Studies in the Poetry of Italy, Part I. Roman

by Frank Justus Miller

The whole seems to have been written in an exceedingly simple and direct style, without much attempt at poetic embellishment. The poet prided himself upon his unadulterated Latinity, and protested against the strong Hellenizing tendency that was setting in. His epitaph (Roman writers had a weakness for composing their own epitaphs) may seem a bit over-laudatory of self from our modest modern standpoint, but it is quite in keeping with the outspoken style of his time, and is very interesting in the claim that he makes to be the mouthpiece and perhaps the last disciple of the native Italian muses (Camenæ). Here is his epitaph:

If it were meet that th' immortals' tears should fall on mortal clay,
Then would our native Muses weep for this our Nævius;
For truly, since to Death's great garner he was gathered in,
Our Romans born have clean forgot to speak their mother tongue.

2. QUINTUS ENNIUS

The Hellenizing tendency of which Nævius complains was setting in strongly already during his life at Rome. But it was especially the influence of his literary successor, an influence still more strongly tending toward Greek forms and motives, which the unfortunate Nævius mourned from his place of exile and which gave added bitterness to the lament which the sturdy old Roman has left us in his epitaph.

This literary successor was the poet Quintus Ennius, who may almost be said to have met Nævius at the gates of Rome, since he arrived at Rome at about the time when Nævius went into banishment. Ennius was not a Roman citizen at this time, having been born and reared down in the extreme heel of Italy, at Rudiæ in Calabria, a section which had for many generations been under Greek influence. He was of good local family, familiar with the rough Oscan speech of his native village, with the polished Greek of neighboring Tarentum, where he was probably at school, and with the Roman tongue, which had become the official language of his district after Rome had pushed her conquests to the limits of Italy. He was wont to say of himself that he had three hearts—Oscan, Latin, and Greek; and certainly by the circumstances of his birth and education he was a good representative of the threefold national influences which were rapidly converging.

Ennius was born in 239 B. C., shortly after the close of the First Punic War; but he comes first into notice as a centurion in the Roman army in Sardinia during the Second Punic War. Here Cato, while acting as quæstor in the island, found him, and no doubt attracted by the sturdy scholarly soldier, took him to Rome in 204 in his own train. The poet afterward accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior on that general's expedition to Ætolia, a privilege which he richly repaid later by immortalizing in verse the Ætolian campaign. He obtained Roman citizenship in 184 through the instrumentality of the son of Fulvius. He was most fortunate, moreover, in enjoying the friendship of the great Scipio, with whom he lived on the most intimate terms. For himself, he lived always at Rome in humble fashion on a slope of the Aventine Hill, and gained a modest living by teaching Greek to the youths of Rome. There is a tradition not very trustworthy that it was of him that Cato himself "learned Greek at eighty."

That Ennius was fitted to be a confidential friend to great men of affairs we may well believe if, as Aulus Gellius, who has preserved the passage, would have us understand, the following picture was intended by the poet as a self-portraiture. The passage is from the seventh book of the "Annals," and has a setting of its own, but may well represent the familiar intercourse of the poet with Marcus Fulvius or with Scipio. If this is indeed a portrait, it is a passage of great value, for it pictures the character in great detail.

So having spoken, he called for a man with whom often and gladly
Table he shared, and talk, and all his burden of duties,
When with debate all day on important affairs he was wearied,
Whether perchance in the Forum wide, or the reverend Senate;
One with whom he could frankly speak of his serious matters,—
Trifles also, and jests,—could pour out freely together
Pleasant or bitter words, and know they were uttered in safety.
Many the joys and the griefs he had shared, whether public or
secret!
This was a man in whom no impulse prompted to evil,
Whether of folly or malice; a scholarly man and a loyal,
Graceful, ready of speech, with his own contented and happy;
Tactful, speaking in season, yet courteous, never loquacious.
Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime
Made him master of earlier customs as well as of newer.
Versed in the laws was he of the ancients, men or immortals.
Wisely he knew both when he should talk and when to be silent.
So unto him Servilius spoke in the midst of the fighting....
Lawton.

Ennius died in 169 B. C., and tradition says that his bust was placed in the tomb of the family of his great patron, whereby the poet-soldier and the soldier-statesman were mutually honored. Upon that sarcophagus of Scipio surmounted by the poet's bust might well have been inscribed the saying of Sellar: "Ennius was in letters what Scipio was in action—the most vital representative of his epoch."