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:—

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,—

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:—

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—

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—

Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the Aeneid—the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas⁵⁵—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—

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—

and also in this fragment—

The enumeration of the great warlike races in the line

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 environment⁵⁷. 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—

and again in the following—

and in the epithet which Cicero quotes as applied to cities—

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:—

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—

and in this strong and scornful triumph over natural sorrow, from the Telamon:—

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:—

There is no subtlety nor rhetorical point in the expression of his serious convictions. The very style of the tragedies, which, as Cicero says⁶², '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 Gellius⁶³, though ridiculed by the purism of Seneca:—

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 daring⁶⁵: the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and saves the State⁶⁶, 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 silent⁶⁷; the sagacity which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to turn them to the best account⁶⁸.

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—

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—

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

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—

Thus too the pretensions and the ignorance of astrologers are exposed in a line of one of the dramas—

And the following passage may be quoted as applicable to charlatans of every kind, in every age and country—

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—

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, when there was a strong revival of admiration for the older literature of Rome⁷². 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 religionem⁷³,' 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 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 feeling which make the epic poem of Virgil the truest representation of Roman sentiment which has come down to modern times. By Ovid he is characterised as—

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—

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.

¹   Parco admodum sumptu contentus et unius ancillae ministerio.

²   xvii. 17.

³   The line—

which is quoted by Cicero in a letter to Atticus, and which Vahlen attributed to Ennius, is now generally assigned to Cicero himself.

⁴   Livy xxxviii. 17.

⁵   '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. 834-7.

⁶   Mommsen, book iii. ch. 5.

⁷   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.

⁸   Amphit. 52-3—

⁹   Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, etc.

¹⁰   De Senectute, 5.

¹¹   De Oratore, ii. 68.

¹²   '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.

¹³   '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.'

¹⁴   Σκιπίωνα γὰρ ᾄδων καὶ ἐπὶ μέγα τὸν ἄνδρα ἐχᾶραι βουλόμενος φησὶ μόνον ἂν Ὅμηρον ἐπαξίους ἐπαίνους εἰπεῖν Σκιπίωνος.—Aelian, as quoted by Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258. Ed. Gaisford. Cf. Vahlen.

¹⁵   'Here is he laid, to whom no one, either countryman or enemy, has been able to pay a due meed for his services.'

¹⁶   '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!'

¹⁷   '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.'

¹⁸   '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.'

¹⁹   'Hail, poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy fiery verse from thy inmost marrow.'

²⁰   '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.'

²¹   '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.'

²²  

²³   Vahlen.

²⁴   Horace, Sat. ii. 4.

²⁵   '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.)

²⁶   '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.'

²⁷   Mommsen.

²⁸   'Inventore minor.'—Horace.

²⁹   Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive of the greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to Roman comedy and to Roman satire:—

³⁰   The meaning of the passage amounts to no more than this, that the man who tries to 'sell' another, and fails, is himself 'sold.'

³¹   Brutus, 20.

³²   De Fin. i. 2.

³³   Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:—

³⁴   Several of these fragments will be examined later.

³⁵   Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.

³⁶   '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 its matter, language, and music.'—Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.

³⁷   '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.'

³⁸   Acad. ii. 28.

³⁹   Gellius, xvii. 21.

⁴⁰   He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas. This statement he is supposed to have derived from the Cypria.

⁴¹   Cicero, Arch. 9.

⁴²   '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. They challenge not their adversaries to contend by forms of law, but claim their rights by the sword, and aim at sovereign power, and make their way by sheer force.'

⁴³   Cic. De Off. i. 12.

⁴⁴   '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.'

⁴⁵   'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were wont to stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?'

⁴⁶   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:—

Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:—

⁴⁷   '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.'

⁴⁸  

⁴⁹   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.

⁵⁰   Cf. Iliad xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen. vi. 179:—