seems to have been rather a free adapta tion of his originals than a rude copy of them, as those of Livius probably were, or an artistic copy like those of Terence. The titles of most of them, like those of Plautus, and unlike those of Csecilius and Terence, are Latin not Greek. Among the few lines preserved from them we find in one the &quot; Laurentines and Praenestines &quot; spoken of, just as we find mention of provincial Italian towns frequently in Plautus. He drew from the writers of the old political comedy of Athens, as well as from the new comedy of manners, and he attempted to make the stage at Rome, as it had been at Athens, an arena of political and personal warfare. A strong spirit o. partisanship is recognized in more than one of his fragments; and this spirit is thoroughly popular and adverse to the senatorian ascendency which became more and more confirmed with the progress of the Second Punic War. Besides his attack on the Metelli and other members of the aristocracy, the great Scipio (whose services and world-wide fame he acknowledges) is the object of a censorious criticism on account of a youthful escapade attri buted to him. Among the few lines still remaining from his lost comedies, we seem to recognize the idiomatic force and rapidity of movement characteristic of the style of Plautus. There is also found that love of alliteration which is a marked feature in all the older Latin poets down even to Lucretius. In one considerable comic fragment attributed to him, the description of a coquette, there is great truth and shrewdness of observation. But we find 1 Cicero (De Sen., 14) speaks of it as the work of his old age. 2 &quot; If it were permitted that immortals should weep for mortals, the divine Camense would weep for Nsevius the poet ; for since he hath passed into the treasure-house of death men have forgotten at Rome how to speak in the Latin tongue. &quot;