Reconstructions

Latin literature began not with epic but with public spectacle, and it was fostered as a matter of public policy. The year was 240. The Romans, having just defeated Carthage in the First Punic War, were quick to flex cultural as well as political muscle. They expanded the native ludi Romani, a festival that had long offered musical and stage performances, to include formal plays in the Greek style. A man named Livius Andronicus was commissioned to furnish Latin scripts for the occasion and to oversee the productions.1 We know just a little about this Andronicus. The name itself suggests a Greek freedman of the Livian gens, and that idea makes some sense. A certain M. Livius Salinator was one of the decemviri sacris faciundis who presided over the Saecular games of 236. He could easily have held this office by 240 and recommended a family retainer for the new theatrical commission. Later sources support that inference: Andronicus was said to have reached Rome as a slave from Tarentum, to have tutored the sons of Salinator, and to have won his freedom by virtue of his talents.2 Those talents launched the first literary career at Rome and the first literary genres. Andronicus continued writing plays-the titles of nine tragedies and three comedies survive-and his experiments bore lasting fruit.

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