Part 13 (1/2)

Ennius was born in 239 B C, shortly after the close of the First Punic War; but he comes first into notice as a centurion in the Ro the Second Punic War Here Cato, while acting as quaestor in the island, found him, and no doubt attracted by the sturdy scholarly soldier, took him to Rome in 204 in his own train The poet afterward accoeneral's expedition to aetolia, a privilege which he richly repaid later by in He obtained Roh the instrumentality of the son of Fulvius He wasthe friendshi+p of the great Scipio, hom he lived on the most intimate terms For himself, he lived always at Rome in huained aGreek to the youths of Rome There is a tradition not very trustworthy that it was of hihty”

That Ennius was fitted to be a confidential friend to great men of affairs we may well believe if, as Aulus Gellius, who has preserved the passage, would have us understand, the following picture was intended by the poet as a self-portraiture The passage is fro of its own, but may well represent the familiar intercourse of the poet with Marcus Fulvius or with Scipio If this is indeed a portrait, it is a passage of great value, for it pictures the character in great detail

So having spoken, he called for a ladly Table he shared, and talk, and all his burden of duties, When with debate all day on important affairs he earied, Whether perchance in the Forum wide, or the reverend Senate; One hom he could frankly speak of his serious ether Pleasant or bitter words, and know they were uttered in safety

Many the joys and the griefs he had shared, whether public or secret!

This was a man in whom no impulse prompted to evil, Whether of folly or malice; a scholarly man and a loyal, Graceful, ready of speech, with his own contented and happy; Tactful, speaking in season, yet courteous, never loquacious

Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime Made him master of earlier customs as well as of newer

Versed in the laas he of the ancients, men or immortals

Wisely he knew both when he should talk and when to be silent

So unto hi

Lawton

Ennius died in 169 B C, and tradition says that his bust was placed in the toreat patron, whereby the poet-soldier and the soldier-statesus of Scipio surht well have been inscribed the saying of Sellar: ”Ennius was in letters what Scipio was in action--the most vital representative of his epoch”

Ennius wrote satires and tragedies as we have seen; but it is because of his great epic poee, that he deserves the high title accorded to him by the Romans themselves--”the father of Ro because of its form and because of its ie itself The poet perceived that the native Saturnian verse was rude and unfitted to serve as a vehicle for the highest for toward this verse is shown in a fragment upon the First Punic War in which he refers to the _Bellum Punicum_ of Naevius:

Others have treated the subject in the verses which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had cliave any care to style

Sellar

From the Saturnian he turned to the hexareat epics of Ho to ad cadences, and quite another to force the heavy, rough Latin speech into this measure But this task, difficult as it was, Ennius essayed, and by the very attempt to force the Latin into the shapely Greek e itself, and handed it down to his literary successors as a farvehicle of noble expression than he had found it It is true that in coil and Ovid the lines of Ennius are noticeably rough and heavy; but still it must be remembered that it was the older poet's pioneer labors that il and Ovid possible

The ”Annals” of Ennius is an atteather up the traditions of early Roman history and the facts of later times, and present them in a continuous narrative Ennius was the pioneer in this work, and shows, as he says in the supposed self-portraiture quoted above, a very extensive knowledge of Roman antiquities, as well as a vivid first-hand perception of contemporary men and events His active service as a soldier in the Second Punic War especially fitted him to write the story of a warlike nation His descriptions of wars and stirring events are _con a series of Ro the Second Punic War, and infused into his great national poe of that exaltation of spirit which animated his times, and which raised his work far above the plane which his ests The poem sank deep into the national heart, and became a very bible of the race, from which his successors drew freely as from a public fountain

This poehteen books, of which only about six hundred lines of fragments remain The first book covers the period from the death of Priam to the death of Ro as it is usually represented by tradition, for Ennius passes over the three hundred years of the Alban kings and represents aeneas as the father of Ilia, the ments describes the dream of Ilia in which the birth of Romulus and Re to the birth and exposure of the twins, their nourishnty of Romulus over his brother was decided, and at the end a spirited passage from the lamentation of the Romans over the death of Roive a history of the Rolimpses of the victory of the Horatii, the dreadful death of the treacherous Mettius Fufetius, the disgusting impiety of Tullia, and the rape of Lucretia, which precipitated the banishment of the Tarquins The fourth and fifth books cover the period fro of the ith Pyrrhus, which is described in the sixth book This contains the fine passage in which King Pyrrhus refuses to accept money for the ransom of captives He says to the Roman ambassadors:

Gold for myself I wish not; ye need not proffer a ransoe our war, but as soldiers: Not with gold but the sword Our lives ill set on the issue

Whether your rule or mine be Fortune's pleasure,--our mistress,-- Let us by valor decide And to this word hearken ye also: Every valorous man who is spared by the fortune of battle, Fully determined aift At the wish of the Gods in heaven I grant it

Lawton

The seventh book treats of the First Punic War, which he touches upon but lightly, since this subject had been so fully covered by his predecessor Then follow, in the re books, the Macedonian, aetolian, and Istrian wars, the history being brought down to within a few years of the writer's death In the last book the old poet very fittingly compares himself to a spirited horse who has won victories in his day, but now enjoys his well-earned rest in the dignity and inactivity of age