Cneius, one of the earliest of Roman poets, is generally supposed to have been a native of Campania, and to have been born in the former half of the third century B.C. He served in the first Punic war, and was thus an eye-witness of those exploits which he afterwards described. On his return to Rome, his literary career was commenced by the production of a drama, in the style introduced a few years before by Livius Andronicus. He continued to write many plays, both tragic and comic, which are known to us only by their titles, and by some of their fragments quoted in other authors. Several of his comedies, if we may judge from their names, seem to have been adapted from the Greek. It is certain, at least, that they lampooned the Roman aristocracy after the bold, sarcastic manner of the early comic poets of Greece. A fragment preserved by Gellius commences with a grandiloquent eulogy on the great deeds and matchless renown of the elder Africanus, and ends suddenly with a low scandal about his incontinence. In another quotation, the Metelli are declared to have been elected consuls merely by the evil genius of Rome. This latter cut was retaliated by the Metelli. They arraigned Naevius for the capital offence of libel. Barely escaping with his life, he was thrown into prison. There he was suffered to lie until he had written two plays for the purpose of retracting the imputations of which he had been convicted. His satirical spirit, however, was not tamed. Soon after his release he was caught in his old offence, and was sentenced to exile. He repaired to Utica, and there he spent the close of his life in composing his epic on the first Punic war. His death took place, according to Cicero, in 204 B.C. (Tusc. Quest. i., c. 1.)

The poetry of Naevius was still popular in the Augustan age. His humour is praised by Cicero in the De Oratore. So highly esteemed was the Bellum Punicum, written though it was in the antiquated Saturnian metre, that Virgil is said to have borrowed from it the description of the storm, and the conversation between Jupiter and Venus, in the first book of the Aeneid. Horace also, in his second epode, talks of Naevius, who, "though not in the hands, is still in the minds of men." The fragments of Naevius were published among the Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum, 8vo, Paris, 1564. They were also published separately by Klussmann, 8vo, Jena, 1843.