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Quintus Ennius (239 - c. 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent

"That author is repeatedly termed a Calabrian (Her. Carm. 4.8; Ovid. A. A. 3.409; Sil. Ital. l. c.; Acron, ad Hor. l. c.)". Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant.


Ennius was born at Rudiae, a Messapian town near Leccemarker. Here the Messapian, Greek, Oscan, and Latin languages were in contact with one another.

Ennius continued the nascent literary tradition by writing praetextae, tragedies, and palliatae, as well as his most famous work, a historic epic called the Annales. Other minor works include the Epicharmus, the Euhemerus, the Hedyphagetica, and Saturae.

The Epicharmus presented an account of the gods and the physical operations of the universe. In it, the poet dreamed he had been transported after death to some place of heavenly enlightenment.

The Euhemerus presented a theological doctrine of a vastly different type in a mock-simple prose style modelled on the Greek of Euhemerus of Messene and several other theological writers. According to this doctrine, the gods of Olympusmarker were not supernatural powers still actively intervening in the affairs of men, but great generals, statesmen and inventors of olden times commemorated after death in extraordinary ways.

The Hedyphagetica took much of its substance from the gastronomical epic of Archestratus of Gela. The eleven extant hexameters have prosodical features avoided in the more serious Annales.

The remains of six books of Saturae show a considerable variety of metres. There are signs that Ennius varied the metre sometimes even within a composition. A frequent theme was the social life of Ennius himself and his upper-class Roman friends and their intellectual conversation.

The Annals was an epic poem in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troymarker in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic poetry, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry. The Annals became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid. About 600 lines survive. A copy of the work is among the Latin rolls of the Herculaneummarker library, the last 2 acts were recently read.

Ennius was said to have considered himself a reincarnation of Homer.


"The idle mind knows not what it wants."

"Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur." - (quoted by Cicero, Laelius 17.64)Translation: "A sure friend shows himself in an unsure time"

"Good deeds, if badly placed, become bad deeds." - quoted by Cicero in "On Duties (part 2)"


Further reading

  • Brooks, R A: Ennius and Roman Tragedy (1981)
  • Evans, R L S: Ennius in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Latin Writers. Ed.Ward Briggs. Vol. 211, 1999.
  • Jocelyn, H D:
- The Tragedies of Ennius (1967)

- "The Poems of Quintus Ennius", in H. Temporini (ed.) ANRW I.2 (1972), 987-1026
  • Skutsch, O: The Annals of Quintus Ennius (1985)

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