Collected Fragments of Ennius

by Quintus Ennius

  Ennius became indeed a close friend with some of the best Romans of this period, above all perhaps with Scipio Africanus, whom he celebrated in his poetry; and with Marcus Fulvius Nobilior and his son Quintus. When Marcus, consul in 189 BC, went to Aetolia, he took Ennius with him. Ennius went not to fight but doubtless because Marcus was a man of culture and Ennius intended to celebrate the coming campaign, as he afterwards did. Marcus doubtless rewarded Ennius well; a very late record states that, to his discredit, Marcus did no more than give to Ennius one military cloak out of the spoils taken at Ambracia. In 184 BC Marcus’ son Quintus caused Ennius to be made a full Roman citizen with a grant of land either at Potentia in Picenum or at Pisaurum in Umbria; for it was apparently this Quintus Fulvius who was concerned in the foundation of a colony at both places in that year. Ennius’ friendship with Scipio Nasica has already been indicated above. In the case of Cato, I think we can trace a loss of that old friendship which had been the making of Ennius. Cicero, in maintaining that the Romans were slow to appreciate poetry and did not honour poets as they should have done, shows that Cato in a speech laid it to Marcus Fulvius’ charge that he had taken poets (Ennius of course is meant) into his province. Now it might be said that Cato may simply have used this argument insincerely and merely as a political expedient against an unfriendly statesman; or that Cato implied that Rome and not a province was the right place for a good poet, especially one whom Cato himself had brought to Rome in the first place. But Cicero did not thus interpret Cato’s speech, which was apparently extant in Cicero’s time; and we must remember that Cato had developed an abiding hatred of new manners and especially of Greek culture amongst Romans, and conclude that Ennius had ceased to be a friend of Cato. There were two reasons, I think, for this estrangement: Cato found that Ennius was, after all, for his taste much too deeply engaged in Greek culture and in expounding of it to Romans and in transferring it into Latin; Ennius had shown himself to be something of an Epicurean, and in works like Epicharmus and Euhemerus, and elsewhere, was expressing opinions which Cato believed to be subversive of Roman religion and manners. And further, Cato had already quarrelled with Ennius’ friends such as the Scipios, partly again because of their love of Greek culture.

  There is one other man of affairs between whom and Ennius we can certainly trace some connexion. One of Ennius’ neighbours was Servius Galba. This was probably Servius Sulpicius Galba who was praetor urbanus in 187 BC and was a friend of M. Fulvius. There is, however, much doubt concerning A. Postumius Albinus, who was praetor in 155, consul in 151. He, according to an isolated manuscript, dedicated to Ennius, who must have been growing old then, a history written by Albinus (obviously as a young man) in Greek.

  Of friendship between Ennius and other primarily literary men we can discover little. We do not know that he was ever acquainted personally with his older contemporaries, the poets Livius Andronicus and Naevius, for the former’s death and the latter’s exile came about the time in which Ennius reached Rome. Still, years after Naevius’ death, Ennius did, in his Annals, rightly disparage the ruder style of Naevius’ Punic War while recognising its value as an historical record, and imitating a phrase or two. Nor, again, is there evidence that he was acquainted with Plautus, who lived for twenty years after Ennius first came to Rome, though we know that Plautus was acquainted with Ennius’ plays. Plautus was a writer of comedies, whereas Ennius’ dramatic talent was expended almost entirely on tragedies. But Ennius does indeed appear to have made friends with the comic writer Caecilius Statius, an Insubrian Gaul; his life is described, so far as we know it, below, and the remains of his work are included in this book. Jerome says that Caecilius was ‘at first’ (that is, at one time) a ‘contubernalis or close comrade of Ennius. In fact Caecilius appears to have remained a friend until Ennius’ death which came first, and to have been cremated near the place where Ennius’ body also was burnt. And lastly, Ennius must presumably have known the tragic poet M. Pacuvius, a Calabrian of Brundisium (220 BC — c. 132), because he was a son of Ennius’ sister. But it is doubtful whether Pacuvius, who was for many years a painter, not a playwright, by profession, had done much by way of composition of tragedies before his uncle’s death in 169 (see below). According to one Pompilius, Pacuvius was a ‘discipulus’ of Ennius. This may mean that Pacuvius was merely inspired to emulate Ennius in the composition of tragedy and possibly too of satire, in which Pacuvius is known to have indulged.

