war, was another, and probably the last work of Nævius, since Cicero says,
that in writing it he filled up the leisure of his latter days with
wonderful complacency and satisfaction(137). It was originally undivided;
but, after his death, was separated into seven books(138).—Although the
first Punic war was the principal subject, as appears from its
announcement,
“Qui terräi Latiäi hemones tuserunt
Vires fraudesque Poinicas fabor;”
yet it also afforded a rapid sketch of the preceding incidents of Roman
history. It commenced with the flight of Æneas from Carthage, in a ship
built by Mercury(139); and the early wars of the Romans were detailed in
the first and second books. To judge by the fragments which remain, the
whole work appears to have been full of mythological machinery. Macrobius
informs us, that some lines of this production described the Romans tost
by a tempest, and represented Venus complaining of the hardships which
they suffered to Jupiter, who consoles her by a prospect of their future
glory—a passage which probably suggested those verses in the first book of
the Æneid, where Venus, in like manner, complains to Jupiter of the danger
experienced by her son in a storm, and the god consoles her by assurances
of his ultimate prosperity(140). Cicero mentions, that Ennius, too, though
he classes Nævius among the fauns and rustic bards, had borrowed, or, if
he refused to acknowledge his obligations, had pilfered, many ornaments
from his predecessor(141). In the same passage, Cicero, while he admits
that Ennius was the more elegant and correct writer, bears testimony to
the merit of the older bard, and declares, that the Punic war of this
antiquated poet afforded him a pleasure as exquisite as the finest statue
that was ever formed by Myron. To judge, however, from the lines which
remain, though in general too much broken to enable us even to divine
their meaning, the style of Nævius in this work was more rugged and remote
from modern Latin than that of his own plays and satires, or the dramas of
Livius Andronicus.
The whole, too, is written in the rough, unmodulated, Saturnian verse—a
sort of irregular iambics, said to have been originally employed by Faunus
and the prophets, who delivered their oracles in this measure. To such
rude and unpolished verses Ennius alludes in a fragment of his Annals,
while explaining his reasons for not treating of the first Punic war—
—— “Scripsere alii rem
Versibus, quos olim Fauni, vatesque canebant;
Cum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat,
Nec dicti studiosus erat.”
As this was the most ancient species of measure employed in Roman poetry,
as it was universally used before the melody of Greek verse was poured on
the Roman ear, and as, from ancient practice, the same strain continued to
be repeated till the age of Ennius, by whom the heroic measure was
introduced, it would not be suitable to omit some notice of its origin and
structure in an account of Roman literature and poetry.
Several writers have supposed that the Saturnian measure was borrowed by
the Romans from the Greeks(142), having been used by Euripides, and
particularly by Archilochus; but others have believed that it was an
invention of the ancient Italians(143). It was first employed in the
Carmen Saliare, songs of triumph, supplications to the gods, or monumental
inscriptions, and was afterwards, as we have seen, adopted in the works of
Livius Andronicus and Nævius. In consequence of the fragments which remain
of the Saturnian verses being so short and corrupted, it is extremely
difficult to fix their regular measure, or reduce them to one standard of
versification. Herman seems to consider a Saturnian line as having
regularly consisted of two iambuses, an amphibrachys, and three trochaës—
˘ _ | ˘ _ | ˘ _ ˘ | _ ˘ | _ ˘ | _ ˘
A dactyl, however, was occasionally admitted into the place of the first
or second trochaë, and a spondee was not unfrequently introduced
indiscriminately. It also appears that a Saturnian line was sometimes
divided into two—the first line consisting of the two iambuses and
amphibrachys, and the second of the trochaës, whence the Saturnian verse
has been sometimes called iambic, and at others trochaic.
The Hexameter verse, which had been invented by the Greeks, was first
introduced into Latium, or at least, was first employed in a work of any
extent, by
ENNIUS,
—— “Qui primus amœno
Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
Per gentes Italas hominum quæ clara clueret.”
