The Metelli, however, did not confine their vengeance to this ingenious and spirited satire, in the composition of which, it may be presumed that the whole Roman Senate was engaged. On account of the unceasing abuse and reproaches which he had uttered against them, and other chief men of the city, he was thrown into prison, where he wrote his comedies, the _Hariolus_ and _Leontes_. These plays being in some measure intended as a recantation of his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes of the people.(130) He soon, however, relapsed into his former courses, and continued to persecute the nobility in his dramas and satires with such implacable dislike, that he was at length driven from Rome by their influence, and having retired to Utica(131), he died there, in the year 550, according to Cicero(132); but Varro fixes his death somewhat later. Before leaving Rome, he had composed the following epitaph on himself, which Gellius remarks is full of Campanian arrogance; though the import of it, he adds, might be allowed to be true, had it been written by another(133); “Mortales immortales flere si foret fas, Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam; Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro, Oblitei sunt Romæ loquier Latina lingua(134).” Besides his comedies and the above epitaph, Nævius was also author of the Cyprian Iliad, a translation from a Greek poem, called the _Cyprian Epic_. Aristotle, in the 23d chapter of his Poetics, mentions the original work, (τα κυπρια,) which, he says, had furnished many subjects for the drama. Some writers, particularly Pindar, have attributed this Greek poem to Homer; and there was long an idle story current, that he had given it as a portion to his daughter Arsephone. Herodotus, in his second Book, concludes, after some critical discussion, that it was not written by Homer, but that it was doubtless the work of a contemporary poet, or one who lived shortly after him. Heyne thinks it most probable, that it was by a poet called Stasinus, a native of the island of Cyprus, and that it received its name from the country of its author(135). Whoever may have written this Cyprian Epic, it contained twelve books, and was probably a work of amorous and romantic fiction. It commenced with the nuptials of Thetis and Peleus—it related the contention of the three goddesses on Mount Ida—the fables concerning Palamedes—the story of the daughters of Anius—and the love adventures of the Phrygian fair during the early period of the siege of Troy—and it terminated with the council of the gods, at which it was resolved that Achilles should be withdrawn from the war, by sowing dissension between him and Atrides(136).