Photograph of Ennius.
Ennius

Overview

Quintus Ennius (239 - 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Greek descent. Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant.

Biography

Ennius was born at Rudiae in Salento, a town where the Greek, Oscan and Latin languages were in contact with one another. (But see also a remark under Messapian language.)

Ennius' more famous works include: the Epicharmus, the Euhemerus, the Hedyphagetica, Saturae, and the Annals (Annales in Latin).

The Epicharmus presented an account of the gods and the physical operations of the universe. In it, the poet dreamed he had been transported after death to some place of heavenly enlightenment.

The Euhemerus presented a theological doctrine of a vastly different type in a mock-simple prose style modelled on the Greek of Euhemerus of Messene and several other theological writers. According to this doctrine, the gods of Olympus were not supernatural powers still actively intervening in the affairs of men, but great generals, statesmen and inventors of olden times commemorated after death in extraordinary ways.

The Hedyphagetica took much of its substance from the gastronomical epic of Archestratus of Gela, a work commonly associated with Epicureanism. The eleven extant hexameters have prosodical features avoided in the more serious Annales.

The remains of six books of Saturae show a considerable variety of metres. There are signs that Ennius varied the metre sometimes even within a composition. A frequent theme was the social life of Ennius himself and his upper-class Roman friends and their intellectual conversation.

The Annals was an epic poem in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry. The Annals became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid. About 600 lines survive.

"The idle mind knows not what it wants." - Ennius

"Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur." - Ennius (quoted by Cicero, Laelius 17.64)

Further reading

*R. A. Brooks, Ennius and Roman Tragedy (1981) *R.L.S. Evans, Ennius in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Latin Writers. Ed.Ward Briggs. Vol. 211, 1999. *H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (1967) *O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (1985)

External links

* Fragments of Ennius' Annals at The Latin Library; text from Wordsworth (1874), line numbering from Warmington (1935)
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This biography says:

...It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry. The Annals became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid. About 600 lines survive....

That biography says:

...Livy says in his "History of Rome" that statues of Scipio Africanus, Lucius Scipio and the Roman poet Ennius (a friend of the family) were present at the Tomb of the Scipios when he visited it.

That biography says:

...The examples it includes to illustrate the rules preserve numerous fragments from Latin authors which would otherwise have been lost, including Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Lucilius, Cato and Varro. But the authors whom he quotes most frequently are Virgil, and, next to him, Terence, Cicero, Plautus; then Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, Sallust, Statius, Ovid, Livy and Persius...

That biography says:

...(Similar to Marcus Claudius Marcellus being named the "Sword of Rome") According to Ennius, unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem – "one man, by delaying, restored the state to us." Vergil, in the Aeneid, has Aeneas' father Anchises mention Fabius Maximus while in Hades as the greatest of the many great Fabii, quoting the same line...

This biography says:

...The Annals was an epic poem in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry...

That biography says:

...The author of the abridged life of Cato which is commonly considered as the work of Cornelius Nepos, assert that Cato, after his return from Africa, put in at Sardinia, and brought the poet Quintus Ennius in his own ship from the island to Italy; but Sardinia was rather out of the line of the trip to Rome, and it is more likely that the first contact of Ennius and Cato happened at a later date, when the latter was praetor in Sardinia.

That biography says:

...He was the nephew and pupil of Ennius, by whom Roman tragedy was first raised to a position of influence and dignity. In the interval between the death of Ennius (169 BC) and the advent of Accius, the youngest and most productive of the tragic poets, Pacuvius alone maintained the continuity of the serious drama, and perpetuated the character first imparted to it by Ennius...

That biography says:

...This circumstance contributed to the boldness, originality and thoroughly national character of his literary work. Had he been a semi-Graecus, like Ennius and Pacuvius, or of humble origin, like Plautus, Terence or Accius, he would scarcely have ventured, at a time when the senatorial power was strongly in the ascendant, to revive the rôle which had proved disastrous to Naevius; nor would he have had the intimate knowledge of the political and social life of his day which fitted him to be its painter...

That biography says:

...The statement of Pomponius Porphyrion, the old commentator on Horace, that Florus himself wrote satires, is probably erroneous, but he may have edited selections from the earlier satirists (Ennius, Lucilius, Varro)....

That biography says:

...His birthday ode in Lucan's honour has, along with the accustomed exaggeration, many powerful lines, and shows, high appreciation of preceding Latin poets. Some phrases, such as "the untaught muse of high-souled Ennius" and "the lofty passion of sage Lucretius," are familiar words with all scholars. The ode ends with a great picture of Lucan's spirit rising after death on wings of fame to regions whither only powerful souls can ascend, scornfully surveying earth and smiling at the tomb, or reclining in Elysium and singing a noble strain to the Pompeys and the Catos and all the "Pharsalian host," or with proud tread exploring Tartarus and listening to the wailings of the guilty, and gazing at Nero, pale with agony as his mother's avenging torch glitters before his eyes...

That biography says:

According to his own statement (prologue to book III), he was born on the Pierian Mountain in Macedonia, but he seems to have been brought to Italy at an early age since he mentions reading a verse of Ennius as a boy in school. According to the heading of the chief manuscript he was a slave and was freed by Augustus...

That biography says:

...If these lines were dictated by a jealousy of the growing ascendancy of Ennius, the life of Naevius must have been prolonged considerably beyond 204, the year in which Ennius began his career as an author in Rome...

That biography says:

...On his return to Rome, Nobilior celebrated a triumph (of which full details are given by Livy) remarkable for the magnificence of the spoils exhibited. On his Aetolian campaign he was accompanied by the poet Ennius, who made the capture of Ambracia, at which he was present, the subject of one of his plays. For this Nobilior was strongly opposed by Cato the Censor, on the ground that he had compromised his dignity as a Roman general...

That biography says:

...by the use of digressions, by bringing divine beings on to the stage, and by giving generally a mythologic tinge to the subject. The Latin laws of the historic epic were fixed by Ennius, and were still binding when Claudian wrote. They were never seriously infringed, except by Lucan, who substituted for the dei ex machina of his predecessors the vast, dim and imposing Stoic conception of destiny...

That biography says:

...He had a great reputation as an orator, and is characterized by Ennius as the quintessence of persuasiveness (suadae medulla). Horace (Ars Poet. 50; Epistles, ii.2.117) calls him an authority on the use of Latin words.

That biography says:

...Accius wrote other works of a literary character: Libri Didascalicon, a treatise in verse on the history of Greek and Roman poetry, and dramatic art in particular; also Libri Pragmaticon, Parerga, and Praxidica, of which no fragments remain; and a hexameter Annales containing the history of Rome, like that of Ennius.
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