This poet, who has generally received the glorious appellation of the
Father of Roman Song, was a native of Rudiæ, a town in Calabria, and lived
from the year of Rome 515 to 585(144). In his early youth he went to
Sardinia; and, if Silius Italicus may be believed, he served in the
Calabrian levies, which, in the year 538, followed Titus Manlius to the
war which he waged in that island against the favourers of the
Carthaginian cause(145). After the termination of the campaign, he
continued to live for twelve years in Sardinia(146). He was at length
brought to Rome by Cato, the Censor, who, in 550, visited Sardinia, on
returning as quæstor from Africa(147). At Rome he fixed his residence on
the Aventine hill, where he lived in a very frugal manner, having only a
single servant maid as an attendant(148). He instructed, however, the
Patrician youth in Greek, and acquired the friendship of many of the most
illustrious men in the state. Being distinguished (like Æschylus, the
great father of Grecian tragedy) in arms as well as letters, he followed
M. Fulvius Nobilior during his expedition to Ætolia in 564(149); and in
569 he obtained the freedom of the city, through the favour of Quintus
Fulvius Nobilior, the son of his former patron, Marcus(150). He was also
protected by the elder Scipio Africanus, whom he is said to have
accompanied in all his campaigns:
“Hærebat doctus lateri, castrisque solebat
Omnibus in medias Ennius ire tubas(151).”
It is difficult, however, to see in what expeditions he could have
attended this renowned general. His Spanish and African wars were
concluded before Ennius was brought from Sardinia to Rome; and the
campaign against Antiochus was commenced and terminated while he was
serving under Fulvius Nobilior in Ætolia(152). In his old age he obtained
the friendship of Scipio Nasica; and the degree of intimacy subsisting
between them has been characterised by the well-known anecdote of their
successively feigning to be from home(153). He is said to have been
intemperate in drinking(154), which brought on the disease called _Morbus
Articularis_, a disorder resembling the gout, of which he died at the age
of seventy, just after he had exhibited his tragedy of Thyestes:
“Ennius ipse pater dum pocula siccat iniqua,
Hoc vitio tales fertur meruisse dolores(155).”
The evils, however, of old age and indigence were supported by him, as we
learn from Cicero, with such patience, and even cheerfulness, that one
would almost have imagined he derived satisfaction from circumstances
which are usually regarded, as being, of all others, the most dispiriting
and oppressive(156). The honours due to his character and talents were, as
is frequently the case, reserved till after his death, when a bust of him
was placed in the family tomb of the Scipios(157), who, till the time of
Sylla, continued the practice of burying, instead of burning, their dead.
In the days of Livy, the bust still remained near that sepulchre, beyond
the _Porta Capena_, along with the statues of Africanus and Scipio
Asiaticus.(158) The tomb was discovered in 1780, on a farm situated
between the Via Appia and Via Latina. The slabs, which have been since
removed to the Vatican, bear several inscriptions, commemorating different
persons of the Scipian family. Neither statues, nor any other memorial,
then existed of Africanus himself, or of Asiaticus(159); but a laurelled
bust of Pepperino stone, which was found in this tomb, and which now
stands on the Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus in the Vatican, is supposed
to be that of Ennius(160). There is also still extant an epitaph on this
poet, reported to have been written by himself(161), strongly
characteristic of that overweening conceit and that high estimation of his
own talents, which are said to have formed the chief blemish of his
character:—
“Aspicite, O cives, senis Ennî imaginis formam;
Hic vestrum panxit maxuma facta patrum.
Nemo me lacrumis decoret, nec funera fletu
Faxit—cur? volito vivus per ora virûm(162).”
The lines formerly quoted(163), which were written by Nævius for his
tomb-stone, express as high a sense of his own poetical merits as the
above verses; but there is in them something plaintive and melancholy,
quite different from the triumphant exultation in the epitaph of Ennius.
To judge by the fragments of his works which remain, Ennius greatly
surpassed his predecessors, not only in poetical genius, but in the art of
versification. By his time, indeed, the best models of Greek composition
had begun to be studied at Rome. Ennius particularly professed to have
imitated Homer, and tried to persuade his countrymen that the soul and
genius of that great poet had revived in him, through the medium of a
peacock, according to the process of Pythagorean transmigration. It is to
this fantastic genealogy that Persius has alluded in his 6th satire:—
“Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
Mæonides Quintus, pavone ex Pythagoreo.”
From the following lines of Lucretius it would appear, that Ennius
somewhere in his works had feigned that the shade of Homer appeared to
him, and explained to him the nature and laws of the universe:—
“Etsi præterea tamen esse Acherusia Templa
Ennius æternis exponit versibus edens;
Quo neque permanent animæ, neque corpora nostra,
Sed quædam simulacra modis pallentia miris:
Unde, sibi exortam, semper florentis Homeri
Commemorat speciem, lacrumas effundere salsas
Cœpisse, et rerum naturam expandere dictis.”
