[73] Mommsen.
[74] 'Inventore minor.'—Horace.
[75] Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive of the greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to Roman comedy and to Roman satire:—
[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.'
[77] Brutus, 20.
[78] De Fin. i. 2.
[79] Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:—
[80] Several of these fragments will be examined later.
[81] Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.
[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.
[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.'
[84] Acad. ii. 28.
[85] Gellius, xvii. 21.
[86] He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas. This statement he is supposed to have derived from the Cypria.
[87] Cicero, Arch. 9.
[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.'
[89] Cic. De Off. i. 12.
[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.'
[91] 'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were wont to stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?'
[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:—
Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:—
[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.'
[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.
[96] Cf. Iliad, xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen. vi. 179:—
[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.'
[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.'
[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.'
[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."'
[101] Aen. ii. 270.
[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.'
[103] E.g. passages such as the following:—
[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.'
[105] 'But they rise superior in spirit, and spurn the first sharp wounds of war.'
[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.'
[107] 'Such is my nature. Enmity and friendship equally I bear stamped on my forehead.'
[108] 'Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit a communi ordine verborum.'—Orator, 11.
[109] Cicero, Brutus, 15; Aulus Gellius, xii. 2.
[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.'
[111] Compare his account of the Tribune in the Istrian war:
[112] Cf. 'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,' etc.
[113] Cf.
also
[114] 'Egregie cordatus homo catus Aeliu' Sextus.'
[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.'
[116] iii. 1059-67.
[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.'
[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.'
[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.
[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.
[121] The name Romais given to the Annals in a later age indicates the appreciation of this national inspiration.