  In the year 169, at the age of seventy, just after he had produced the tragedy Thyestes, and still, according to Cicero, calmly bearing and almost enjoying poverty and old age, Ennius died of gout. His body was apparently cremated on the Ianiculum; and some authorities stated that his bones were taken to his birthplace Rudiae. This at any rate was a common custom. But the connexion of Ennius with the sepulchre of the Scipios is doubtful. Thus, according to Cicero, a statue of Ennius in marble was, in Cicero’s time, believed to have been set up in the Scipios’ sepulchre because of Africanus’ affection for him; in Livy’s time, of three statues then to be seen in the sepulchre, one was said at that time to be a statue of Ennius; later on again, the elder Pliny says that Africanus ordered that a statue of Ennius be put in his tomb, and that Ennius’ name could still be read on it; yet again, as a fourth stage in the development of what is, from beginning to end, apparently a falsehood, Jerome, following Suetonius, says that Ennius himself was cremated (sepultus) in Scipio’s sepulchre. Lastly, we may mention the ascription to Ennius by Woelfflin, in modern times, of at least some of the old elogia still extant on the monuments of the Scipios. The existence of such a statue as the Romans described was probably an assumption without foundation. A sculptured portrait inscribed ‘Q. Ennius’ has been found at Rome, but unfortunately it is headless. No portrait of Ennius has been found in the Scipios’ sepulchre.

  With regard to Ennius’ poetic remains, I propose, with the help of notes and headings given in the text and translation, to let the fragments in the main speak for themselves, but I give here a few probabilities and known facts about his various works, though we can trace the date of hardly one of them. He produced tragedies at various times up to the year of his death, while the epic poem the Annals, by far his greatest single work, was apparently composed over a long period, being once or twice resumed, as time went on, after a tentative ending. His minor works were composed for special occasions or as the spirit moved him. Thus, his poem Scipio in praise of Africanus, victor of Hannibal in the battle of Zama, and possibly the Satires (of which the third book apparently alludes to Scipio), were written soon after the triumph celebrated by Scipio in 201 in honour of that last contest of the Second Punic War; and Ambracia, in honour of M. Fulvius, very soon after 188. A number of tragedies were probably composed before the Annals were begun or had gone very far, because dramatic composition would more than any poetry except comedies enable or help Ennius to live independently of literary ‘patrons’ so far as he could. The tragedy Achilles after Aristarchus, was written before the composition of Plautus’ Poenulus in 189. The Annals had reached no farther than the twelfth book (which was perhaps intended to be the last) in 172, for in that book Ennius mentioned his age as being sixty-seven years; thus books thirteen to eighteen were composed between 172 and 168; Ennius intended again to finish with book fifteen, and indeed made an end there; but added three more books for a particular reason. The eighteenth was probably unfinished. Lastly, in the year of his death, 169, Ennius produced the tragedy Thyestes, which was his last work.

  The list of Ennius’ complete works comprises eighteen books of Annals, at least twenty tragedies, two historical Roman plays (fabulae praetextae), two comedies (fabulae palliatae?), at least four books of Satires, the poems Scipio, Sota, Protrepticum (?), Hedyphagetica (?), Epicharmus, Euhemerus or Holy History, and epigrams. There was a later grammarian, named Ennius (fl. c. 100 BC), whom it is difficult to distinguish from the poet. Two books on ‘letters and syllables’ and one (?) on ‘metres’ were generally attributed
by later Romans to this grammarian. I have assumed that the first development of shorthand writing is also to be ascribed to the grammarian. But that the doubling of consonants was begun or established by the poet Ennius (and not the grammarian) as Festus indicates, I take to be a true tradition; for in Latin inscriptions the double consonants do not appear (except in one name where the Greek is transliterated) until 189 BC, as will be seen in the fourth volume of this series.

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