Ennius

Quintus Ennius (c. 239 – c. 169 BC) was a writer and poet of the Roman Republic, often called the father of Roman poetry. He was born in Rudiae, a small Messapian town near modern Lecce in the ancient region of Calabria (today Salento). His native language was Oscan, and he also spoke Greek and Latin.

Biography

Though only fragments of his work remain, his impact on Latin literature was major, especially because he adapted Greek literary models. Very little is known for sure about Ennius’s life. His contemporaries rarely mentioned him, and much of what is reported may come from his own fragmentary writings. Some lines of his epic Annales and ancient testimonies suggest he opened the poem with a dream in which Homer told him that his spirit had been reborn into Ennius.

The idea of the transmigration of souls had once flourished in Greek-settled parts of Italy, but this could simply be a literary device. Ennius seems to have made grand claims: the commentator Servius reports that he claimed descent from Messapus, the legendary king of his home district. According to Aulus Gellius, Ennius said his birthplace, the partially Hellenized city of Rudiae in Apulia, gave him a triple linguistic and cultural heritage, which he called “three hearts … Greek, Oscan and Latin.”

Ennius’s public career first becomes clear in middle age, when he served as a centurion in the Second Punic War. In 204 BC, while in Sardinia, he caught the attention of Cato the Elder, who brought him to Rome. There he made a living teaching Greek and adapting Greek plays. His poetry won him the friendship of leading Romans, including Scipio Africanus and Fulvius Nobilior.

He accompanied Nobilior on the Aetolian campaign in 189 BC and later wrote a play and an episode in the Annales about the capture of Ambracia, which he witnessed. Through the influence of Nobilior’s son Quintus, Ennius obtained Roman citizenship. He lived simply in the literary quarter on the Aventine Hill with the poet Caecilius Statius, another adapter of Greek plays.

Ennius died at about age 70, right after producing his tragedy Thyestes. In the last book of his epic, he noted that he was in his 67th year when he wrote it. He compared himself, near the end of his great work, to a prize-winning horse that finally rests in old age. He also composed memorial lines for his bust: “Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.”

Literature

Ennius continued Rome’s early literary tradition by writing plays in both Greek and Roman style (praetextae and palliatae), as well as his most famous work, the historical epic Annales, written in hexameters. Other minor works include Epicharmus, Epigrammata, Euhemerus, Hedyphagetica, Praecepta/Protrepticus, Saturae (Satires), Scipio, and Sota. The Annales was an epic in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC to Cato the Elder’s censorship in 184 BC.

The Annales

It was the first Latin poem to use the dactylic hexameter meter from Greek epic and didactic poetry, making it the standard for those genres in Latin. The poem became a school text for Roman children, later replaced by Virgil’s Aeneid. About 600 lines survive. The Epicharmus was inspired by the philosophical ideas of the Sicilian poet and philosopher Epicharmus of Kos.

Minor works

In it, Ennius describes a dream where he died and was taken to a place of heavenly enlightenment, where Epicharmus explained the nature of the gods and the physics of the universe. The Euhemerus presented the doctrine of Euhemerus of Messene, who argued that the Olympian gods were not supernatural beings but ancient heroes later worshipped for their deeds. Cicero and Lactantius say the Euhemerus was a translation and retelling of Euhemerus’s Sacred History, but it is unclear if Ennius simply translated it or added his own material. Most surviving fragments come from Lactantius and suggest the work was in prose.

The Hedyphagetica drew heavily from the gastronomical epic of Archestratus of Gela. The surviving parts discuss where to find the best fish, but many fragments are corrupt or damaged, filled with unusual fish names and place names. It is written in hexameters but differs from the Annales in metrical practices, likely because of its different subject matter.