- Not to be confused with Livy, the Augustan-era historian whose Latin name is Livius.
Lucius Livius Andronicus (c. 284 – c. 204 BC) was a
Greco-Roman dramatist and
epic poet of the
Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating
Greek works into
Latin, including
Homer's
Odyssey. They were meant at first as educational devices in the school he founded. He wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language of ancient Rome. His comedies were based on Greek
New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term
comoedia palliata (fabula palliata). The Roman biographer
Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and
Ennius (referring to their genre, not their ethnic backgrounds). The genre was imitated by the next dramatists to follow in Andronicus' footsteps and on that account he is regarded as the father of
Roman drama and of Latin literature in general; that is, he was the first man of letters to write in Latin.
Varro,
Cicero, and
Horace, all men of letters during the subsequent
Classical Latin period, considered Livius Andronicus to have been the originator of
Latin literature. He is the earliest Roman poet whose name is known.