ENNIUS.
The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two
directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its
subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the
work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his
younger contemporary Plautus: and, in a strictly chronological history
of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in order.
But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of Roman
comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to direct
attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of Naevius
in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.
The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than
those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature.
They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the
spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to
Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their
literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language a
vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the metrical
conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully to elicit
the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national imagination.
The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance with Greek
literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of his time, the
serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which he carried out
his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was in action, the
most vital representative of his epoch. It has happened too that the
fragments from his writings and the testimonies concerning him are more
expressive and characteristic than in the case of any other among the
early writers. There are none of his contemporaries, playing their part
in war or politics, and not many among the writers of later times, of
whom we can form so distinct an image.
I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year
after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first
entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as
quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the
rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus,
he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal
combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he resided
at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome, 'very plainly,
on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city), 'attended only by
a single maid-servant[48],' and supporting himself by teaching Greek
and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior in his Aetolian
campaign. Through the influence of his son, he obtained the honour of
Roman citizenship, probably at the time when the colony of Pisaurum was
planted in B.C. 184. This distinction Ennius has himself recorded in a
line of the Annals:--
Nos sumu' Romani, qui fuvimus ante Rudini.
He lived on terms of intimacy with influential members of the noblest
families in Rome, and became the familiar friend of the great Scipio.
When he died at the age of seventy, his bust was believed to be placed
in the tomb of the Scipios, between those of the conqueror of Hannibal
and of the conqueror of Antiochus. He died in the year B.C. 169. The
most famous of his works were his Tragedies and the Annals, a long
historical poem written in eighteen books. But, in addition to these,
he composed several miscellaneous works, of which only very scanty
fragments have been preserved.
Among the circumstances which prepared him to be the creator of a
national literature, his birthplace and origin, the kind of education
available to him in his early years, and the experience which awaited
him when first entering on life, had a strong determining influence.
His birthplace, Rudiae, is called by Strabo 'a Greek city;' but it
was not a Greek colony, like Tarentum and the other cities of Magna
Graecia, but an old Italian town, (the epithet _vetustae_ is applied to
it by Silius) which had been partially Hellenised, but still retained
its native traditions and the use of the Oscan language. Ennius is thus
spoken of as 'Semi-Graecus.' He laid claim to be descended from the old
Messapian kings, a claim which Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the
introduction of Messapus leading his followers in the gathering of the
Italian races,
Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant.
This claim to royal descent indicates that the poet was a member of the
better class of families in his native district; and the consciousness
of old lineage, which prompted the claim, probably strengthened the
high self-confidence by which he was animated, and helped to determine
the strong aristocratic bias of his sympathies. He bore witness to his
nationality in the saying quoted by Gellius[49] that 'in the possession
of the Greek, Oscan, and Latin speech, he possessed three hearts.' Of
these three languages the Oscan, as the one of least value to acquire
for the purposes of literature or of social intercourse, was most
likely to have been his inherited tongue. Rudiae, from its Italian
nationality, from its neighbourhood to the cities of Magna Graecia, and
from its relation of dependence on Rome, must have been in the time
of the boyhood of Ennius a meeting-place, not only of three different
languages,--that of common life, that of culture and education, that
of military service--but of the three different spirits or tendencies
which were operative in the creation of the new literature. To his home
among the hills overlooking the Grecian seas--referred to in a line of
the Annals,--
Ad patrios montes et ad incunabula nostra--
in the expression of Ovid,--
Calabris in montibus ortus--
and in the phrase of Silius,--
Hispida tellus
Miserunt Calabri; Rudiae genuere vetustae
the poet owed the 'Italian heart' the virtue of a race still
uncorrupted and unsophisticated, the buoyant energy and freshness
of feeling which enabled him to apprehend all the novelty and the
greatness of the momentous age through which he lived. The South of
Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied
to Rome or Latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for
the first twenty years of the life of Ennius granted leisure to avail
himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been
born a few years later. In the short account of his life in Jerome's
continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, it is stated that he was born
at Tarentum. Though this is clearly an error, it seems probable that
the poet may have spent the years of his education there. Though
Tarentum had lost its political importance since its capture by the
Romans, it still continued to be a centre of Greek culture and of
social pleasure. Dramatic representations had been especially popular
among a people who had drifted far away 'ex Spartana dura illa et
horrida disciplina[50]' of their ancestors. From the intimate knowledge
of the Attic tragedians displayed by Ennius in his later career it
is likely that he had witnessed representations of their works on a
Greek stage, before he began, in middle life, to direct his own genius
to dramatic composition. The knowledge and admiration of Homer which
stimulated him to the composition of his greatest work, might have
been acquired in any centre of Greek culture. But the intellectual
interests indicated in some of his miscellaneous writings have a
kind of local character, distinguishing them alike from the older
philosophies of Athens and from the more recent science of Alexandria.
His acceptance of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the
physical fancies expressed in some of the fragments of the Epicharmus
probably came to him from the teaching of the Neo-Pythagoreans,
who were widely spread among the Greeks of Southern Italy. The
rationalistic speculations of Euhemerus, which appear in strange union
with the 'somnia Pythagorea' of the Annals, were of Sicilian origin.
The gastronomic treatise, which Ennius afterwards translated into
Latin, was the work of Archestratus of Gela. The class of persons for
whom such a work would originally be written was likely to be found
among the luxurious livers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Thus while the
serious poetry of Ennius was inspired by the older and nobler works
of Greek genius, the influence of a more vulgar and prosaic class of
teachers, transmitted by him to Roman thought and literature, was
probably derived from the place of his early education.
His Italian spirit, and the Greek culture acquired by him in early
youth, were two of the conditions out of which the new literature was
destined to arise. The third condition was his steadfast and ardent
Roman patriotism. Born more than a generation after his native district
had ceased to be at war with Rome, he grew up to manhood during the
years of peace between the first and second Carthaginian wars, when
the supremacy of Rome was loyally accepted. Between early manhood and
middle life he was a witness of and an actor in the protracted and long
doubtful struggle between the two great Imperial States, on the issue
of which hung the future destinies of the world:--
Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris;
In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique[51].
Though during that struggle the loyalty of some of the Italian
communities was shaken, yet the aristocratic party in every city, and
the Greek States generally, were true to the Roman alliance[52]. Thus
his political sympathies, as well as his Greek education, would incline
Ennius to identify himself with the cause of Rome, and his ardent
imagination apprehended the grandeur and majesty with which she played
her part in the contest. It was in the Second Punic War that the ideal
of what was greatest in the character and institutions of Rome was most
fully realised. Her good fortune supplied from among the contingent
furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of a nature so
sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to gain for the
ideal thus created a permanent realization.
Of the share which Ennius had in the war we know only that he served
in Sardinia with the rank of centurion. That he had become a man of
some note in that capacity is suggested by the fact that he attracted
the attention of the Roman quaestor Cato, and accompanied him to Rome.
A certain dramatic interest attaches to this first meeting of the
typical representative of Roman manners and traditions and great enemy
of foreign innovations, with the man by whom, more than by any one
else, the mind of Rome was enlarged and liberalised, and many of her
most cherished convictions were most seriously undermined. This actual
service in a great war left its impress on the work done by Ennius.
Fragments both of his tragedies and his Annals prove how thoroughly
he understood and appreciated the best qualities of the soldierly
character. This fellowship in hardship and danger fitted him to become
the national poet of a race of soldiers. He has drawn from his own
observation an image of the fortitude and discipline of the Roman
armies, and of the patriotic devotion and resolution of the men by whom
these armies were led. There is a strong realism in the expression of
martial sentiment in Ennius, marking him out as a man familiar with
the life of the camp and the battle-field, and quite distinct from the
idealising enthusiasm of Livy and Virgil[53].
Ennius entered on his career as a writer at a time when the long strain
of a great struggle was giving place to the confidence and security
of a great triumph. He lived for thirty-five years longer, witnessing
the rapid advance of Roman conquest in Greece and Asia, and over the
barbarous tribes of the West. He died one year before the crowning
victory of Pydna. During all his later life his sanguine spirit and
patriotic enthusiasm were buoyed up by the success of the Roman and
Italian arms abroad; while his political sympathies were in thorough
accord with the dominant influences in the government of the State. At
no other period of Roman history was the ascendency of the Senate and
of the great houses more undisputed, or, on the whole, more wisely and
ably exercised. In the lists of those who successively fill the great
curule magistracies, we find almost exclusively the names of members of
the old patrician or of the more recent plebeian nobility. At no other
period does the tribunician opposition to the senatorian direction of
affairs and to the authority of the magistrate appear weaker or more
intermittent. It was not till a generation after the death of Ennius
that the moral corruption and political and social disorganisation--the
ultimate results of the great military successes gained under the
absolute ascendency of the Senate,--became fully manifest. It is
difficult to say how far the aristocratic and antipopular bias of all
Roman literature may have been determined by the political conditions
of the time in which that literature received the most powerful
impulse, and by the personal relations and peculiar stamp of character
of the man by whom that impulse was given.
Along with the military and political activity of the time, during
which Ennius lived in Rome, the stirring of a new intellectual life
was apparent. Even during the war dramatic representations continued
to take place, and the most active part of the career of Naevius, and
a considerable part of that of Plautus, belong to the years during
which Hannibal was still in Italy. After the cessation of the war,
we note in the pages of Livy that much greater prominence is given
to the celebration of public games, of which at this time dramatic
representations formed the chief part. The regular holidays for which
the Aediles provided these entertainments became more numerous; and the
art of the dramatist was employed to enhance the pomp of the spectacle
on the occasion of a great triumph, or of the funeral of an illustrious
man. The death of Livius Andronicus and the banishment of Naevius,
which must have happened about the time that Ennius arrived at Rome,
had deprived the Roman stage of the only writers of any name, who had
attempted to introduce upon it the works of the Greek tragedians.
Ennius had, indeed, rather to create than to revive the taste for
tragedy. The prologue to the Amphitryo[54] shows how much more
congenial the reproduction of the ordinary life of the Greeks was to
the uneducated audiences of Rome than the higher effort to familiarise
them with the personages and adventures of the heroic age. The great
era of Roman comedy was coincident with the literary career of Ennius.
It was then that the best extant plays of Plautus were produced, and
that Caecilius Statius, whom ancient critics ranked as his superior,
flourished. The quality attributed to the latter in the line of Horace,
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte,
indicates a closer affinity with the spirit of Ennius, than the moral
and political indifference of the older dramatist. The aim of Ennius
was to raise literature from being a mere popular recreation, and to
bring it into accord with the higher mood of the nation; to use it
as a medium both of elevation and enlightenment. In carrying out this
aim he appealed to the temper and to the newly awakened interests of
members of the aristocratic class, who were coming into close contact
with educated Greeks, and were beginning to appreciate the treasures
of art and literature now opened up to them. The career of Q. Fabius
Pictor, the first historian of Rome, and the first who made a name
for himself in painting, who lived at this time, attests this twofold
attraction. The friendly relations which Roman generals, such as T.
