LIVIUS ANDRONICUS,
A native of Magna Græcia, was the first who attempted to establish at Rome a regular theatre, or to connect a dramatic fable, free from the mummeries, the ballet, and the melodrama of the ancient satires[108]. Tiraboschi asserts, that when his country was finally subdued by the Romans, in 482, Livius was made captive and brought to Rome[109]. It is generally believed that he there became the slave, and afterwards the freedman of Livius Salinator, from whom he derived one of his names: these facts, however, do not seem to rest on any authority more ancient than the Eusebian Chronicle[110]. The precise period of his death is uncertain; but in Cicero’s Dialogue De Senectute, Cato is introduced saying, that he had seen old Livius while he was himself a youth[111]. Now Cato was born in 519, and since the period of youth among the Romans was considered as commencing at fifteen, it may be presumed that the existence of Livius was at least protracted till the year 534 of the city. It has been frequently said, that he lived till the year 546[112], because Livy[113] mentions that a hymn composed by this ancient poet was publicly sung in that [pg 55]year, to avert the disasters threatened by an alarming prodigy; but the historian does not declare that it was written for the occasion, or even recently before.
The earliest play of Livius was represented in 513 or 514, about a year after the termination of the first Punic war. Osannus, a modern German author, has written a learned and chronological dissertation on the question, in which of these years the first Roman play was performed[114]; but it is extremely difficult for us to come to any satisfactory conclusion on a subject which, even in the time of Cicero, was one of doubt and controversy[115]. Like Thespis, and other dramatists in the commencement of the theatrical art, Livius was an actor, and for a considerable time the sole performer in his own pieces. Afterwards, however, his voice failing, in consequence of the audience insisting on a repetition of favourite passages, he introduced a boy who relieved him, by declaiming in concert with the flute, while he himself executed the corresponding gesticulations in the monologues, and in the parts where high exertion was required, employing his own voice only in the conversational and less elevated scenes[116]. It was observed that his action grew more lively and animated, because he exerted his whole strength in gesticulating, while another had the care and trouble of pronouncing. “Hence,” continues Livy, “the practice arose of reciting those passages which required much modulation of the voice, to the gesture and action of the comedian. Thenceforth the custom so far prevailed, that the comedians never pronounced anything except the verses of the dialogues[117]:” And this system, which one should think must have completely destroyed the theatric illusion, continued, under certain modifications, to subsist on the Roman stage during the most refined periods of taste and literature.
The popularity of Livius increasing from these performances, as well as from a propitiatory hymn he had composed, and which had been followed by great public success, a building was assigned to him on the Aventine hill. This edifice was partly converted into a theatre, and was also in[pg 56]habited by a troop of players, for whom Livius wrote his pieces, and frequently acted along with them[118].
It has been disputed whether the first drama represented by Livius Andronicus at Rome was a tragedy or comedy[119]. However this may be, it appears from the names which have been preserved of his plays, that he wrote both tragedies and comedies. These titles, which have been collected by Fabricius and other writers, are, Achilles, Adonis, Ægisthus, Ajax, Andromeda, Antiopa, Centauri, Equus Trojanus, Helena, Hermione, Ino, Lydius, Protesilaodamia, Serenus, Tereus, Teucer, Virgo[120]. Such names also evince that most of his dramas were translated or imitated from the works of his countrymen of Magna Græcia, or from the great tragedians of Greece. Thus, Æschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of Ægisthus: There is still an Ajax of Sophocles extant, and he is known to have written an Andromeda: Stobæus mentions the Antiopa of Euripides: Four Greek dramatists, Sophocles, Euripides, Anaxandrides, and Philæterus, composed tragedies on the subject of Tereus; and Epicharmus, as well as others, chose for their comedies the story of the Syrens.
Little, however, except the titles, remains to us, from the dramas of Livius. The longest passage we possess in connection, extends only to four lines. It forms part of a hymn to Diana, recited by the chorus, in the tragedy of Ino, and contains an animated exhortation to a person about to proceed to the chase:—
“Et jam purpureo suras include cothurno,
Baltheus et revocet volucres in pectore sinus;
Pressaque jam gravida crepitent tibi terga pharetra:
Dirige odorisequos ad cæca cubilia canes[121].”
This passage testifies the vast improvement effected by Livius on the Latin Tongue; and indeed the polish of the language and metrical correctness of these hexameter lines, have of late led to a suspicion that they are not the production of a period so ancient as the age of Livius[122], or at least that they [pg 57]have been modernised by some later hand. With this earliest offspring of the Latin muse, it may be curious to compare a production from her last age of decrepitude. Nemesianus, in his Cynegeticon, has closely imitated this passage while exhorting Diana to prepare for the chase:
“Sume habitus, arcumque manu; pictamque pharetram
Suspende ex humeris; sint aurea tela, sagittæ;
Candida puniceis aptentur crura cothurnis:
Sit chlamys aurato multum subtemine lusa,
Corrugesque sinus gemmatis baltheus artet
Nexibus ——”
As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the Ino are the only passage among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved a second perusal[123]. They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry. It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature, there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better models existed:
“Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livi
Esse reor, memini quæ plagosum mihi parvo
Orbilium dictare; sed emendata videri,
Pulchraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror:
Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et
Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter;
Injuste totum ducit venditque poema[124].”
But although Livius may have been too much read in the schools, and too much admired in an age, which could boast of models so greatly superior to his writings, he is at least entitled to praise, as the inventor among the Romans of a species of poetry which was afterwards carried by them to much higher perfection. By translating the Odyssey, too, into Latin verse, he adopted the means which, of all others, was most likely to foster and improve the infant literature of his country—as he thus presented it with an image of the most [pg 58]pure and perfect taste, and at the same time with those wild and romantic adventures, which are best suited to attract the sympathy and interest of a half-civilized nation. This happy influence could not be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian verse, which led Cicero to compare the translation of Livius to the ancient statues, which might be attributed to Dædalus[125].
The Latin Odyssey commenced—
“Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum.”
There have also been three lines preserved by Festus, which are translated from the 8th Book, expressing the effects produced on the mind by a sea-storm—
—— “Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem quamde mare sævom: vires quoi
Sunt magnæ, topper confringent importunæ undæ[126].”
From the æra in which the dramatic productions of Livius appeared, theatrical representations formed the object of a peculiar art. The more regular drama, founded on that of Magna Græcia, or Sicily, being divided into tragedy and comedy, became, in a great measure, the province of professional players or authors, while the Roman youths of distinction continued to amuse themselves with the Fabulæ Atellanæ, and Exodia, a species of satirical medley, derived from the ancient Etruscans, or from the Osci, the nature and progress of which I shall hereafter have occasion more particularly to examine.