NÆVIUS (Cneius), a famous poet of Campania, was bred a soldier; but quitted the profession of arms, in order to apply himself to poetry, which he prosecuted with great diligence. He composed a history in verse, and a great number of comedies: But it is said, that his first performance of this last kind so displeased Metellus on account of the satirical strokes it contained, that he procured his being banished from the city; on which he retired to Utica in Africa, where he at length died, 202 B. C. We have only some fragments left of his works.
There was another Nævus a famous augur in the reign of Tarquin, who, to convince the king and the Romans of his preternatural power, cut a flint with a razor, and turned the ridicule of the populace to admiration. Tarquin rewarded his merit by erecting him a statue in the comitium, which was still in being in the age of Augustus. The razor and flint were buried near it under an altar, and it was usual among the Romans to make witnesses in civil causes swear near it. This miraculous event of cutting a flint with
a razor, though believed by some writers, is treated as fabulous and improbable by Cicero, who himself had been an augur.