Quintius Flamininus, established with the famous Greek cities, in which
they appeared as liberators rather than conquerors, were the result of
intellectual enthusiasm as much as of a definite policy. With the wars
of Pyrrhus and the capture of Tarentum, the first stage of the process
described in the lines of Horace began[55]: the end of the Second Punic
War was the second stage in the process. It is to this period, rather
than to the progress of the war, that the words of the Grammarian,
Porcius Licinus, most truly apply,
Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.
The more frequent and closer contact with the mind of Greece not only
refined the taste and enlarged the intelligence of those capable of
feeling its influence, but produced at the same time a change in
men's deepest convictions. Though the definite tenets of Stoicism
and Epicureanism did not acquire ascendency till a later time, the
dissolving force of Greek speculative thought and Greek views of life
forced its way into Rome through various channels,--especially through
the adaptations of the tragedies of Euripides and of the comedy of
Menander. All these tendencies of the time acted on Ennius, stimulating
his mental activity in various directions. His natural temperament and
his acquired culture brought him into harmony with the spirit of his
age without raising him too much above it. A poet of more delicacy
of taste and perfection of execution would have been unintelligible
to his contemporaries. A more systematic thinker would have been out
of harmony with the conditions of life by which he was surrounded.
Breadth, vigour, a spirit clinging to what was most vital in the old
state of things, and yet readily adapting itself to what was new, were
the qualities needed to establish a literature true to the genius of
Rome in the second century B.C., and containing the promise of the more
perfect accomplishment of a later age. And these qualities belonged to
Ennius by natural gifts and the experience and culture of his earlier
years.
There is no reason to believe that he had obtained any eminence in
literature before he settled in middle age at Rome. His genius was of
that robust order which grows richer and livelier with advancing years.
The Annals was the work of his old age,--the ripe fruit of a strong and
energetic manhood, prolonged to the last in hopeful activity. Cicero
speaks of 'the cheerfulness with which he bore the two evils of old age
and poverty[56].' Wherever the poet speaks of himself, his words reveal
a sanguine and contented spirit; as, in that fine simile, where he
compares himself, at the close of his active and successful career, to
a brave horse which has often won the prize at the Olympian games, and
in old age obtains his well-deserved repose:--
Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectu' quiescit.
In none of his fragments is there any trace of that melancholy
after-thought which pervades the poetry of his greatest successors,
Lucretius and Virgil. From the humorous exaggeration of Horace,
Ennius ipse pater nunquam, nisi potus, ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda;
and from the poet's own confession,
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager,
it may be inferred that he belonged to the class of poets of a lusty
and social nature, of which Dryden is a type in modern times, who
enjoyed the pleasures of wine and good fellowship. The well-known
anecdote, told by Cicero, of the interchange of visits between Scipio
Nasica and Ennius[57], though not a brilliant specimen of Roman wit,
is interesting from the light which it throws on the easy terms of
intimacy in which the poet lived with the members of the most eminent
Roman families. Such testimonies and traits of personal character make
us think of Ennius as a man of genial and social temper, as well as of
'an intense and glowing mind.'
It was probably through his position as a teacher of Greek that Ennius
first became known to the leading men of Rome. If this position was
at first one of dependence, similar to that in which in earlier times
the client stood to his patron, it soon changed into one of mutual
esteem and admiration. We can best understand the relation in which
he stood to men eminent in the state and in the camp, from a passage
from the seventh book of the Annals quoted by Aulus Gellius. In that
passage the poet is stated, on the authority of L. Aelius Stilo[58] (an
early grammarian, a friend of Lucilius, and one of Cicero's teachers),
to have drawn his own portrait, under an imaginary description of
a confidential friend of the Roman general, Servilius Geminus. The
portrait has the air of being drawn from the life, with a rapid and
forcible hand, and with a minuteness of detail significant of close
personal observation:--
Haece locutu' vocat quocum bene saepe libenter
Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassu' diei
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis
Cousilio, indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
Cui res audacter magnas parvasque jocumque
Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque:
Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
Ut faceret facinus levis aut malu', doctu', fidelis,
Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus,
Scitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum
Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.
Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque;
Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.
Hunc inter pugnas Servilius sic compellat[59].
There are many touches in this picture, which suggest the kind of
intimacy in which Ennius may have lived with Fulvius Nobilior when
accompanying him in his Aetolian campaign, or his bearing when taking
part in the light or serious talk of the Scipios. The learning and
power of speech, the knowledge of antiquity and of the manners of the
day, attributed to this friend of Servilius, were gifts which we may
attribute to the poet both on ancient testimony and on the evidence
afforded by the fragments of his writings. The good sense, tact, and
knowledge of the world, the cheerfulness in life and conversation, the
honour and integrity of character represented in the same passage,
are among the personal qualities which, in all ages, form a bond of
union between men eminent in great practical affairs and men eminent
in literature. Such were the qualities which, according to his own
account, recommended Horace to the intimate friendship of Maecenas.
Many expressive fragments from the lost poetry of Ennius give assurance
that he was a man in whom learning and the ardent temperament of
genius were happily united with the worth and sense described in this
nameless portrait.
By his personal merit he broke through the strongest barriers ever
raised by national and family pride, and made the name of poet, instead
of a reproach, a name of honour with the ruling class at Rome. The
favourable impression which he produced on the 'primitive virtue' of
Cato, by whom he was first brought to Rome, was more probably due
to his force of character and social qualities than to his genius
and literary accomplishment,--qualities seemingly little valued by
his earliest patron, who, in one of his speeches, reproached Fulvius
Nobilior with allowing himself to be accompanied by a poet in his
campaign. But the strongest proof of the worth and the wisdom of Ennius
is his intimate friendship with the greatest Roman of the age, and the
conqueror of the greatest soldier of antiquity. It is honourable to
the friendship of generous natures, that the poet neither sought nor
gained wealth from this intimacy, but continued to live plainly and
contentedly on the Aventine. Yet after death it was believed that the
two friends were not divided; and the bust of the provincial poet found
a place among the remains of that time-honoured family, the record of
whose grandeur has been preserved, even to the present day, in the
august simplicity of their monumental inscriptions.
The elder Africanus may have been attracted to Ennius not only by his
passion for Greek culture, but by a certain community of nature. The
mystical enthusiasm, the high self-confidence, the direct simplicity
combined with majesty of character, impressed on the language of the
poet were equally impressed on the action and bearing of the soldier.
The feeling which Ennius in his turn entertained for Scipio was one
of enthusiastic admiration. While paying due honour to the merits and
services of other famous men, even of such as Cato and Fabius, who were
most opposed to his idol, of Scipio he said that Homer alone could
worthily have uttered his praises[60].
In addition to the part which he assigned to him in the Ninth Book of
the Annals, he devoted a separate poem to commemorate his achievements.
He has left also two short inscriptions, written in elegiac verse,
in which he proclaims in words of burning enthusiasm the momentous
services and transcendent superiority of the 'great world's victor's
victor'--
Hic est ille situs cui nemo civi' neque hostis
Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium[61];
and this also,
A sole exoriente supra Maeoti' paludes
Nemo est qui factis me aequiperare queat.
Si fas endo plagas coelestium ascendere cuiquam est,
Mi soli caeli maxima porta patet[62].
With many marked differences, which distinguish a man of active,
social, and national sympathies from a student of Nature and a thinker
on human life, there is a certain affinity of character and genius
between Ennius and Lucretius. Enthusiastic admiration of personal
greatness is one prominent feature in which they resemble one another.
But while Lucretius is the ardent admirer of contemplative and
imaginative greatness, it is greatness in action and character which
moves the admiration of Ennius. They resemble each other also in their
strong consciousness of genius and their high estimate of its function
and value. Cicero mentions that Ennius applied the epithet _sanctus_ to
poets. Lucretius applies the same epithet to the old philosophic poets,
as in the lines of strong affection and reverence which he dedicates to
Empedocles,
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se,
Nec _sanctum_ magis, et mirum carumque videtur[63].
The inscription which Ennius composed for his own bust directly
expresses his sense of the greatness of his work, and his confident
assurance of fame, and of the lasting sympathy of his countrymen--
Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam,
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum.
Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu
Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[64].
Two lines from one of his satires--
Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[65].
indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power.
Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by
Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the
self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in
Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful
of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature
and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or
political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in
men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect
sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or
antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the
disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:--
Scripsere alii rem
Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
Nec dicti studiosus erat[66].
The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet
seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first to
introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature.
Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and
Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed
no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius,
nor in Lucretius any gleam of the mysticism which Ennius inherited from
the speculations of Pythagoras. But in both deep feelings of awe and
reverence are combined with a scornful disbelief of the superstition
of their time. They both apply the principles of Euhemerism to resolve
the bright creations of the old mythology into their original elements.
Ennius, like Lucretius, seems to deny the providence of the gods.
He makes one of the personages of his dramas give expression to the
thought which perplexed the minds of Thucydides and Tacitus--the
thought, namely, of the apparent disconnexion between prosperity and
goodness, as affording proof of the divine indifference to human
well-being--
Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[67]:
and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs,
prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of
Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions
of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit
of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he
believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued
existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the
spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a
peacock[68], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had
finally passed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he
regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype had
appeared to him from the invisible world,--
Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra
Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris,
and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the
imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to
escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to
Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was
that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism.
He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of
Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime of
Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold fancies
of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their later
speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus to
have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance of
tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency.
II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.
II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius displayed
not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of genius, but also
great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning. The composition
of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most demand on his
original gifts, implied also a diligent study of Homer and of the
Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the traditions and
antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which his highest
poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a philosophical,
didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of the versatility
of his powers and interests. It does not appear that he was the
author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred Chronicle
of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than a literal
prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was conceived in
that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by Plato in the
Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology, by representing
them as a supernatural account of historical events. Several extracts
of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the translation of Ennius,
look as if they had been reduced from a form originally metrical into
the prose of a later era[69]. There is thus no evidence, direct or
indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in forming the style of
Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument which he used, this
was certainly not due to the poetical character of all the topics which
he treated, but, more likely, to the fact that his acquired aptitude,
and the state of the Latin language in his time, made metrical writing
more natural and easy than prose composition.
One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called
Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus
of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of
everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have
recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of
epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius,
giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be found,
have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as exemplifying
that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who treat, either in
prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem naturally to adopt[70].
The language in which the _scarus_, a fish unhappily lost to the modern
epicure, is described as 'the brain almost of almighty Jove,' fits all
the requirements of gastronomic rapture:--
Quid turdum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam
Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi?
Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque.
He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse,
called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian
poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology
into natural substances[71]. A few slight fragments have been preserved
from this poem. They speak of the four elements or principles of the
universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the blending of heat with
cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth bearing and supporting all
nations and receiving them again back into herself.' The following is
the longest fragment from the poem:--
Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant
Aërem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea
Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aër denuo,
Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi,
Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[72].
These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals,
where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius (like
the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are
specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature,
which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge.
Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the Roman
poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred Chronicle
of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was the first
among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the ultimate
facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the universe,
which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the mind of
Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.
Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic
character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that
all of these works[73], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the
Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which title Ennius composed four,
or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked
upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that
word[74];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the
character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time.
But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in
early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the
principal authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various
subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written
partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well
as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or
dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of
Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was
superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name
was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which
ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory
way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained
much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written
in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of
various topics of personal and public interest. The few passages which
ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value
in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to
their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind of
composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura and
the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one of these
pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and Death;--thus
transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very frequently in
Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original scenic medley. Ennius
also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have communicated in his
satires his own personal feelings and experience, as in the fragment
already quoted:--
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager.
Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical
moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and
by portraiture of individuals and classes, but also by the use of
anecdotes and fables. This last mode of combining amusement with
instruction is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have been
first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable of the
field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully told
by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice, appended to the
fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do for
yourself:'
Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm:
Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[75].
These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning
and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might
have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been
as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas,
and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent,
and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and
literature is discerned.
(2) DRAMAS.
(2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic,
had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy
and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully
cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The
advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due
to the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried,
though without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in
favour of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_
and _Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too
insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits.
His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim
to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a
work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as assigning
the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius
as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that
might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments
of Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence
of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in
common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally
the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour.
The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave
and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits,
strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply want
of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the following
fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the passage is more
obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon the word
_frustra_:--
Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari,
Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse.
Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sentit,
Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[76].
The love of alliteration and assonance, which is conspicuous also in
Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems
to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy
imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators,
appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the
O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti,
quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he
possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light of
common sense, not of humour, that he viewed the follies of the world.
The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be ascertained
from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the early
tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not
possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed
in the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters.
His peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his
dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of
conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality,
are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman
temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in the sequel,
along with passages from the Annals, as important contributions to our
estimate of the poet's genius and intellect.
It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to
that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero.
While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried
on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his life.
Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the celebration
of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's death[77]. The
titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known, and a few
fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these bear the
titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan cycle
of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_, _Ajax_,
_Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_, _Hecuba_,
_Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his tragedies,
the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of Euripides,
whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to the older
Attic dramatists. Cicero[78] speaks of it, along with the Antiope of
Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek; and a
comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in the Medea
of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original. In one
place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med. 215),
οἶδα γὰρ πολλοὺς βροτῶν
σεμνοὺς γεγῶτας, τοὺς μὲν ὀμμάτων ἄπο
τοὺς δ᾽ ἐν θυραίοις,
being thus rendered in Latin,--
Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul.
The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a
fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman
tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous
force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the
language:--
Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum;
Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem
Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[79].
In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free
use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in
many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly
that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[80]. The subjects of many of
his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the
Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the
soldierly character. Cicero[81] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an
example of the kind of fortitude and superiority to pain produced
by the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with
great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache
Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to
his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle;'
and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis
contemnitur! Sentit omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ...
praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[82].'
In the former of these scenes Cassandra, under the influence of
Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a
Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by
prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:--
Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio:
Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite.
Iamque mari magno classis cita
Texitur: exitium examen rapit.
Advenit, et fera velivolantibus
Navibus complevit manus litora[83].
We see in this passage how the passionate character of the situation
is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Cassandra. A similar
excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in
a fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another
the motive is the awe associated with the dim and pale realms of the
dead[84]. In these and similar passages we note the power of expressing
the varying moods of passion by varied effects of metre. Horace
characterises his ordinary verse in the line,
In scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus;
and this slow and weighty movement seems to have been the general
character of his metre in the calmer parts of his dramas. But in a
large number of the fragments of the dialogue, where there is any
excitement of feeling or intensity of thought, we find him using
the more rapid trochaic septenarian, with quick transitions to the
anapaestic dimeter or tetrameter, as the passion passes beyond the
control of the speaker.
In two of his dramas, the Sabinae and Ambracia, he made use of
materials supplied by the early legendary history of Rome, and by a
great contemporary event. The first of these, like the Romulus of
Naevius, belonged to the class of 'fabulae Praetextatae,' and was
founded on the intervention of the Sabine women in the war between
Romulus and Tatius. The second, representing the capture of the town
of Ambracia, in the Aetolian war, may, like the Clastidium of the
older poet (written in celebration of the victory of Marcellus over
the Gauls), have had more of the character of a military pageant and,
in all probability, was composed for representation at the games
celebrated on the triumphal return of M. Fulvius Nobilior from that war.
(3) THE ANNALS.
(3) But the poem which was the chief result of his life, and made an
epoch in Latin literature, was the Annals. On the composition of this
work he rested his hopes of popular and permanent fame--
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum:
and again, apparently at the opening of the poem, he wrote,--
Latos per populos terrasque poemata nostra
Clara cluebunt.
At its conclusion, he claimed for his old age the repose due to a brave
and triumphant career. He composed the eighteenth book, the last, in
his sixty-seventh year, three years before his death[85]. The great
length to which the poem extended, and the vast amount of materials
which it embraced, imply a long and steady concentration of his powers
on the task. It was one requiring much learning as well as original
conception. The fragments of the poem afford proofs of a familiarity
with Homer, and of acquaintance with the Cyclic poets[86]. It is
impossible to say how much of the early Roman history, as it has come
down to modern times, is due to the diligence of Ennius in collecting,
and to his genius in giving life to the traditions and ancient records
of Rome. He was certainly the earliest writer who gathered them up, and
united them in a continuous narrative. The work accomplished by him
required not only the antiquarian lore of a man
Multa tenens, antiqua, sepulta,
and the power of imagination to give a new shape to the past, but an
intimate knowledge of the great events and the great men of his own
time, and a sympathetic insight into the spirit by which they were
animated.
The poem was written in eighteen books. Of these books about six
hundred lines have been preserved in fragments, varying from about
twenty lines to half a line in length. From the minuteness with which
comparatively unimportant matters are described, it is inferred that
the separate books extended to a much greater length than those either
of the Iliad or of the Aeneid. Of the first book there remain about 120
lines, including the dream of Ilia in seventeen lines, and the auspices
of Romulus in twenty lines. In it were narrated the mythical events
from the time
Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub marte Pelasgo,
to the death and deification of Romulus;
Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus aevum
Degit.
There is no allusion in these fragments to the Carthaginian adventures
of Aeneas, which Naevius had introduced into his poem on the First
Punic War. Aeneas seems at once to have been brought to Hesperia, a
land,
Quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.
Ilia is represented as the daughter of Aeneas. The birth and infancy
of Romulus and Remus appear to have been described at great length. In
commenting on Virgil's lines at Aeneid viii. 630--
Fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro
Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos; illam terreti cervice reflexam
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua,--
Servius says 'Sane totus hic locus Ennianus est.' The second and third
books contained the history of the remaining Roman kings. Virgil
imitated the description given in these books of the destruction of
Alba (the story of which is told by Livy also with much poetic power,
perhaps reproduced from the pages of Ennius), in his account of the
capture of Troy, at Aeneid ii. 486--
At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu, etc.
One short fragment of the third book contains a picturesque notice of
the founding of Ostia--
Ostia munita est; idem loca navibu' pulchris
Munda facit; nautisque mari quaesentibu' vitam.
This line also
Postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancu' reliquit
is familiar from its reappearance in one of the most impressive
passages of Lucretius.
The fourth and fifth books contained the history of the State from the
establishment of the Republic till just before the beginning of the
war with Pyrrhus. One short fragment is taken from the night attack
of the Gauls upon the Capitol. The sixth book was devoted to the war
with Pyrrhus; the seventh, eighth, and ninth, to the First and Second
Punic Wars. In the fragments of the sixth are found a few lines of the
speeches of Pyrrhus, and of Appius Claudius Caecus. In the account of
the First Punic War, the disparaging allusion to Naevius occurs--
Scripsêre alii rem, etc.
It is mentioned by Cicero that Ennius borrowed much from the work of
Naevius; and also that he passed over (_reliquisse_) the First Punic
War, as it had been treated by his predecessor. Several fragments
however must certainly refer to this war; but it is probable that
that part of the subject was treated more cursorily than either the
war with Pyrrhus, or the later wars. The passage in which the poet
is supposed to have painted his own character, under the form of
a friend of Servilius Geminus, occurred in the seventh book. Two
well-known passages have been preserved from the ninth book--viz., that
characterising the 'sweet-speaking' orator, M. Cornelius Cethegus--
Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla,
and the lines in honour of Q. Fabius Maximus,
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, etc.
The tenth and eleventh books, beginning with a new invocation to the
muse--
Insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator
Quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo,
treated of the Macedonian war, and of the deeds of T. Quintius
Flamininus. In the later books, Ennius told the history of the war with
Antiochus, of the Aetolian War carried on by his friend, M. Fulvius
Nobilior, of the exploits of L. Caecilius Denter and his brother (of
whom scarcely anything is known except that the sixteenth book of the
Annals was written in consequence of the poet's especial admiration for
them), and lastly, of the Istrian War, which took place within a few
years of the author's death.
Neither in general design nor in detail could the Annals be regarded
as a pure epic poem. Like the Aeneid, which connects the mythical
story of Aeneas with the glories of the Julian line and the great
destiny of Rome, the poem of Ennius treated of fabulous tradition, of
historical fact, and of great contemporary events; but it did not, like
the Aeneid, unite these varied materials in the representation of the
fortunes of one individual hero. The action of the poem, instead of
being limited to a few days or months, extended over many generations.
Nor could the poem terminate with any critical catastrophe, as its
object was to unfold the continuous, still advancing progress of the
State. From the name it might be inferred that the Annals must have
been more like a metrical chronicle than like an epic poem; yet, as
being inspired and pervaded by a grand and vital idea, the work was
elevated above the level of matter of fact into the region of poetry.
The idea of a high destiny, unfolding itself under the old kingly
dynasty and the long line of consuls,--through the successive wars
with the Italian races, with Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians,--rapidly
advancing, though not fully accomplished in the age when the poem
was written,--gave unity of plan and consistency of form to its rude
and colossal structure. The word Annales, as applied to Roman story,
suggests something more than the mere record of events in regular
annual sequence. It involves also the idea of unbroken continuity.
