With the assistance of the other patricians, the Metelli retorted his sarcasms in a Saturnian stanza, not unlike the measure of some of our old ballads, in which they threatened to play the devil with their witty persecutor—
“Et Nævio Poetæ,
Cum sæpe læderentur,
Dabunt malum Metelli,
Dabunt malum Metelli,
Dabunt malum Metelli.”
The Metelli, however, did not confine their vengeance to this ingenious and spirited satire, in the composition of which, it may be presumed that the whole Roman Senate was engaged. On account of the unceasing abuse and reproaches which he had uttered against them, and other chief men of the city, he was thrown into prison, where he wrote his comedies, the Hariolus and Leontes. These plays being in some measure intended as a recantation of his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes of the people.[130] He soon, however, relapsed into his former courses, and continued to persecute the nobility in his dramas and satires with such implacable dislike, that he was at length driven from Rome by their in[pg 61]fluence, and having retired to Utica[131], he died there, in the year 550, according to Cicero[132]; but Varro fixes his death somewhat later. Before leaving Rome, he had composed the following epitaph on himself, which Gellius remarks is full of Campanian arrogance; though the import of it, he adds, might be allowed to be true, had it been written by another[133];
“Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam;
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,