Gnaeus Naevius

• Born: c. 270 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Ancient Capua (now in Italy)
• Died: c. 201 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Utica, North Africa (now in Tunisia)

Other Literary Forms

Gnaeus Naevius created a Roman national epic with his poem in Saturnian verse, the Bellum Punicum (c. 250-205 b.c.e.; The Punic War, 1935-1940). He also authored the historical epic Annales (c. 250-205 b.c.e.; Annals, 1935-1940).

Achievements

In the Bellum Punicum, Gnaeus Naevius claimed to have fought with distinction in the First Punic War. Testimony that he made this statement comes through Varro, who quoted Naevius, and Gellius, who quoted Varro. Even so, a greater achievement was the new life Naevius brought to the Roman stage. Naevius followed Livius Andronicus, enlivening Roman drama considerably, in part through what Terence called his neglegentia. Terence’s use of the word “carelessness” probably refers to Naevius’s willingness to modify the Greek originals from which he worked.

It is also likely that Naevius invented the poetic form known as the fabula praetexta or praetextata. The toga praetexta was the purple-bordered toga worn by Roman magistrates as a mark of their office, and correspondingly the fabulae praetextae were plays with characters drawn from Roman history or myth who might have worn such a toga. The effect gave antiquity to such Roman customs, for Romulus would wear the gown of a Roman senator.

Similarly, such dress allowed references to other customs. In a fragment from the Clastidium (which probably dealt with the Roman victory there in 222 b.c.e.), there is a reference to the triumph that the hero can expect when he returns to his native land. Though some critics maintain that Naevius also invented the form known as the fabula Atellana (a series of verse jokes exchanged as banter between two actors) and the fabulae togatae (comedy on Italian themes), there is no evidence that he did so. Reliable arguments trace the Atellanae to Oscan sources.

Naevius was the pioneer of the Roman national epic, a form that Virgil would use in writing the Aeneid (29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553). Like the Aeneid, Naevius’s Bellum Punicum established the antiquity of Roman origins, tracing the city’s legendary connections to Aeneas’s flight from Troy and his establishment of a Trojan settlement in Italy; unlike Vergil’s elegant poem, however, the Bellum Punicum, to judge from the fragments that remain, was close stylistically to the prose chronicles of the Roman analyst historians. The poem originally formed a continuous whole, but Suetonius reports that it was subsequently divided into seven books by the scholar Octavius Lampadio. The main body of the poem, telling of the First Punic War, was preceded by a lengthy recounting of legendary history starting with Aeneas.

Though Naevius wrote imitations of Greek tragedies, as did the other Roman dramatists, his play Romulus treated the youth of Romulus and Remus, and his Clastidium a contemporary historical event. He was, then, the first Roman dramatist to adapt native materials to a literary form specifically Greek.

Biography

Because Gnaeus Naevius fought in the First Punic War (264-241 b.c.e.), he could not have been born much later than 260 b.c.e. The second century c.e. commentator Aulus Gellius, in Noctes Atticae (c. 180 c.e.; Attic Nights, 1927), records Naevius’s prideful and possibly self-composed epitaph, in which he declares that the Muses themselves weep for him, if deities ever mourn for human beings, for his death signals the end of the true Latin language in Rome. Gellius remarks that the epitaph is filled with Campanian pride, and this remark has been used to support the traditionally held view that Naevius’s birthplace was in Campania. It consequently seems reasonable to assume that Naevius came from that region’s principal town, Capua, which prided itself on its ancient origins. There is no firm evidence that the epitaph was self-composed, however, and Gellius’s comment simply follows the tradition, firmly established even in his own time, that Campania was Naevius’s birthplace.

It is clear, however, that Naevius became proficient in the Latin language relatively early in his life and that he came to see himself as an urbane man whose personal interests were identifiable with those of Rome itself. His literary output indicates his special interest in Roman historical and political affairs, and from his own testimony in his Bellum Punicum it is clear that he fought in the First Punic War.

The Punic War took Naevius to Sicily, called Magna Graecia by the Romans because of its extensive Greek settlements, and it was there that he was able to see Greek life at first hand, as well as the permanent stone theaters built in Greek style where the plays of Greek dramatists were given. This is not to imply that his experiences in Sicily were pleasure-filled. High-level incompetence and poor treatment of the common soldiers by their commanders were rife, and it may be that Naevius developed even this early in his life the sharp wit that appeared in his plays.

Two important events occurred in 235 b.c.e.: Spurius Carvilius Ruga became the first Roman to divorce his wife, and Naevius presented his first play at the public games. There is a stronger connection between these two events than there would at first appear to be, for Romans traditionally maintained the sanctity and permanence of the marriage vow just as they frowned on publicly sponsored drama. That both things happened in the same year indicates an increasing willingness to accept Greek institutions and practices. By the time of Plautus, marriage itself would become acceptable matter for ridicule in Roman comedy.