Accordingly, we find in the fragments of Ennius many imitations of the
Iliad and Odyssey. It is, however, the Greek tragic writers whom Ennius
has chiefly imitated; and indeed it appears from the fragments which
remain, that all his plays were rather translations from the dramas of
Sophocles and Euripides, on the same subjects which he has chosen, than
original tragedies. They are founded on the old topics of Priam and Paris,
Hector and Hecuba; and truly Ennius, as well as most other Latin
tragedians, seems to have anticipated Horace’s maxim—
“Rectus Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quamsi proferres ignota indictaque primus.”
But although it be quite clear that all the plays of Ennius were
translated, or closely imitated, from the Greek, there is occasionally
some difficulty in fixing on the drama which was followed, and also in
ascertaining whether there be any original passage whatever in the Latin
imitation. This difficulty arises from the practice adopted by the Greek
dramatists, of new modelling their tragedies. Euripides, in particular,
sometimes altered his plays after their first representation, in order to
accommodate them to the circumstances of the times, and to obviate the
sarcastic criticisms of Aristophanes, who had frequently exposed whole
scenes to ridicule. With such views, considerable changes were made on
_Iphigenia in Aulis_, the _Hippolytus_, and _Medea_. Euripides is the
author from whom Ennius has chiefly borrowed the fables of his tragedies;
and when Sophocles and Euripides have treated the same subject, the latter
poet has been uniformly preferred. Not one of the dramas of Ennius has
been imitated from Æschylus. The reason of this is sufficiently obvious:
The plays of Æschylus have little involution of plot, and are rather what
we should now term dramatic sketches, than tragedies. The plots of
Sophocles are more complex than those of Æschylus; but the tragedies of
Euripides are the most involved of all. Now, it may be presumed, that a
tragedy crowded with action, and filled with the bustle of a complicated
fable, was best adapted to the taste of the Romans, because we _know_ that
this was their taste in comedy. Plautus combined two Greek comedies to
form one Latin; and the representation of the Hecyra of Terence, the only
Latin play formed on the simple Greek model, was repeatedly abandoned by
the people before it was concluded, for the sake of amusements of more
tumult and excitement.
Of _Achilles_, which, in alphabetical order, is the first of the plays of
Ennius, there are just extant seven lines, which have been preserved by
Nonius and Festus; and from such remains it is impossible to know what
part of the life or actions of the Grecian hero Ennius had selected as the
subject of his plot. There were many Greek tragedies on the story of
Achilles, of which, one by Aristarchus of Tegea, was the most celebrated,
and is supposed to have been that from which Ennius copied.
_Ajax_. Sophocles was author of two tragedies founded on the events of the
life of Ajax;—_Ajax Flagellifer_, and _Ajax Locrensis_. The first turns on
the phrensy with which the Grecian hero was seized, on being refused the
arms of Achilles, and it may be conjectured, from a single fragment,
apparently at the very close of the tragedy by Ennius, and which describes
the attendants raising the body of Ajax, streaming with blood, that this
was the piece translated by the Roman poet.
_Alcmæon_. This play, of which the fable closely resembles the story of
Orestes, has by some been attributed to the Latin poet Quintus Catulus.
The transports of Alcmæon had been frequently exhibited on the Greek
stage(164). The drama of Ennius was taken from a tragedy of Euripides,
which is now lost, but its subject is well known from the Thebaid of
Statius. The soothsayer Amphiaraus, foreseeing that he would perish at the
siege of Thebes, concealed himself from the crimps of those days; but his
wife, Eryphile, who alone knew the place of his retreat, being bribed by
the gift of a mantle and necklace, revealed the secret to one of the
“Seven before Thebes,” who compelled him to share in the expedition.
Before death, the prophet enjoined his son, Alcmæon, to avenge him on his
faithless wife. The youth, in compliance with this pious command, slew his
mother, and was afterwards tormented by the Furies, who would only be
appeased by a gift of the whole _paraphernalia_ of Eryphile, which were
accordingly hung up in their temple. As soon as their persecution ceased,
he married the fair Calirrhoe, daughter of Achelous, and precipitately
judging that the consecrated necklace would be better bestowed on his
beautiful bride than on the beldame by whom he had so long been haunted,
he contrived, on false pretences, to purloin it from the place where it
was deposited; but the Furies were not to be so choused out of their
perquisites, and in consequence of his rash preference, Alcmæon was
compelled to suffer a renewed phrensy, and to undergo a fresh course of
expiatory ceremonies(165).
