(2) WORKS.
1. Tragedies.—Of those founded on mythology we have fragments of twenty-two, eight at least of which were borrowed from Euripides. The Auct. ad Herenn. ii. 34, quotes nine lines which are a literal translation of the beginning of the Medea. The date of the Thyestes, B.C. 169, is the only one known (Cic. Brut. 78, quoted [p. 28]). Besides these, Ennius probably wrote a praetexta on ‘the Rape of the Sabines’; and his Ambracia is probably a praetexta on the capture of the town by M. Fulvius Nobilior in B.C. 189 (L. Müller includes it in the Saturae).
2. Comedies.—There are very slight fragments of the Cupuncula and the Pancratiastes.
3. Saturae.—A miscellaneous collection of poems.
Porphyr. ad Hor. Sat. i. 10, 47, ‘Ennius quattuor libros saturarum reliquit.’
The reference in Hor. Sat. i. 10, 66,
‘Quam rudis et Graecis intacti carminis auctor,’
is not to Ennius, as some have supposed, but to the inventor of satura, whoever he may have been.
The Saturae include (a) Scipio, probably a short epic. It was mostly written in trochaic septenarii. (b) Epicharmus (in trochaic tetrameters), dealing with Pythagoreanism in the department of physics. (c) Euhemerus or Sacra Historia, modelled on Euhemerus’ ἱερὰ ἀναγραφή,[16] the doctrines of which were applied to the religion of Rome.
Cic. N.D. i. 119, ‘Euhemerus, quem noster et interpretatus et secutus est praeter ceteros Ennius.’