c. 280 B.C.E.–c. 204 B.C.E.

Playwright
Translator

The Originator of Latin Poetry.

Little is known about the early life of Livius Andronicus, who was born around 280 B.C.E. He likely came to Rome as a teacher of Greek and Latin sometime in the mid-third century B.C.E. in the household of one Livius Salinator, from whom he took the family name "Livius" after being freed. His exact region of origin is not known, though his last name "Andronicus" sounds Greek, and he may have been born in the Greek colony of Tarentum in southern Italy. This area was known to the early Romans as Magna Graecia or "Greater Greece," because it, as well as the island of Sicily, had been colonized by the Greeks since at least the eighth century B.C.E. He is credited as the first to create...