_Alexander_ (_Paris_). The plot of this play hinges on the destruction of
Troy. The passages which remain are a heavenly admonition to Priam on the
crimes of his son, a lamentation for the death of Hector, and a prediction
of Cassandra concerning the wooden horse. Planck, in his recent edition of
the _Medea_ of Ennius, while he does not deny that our poet may have
written a tragedy with the title of _Alexander_, is of opinion that the
fragments quoted as from this play in the editions of Ennius belong
properly to his _Alexandra_ (_Cassandra_), to which subject they are
perfectly applicable. This German critic has also collected a good many
fragments belonging to the _Cassandra_, which had been omitted in Columna
and Merula’s editions of Ennius. The longest of these passages, delivered
by Cassandra in the style of a prophecy, seems to refer to events previous
to the Trojan war—the judgment of Paris, and arrival of Helen from Sparta.
_Andromache_. It is uncertain from what Greek writer this tragedy has been
translated. It seems to be founded on the lamentable story of Andromache,
who fell, with other Trojan captives, to the share of Neoptolemus, and saw
her only son, Astyanax, torn from her embraces, to be precipitated from
the summit of a tower, in compliance with the injunctions of an oracle.
Among the fragments of this play, we possess one of the longest passages
extant of the works of Ennius, containing a pathetic lamentation of
Andromache for the fall and conflagration of Troy, with a comparison
between its smoking ruins and former splendour. This passage Cicero
styles, “Præclarum Carmen!”—“Est enim,” he adds, “et rebus, et verbis, et
modis lugubre(166).”
—— “Quid petam
Præsidi aut exsequar? quo nunc aut exilio aut fuga freta sim?
Arce et urbe orba sum; quo accidam? quo applicem?
Cui nec aræ patriæ domi stant; fractæ et disjectæ jacent,
Fana flamma deflagrata; tosti alti stant parietes.
O Pater, O Patria, O Priami domus;
Septum altisono cardine templum:
Vidi ego te, adstante ope barbarica,
Tectis cælatis, laqueatis,
Auro, ebore instructum regifice.
Hæc omnia vidi inflammari,
Priamo vi vitam evitari,
Jovis aram sanguine turpari(167).”
_Andromache Molottus_ is translated from the _Andromache_ of Euripides,
and is so called from Molottus, the son of Neoptolemus and Andromache.
_Andromeda_. Livius Andronicus had formerly written a Latin play on the
well-known story of Perseus and Andromeda, which was translated from
Sophocles. The play of Ennius, however, on the same subject, was a version
of a tragedy of Euripides, now chiefly known from the ridicule cast on it
in the fifth act of Aristophanes’ _Feasts of Ceres_. That Ennius’ drama
was translated from Euripides, is sufficiently manifest, from a comparison
of its fragments with the passages of the Greek Andromeda, preserved by
Stobæus.
_Athamas_. There is only one short fragment of this play now extant.
_Cresphontes_. Merope, believing that her son Cresphontes had been slain
by a person who was brought before her, discovers, when about to avenge on
him the death of her child, that she whom she had mistaken for the
murderer is Cresphontes himself.
_Dulorestes_. Of this play there is only one line remaining, and of course
it is almost impossible to ascertain from what Greek original it was
borrowed. Even this single verse has by several critics been supposed to
be falsely attributed to Ennius, and to belong, in fact, to the Dulorestes
of Pacuvius(168).
_Erectheus_. There is just enough of this play extant to have satisfied
Columna, one of the editors of Ennius, that it was taken from a tragedy of
the same name by Euripides. As told by Hyginus, the fable concerning
Erectheus, King of Attica, was, that he had four daughters, who all
pledged themselves not to survive the death of any one of their number.
Eumolpus, son of Neptune, being slain at the siege of Athens, his father
required that one of the daughters of Erectheus should be sacrificed to
him in compensation. This having been accomplished, her sisters slew
themselves as a matter of course, and Erectheus was soon afterwards struck
by Jupiter with thunder, at the solicitation of Neptune. The longest
passage preserved from this tragedy is the speech of Colophonia, when
about to be sacrificed to Neptune by her father.