Naevius, however, pursued his career in the theater by continuing to adapt Greek originals. Indeed, he was to do so for the next thirty years, though he managed, as his predecessor Livius Andronicus never had, to infuse a distinctly Roman tone into his works. In addition to beginning the practice of staging historical dramas in Roman dress (fabulae praetextae), he began to lampoon the aristocracy. His attacks on a wealthy and powerful consular family, the Metelli, were so sharp that he was brought up on charges under the provision of the ancient code of the Twelve Tables, which required capital punishment for those found guilty of slander.

Even politics was a forbidden subject. Public allusions to contemporary political matters were punishable by flogging, and Naevius might have suffered this punishment. Plautus reports the flogging of “a foreign poet” in lines 210-211 of Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Warrior, 1767); and Festus, a grammarian of the third century c.e., maintains that this man was Gnaeus Naevius. Gellius notes that Naevius was imprisoned for his stage attacks and wrote recantations into two plays, Ariolus and Leon, which brought his release. Saint Jerome claims that the Metelli and others he had attacked exiled Naevius to Utica in North Africa and that he died there in 201. Cicero, in Brutus (46 b.c.e.; English translation, 1776), though he says nothing about either the imprisonment or exile, gives 204 as the date of Naevius’s death. To accept 204 as the date of death, however, makes it impossible to maintain that Naevius died at Utica, for Scipio’s siege of that city ended only in the year 202. Although some modern scholarship sets forth the year 199, the commonly accepted year of death is 201.

Analysis

Although little of his work actually survives, it is clear that Gnaeus Naevius was a prolific dramatist. Nearly forty titles have been attributed to him, and assuming that they were all his, this would mean that he wrote more than one play each year during his theatrical career. If one can judge reliably based on the meager fragments, independence and free speech were his recurring themes. Several of his comedies, given their outrageous titles (Cataract, A Play About Testicles, Triphallus) no doubt brought unconventional subject matter to the stage, and the very number of his comedies, when considered against a mere seven tragedies, implies that he found in comedy a greater opportunity for innovation. The tragedies, no matter what innovations Naevius might have introduced in meter or detail, were essentially adaptations, translations based on Greek originals. It is logical that his ingenuity and patriotism would lead him to create his historical dramas in Roman dress, and though only two of these titles remain, they likely constituted the most significant dramatic contribution he made to Roman drama.

Stylistically, his plays had the strong bias toward rhetorical effects which Romans would continue to admire in the works of Quintus Ennius. Both Cicero and Seneca quote a heavily alliterated line from Hector’s Departure drawn from Hector’s farewell to his father Priam. Although it is difficult to be certain on the basis of one line, Naevius’s Hector appears to have an almost consular nobility in this scene, fighting for his city rather than for personal glory. Cicero also quotes Lycurgus’s ornate words to his bodyguard. His guard is called “custodian of the royal person” (regalis corporis custodias), the forest “branch-bearing groves” (frundiferos locos) where trees unsown grow “by skill” (ingenio). Such rhetoric, while somewhat precious and perhaps overdone by classical standards, shows that Naevius was experimenting, even in his tragedies, to create a literary Latin language.

Comedy provided an even greater opportunity for innovation. Although the characters of the fragments are derived from the stock plots of Greek New Comedy, Naevius clearly chose plots into which he could infuse distinctly Italian references and points of view. He depended on topical puns and political allusions to make the plays his own. Titles such as The Soothsayer, The Collier Maid, and The Garland Seller imply that the characters of these plays were colorful commoners. The discussion of the cuisine of Praeneste and Lanuvium (boiled pig’s stomach and nuts) which survives from the Ariolus (Loeb fragments 22-26) illustrates the broad localized tone which Naevius brought to his Greek plots. In The Little Tunic, the largest fragment (Loeb 97-100) mentions the Compitalia (the crossroads festival) and the Lares (Roman household gods).

Though Tarentum was a Greek colony and though Naevius’s The Girl from Tarentus probably derives from a lost Greek original by Alexis, Naevius could have assumed that many former soldiers in his audience knew the place and what many Romans viewed as its degeneracy. Indeed, his tale of two young men “on the town” in Tarnetum probably had a familiar ring. Terence, the Roman playwright, reports that The Flatterer, a play from Menander’s original, was translated by Plautus and Naevius. This could imply two plays, or it might mean a Plautine reworking of the original play. In either case, it indicates the affinity between the two Roman comedians.

The fragments allow only brief remarks about plot lines and characterizations. Does the Appella concern a circumcised man (a pellis), a Jew, or possibly a woman from Apulia? Evidently, Wide-awakes concerned a gang of street thieves, while Speared was a murder play, presenting a hero who was wrongly accused of fratricide. Courtesans and pimps, wise slaves and foolish masters, young lovers and hopeless love ultimately realized—this is the stuff of Naevius’s comedies. It would find its fullest development in Plautus and Terence.

Bibliography

Goldberg, Sander M. Epic in Republican Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Goldberg’s study of the epic in Republican Rome touches on Naevius.

Gruen, Erich S. Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. This study on the ancient Greeks and Romans provides insight into Naevius’s life and works.

Rowell, H. T. “The Original Form of Naevius’s Bellum Punicum.” American Journal of Philology 68 (1947): 21-46. Although this article focuses on Naevius’s The Punic War, it provides some insight into this dramatist’s life and other works.