SOURCE: “The Original Form of Naevius’s Bellum Punicum,”American Journal of Philology, Vol. LXVIII, No. 1, January 1947, pp. 21-46.

In the following essay Rowell contends that the common distribution and assignment of fragments of the Bellum Punicum is faulty and he offers suggestions for a different arrangement of particular segments.

From statements of Suetonius and Santra, it is known that Cn. Naevius wrote his Bellum Punicum in the form of a single unbroken narrative which was later divided into seven books by C. Octavius Lampadio, probably in the second half of the second century b.c.¹ That this edition of Lampadio was used either directly or indirectly by some of the later writers who refer to the Bellum Punicum is indicated by their identification of specific books as the sources of their quotations and references.² Consequently scholars who have compiled and edited the fragments, since the revival of...