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 cituis 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).