ENNIUS, QUINTUS (239-17o B.c.), ancient Latin poet, was born at Rudiae in Calabria. Familiar with Greek as the language in common use among the cultivated classes of his dis trict, and with Oscan, the prevailing dialect of lower Italy, he further acquired a knowledge of Latin ; to use his own expression (Gellius xvii., 17), he had three "hearts" (corda), the Latin word being used to signify the seat of intelligence. We first hear of him in 204 in the Second Punic war. He served as a centurion in Sardinia and he attracted the attention of Cato the elder, who took him to Rome in the same year. Here he taught Greek and adapted Greek plays for a livelihood ; his writings gained him the friendship of the greatest men in Rome, including the elder Scipio and Fulvius Nobilior, whom he accompanied on his Aetolian cam paign (189). Through the influence of Nobilior's son, Ennius subsequently obtained Roman citizenship (Cicero, Brutus, 20, 79) . He lived at Rome till his death. The epitaph which he com posed for himself expresses his pride in his achievement "Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning ; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men." The fragments of his work and the testimony of his countrymen show us a man of a cheerful nature (Hor. Epp. ii. 1. 50 ; Cic. De sen. 5) ; of great industry and versatility; combining imagination and a vein of religious mysticism with a sceptical indifference to popular beliefs and a scorn of religious imposture ; and tempering the gravity of a Roman with a genial capacity for enjoyment (Hor. Epp. 1, 7).
Till the appearance of Ennius, Roman literature had been most successful in comedy. Naevius and Plautus were men of popular fibre. Ennius, on the other hand, was in sympathy with the dominant aristocratic element in Roman life. Under his influence literature began to appeal to a limited and cultivated class, but at the same time to express more truly what was greatest and most enduring in the national traditions. He was a man of many-sided activities. He dealt with questions of Latin orthography, and is said to have been the first to introduce shorthand writing in Latin. He attempted comedy, but with so little success that in the canon of Volcacius Sedigitus he is placed tenth, and last in the list of comic poets. He may be regarded also as the inventor of Roman satire, in its original sense of a "miscellany," although it was Lucilius who gave it the character of a criticism of men and manners. The saturae of Ennius were collections of writings on various subjects, written in various metres and contained in four (or six) books, and included metrical versions of the physical speculations of Epicharmus, and of Euhemerus. Original corn positions were also contained in these saturae, and among them the panegyric on Scipio, unless this was a drama. The satire of Ennius seems to have resembled the more artistic satire of Horace in its record of personal experiences, in the occasional introduction of dialogue, in the use made of fables with a moral application, and in the didactic office which it assumed.
But the chief distinction of Ennius was gained in tragic and narrative poetry. The titles of about 25 of his tragedies are known to us, besides fragments, the longest consisting of about 15 lines. These tragedies were mostly adaptations and transla tions from Euripides. One or two were original dramas dealing with Roman subjects (praetextae) ; thus, the Ambracia treated of the capture of that city by his patron Nobilior, the Sabine of the rape of the Sabine women. The language is generally nervous and vigorous, but flows less smoothly than that of the dialogue of Latin comedy. It shows the same tendency to aim at effect by alliterations, assonances and plays on words. The rudeness of early art is most apparent in the inequality of the metres in which both the dialogue and the "recitative" are composed.
But his greatest work, which was admired by Cicero and Lucre tius and imitated by Virgil, was the Annales, a narrative poem in 18 books, containing the record of the national story from mythi cal times to his own. Although the conception of the work implies a confusion of the provinces of poetry and history, yet it was the instinct of genius to discern in the idea of the national destiny the only possible motive of a Roman epic. The poem (to judge from the fragments, amounting to about 600 lines), although rough, unequal and often prosaic, seems to have breathed the true Roman spirit, and to have contained flashes of poetic imagination —that ingenium which later critics regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of Ennius. Ennius prided himself especially on being the first to form the strong speech of Latium into the mould of the Homeric hexameter in place of the old Saturnian metre. And although it took several generations of poets to beat their music out to the perfection of the Virgilian cadences, yet in the rude adaptation of Ennius was first discovered the secret of what ultimately became one of the grandest organs of literary expression. The inspiring idea of the poem was perfected by Virgil in his Aeneid, which is linked to the ancient tradition by the deliberate and skilful use of phrases of Ennius. The occasional references to Roman history in Lucretius are evidently reminis cences of the Annales. He as well as Cicero speaks of him with pride and affection as "Ennius poster." Of the great Roman writers Horace had least sympathy with him; yet he testifies to the high esteem in which he was held during the Augustan age. Ovid expresses the grounds of that esteem when he characterizes him as A sentence of Quintilian expresses the feeling of reverence for his genius, mixed with distaste for his rude workmanship, with which the Romans of the early empire regarded him : "Let us revere Ennius as we revere the sacred groves, hallowed by antiq uity, whose massive and venerable oak trees are not so remark able for beauty as for the religioi' awe which they inspire." (Inst. or. x. I, 88).
Editions of the fragments by L. Valmaggi (Turin, 1900, with notes), J. Vahlen (Leipzig, i9o3) ; G. Pascoli in Epos (Livorno, 1911) ; L.
Muller in Postgate's Corp. Poet. Lat.; E. M. Steuart (1925) with notes; monographs by L. Muller (1884 and 1893), C. Pascal, sugli scrittori Latini (1900) ; see also Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. iii. ch. 14. On Virgil's indebtedness to Ennius see V. Quae praecipue hausit Vergilius ex Naevio et (1889) ; E. Norden, Ennius and Vergilius (1915) ; de Gubernatis, (Turin, 1915) .