In the Roman Republic, the unity and vital action of the State were
maintained and manifested by the delegation of the functions of
government on magistrates appointed from year to year, just as the
life of a monarchical state is maintained and manifested in its line
of kings. In the spirit animating the work,--in the conception of a
past history, stretching back in unbroken grandeur until it is lost
in fable, but yet vitally linked to the interests of the present
time,--the Annals of Ennius may be compared with the dramas in which
Shakspeare has represented the national life of England--in all its
greatness and vicissitudes--with the glory and splendour, as well as
the dark and tragic colours with which that story is inwoven.
The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form,
had thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating
both of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded
by a living and popular idea,--faith in the destiny of Rome. It was
through the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that
Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous
tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan
hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It
is the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial
epics of refined and civilised eras,--such poems, for instance, as the
_Thebais_ of Statius, or the _Argonautics_ of Valerius Flaccus,--in
general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as
a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable
conditions than the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, or the _Punic Wars_ of Silius
Italicus--in being the work of an age to which the past had come down
as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The imagination of the
poet employs itself more happily and legitimately in filling up or
modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies and feelings of
successive generations, than in venturing to recast the facts that
stand out prominently in the actual march of human affairs. By treating
of contemporary events, the poem must have receded still further from
the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later fragments of the work,
while written with something of the minute and literal fidelity of a
chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic inspiration. They prove that the
author was no unconcerned spectator and reporter of the events going
on around him, but that his imagination was fired and his sympathies
keenly interested by whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live
in the memory of the world.
There must have been many drawbacks to the popularity of the poem in a
more critical time, when strong enthusiasm and forcible conception fail
to interest, unless they are combined with the harmonious execution of
a work of art. Even from the extant fragments the rude proportions and
the unwieldy mass of the original work may be inferred. It is still
possible to note the bare, annalistic style of many passages which
sink below the level of dignified prose, the barbarisms of taste shown
by a fondness for alliterative lines and plays upon words, the more
common faults of careless haste and redundance of expression, and of
a rugged and irregular cadence. There must have been some peculiar
excellencies or adaptation to the Roman taste, through which, in spite
of these defects, the popularity of the poem was sustained far into the
times of the Empire. This late popularity may have been due in part to
antiquarian zeal or affectation, but some degree of it, as well as the
favour of the age in which the poem was written, must have been founded
on more substantial grounds. Apart from other literary interest, this
poem first drew forth and established, for the contemplation of after
times, the ideal latent in the national mind. The patriotic tones of
Virgil have the same kind of ring as these in the older poet--
Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis;
and this other line which Cicero compared to the utterance of an
oracle--
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.
While in his other works Ennius was the teacher of an alien culture
to his countrymen, in his Annals he represented them. He set before
them an image of what was most real in themselves;--an image combining
the strength and commanding features of his own time, with the proud
memories and traditional traits of the past. As it is by sympathy with
what is most vital and of deepest meaning in actual experience that a
great poet forms his ideal of what transcends experience, so it is
by a vivid apprehension of the present, that he is able to re-animate
the past. Dante and Milton gained their vision of other worlds through
their intense feeling of the spiritual meaning of this life; and, in
another sphere of art, Scott was enabled to immortalise the romance
and humour of past ages, partly through the chivalrous and adventurous
spirit which he inherited from them, partly through the strong interest
and enjoyment with which he entered into the actual life and pursuits
of his contemporaries. It is in ages of transition, such as were the
ages of Sophocles, of Shakspeare, and of Scott, in which the traditions
of the past seem to blend with and colour the activity and enjoyment
of a new time in which great issues are involved, that representative
works of genius are produced. Living in such an era, deeply moved by
all the memories, the hopes, and the impulses which acted upon his
contemporaries, living his own life happily and vigorously in the chief
centre of the world's activity, Ennius was enabled to gather the life
of centuries into one representation, and to tell the story of Rome, if
without the accomplished art, yet with something of the native force
and spirit of early Greece; to fix in language the patriotic traditions
which had hitherto been kept alive by the statues, monuments, and
commemorative ceremonies of earlier times; to uphold the standard
of national character with a fervent enthusiasm; and to address the
understanding of his contemporaries with a practical wisdom like their
own, and a large knowledge both of 'books and men:'--
Vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.
The manifest defects, as well as the peculiar power of the poem, show
how widely it departed from the standard of the Greek epic which it
professed to imitate. Its vast dimensions and solid structure are
proofs of that capacity of long labour and concentrated interest on
one great object, which was the secret of Roman success in other
spheres of action. So large a mass of materials held in union only by
a pervading national enthusiasm would have been utterly repugnant to
Greek taste, intolerant above all things of monotony, and most exacting
in its demands of artistic unity and completeness. The fragments of
the poem give no idea of careful finish; they produce the impression
of massiveness and energy, strength and uniformity of structure,
unaccompanied by beauty, grace, or symmetry. The creation of an
untutored age may be recognised in the rudeness of design,--of a Roman
mind in the national spirit, the colossal proportions, and the strong
workmanship of the poem.
The originality of the Roman epic will be still more apparent if we
compare the fragments of the Annals, in some points of detail, with
the complete works of the poet, whom Ennius regarded as his prototype.
There was, in the first place, a marked difference between Homer
and the Roman poet in their modes of representing human life and
character. The personages of the Iliad and of the Odyssey are living
and forcible types of individual character. In Achilles, in Hector,
and in Odysseus,--in Helen, Andromache, and Nausicaa, we recognise
embodiments the most real, yet the most transcendent, of the grandeur,
the heroism, the courage, and strong affection of manhood, and of the
grace, the gentleness, and the sweet vivacity of woman. The work of
Ennius, on the other hand, instead of presenting varied types of human
nature, appears to have unfolded a long gallery of national portraits.
The fragments of the poem still afford glimpses of the 'good Ancus';
'of the man of the great heart, the wise Aelius Sextus'; 'of the sweet
speaking orator,' Cethegus, 'the marrow of persuasion.' The stamp of
magnanimous fortitude is impressed on the fragmentary words of Appius
Claudius Caecus; and sagacity and resolution are depicted in the lines
which have handed down the fame of Fabius Maximus. This idea of the
poem, as unfolding the heroes of Roman story in regular series, may be
gathered also from the language of Cicero: 'Cato, the ancestor of our
present Cato, is extolled by him to the skies; the honour of the Roman
people is thereby enhanced: finally all those Maximi, Fulvii, Marcelli,
are celebrated with a glory in which we all participate[87].' This
portraiture of the kings and heroes of the early time, of the orators,
soldiers, and statesmen of the Republic, could not have exhibited the
variety, the energy, the passion, and all the complex human attributes
of Homer's personages. The men who stand prominently out in the annals
of Rome were of a more uniform type. They were men of one common
aim,--the advancement of Rome; animated with one sentiment,--devotion
to the State. All that was purely personal in them seems merged in the
traditional pictures which express only the fortitude, dignity, and
sagacity of the Republic.
Ennius also followed Homer in introducing the element of supernatural
agency into his poem. The action of the Annals, as well as of the
Iliad, was made partially dependent on a divine interference with
human affairs, though exercised less directly, and, as it were, from a
greater distance. Yet how great is the difference between the life-like
representation of the eager, capricious, and passionate deities
of Homer's Olympus and that outline which may still be traced in
Ennius, and which is seen filled up in Virgil and Horace, of the gods
assembled, like a grave council of state, to deliberate on the destiny
of Rome. In one fragment, containing the familiar line,--
Unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli
Templa,--
they are introduced as debating, 'tectis bipatentibus,' on the
admission of Romulus into heaven. Again, in the account of the Second
Punic War, Jupiter is introduced as promising to the Romans the
destruction of Carthage; and Juno abandons her resentment against the
descendants of the Trojans,--
Romanis coepit Juno placata favere.
It may be remarked, as a strong proof of the hold which their mythology
had on the minds of the ancients, that men so sincere as Ennius
and Lucretius, while openly expressing opposition to that system of
religious belief, cannot separate themselves from its influence and
associations in their poetry. But it is not to be supposed that Ennius,
in the passages just referred to, was merely using an artificial
machinery to which he attached no meaning. In this representation of
the councils of the gods, he embodies that faith in the Roman destiny,
which was at the root of the most serious convictions of the Romans, in
the most sceptical as well as the most believing ages of their history.
This, too, is the real belief, which gives meaning to the supernatural
agency in the Aeneid. Aeneas is little more than a passive instrument
in the hands of Fate; Jupiter merely foreknows and pronounces its
decrees; the parts assigned to Juno and Venus, in thwarting and
advancing these decrees, seem to be an artistic addition to this
original conception, suggested perhaps as much by the experience of
female influence and intrigue in the poet's own age as by the memories
of the Iliad.
Homer makes his personages known to us in speech as well as in action.
Among epic poets he alone possessed the finest dramatic genius. But
over and above the natural dialogue or soliloquy, in which every
feeling of his various personages is revealed, he has invested his
heroes with the charm of fluent and powerful oratory, in the council of
chiefs and before the assembled people. The words of his speakers pour
on, as he says of the words of Odysseus,--
νιφάδεσσιν ἐοίκοτα χειμερίῃσι,
in the rapid vehemence of passion or the subtle fluency of persuasion.
The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, scarcely afford sufficient
ground for attributing to him a genuine dramatic faculty. But, as the
citizen of a republic in which action was first matured in council,
and living in the age when public speech first became a recognised
power in the State, it was incumbent on him to embody in 'his abstract
and chronicle of the time' the speech of the orator no less than the
achievement of the soldier. In his estimate of character this power
of speech is honoured as the fitting accompaniment of the wisdom of
the statesman. In the following lines, for instance, he laments the
substitution of military for civil preponderance in public affairs.
Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res:
Spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur:
Haut doctis dictis certantes, sed maledictis
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes;
Non ex jure manu consertum, sed magi' ferro
Rem repetunt, regnumque petunt, vadunt solida vi.[88]
Many lines of the Annals are evidently fragments of speeches. The
most remarkable of these passages is one from a speech of Pyrrhus,
and is characterised by Cicero as expressing 'sentiments truly regal
and worthy of the race of the Acacidae[89].' This fragment, although
evincing nothing of the fluency, the passion, or the argumentative
subtlety of debate, yet suggests the power of a great orator by its
grave authoritative appeal to the moral dignity of man:--
Nec mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium dederitis:
Non cauponantes bellum, sed belligerantes,
Ferro non auro vitam cernamus utrique.
Vosne velit an me regnare era quidve ferat Fors,
Virtute experiamur. Et hoc simul accipe dictum:
Quorum virtutei belli fortuna pepercit,
Eorundem libertati me parcere certum est.
