Cnæus Nævius

, a Latin poet in the first Punic war. He was originally in the Roman armies, but afterwards he applied himself to study and wrote comedies, besides a poetical account of the first Punic war, in which he had served. His satirical disposition displeased the consul Me tell us, who drove him from Rome. He pa ed the rest of his life in Utica, where he died, about 203 years before the christian era. Some fragments of his poetry are extant. Cicero , Tusculanæ Dis put at i ones , bk. 1 , ch. 1 ; de Senectute .— Horace , bk. 2 , ltr. 1 , li. 53 .――A tribune of the people at Rome, who accused Scipio African us of extortion.――An augur in the reign of Tarquin. To convince the king and the Romans of his power as an augur, he cut a flint with a razor, and turned the ridicule of the populace into admiration. Tarquin rewarded his merit by erecting to him a statue in the comitium , which was still in being in the age of August us. The razor and flint were buried near it under an altar, and it was usual among the Romans to make witne es in civil causes swear near it. This miraculous event of cutting a flint with a razor, though believed by some writers, is treated as fabulous and improbable by Cicero, who himself had been an augur. Dionysius of Halicarna us. — Livy , bk. 1 , ch. 36 .— Cicero , de Div in at i one , bk. 1 , ch. 17 ; De Natura Deorum , bk. 2 , ch. 3 ; bk. 3 , ch. 6 .