Such, then, we may suppose, was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy. But alas for any real personal knowledge which we may gain of it, those merry, clumsy jests, those rustic songs, are vanished with the simple sun-loving race which produced them. The olive orchards still wave gray-green upon the sunny slopes, the vineyards still cling to every hillside and nestle in every valley; but the ancient peasantry who once called this land their home, whose simple annals old Cato loved to tell, and who could have given us material for precious volumes upon the folk-lore and customs of their times, have gone, and left scarcely a trace of their rude, unlettered literature.
The first tangible literary link that binds us to the old Roman satire is found in the poet Ennius, who flourished about two hundred years before Christ. The story of his life is outlined elsewhere in this book. His satires seem to have been a sort of literary miscellany which included such of his writings as could not conveniently be classified elsewhere.
The merest handful of fragments of these satires remains, although there is good ground for believing that there were six books of these. No adequate judgment can therefore be formed as to their character. It can with safety be said, however, that they were in a sense the connecting link between the early satire and the literary satire of the modern type. As has been said above, they were a literary miscellany or medley, and as such contain some salient features of their predecessors; and it is highly probable that they contained attacks upon the vices and follies of the time, in which respect they looked forward to a more complete development in Lucilian satire.
A most interesting fragment of the Epicharmus describes the nature of the gods according to the philosophy of Ennius:
And that is he whom we call Jove, whom Grecians call
The atmosphere: who in one person is the wind and clouds, then rain,
And after, freezing hail; and once again, thin air.
For this, those things are Jove considered which I name to you,
Since by these elements do men and cities, beasts.
And all things else exist.
There was a satire by Ennius, as Quintilian tells us, containing a dialogue between Life and Death; but of this we have not a remnant. He also introduced the fables of Æsop into his writings. The following is the moral which he deduces from the story of the lark and the farmers—a moral which Aulus Gellius assures us that it would be worth our while to take well to heart. It may be freely translated as follows:
Now list to this warning, give diligent heed,
Whether seeking for pleasure or pelf:
Don't wait for your neighbors to help in your need,
But just go and do it yourself!
Surely Miles Standish might have gained from his Ennius, as well as from his Cæsar, that famous motto:
If you wish a thing well done,
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!
We may leave our present notice of Ennius with a glance at the epitaph which he wrote for himself. It is classed with his epigrams, but it may properly be considered in connection with the medley of his satires. In it he claims that unsubstantial immortality of remembrance and of mention among men which is even now, as we write and read, being vouchsafed to him.