Dono ducite, doque volentibu' cum magnis dis.[90]
Of the same severe and lofty tone is that appeal of Appius Claudius,
blind and in extreme old age, to the Senate, when wavering in its
resolution, and inclined to make peace with Pyrrhus--
Quo vobis mentes rectae quae stare solebant
Antehac, dementes sese flexere viai.[91]
As Milton, in his representation of the great debate in Pandemonium,
idealised and glorified the stately and serious speech of his own time,
so Ennius, in his graphic delineation of the age in which he lived,
gave expression to that high magnanimous mood in accordance with which
the acts of Roman statesmen were assailed or vindicated, and the policy
of the State was shaped before Senate and people--
indu foro lato sanctoque senatu--
The great poets of human action and passion are for the most part to be
ranked among the great poets of the outward world. If they do not seem
to have penetrated with so much personal sympathy into the inner secret
of the life of Nature, as the great contemplative poets of ancient and
modern times, yet they show, in different ways, that their sense and
imagination were powerfully affected both by her outward beauty and by
her manifold energy. Homer, not so much by direct description of the
scenes in which the action of his poems is laid, as by many indirect
touches, by vivid imagery and picturesque epithets, reveals the
openness of his mind to every impression from the outward world, and
the fresh delight with which his imagination reproduced the impressions
immediately received from the 'world of eye and ear.' If he has left
any personal characteristic stamped upon his poetry, it is the trace of
adventure and keen enjoyment in the open air, among the most stirring
sights and sounds and forces of Nature. The imagery of Virgil is of a
more peaceful cast. It seems rather to be 'the harvest of a quiet eye,'
gathered in the conscious contemplation of rural beauty, and stored up
for after use along with the products of his study and meditation. The
fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, afford few indications either
of active toil and unconscious enjoyment among the solitudes of Nature,
or of the luxurious and pensive susceptibility to beauty by which the
poetry of Virgil is pervaded. He was the poet, not of the woods and
rivers, but, essentially, of the city and the camp. No sentiment could
appear less appropriate to him than that of Virgil's modest prayer,--
Flumina amem silvasque inglorius.
Yet both in his illustrative imagery and in his narrative, he
occasionally reproduces with lively force, if not with much poetical
ornament, some aspects of the outward world, as well as many real
scenes from the world of action.
His imagery is sometimes borrowed from that of Homer; as, for instance,
the following simile, which is also imitated by Virgil:--
Et tum sic ut equus, qui de praesepibu' fartus,
Vincla suis magnis animis abrupit, et inde
Fert sese campi per caerula laetaque prata
Celso pectore, saepe jubam quassat simul altam,
Spiritus ex anima calida spumas agit albas.[92]
Other illustrations are taken from circumstances likely to have been
familiar to the men of his own time, but without any apparent intention
of adding poetical beauty to the object he is representing. Thus
the silent expectation with which the assembled people watch the
rival auspices of Romulus and Remus is brought before the mind by an
illustration suggested by, and suggestive of, the passionate eagerness
with which the public games were witnessed by the Romans of his own
age:--
Expectant vel uti consul cum mittere signum
Volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras,
Quam mox emittat pictis e faucibu' currus.[93]
There may be noticed also, in fragments of the narrative, occasional
expressions and descriptive touches implying some sense of what is
sublime or picturesque in the familiar aspects of the outward world.
The sky, with its starry host, is poetically presented in that
expression, which has been adopted by Virgil, 'stellis ingentibus
aptum;' and in the following line,
Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis.
In the description of the auspices of Romulus, the scene is enlivened
by this vivid flash, 'simul aureus exoritur Sol,' following
instantaneously upon the appearance of the first bird of omen. A lively
sense of natural scenery is implied in these lines from the dream of
Ilia--
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
Et ripas raptare locosque novos;
in this description of a river, afterwards imitated both by Lucretius
and Virgil--
Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen;
and in these lines which recall a familiar passage in the Aeneid:--
Jupiter hic risit tempestatesque serenae
Riserunt omnes risu Jovis omnipotentis.[94]
The rhythm and the diction of these fragments suggest another point
of contrast between the father of Greek and the father of Roman
literature. For the old Saturnian verse of the Fauns and Bards, which
had been employed by Livius Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius substituted
the heroic hexameter, which he moulded to the use of Roman poetry, with
little art and grace, but with much energy and weight. As he imitated
the metre of Homer, he has in several places (as in a simile already
quoted, and again in describing the conduct of a brave tribune in the
Istrian war), attempted to reproduce his language. Nothing, however,
can show more clearly the vast original difference between the genius
of Greece and of Rome than the contrast presented between the rhythm
and style of their earliest epic poets. In their regard for law and
civil order, in military and political organisation, in practical
power of understanding, and in the command which that power gave them
over the world, the Romans of the second century B.C. had made a great
and permanent advance beyond the Greeks of the time of Homer. But the
Greeks, when they first become known to us, appear in possession of a
gift to which all later generations have been unable to attain. The
genius of poetry has never, since the time of Homer, appeared in union
with a faculty of expression so true and spontaneous, so faultless
in purity, so inexhaustible in resources. It is difficult to imagine
a greater contrast than that between the varied and harmonious power
of the earliest Greek epic, and the rugged rhythm and diction of the
Annals. Yet the very rudeness of that work is significant of the energy
of a man who had to accomplish a gigantic task by his own unaided
efforts. His ear had not been passively trained by the musical echoes
transmitted by earlier minstrels; nor did he inherit the fluency and
richness of expression which a long line of poets hands on to their
successors. While professing to imitate the structure of the Homeric
verse, he was unable to seize its finer cadences. Nor had he learned
the stricter conditions under which that metre could be adapted to the
powerful and weighty movement of the Latin language. If he did much
to establish Latin prosody on principles deviating considerably from
those observed by the contemporary comic poets, yet many points which
were regulated unalterably for Virgil were left quite unsettled by
Ennius. There are found occasionally in these fragments lines without
any _caesura_ before the fifth foot, as the following, in one of the
longest and least imperfect of his remains--
Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
and this in a passage in which the sound seems intended to imitate the
sense--
Poste recumbite vestraque pectora pellite tonsis.
And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a
large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed by
later poets are violated. Again, while the final 's' is in most cases
not sounded before a word beginning with a consonant (a usage which
finally disappears only in the Augustan poets) the final m, on the
other hand, is sometimes left without elision before a vowel, as in the
following line--
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes.
The quantity of syllables and the inflexions of words were so far
unsettled, that such lines as the following are read,
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis;
and this,
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;
and
Volturus in spinis miserum mandebat homonem.
Among the ruder characteristics of his diction, his use of prosaic and
technical terms is especially to be noticed. The following lines, for
instance, read more like the bare statement of a chronicle, or of a
legal document, than an extract from a poetical narrative:--
Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani;
and this
Appius indixit Karthaginiensibu' bellum;
and these lines enumerating the various priesthoods established by
Numa,--
Volturnalem Palatualem Furrinalem
Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit
Hic idem.
Yet, in spite of these imperfections, both his rhythm and language
produce the impression of power and originality. With all the roughness
and irregularity of his measure, and notwithstanding the inharmonious
structure of continuous passages, his lines often have a weighty and
impressive effect, like that produced by some of the great passages
in Lucretius and Virgil. It is said of the rhetorician Aelian that he
excessively admired in Ennius both 'the greatness of his mind and the
grandeur of his metre[95].' Something of this sonorous grandeur may be
recognised in a fragment descriptive of the havoc made by woodcutters
in a great forest,--a passage in which the language of Ennius again
appears as a connecting link between that of Homer and of Virgil:--
Incedunt arbusta per alta, securibu' caedunt,
Percellunt magnas quercus, exciditur ilex,
Fraxinu' frangitur, atque abies consternitur alta.
Pinus proceras pervortunt: omne sonabat
Arbustum fremitu siluai frondosai.[96]
In the longest consecutive passages,--the dream of Ilia, the auspices
of Romulus, and that from book seventh, already quoted as illustrative
of the poet's character,--there is, notwithstanding the roughness of
the lines, something also of Homeric rapidity;--a quality which the
Latin hexameter never afterwards attained in elevated poetry.
The diction also of the Annals is generally fresh and forcible,
sometimes vividly imaginative. But perhaps the most admirable quality
of its style is a grave simplicity and sincerity of tone. Especially
is this the case in passages expressing appreciation of strength
and grandeur of character, as in those fragments from the speeches
of Pyrrhus and of Appius Claudius Caecus, already quoted, and in the
famous lines commemorative of the resolute character and momentous
services of Fabius Maximus.
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem:
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem:
Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.[97]
These lines leave on the mind the same impression of antique majesty,
as is produced by the unadorned record of character and work
accomplished inscribed on the tombs of the Scipios.
This truly Roman quality of style, depending on a strong imaginative
sense of reality, is one of the great elements of power in the language
of Lucretius.
III. CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS AND INTELLECT.
III.--From a review of the extant fragments both of the Tragedies and
the Annals of Ennius, it appears that his prominent place in Roman
literature, and influence over his countrymen, were due much more to
a great productiveness and activity, and to an original force of mind
and character, than to any artistic skill displayed in the conception
or execution of his works. A consideration of the spirit and purpose
of his greatest works has led to the conclusion that they were, in a
considerable measure, inspired by the genius of Rome, and were thus
rather the starting-point of a new literature than the mechanical
reproduction of the literature of the Greeks. It remains to consider
what inference may be formed from these fragments as to the character
of his genius, of his imaginative sentiment and moral sympathies, and
of his intellectual power.
The force of many single expressions in these fragments, and the power
with which various incidents, situations, and characters, are brought
before the mind indicate an active imagination. A sense of energy and
life-like movement is the prevailing impression produced by a study
of the language and the longer passages in these remains. Many single
lines and expressions that have been gathered accidentally, as mere
isolated phrases, disjoined from the context in which they originally
occurred, bear traces of the ardour with which they were cast into
shape. In longer passages, the whole heart, sense, and understanding of
the writer seem to be thrown into his narrative. He has not the eye of
a poetic artist who observes, as it were, from a distance, and fixes
as in a picture, some phase of passionate feeling or some beautiful
aspect of repose. He suggests rather the idea of a man of practical
energy, who has been present and taken part in the action described,
who enters with living interest into every detail, and watches it at
the same time with a sagacious discernment and a strong enthusiasm.
His power as a narrative poet is the power of forcibly reproducing
the outward movement and the inward meaning of an action, and of
identifying himself with the hearts and minds of the actors on the
scene. Several passages, wanting altogether in poetical beauty, yet
arrest the attention by this energy and realism of conception; as, for
example, this short and rugged fragment, descriptive of a commander in
the crisis of a battle (probably that of Cynoscephalae),--
Aspectabat virtutem legioni' suai,
Expectans, si mussaret, quae denique pausa
Pugnandi fieret, aut duri fini' laboris.[98]
Even in the abrupt dislocation from their context these lines leave on
the mind an impression of the calm vigilance of a general, and of his
confidence, not unmixed with anxiety, in 'the long-enduring hearts' of
his men. The same truth and energy of conception, with more poetical
accompaniment, may be recognised in the longer passages, from Book vii.
and Book i., already quoted or referred to.
