The Poet Cn. Naevius, P. Cornelius Scipio and Q. Caecilius Metellus

Abstract

It was many years after the last premiere of a Terentian comedy that the first attempts to write the history of Latin poetry appeared. Scholars had available little documentary material regarding the poets of the late third and early second centuries except the texts of poems, dates of performance of so-called carmina in priestly archives and of so-called fabulae in magisterial archives, and inscriptions on tombstones. These poets were without exception slaves or non-Roman clients of the great aristocratic families and their persons were not well regarded in the community at large. Neither the attitude to poetry of Roman society nor the example of Greek historiography permitted the chroniclers of Roman public life to take account of them. The poets who wrote for the theatre of fifth-century Athens came for the most part from well-regarded citizen families and practised an honoured craft. Although those of them who wrote comedies had much to say about Athenian public life and although their prejudices tended to correspond with his own the great Thucydides had ignored them. Their first biographers found themselves as badly off for contemporary documentary material as Roman writers were to be and yet by the exercise of judgement and fancy in interpreting the extant texts succeeded in constructing extensive narratives. The Roman writers took over Greek methods here as in other areas.

Poetry, Prosecution and the Author Function

“…55 51 Ennius stops short of explicitly naming Naevius, though the anonymous plural alii, common in polemical texts, can only be a reference to him: Skutsch (1985) 371. 52 For discussion of the fragment (quoted by the grammarian Charisus, GLK I.216.10) and its presumed speaker, see Leo (1913) 77;Jocelyn (1969) and Goldberg (2005) 169. On the Tarentilla, see esp.…”

“…The fragment and the story have also been linked with Cicero's report (which may ultimately be based on Cato) at De or. 2.249 of a pun on the name Naevius made seuere by Scipio (Quid hoc Naeuio ingnauius, 'Is there anyone lazier (ignauius) than Naevius': Jocelyn (1969) 38-9. Cf.…”

“…As Jocelyn (1969 34 puts it, the basic outline of the anecdotes (that Naevius criticised Scipio and the Metelli), at the very least, seems unlikely to have been completely invented by later sources, who tended to date the beginnings of serious dramatic poetry at Rome after the second Punic War. 67 The detail of the poet composing some of his plays in prison in order to redeem himself may be based on Naevius' own plays: Jocelyn (1969) 38. The story also echoes the similarly constructed biography of Plautus (said to have ended his days chained to a mill, where he wrote three comedies), also told by Varro, an important source for Naevius' life: Goldberg (1995) 35-6.…”

“…72 Whether Naevius himself would have been read into the passage by Plautus' audience is a subject of contention, but, again, recent work has moved in the direction of cautious acceptance.73 The identification goes back to antiquity, though the trail is pretty cold: Festus' epitome (known through Paulus' own epitome) of the first-century BCE scholar Verrius Flaccus, who himself may have been drawing on earlier lexicographers, tells us that Plautus called the poet Naevius a barbarus (i.e. Latin-speaking) poeta.74 Verrius would probably have been aware of more than the twenty-one known plays of Plautus, so (if the reading does go back to him) it is not necessarily the passage in the Miles in particular he was thinking of, though the linguistic69 AsJocelyn (1969) 42 points out, the exile story may be 'a post-Varronian guess based on the story of the exchange of verses'.70 The word os signals outspokenness in Plautus at Mil. 189: see also Ter.Germany (2019) 71, andGallia (2020) all find the link credible.…”

Libertas en satura

“…Volgens Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae III, 3, 15) werd Naevius vrijgelaten nadat hij in de kerker twee palinodieën had geschreven (Hariolus en Leon), maar dit lijkt erg onwaarschijnlijk (cf. Jocelyn [1969], p. 37). Voor een meer omstandige bespreking verwijs ik naar Frank (1927), pp.…”