NÆVIUS, CÆCIUS, a tragic and comic poet, was a native of Campania, and flourished about the year 235 B. C. having served in the first Punic war (264-241 B. C.), which he celebrated in an epic poem (Gell. xvii. 21, 45; v. 12, 7). He wrote a little before the time of Ennius, who was born in 239 B. C. and died in 169. He was younger than Livius Andronicus, who exhibited his first play the year before Ennius was born, B. C. 240. Nævius was the author of several tragedies, many of the titles of
which have been preserved; and from them it is easy to discover that they were imitations of the Greek writers. But he appears to have earned still higher praise by his labours as a writer of comedy. Pursuing the path of the old Attic comedy, he lashed with an unsparing hand the vices of the Roman nobles; for which he was driven into exile, or, according to others, confined in prison, where he nevertheless seems to have written two tragedies. Such an example of severity could not have but impeded the free development of the comic muse of Rome. All that remains of the comedies of Nævius are the mere names, and a few insignificant fragments. The epic poem on the first Punic war was divided into seven books by C. Octavius Lampodio (Sueton. De Illust. Gram. 2). Nævius died in exile at Utica, on the coast of Africa, B. C. 201, the very year in which the second Punic war terminated. (Eusebius.) The fragments have been published under the title of Emmi Annal. Fragmenta et Cn. Nævii Fragm. Leipzig, 1825.