But the imaginative power which gives poetical meaning to familiar
objects and ideas is revealed by the force of many single expressions
and by the delineation of more passionate situations. Such expressions
as the following, most of which reappear with an antique lustre in the
gold of Virgil's diction, are indicative of this higher power.
Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum.
Transnavit cita per teneras caliginis auras.
Postquam discordia taetra
Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit.
Quem super ingens
Porta tonat caeli.
Spiritus austri imbricitor. Naves velivolae, etc. etc.
These and similar phrases, some of which have already been quoted,
imply poetical creativeness. They tend to justify the estimate of the
genius of Ennius, indicated in the language of high admiration applied
to him by Lucretius,--
Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno
Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret;[99]
and in the signs of the careful study of the Annals which may be traced
in the elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid.
The longest specimen of narrative vivified by poetical feeling, from
the hand of Ennius, is the passage in which the vestal Ilia relates to
her sister the dream that portended her great and strange destiny:--
Excita cum tremulis anus attulit artubu' lumen,
Talia commemorat lacrimans, exterrita somno.
Eurudica prognata, pater quam noster amavit,
Vires vitaque corpu' meum nunc deserit omne.
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
Et ripas raptare locosque novos; ita sola
Postilla, germana soror, errare videbar
Tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse
Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
Exin compellare pater me voce videtur
His verbis: 'O gnata, tibi sunt ante ferendae
Aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet.'
Haec ecfatu' pater, germana, repente recessit
Nec sese dedit in conspectum, corde cupitus,
Quanquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa
Tendebam lacrimans et blanda voce vocabam:
Vix aegro cum corde meo me somnu' reliquit.[100]
Though these lines are rough and inharmonious as compared with the
rhythm of Catullus or Virgil, yet they flow more smoothly and rapidly
than any of the other fragments preserved from Ennius. The impression
of gentleness and tender affection produced by the speech of Ilia,
implies some dramatic skill in the conception of character. And there
is real imaginative power shown in the sense of hurry and surprise, of
vague awe and helplessness conveyed in the lines--
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta, etc.
From this passage Virgil has borrowed one of the finest touches in his
delineation of the passion of Dido, the sense of horror and desolation
haunting the Carthaginian queen in her dreams--
Agit ipse furentem
In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui
Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur
Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra.
Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the
Aeneid--the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas[101]--was evidently
suggested by the description which Ennius gave of the appearance of the
shade of Homer to himself. Some of his dramatic fragments, also, as for
instance the scene between Hecuba and Cassandra already referred to,
show a real power of conceiving and representing passionate situations.
Among the modes of imaginative sentiment by which the poetry of
Ennius is pervaded, those kindled by patriotic enthusiasm are most
conspicuous. In the manifestation of his enthusiasm, he shows an
affinity to Virgil in ancient, and to Scott in modern times. He
resembles them in their mingled feelings of veneration and affection
which they entertain towards the national heroes of old times, and
the great natural features of their country, associated with historic
memories and legendary renown. Such feelings are shown by Ennius in the
lines of tender regret and true hero-worship, which express the sorrow
of Senate and people at the death of Romulus--
Pectora ... tenet desiderium, simul inter
Sese sic memorant, O Romule, Romule die
Qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt!
O pater, O genitor, O sanguen dis oriundum!
Tu produxisti nos intra luminis oras.[102]
They appear also in the language applied by him to the sacred river of
Rome, which had preserved the founder of the city from his untimely
fate, and which was thus inseparably identified with the national
destiny--
Teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto.
and also in this fragment--
Postquam consistit fluvius qui est omnibu' princeps
Qui sub caeruleo.
The enumeration of the great warlike races in the line
Marsa manus, Peligna cohors, Vestina virum vis,
may recall the pride and enthusiasm which are kindled in the
heart of Virgil by the names of the various tribes of Italy, and
of places renowned for their fame in story, or their picturesque
environment[103]. This fond use of proper names recalling old
associations or the charm of natural scenery is also among the most
familiar characteristics of the poetry of Scott.
It was seen in the introductory chapter that the Roman mind was
peculiarly susceptible of that kind of feeling, which perhaps may best
be described as the sense of majesty. This vein of poetical emotion is
also conspicuous in the fragments of Ennius. His language shows a deep
sense of greatness and order, both in the material world and in human
affairs. Thus his style appears animated not only by vital force, but
by an impressive solemnity, befitting the grave and dignified emotion
which responds to such ideas. This susceptibility of his genius appears
in such expressions as these--
Magnum pulsatis Olympum. Indu mari magno.
Litora lata sonant.
Latos per populos terrasque.
Magnae gentes opulentae.
Quis potis ingentis oras evolvere belli?
Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis;
and again in the following--
Indu foro lato sanctoque senatu.
Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est.
Omnibu' cura viris uter esset induperator,
and in the epithet which Cicero quotes as applied to cities--
Urbes magnas atque _imperiosas_.
His imagination appears also to have been impressed by that sense of
outward pomp and magnificence which exercised a strong spell on the
Roman mind in all ages, and obtained its most complete and permanent
realisation in the architecture of the Empire. A short passage from one
of his tragedies, the Andromache, may be quoted as illustrative of this
influence, even in the writings of Ennius, though naturally it is much
more apparent in the style of those poets who witnessed the grandeur of
Rome in her later era:--
O pater, O patria, O Priami domus,
Saeptum altisono cardine templum!
Vidi ego te, astante ope barbarica,
Tectis caelatis, lacuatis,
Auro ebore instructum regifice![104]
While his peculiar poetical feeling is present chiefly in the fragments
of the Annals, the moral elements of his poetry may be gathered both
from his epic and dramatic remains. Strength and dignity of character
are the qualities with which his own nature was most in sympathy. Yet
in delineating the agitation of Ilia, the shame of Cassandra, and the
sorrow of Andromache, he reveals also much tenderness of feeling,--the
not unusual accompaniment of the manly genius of Rome. A similar
tenderness is found in union with the grave tones of Pacuvius and
Accius, and in still greater measure with the fortitude of Lucretius
and the majesty of Virgil. The masculine qualities which most stir his
enthusiasm are the Roman virtues of resolution (constantia), sincerity,
magnanimity, capacity for affairs. Thus a latent glow of feeling may be
discerned in the lines which record the brave resolution of the Roman
people during the first hardships of the war with Pyrrhus--
Ast animo superant atque aspera prima
Volnera belli dispernunt;[105]
and in this strong and scornful triumph over natural sorrow, from the
Telamon:--
Ego cum genui tum morituros scivi, et ei rei sustuli:
Praeterea ad Trojam cum misi ob defendendam Graeciam,
Scibam me in mortiferum bellum, non in epulas mittere.[106]
The generosity and courage of a magnanimous nature are stamped
upon the kingly speech which he puts into the mouth of Pyrrhus. A
frank sincerity of character reveals itself in such passages as the
following:--
Eo ego ingenio natus sum,
Aeque inimicitiam atque amicitiam in frontem promptam gero.[107]
There is no subtlety nor rhetorical point in the expression of his
serious convictions. The very style of the tragedies, which, as Cicero
says[108], 'does not depart from the natural order of the words,' is a
symbol of frankness and straightforwardness.
He shows also, in his delineations of character, high appreciation of
practical wisdom, and of its most powerful instrument in a free State,
the persuasive power of oratory. This appreciation is expressed in
the lines so much admired by Cicero and Aulus Gellius[109], though
ridiculed by the purism of Seneca:
Is dictus 'st ollis popularibus olim
Qui tum vivebant homines, atque aevum agitabant,
Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla.[110]
He seems to admire the sterling qualities of character and intellect
rather than the brilliant manifestations of impulse and genius. He
celebrates the heroism of brave endurance rather than of chivalrous
daring[111]; the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and
saves the State[112], rather than the impetuous valour which achieves a
barren glory; the sincerity and simplicity which are stronger than art,
yet that know when to speak and when to be silent[113]; the sagacity
which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to turn them
to the best account[114].
Many of his fragments, again, show traces of that just and vigorous
understanding of human life, and that shrewdness of observation, which
constitute a great satirist. The didactic tone of satire appears, for
instance, in the following lines--
Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit;
Hic itidem est: enim neque domi nunc nos neque militiae sumus,
Imus huc, illuc hinc, cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet;
Incerte errat animus: praeter propter vitam vivitur[115],--
a fragment which might be compared with certain passages in the
Epistles of Horace, which give expression to the _ennui_ experienced
as a result of the inaction and luxurious living of the Augustan age.
But a closer parallel will be found in a passage where Lucretius has
assumed something of the caustic tone of Roman satire--
Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille
Esse domi quem pertaesum 'st, subitoque revertit,
Quippe domi nihilo melius qui sentiat esse,' etc.[116]
While Ennius, like Lucretius, gives little indication of humour, yet
the folly and superstition of his times provoke him into tones of
contemptuous irony, especially where he has to expose the arts of
false prophets and fortune-tellers. The men of the manliest temper and
the strongest understanding in ancient times were most intolerant of
this mischievous form of imposture and credulity. Thus Thucydides, in
general so reserved in his expression of personal feeling, treats, with
a manifest irony, all supernatural pretences to foresee or control the
future. The tone in which Ennius writes of such professions reminds us
of Milton's grim contempt for
Eremites and friars
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.
Thus, in a fragment of Book xi. of the Annals, the fears excited by the
prophets and diviners at the commencement of the war with Antiochus are
encountered with the pertinent question--
Satin' vates verant aetate in agenda?
Thus too the pretensions and the ignorance of astrologers are exposed
in a line of one of the dramas--
Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.
And the following passage may be quoted as applicable to charlatans of
every kind, in every age and country--
Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachmam ipsi petunt.[117]
There are passages of the same spirit to be found among the fragments
of Pacuvius and Accius.
There is not much indication of speculative thought in any of these
fragments. The blunt sentiment which Ennius puts into the mouth of
Neoptolemus probably expressed his own mental attitude towards the
schools of philosophy--
Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis: nam omnino haut placet.
His observations on life are neither of an imaginative, of a deeply
reflective, nor of a purely satiric character. Unlike the thoughts
of the Greek dramatists, they make no attempt to solve the painful
riddle of the world; they want the universality and systematic basis
of philosophical truths; they are expressed neither with the pointed
wit nor with the ironical humour of satire. They are the maxims of a
strong common sense and the dictates of a grave rectitude of will. They
are practical, not speculative. They have their origin in a sense of
duty rather than of consequences. They are in conformity with the ideal
realised in the best types of Roman character; and they bear witness
to the sterling worth combined with the ardent enthusiasm, and the
practical sense united to the strong imagination of the poet.
