Gnaeus Naevius
Roman epic poet and dramatist
270 BCE to 201 BCE
Gnaeus Naevius (ca.
270 BCE – 201 BCE) is a Roman epic poet and dramatist of the Old Latin period.
He has a notable literary career at Rome until his satiric comments delivered in comedy anger the Metelli family, one of whom is consul.
After a sojourn in prison, he recants and is set free by the tribunes (who have the tribunician power, in essence the power of habeas corpus).
After a second offense, he is exiled to Tunisia, where he writes his own epitaph and commis suicide.
His comedies are in the genre of Palliata Comoedia, an adaptation of Greek New Comedy.
A soldier in the Punic Wars, he is highly patriotic, inventing a new genre called Praetextae Fabulae, an extension of tragedy to Roman national figures or incidents, named after the Toga praetexta worn by high officials.
Only fragments of several poems survive.
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Roman dramatist Gnaeus Naevius, probably a Roman citizen by birth, had served either in the Roman army or among the socii in the First Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before 241.
An outspoken critic of those in power, his career as a dramatic author had begun with the exhibition of a drama in or about the year 235, and had continued for thirty years.
Towards the close, he had incurred the hostility of some of the nobility, especially, it is said, of the Metelli, by the attacks which he made upon them on the stage, and at their insistence he is convicted of slander for poking fun at public officials and imprisoned.
This is the first recorded) case of suppression of a theatrical performance After writing two plays during his imprisonment, in which he is said to have apologized for his former rudeness, he was liberated through the interference of the tribunes of the commons; but he had shortly afterwards to retire from Rome (in or about 204) to Utica.
It may have been during his exile, when withdrawn from his active career as a dramatist, that he composed or completed his poem on the First Punic War.
Probably his latest composition was his own epitaph.