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Quintus Ennius, a poet of surprising versatility and power, was born at Rudiæ, in Calabria, in 239 B. C. While he was serving in the Roman army in Sardinia, in 204 B. C., he met with M. Porcius Cato, who took him home to Rome. Here Ennius gave lessons in Greek and translated Greek plays for the Roman stage. He became acquainted with several prominent Romans, among them the elder Scipio Africanus, went to Ætolia as a member of the staff of M. Fulvius Nobilior, and obtained full Roman citizenship in 184 B. C. His death was brought on by the gout in 169 B. C.

The works of Ennius were many and various, including tragedies, comedies, a great epic poem, a metrical treatise on natural philosophy, a translation of the work of Euhemerus, in which he explained the nature of the gods and declared that they are merely famous men of old times,1 a poem on food and cooking, a series of Precepts, epigrams (in which the elegiac distich was used for the first time in Latin), and satires. His most important works were his tragedies and his great epic, the Annales.

The tragedies were, like those of Nævius, translations of the works of the great Greek tragedians and their less great, but equally popular, successors. The titles and some fragments of twenty-two of these plays are preserved, from which it is evident that Ennius sometimes translated exactly and sometimes freely, while he allowed himself at other times to depart from his Greek original even to the extent of changing the plot more or less. For the most part, however, the invention of the plot, the delineation of character, and the poetic imagery of his plays were due to the Greek dramatists whose works he presented in Latin form. To Ennius himself belong the skillful use of the Latin language, the ability to express in a new language the thoughts rather than the words of the Greek poets, and also such changes as were necessary to make the Greek tragedies appeal more strongly to a Roman audience. It is impossible to tell from the fragments just what changes were made, but the popularity of the plays, which continued long after the death of Ennius, proves that the changes attained their object and pleased the audience. The titles of two fabulæ prætextæ by Ennius are known, the Sabine Women, a dramatic presentation of the legend of the Rape of the Sabines, and Ambracia, a play celebrating the capture of Ambracia by M. Fulvius Nobilior. His comedies seem to have been neither numerous nor especially successful.

The most important work of Ennius is his great epic in eighteen books, the Annales, in which he told the legendary and actual history of the Romans from the arrival of Æneas in Italy to his own time. In this work, as in his tragedies, he may be said to have followed in the way pointed out by Nævius, but the Annales mark an immense advance beyond the Bellum Punicum of Nævius. The monotonous and unpolished Saturnian metre could not, even in the most skillful hands, attain the dignity or the melodious cadences appropriate to great epic poems. Ennius therefore gave up the native Italian metre and wrote his epic in hexameter verse in imitation of Homer. This was no easy matter, for the laws of the verse as it existed in Greek could not be applied without change to Latin, but Ennius modified them in some particulars and thus fixed the form of the Latin hexameter, at the same time establishing in great part the rules of Latin prosody. Only about six hundred lines of the Annales remain, and many of these are detached from their context, yet from these we can see that Ennius had much poetic imagination, great skill in the use of words, and great dignity of diction. The line At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit shows at once his ability to make the sound of his words imitate the sound he wishes to describe (in this case that of a trumpet) and his liking for alliteration. This last quality is found in many Roman poets, but in none more frequently than Ennius.

The Annales continued to be read and admired even after the time of Virgil, though the Æneid soon took rank as the greatest Roman epic. Some of the lines of Ennius breathe the true Roman spirit of military pride and civic rectitude, as

Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque,2

or

Quem nemo ferro potuit superare nec auro,3

or

Nec cauponantes bellum sed belligerentes.4

Among the existing fragments are several which seem to have suggested to Virgil some of the passages in the Æneid, and there is no doubt that Virgil found Ennius worthy of imitation.

We may learn something of the character of Ennius from a passage of the Annales in which he is said,5 on the authority of the grammarian L. Ælius Stilo, to be describing himself: “A man of such a nature that no thought ever prompts him to do a bad deed either carelessly or maliciously; a learned, faithful, pleasant man, eloquent, contented and happy, witty, speaking fit words in season, courteous, and of few words, possessing much ancient buried lore; a man whom old age made wise in customs old and new and in the laws of many ancients, both gods and men; one who knew when to speak and when to be silent.”

Ennius was the first great epic poet at Rome. After him epic poetry was neglected, until it was taken up again a hundred years later. Tragedy, however the other branch of literature in which Ennius chiefly excelled, was cultivated without interruption, for it had become usual to produce tragedies at the chief festivals of the city and on other public occasions, and new plays were therefore constantly in demand.

1 Even if this work and some treatises on grammar should be ascribed to a later Ennius, which is not proved, the works of the great poet were sufficiently various.

2 Ancient customs and men cause the Roman republic to prosper.

3 Whom no one with the sword could overcome nor by bribing.

4 This line occurs in a context which is worth translating. “I do not ask gold for myself, and do not you offer me a ransom: not waging the war like hucksters, but like soldiers, with the sword, not with gold, let us strive for our lives. Let us try by our valor whether our mistress Fortune wishes you or me to rule.”

5 Aulus Gellius, xii, 4.