_Eumenides_. This play, translated from Æschylus, exhibited the phrensy of
Orestes, and his final absolution from the vengeance of the Furies.
_Hectoris Lytris vel Lustra_, so called from λυω, _solvo_, turned on the
redemption from Achilles by Priam, of the body of Hector. It appears,
however, from the fragments, that the combat of Hector, and the brutal
treatment of his corpse by Achilles, had been represented or related in
the early scenes of the piece.
_Hecuba_. This is a free translation from the Greek _Hecuba_, perhaps the
most tragic of all the dramas of Euripides. From the work of Ennius, there
is still extant a speech by the shade of Polydorus, announcing in great
form his arrival from Acheron. This soliloquy, which is a good deal
expanded from the original Greek, always produced a great sensation in the
Roman theatre, and is styled by Cicero, _Grande Carmen_(169).—
“Adsum, atque advenio Acherunte, vix via alta, atque ardua,
Per speluncas saxeis structas aspereis pendentibus
Maxumeis; ubi rigida constat et crassa caligo inferûm;
Unde animæ excitantur obscura umbra, aperto ostio
Alti Acheruntis, falso sanguine imagines mortuorum(170).”
A speech of Hecuba, on seeing the dead body of Polydorus, and in which she
reproaches the Greeks as having no punishment for the murder of a parent
or a guest, seems to have been added by Ennius himself, at least it is not
in the Greek original of Euripides. On the whole, indeed, the _Hecuba_ of
Ennius appears, so far as we can judge from the fragments, to be the least
servile of his imitations. In Columna’s edition of Ennius, an opportunity
is afforded by corresponding quotations from the Greek _Hecuba_, of
comparing the manner in which the Latin poet has varied, amplified, or
compressed the thoughts of his original. In Euripides, Hecuba, while
persuading Ulysses to intercede for Polixena, says—
“Τὸ δ’ αξίωμα, καν κακως λέγῃς, τὸ σόν
Πείσει. Λόγος γαρ ἔκ τ’ αδοξούντων ἰων,
Και ’κ των δοκούντων αὐτὸς, οὐ ταυτὸν σθένει.”
Ennius imitates this as follows:
“Hæc tu, etsi perverse dices, facile Achivos flexeris;
Namque opulenti cum loquuntur pariter atque ignobiles,
Eadem dicta, eademque oratio æqua non æque valent.”
This has been copied by Plautus, and from him by Moliere in his
_Amphitrion_—
“Tous les discours sont des sottises
Partant d’un homme sans eclat;
Ce seroient paroles exquisses,
Si c’etoit un grand qui parlàt.”
The last link in this chain of imitation, is Pope’s well-known lines—
“What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonnetteer or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens, how the style refines!”
_Iliona sive Polydorus_.—Priam, during the siege of Troy, had entrusted
his son Polydorus to the care of Polymnestor, King of Thrace, who was
married to Iliona, daughter of Priam, and slew his guest, in order to
possess himself of the treasure which had been sent along with him. The
only passage of the play which remains, is one in which the shade of
Polydorus calls on Hecuba to arise and bury her murdered son.
_Iphigenia_.—Ennius, as already mentioned, appears invariably to have
translated from Euripides, in preference to Sophocles, when the same
subject had been treated by both these poets. Sophocles had written a
tragedy on the topic of the well-known _Iphigenia in Aulis_ of Euripides;
but it is the latter piece which has been adopted by the Roman poet.
Boeckius has shown, in a learned dissertation, that Euripides wrote two
_Iphigenias in Aulis_(171). From the first, which has perished,
Aristophanes parodied the verses introduced in his _Frogs_; and it was on
this work that Ennius formed his Latin _Iphigenia_. The _Iphigenia_ now
extant, and published in the editions of Euripides, is a _recension_ of
the original drama, which was undertaken on account of the ridicule thrown
on it by Aristophanes, and was not acted till after the death of its
author. Boeckius, indeed, thinks, that it was written by the younger
Euripides, the nephew of the more celebrated dramatist; hence some of the
lines of Ennius, which, on comparison with the _Iphigenia_ now extant,
appear to us original, were probably translated from the first written
_Iphigenia_. Such, perhaps, are the jingling verses concerning the
disadvantages of idleness, which are supposed, not very naturally, to be
sung while weather-bound in Aulis, by the Greek soldiers, who form the
chorus of this tragedy instead of the women of Chalcis in the play of
Euripides:—