Such appear to be the chief attributes of genius and imaginative
sentiment, and the chief moral and intellectual features indicated in
the fragments of Ennius. It is not indeed possible, from the tenor
of single passages, to judge of the composition of a whole drama or
of a continuous book of the Annals. No single scene or speech can
afford sufficient grounds for inferring the amount of creative power
with which his characters were conceived and sustained in all their
complex relations. Yet enough has appeared in these fragments, which,
from the accidental mode of their preservation, must be regarded as
the ordinary samples and not chosen specimens of his style, to confirm
the ancient belief in his pre-eminence and to determine the prevailing
characteristics of his genius. There is ample evidence of the great
popularity which he enjoyed among his countrymen, and of the high
estimate which many of the best Roman writers formed of his power. It
is recorded that great crowds ('magna frequentia') attended the public
reading of the Annals. Virgil was said to have introduced many lines
into the Aeneid, with the view of pleasing a public devoted to Ennius
('populus Ennianus'). The title of Ennianista was assumed by a public
reader of the Annals in the time of Hadrian[118]. Cicero often speaks
of the poet as 'noster Ennius,' and quotes him with all the signs of
hearty admiration and affection. The numerous references in his works
to the Annals and the Tragedies imply also a thorough familiarity with
these poems on the part of the readers for whom his philosophical
and rhetorical treatises were written. The criticism of Quintilian,
'Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et
antiqua robora jam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem[119],'
expresses a sentiment of traditional reverence as well as of personal
appreciation. Aulus Gellius, a writer of the time of Hadrian, often
quotes and comments upon him with hearty and genial sympathy. The
greatest among the Roman poets also, directly and indirectly,
acknowledge their admiration. The strong testimony of Lucretius,
the most imaginative poet and the most powerful thinker whom Rome
produced, is alone sufficient to establish the fame of Ennius as a man
of remarkable force and genius. The spirit of the Annals still lives
in the antique charm and national spirit which make the epic poem of
Virgil the truest representation of Roman feeling which has come down
to modern times. By Ovid he is characterised as--
Ennius, ingenio maximus, arte rudis.
Horace, although more reluctant and grudging in his admiration, yet
allows the 'Calabrian Muse' to be the best preserver of the fame of
the great Scipio. Even the disparaging lines--
Ennius et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus,
Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur
Quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea,[120]
are a strong testimony in favour of the esteem in which the vigour and
sagacity of Ennius were held by those who had all his works in their
hands. As one of the founders of Roman literature, it was impossible
that he could have rivalled the careful and finished style of the
Augustan poets; but, by his rude and energetic labours, he laid the
strong groundwork on which later poets built their fame.
He has been exposed to more serious detraction in modern times, as
the corrupter of the pure stream of early Roman poetry. It is alleged
against him by Niebuhr, that through jealousy he suppressed the ballad
and epic poetry of the early bards. The answer to this charge has
already been given. There is no evidence to prove that any such poems
were in existence in the time of Ennius. By other modern scholars
he is disadvantageously compared with Naevius, who is held up to
admiration as the last of the genuine Roman minstrels. Naevius appears
indeed to have been a remarkable and original man, yet his very scanty
fragments do not afford sufficient evidence to justify the reversal
of the verdict of antiquity on the relative greatness and importance
of the two poets. The old Roman party, in opposition to whom Ennius
and his friends are supposed to have introduced the new taste and
suppressed the old, never showed any zeal in favour of poetry of any
kind. Cato, their only literary representative, wrote prose treatises
on antiquities and agriculture, and in one of his speeches reproached
Fulvius Nobilior for the consideration which he showed to Ennius. The
evidence of these epic and dramatic fragments which have just been
considered, is all in favour of the high verdict of antiquity on the
importance and pre-eminence of the author of the Annals. Whatever in
the later poets is most truly Roman in sentiment and morality appears
to be conceived in the spirit of Ennius.
He stands out prominently in that early time as a man of true genius,
and of a strong and original character. His lot was not cast, like that
of the Augustan poets, in the midst of a refined and courtly society,
with all the aids and appliances of literary leisure, and in secure
exemption from any harsh collision with the world. Neither was he a
poetical artist, like Catullus, yielding himself up to the enjoyment
of beauty, and reproducing in his verse the charm which he had found
in life, in Nature, and in earlier art. His poetry was the serious
product of a manly and energetic life, and of a vital interest in the
great affairs of his time. Till middle life he is dimly discerned as an
obscure Messapian soldier, claiming descent from an old race of kings,
and a stranger to the great city which in after times regarded him as
the father of her literature. In mature manhood, and in a kindly old
age, he is seen exercising a constant literary industry in manifold
ways, living plainly and in cheerful independence, applauded by his
fellow-citizens, and honoured by the friendship of the greatest among
his contemporaries.
The variety and extent of his works bear witness to remarkable
learning, as well as a strong productive energy. With a wide knowledge
of Greek literature, he combined the heart and will of a Roman; and
to the study of the best books he added a close contact with men.
Expressions in his remains indicate the opposite religious feelings
and convictions of a mystic and a sceptic. In his temper and character
a high self-consciousness appears united with a true simplicity
and hearty appreciation of others, and a great gravity of tone and
purpose with a cheerful and sanguine spirit. His moral sympathies are
most deeply moved by such qualities as fortitude, magnanimity, and
practical wisdom; and the transparent sincerity of his words gives
assurance that he himself was formed out of the same true metal which
he recognised in 'the old manners and men' of his adopted country.
In his poetry he represented the traditions and the steady continuous
growth of the Roman State, and expressed the confidence which the
people reposed in their destiny, their institutions, and their leading
men. His dramas, although founded on Greek models, and dealing with
Greek legends and personages, yet had a real national air in the type
of character they presented, in the sentiments they expressed, and in
the lessons of life they inculcated. His epic poem was in form, spirit,
and substance, inspired by the genius of his country, and was finished
with the strong and massive execution of Roman workmanship[121]. While
discarding the native Saturnian measure, as unequal to the elevated
tone of a long narrative poem, he moulded the Latin language to the
conditions of a new metre, which, in later times, was successfully
wrought into the most expressive organ of the majesty of Rome. In his
reproduction of the Homeric mythology, he has embodied the idea of the
national destiny. The characteristic sentiment of his poetry indicates
his affinity not to Homer and Sophocles, but to Lucretius and Virgil.
There are gleams also of true creative power in these fragments. If
wanting in the fine accomplishment and the contemplative faculty of
a poetic artist, he seems to have possessed a strength and energy of
conception unsurpassed by any of his successors. He was endowed also
with that living power which gives new meaning to familiar things;
which, without distorting or exaggerating the truth, discerns and
reveals the glory and grandeur in the actual march of events.
[Footnote 48: Parco admodum sumptu contentus et unius ancillae
ministerio.]
[Footnote 49: xvii. 17.]
[Footnote 50: Livy xxxviii. 17.]
[Footnote 51: 'When the Carthaginians were coming from all sides to
the conflict, and all things, beneath high heaven, confounded by the
hurry and tumult of war, shook with alarm: and men were in doubt to
which of the two the empire of the whole world, by land and sea, should
fall.'--Lucret. iii. 833-7.]
[Footnote 52: Mommsen, book iii. ch. 5.]
[Footnote 53: The author of Caesar's Spanish War quotes Ennius in his
account of the critical moment in the Battle of Munda:--'Hic, ut ait
Ennius, "pes pede premitur, armis teruntur arma."' Bell. Hisp. xxxi.]
[Footnote 54: Amphit. 52-3--
Quid contraxistis frontem, quia tragoediam
Dixi futuram hanc?
]
[Footnote 55: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, &c.]
[Footnote 56: De Senectute, 5.]
[Footnote 57: De Oratore, ii. 68.]
[Footnote 58: 'L. Aelium Stilonem dicere solitum ferunt Q. Ennium de
semet ipso haec scripsisse, picturamque istam morum et ingenii ipsius
Q. Ennii factam esse.'--Gell. xii. 4.]
[Footnote 59: 'He finished: and summons to him one with whom often,
and right gladly, he shared his table, his talk, and the whole weight
of his business, when weary with debate, throughout the day, on high
affairs of state, within the wide Forum and the august Senate,--one to
whom he could frankly speak out serious matters, trifles, and jest; to
whom he could pour forth and safely confide, if he wanted to confide
in any one, all that he cared to utter, good or bad; with whom, in
private and in public, he had much entertainment and enjoyment,--a man
of that nature which no thought ever prompts to baseness through levity
or malice: a learned, honest, pleasant man, eloquent, contented, and
cheerful, of much tact, speaking well in season; courteous and of few
words; with much old buried lore; whom length of years had made versed
in old and recent ways; in the laws of many ancients, divine and human;
one who knew when to speak and when to be silent. Him, during the
battle, Servilius thus addresses.']
[Footnote 60: Σκιπίωνα γὰρ ᾄδων καὶ ἐπὶ μέγα τὸν ἄνδρα ἐξᾶραι
βουλόμενος φησὶ μόνον ἄν Ὥμηρον ἐπαξίους ἐπαίνους εἰπεῖν
Σκιπίωνος.--Aelian, as quoted by Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258. Ed.
Gaisford. Cf. Vahlen.]
[Footnote 61: 'Here is he laid, to whom no one, either countryman or
enemy, has been able to pay a due meed for his services.']
[Footnote 62: 'From the utmost east, beyond the Maeotian marsh, there
is no one who in actions can vie with me. If it is lawful for any one
to ascend to the realms of the gods, to me alone the vast gate of
heaven is opened!']
[Footnote 63: 'Yet nothing more glorious than this man doth it (the
island of Sicily) seem to have contained, nor aught more holy, nor more
wonderful and beloved.']
[Footnote 64: 'Behold, my countrymen, the bust of the old man, Ennius.
He penned the record of your fathers' mighty deeds. Let no one pay to
me the meed of tears, nor weep at my funeral. And why? because I still
live, as I speed to and fro, through the mouths of men.']
[Footnote 65: 'Hail, poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy fiery
verse from thy inmost marrow.']
[Footnote 66: 'Others have treated the subject in the verses, which
in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had
climbed the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style.']
[Footnote 67: 'I have always said and will say that the gods of heaven
exist, but I think that they heed not the conduct of mankind; for, if
they did, it would be well with the good and ill with the bad; and it
is not so now.']
[Footnote 68:
Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
Maeonides, Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.
Persius, vi. 10 (Ed. Jahn).
]
[Footnote 69: Vahlen.]
[Footnote 70: E.g. Horace, Sat. ii. 4.]
