Note 10 — Chapter III

In the year 206 b.c. Q. Caecilius Metellus was Consul, his brother M. Metellus Praetor Urbanus, an office that held out an almost certain prospect of the Consulship; and it has been suggested10, with much probability, that it was against them that this sneer was directed. The Metelli carried out their threat, as Naevius was imprisoned, a circumstance to which Plautus11 alludes in one of the few passages in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of Athenian manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While in prison, he composed two plays (the Hariolus and Leon), which contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was liberated through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. But he was soon after banished, and took up his residence at Utica, where he is said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have died, in b.c. 20412, though the same author adds that Varro, 'diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was still alive for some time after that date13. It is inferred, from a passage in Cicero14, that his poem on the First Punic War was composed in his old age. Probably it was written in his exile, when removed from the sphere of his active literary efforts. As he served in that war, some time between b.c. 261 and b.c. 241, he must have been well advanced in years at the time of his death.