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APPENDIX OF
AUTHORS AND WORKS
ANDRONICUS, LUCIUS LIVIUS
LIFE
(1) Name. Livius, L. Livius, or Livius Andronicus in extant sources. The name T.
Livius (twice in Nonius, once in Jerome) is presumed to be an error due to confusion
with the Augustan historian. That he was called L. Livius Andronicus is strictly an
inference.
(2) Status and origin. Apparent implication of these tria nomina is that the poet was a
Greek by birth, named Andronikos, that somehow he became a slave in the household
of a Roman Livius, and that he was manumitted and became a c'tuis liberrinus with the
praenomen Lucius; he might, however, be the son of such a person. Accius in his
Didascalica (reported by Cic. Brut. 72 and Jerome, Chron. 187 B.C.) said that he was a
native of Tarentum and came to Rome in 209 B.C. when the city was taken by the
Romans (Livy 27.15—16; for problems in the Cicero passage see A. E. Douglas,
M. Tulli Cicerorus Brutus (Oxford 1966) 62-4); further, that he was granted his
freedom by M. Livius Salinator (he has in mind the victor of the battle at the Metaurus
in 207 B.C., RE 33), as a reward for teaching his children (cf. Suet. De gramm. et rhet.
1 for A. as teacher).
(3) Career according to Accius. Most circumstantially documented fact in A.'s life
is that in 207 B.C. he composed or re-used a ritual hymn to be sung by thrice nine girls
in procession; during a rehearsal the temple of Juno Regina on the Aventine was
struck by lightning; as an important part of the especially elaborate rite of expiation
which the curule aediles ordered, the girls performed A.'s hymn in procession to
Juno's temple (Livy 27.37, cf. 31.12). This happened shortly before Salinator's
important victory at the Metaurus, and retrospectively this was seen as the time at
which Juno had given up her hostility to the Trojans and their descendants (cf.
Ennius, Ann. (8) 291 V = ROZ. 293). As a result the scribae and kistriones were given
the right to hold official meetings in the Temple of Minerva on the Aventine and make
offerings (Festus p. 448 L; see p. 84). On Accius' view this would have been the
beginning, not the end of A.'s public life; and Cicero (loc. cit.) makes it clear that
Accius thought A.'s first play was not produced until the votive games of his patron
Salinator at the ludi luventutis in 197 B.C. (so Cicero; Livy dates the games to 191 B.C.,
799
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