[Footnote 71: 'The poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans
had extracted from the writings of the old Sicilian comedian,
Epicharmus of Megara, or rather had, at least for the most part,
circulated under cover of his name, regarded the Greek gods as natural
substances, Zeus as the atmosphere, the soul as a particle of Sun-dust,
and so forth.'--Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, Book iii. ch. 15. (Dickson's
Translation.)]
[Footnote 72: 'This is that Jupiter which I speak of, which the Greeks
call the air; it is first wind and clouds; afterwards rain, and after
rain, cold; next it becomes wind, then air again. All those things
which I mention to you are Jupiter, because it is he who supports
mortals and cities and all animals.']
[Footnote 73: Mommsen.]
[Footnote 74: 'Inventore minor.'--Horace.]
[Footnote 75: Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive of the
greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to Roman comedy and to
Roman satire:--
Quippe sine cura laetus lautus cum advenis
Insertis malis, expedito bracchio
Alacer, celsus, lupino expectans impetu,
Mox cum alterius obligurias bona,
Quid censes domino esse animi? pro divum fidem!
Ille tristis cibum dum servat, tu ridens voras.
]
[Footnote 76: The meaning of the passage amounts to no more than this,
that the man who tries to 'sell' another, and fails, is himself 'sold.']
[Footnote 77: Brutus, 20.]
[Footnote 78: De Fin. i. 2.]
[Footnote 79: Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:--
Εἴθ᾽ ὤφελ᾽ Αργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος
Κόλχων ἐς αἶαν κυανέας Συμπληγάδας,
μηδ᾽ ἐν νάπαισι Πηλίου πεσεῖν ποτε
τμηθεῖσα πεύκη, μηδ᾽ ἐρετμῶσαι χέρας
ἀνδρῶν ἀριστέων, οἳ τὸ πάγχρυσον δέρος
Πελίᾳ μετῆλθον· οὐ γὰρ ἂν δέσποιν᾽ ἐμὴ
Μήδεια πύργους γῆς ἔπλευσ᾽ Ἰωλκίας
ἔρωτι θυμὸν ἐκπλαγεῖσ᾽ Ἰάσονος.
]
[Footnote 80: Several of these fragments will be examined later.]
[Footnote 81: Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.]
[Footnote 82: 'How tender, how true to character, how affecting!' De
Div. i. 31. 'What a great poet, though he is despised by those admirers
of Euphorion. He understands that sudden and unlooked-for calamities
are more grievous. A noble poem,--pathetic in matter, in language, in
melody.' Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.]
[Footnote 83: 'Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood.
Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it. For
now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries along
a host of calamities. They come: a fierce host lines the shores with
sail-winged ships.' Exitium = exitiorum, cf. Cic. Orator. 46. Itaque
idem poeta, qui inusitatius contraxerat 'Patris mei meum factum'
pudet pro 'meorum factorum' et 'Texitur: exitium examen rapit' pro
'exitiorum.']
[Footnote 84: Acad. ii. 28.]
[Footnote 85: Gellius, xvii. 21.]
[Footnote 86: He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas. This
statement he is supposed to have derived from the _Cypria_.]
[Footnote 87: Cicero, Arch. 9.]
[Footnote 88: 'Wisdom is banished from amongst us, violence rules the
day: the good orator is despised, the rough soldier loved; striving,
not with words of learning, but with words of hate, they get embroiled
in feuds, and stir up enmity one with another. The battle is fought,
not according to law, but with the sword they demand their rights,
assail the sovereign power, advance by sheer force.']
[Footnote 89: Cic. De Off. i. 12.]
[Footnote 90: 'Neither do I ask gold for myself, nor offer ye to
me a ransom. Let us wage the war, not like hucksters, but like
soldiers--with the sword, not with gold, putting our lives to the
issue. Whether our mistress Fortune, wills that you or I should reign,
or what her purpose be, let us prove by valour. And hearken too to
this saying,--The brave men, whom the fortune of battle spares, their
liberty I have resolved to spare. Take my offer, as I grant it, under
favour of the great gods.']
[Footnote 91: 'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were wont to
stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?']
[Footnote 92: A comparison with the original passage (Iliad, vi. 506),
will show that Ennius, while reproducing much, though not all, of the
force and life of Homer's image, has added also some touches of his
own:--
ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τις στατὸς ἵππος, ἀκοστήσας ἐπὶ φάτνῃ
δεσμὸν ἀπορρήξας θείῃ πεδίοιο κροαίνων,
εἰωθὼς λούεσθαι εὐρρεῖος ποταμοῖο,
κυδιόων· ὑψοῦ δὲ κάρη ἔχει, ἀμφὶ δὲ χαῖται
ὤμοις ἀΐσσονται· ὁ δ᾽ ἀγλαΐηφι πεποιθώς,
ῥίμφα ἑ γοῦνα φέρει μετά τ᾽ ἤθεα καὶ νομὸν ἵππων.
Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:--
Qualis ubi abruptis fugit praesepia vinclis
Tandem liber equus, campoque potitus aperto
Aut ille in pastus armentaque tendit equarum,
Aut adsuetus aquae perfundi flumine noto
Emicat, arrectisque fremit cervicibus alte
Luxurians, luduntque jubae per colla, per armos.
]
[Footnote 93: 'They watch, as when the consul is going to give the
signal, all look eagerly to the barrier, to see how soon he may start
the chariots from the painted entrance.']
[Footnote 94:
Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat.--Aen. i. 254.
]
[Footnote 95: Ἔννιος Ῥωμαῖος ποιητής· ὃν Αἰλιανὸς ἐπαινεῖν ἄξιόν
φησι . . . . δῆλον δὲ ὡς ἐτεθήπει τοῦ ποιητοῦ τὴν μεγαλόνοιαν καὶ
τῶν μέτρων τὸ μεγαλεῖον καὶ ἀξιάγαστον.--Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258, ed.
Gaisford.]
[Footnote 96: Cf. Iliad, xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen. vi.
179:--
Itur in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum,
Procumbunt piceae, sonat icta securibus ilex,
Fraxineaeque trabes cuneis et fissile robur
Scinditur, advolvunt ingentis montibus ornos.
]
[Footnote 97: 'One man, by biding his time, restored the commonwealth.
He cared not for what men said of him, as compared with our safety:
therefore now his fame waxeth brighter day by day.']
[Footnote 98: 'He watched the courage of his force, to see if any
murmur should arise for some pause to the long battle, some rest from
their weary toil.']
[Footnote 99: 'As sang our Ennius, the first who brought down from
pleasant Helicon a chaplet of unfading leaf, the fame of which should
be bruited loud through the nations of Italian men.']
[Footnote 100: 'When the old dame had risen, and with trembling
limbs had brought the light, thus she (Ilia), roused in terror from
her sleep, with tears tells her tale: "Daughter of Eurydice, whom
our father loved, my strength and life now fail me through all my
frame. For methought that a goodly man was bearing me off through the
pleasant willow-groves, by the river-banks, and places strange to me.
Thereafter, O my sister, I seemed to be wandering all alone, and with
slow steps to track my way, to be seeking thee, and to be unable to
find thee near; no footpath steadied my step. Afterwards methought I
heard my father address me in these words--'Daughter, trouble must
first be borne by thee; afterwards thy fortune shall rise up again from
the river.' With these words, O sister, he suddenly departed, nor gave
himself to my sight, though my heart yearned to him, though I kept
eagerly stretching my hands to the blue vault of heaven, weeping, and
calling on him with loving tones. With pain and weary heart at last
sleep left me."']
[Footnote 101: Aen. ii. 270.]
[Footnote 102: 'Regret and sorrow fill their hearts, while thus they
say to one another, O Romulus, God-like Romulus, how great a guardian
of our country did the gods create in thee! O father, author of our
being, O blood sprung from the gods! it is thou that hast brought us
forth within the realms of light.']
[Footnote 103: E.g. passages such as the following:--
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
Junonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit,
Quos, Amasene pater.--Aen. viii. 682-5.
]
[Footnote 104: 'O father! O fatherland! O house of Priam, palace,
closing on high-sounding hinge, I have seen thee, guarded by a barbaric
host, with carved and deep-fretted roof, with ivory and gold royally
adorned.']
[Footnote 105: 'But they rise superior in spirit, and spurn the first
sharp wounds of war.']
[Footnote 106: 'When I begat them, I knew that they must die, and to
that end I bred them. Besides, when I sent them to Troy to fight for
Greece, I was well aware that I was sending them, not to a feast, but
to a deadly war.']
[Footnote 107: 'Such is my nature. Enmity and friendship equally I bear
stamped on my forehead.']
[Footnote 108: 'Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit a
communi ordine verborum.'--Orator, 11.]
[Footnote 109: Cicero, Brutus, 15; Aulus Gellius, xii. 2.]
[Footnote 110: 'He was called by those, his fellow-countrymen, who
flourished then and enjoyed their day, the chosen flower of the people,
and the marrow of persuasion.']
[Footnote 111: Compare his account of the Tribune in the Istrian war:
'Undique conveniunt velut imber, tela tribuno,' etc.
]
[Footnote 112: Cf. 'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,' etc.]
[Footnote 113: Cf.
'Ita sapere opino esse optimum, ut pro viribus
Tacere ac fabulare tute noveris;'
also
'Ea libertas est quae pectus purum et firmum gestitat.'
]
[Footnote 114: 'Egregie cordatus homo catus Aeliu' Sextus.']
[Footnote 115: 'In idleness the mind knows not what it wants. This is
now our case. We are neither now at home nor abroad. We go hither,
back again to the place from which we came,--when we have reached it
we desire to leave it again. Our mind is all astray--existence goes on
outside of real life.']
[Footnote 116: iii. 1059-67.]
[Footnote 117: 'But your superstitious prophets and impudent
fortune-tellers, idle fellows, or madmen, or the victims of want,
who cannot discern the path for themselves, yet point the way out to
others, and ask a drachma from the very persons to whom they promise a
fortune.']
[Footnote 118: 'And there it is announced to Julianus that a certain
public reader, an accomplished man, with a very well-trained and
musical voice, read the Annals of Ennius publicly in the theatre. Let
us go, says he, to hear this "Ennianista," whoever he is,--for by that
name he chose to be called.--Aulus Gellius, xviii. 5.
The following line of Martial (v. 10. 7) implies also his popularity
under the Empire--
'Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi, Roma, Marone.'
]
[Footnote 119: 'Let us venerate Ennius like the groves, sacred from
their antiquity, in which the great and ancient oak-trees are invested
not so much with beauty as with sacred associations.'--Inst. Or. x. i.
88.]
[Footnote 120: 'Ennius, the wise and strong, and the second Homer, as
his critics will have it, seems to care little for the issue of all his
promises and Pythagorean dreams.'--Epist. II. i. 50-2.]
[Footnote 121: The name _Romais_ given to the Annals in a later age
indicates the appreciation of this national inspiration.]