Telephus is probably taken from a lost play of Euripides, ridiculed by Aristophanes in his Acharnenses, from a scene of which it would seem that Telephus had appeared on the stage in tattered garments. The passages of the Latin play which remain, exhibit Telephus as an exile from his kingdom, wandering about in ragged habiliments. The lines of Horace, in his Art of Poetry, (a work which is devoted to the subject of the Roman drama,) are probably in allusion to this tragedy:
“Telephus et Peleus, cum pauper et exsul, uterque
Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba.”
Thyestes.—The loose and familiar numbers in which the tragedy of Telephus was written, were by no means suitable to the atrocious subject of the Supper of Thyestes. Ennius accordingly has been censured by Cicero, in a passage of his Orator, for employing them in this drama.—“Similia sunt quædam apud nostros; velut illa in Thyeste,
‘Quemnam te esse dicam! qui tarda in senectute,’
Et quæ sequuntur: quæ, nisi cum tibicen accesserit, orationi sunt solutæ simillima.” There can therefore be little doubt that the passage in Horace’s Art of Poetry, in which a tragedy on the subject of Thyestes is blamed as flat and prosaic, and hardly rising above the level of ordinary conversation in comedy, alluded to the work of Ennius—
“Indignatur item privatis, ac prope socco
Dignis carminibus, narrari cœna Thyestæ.”
Yet this spiritless tragedy, was very popular in Rome, and continued to be frequently represented, till Varius treated the same subject in a manner, as we are informed by Quintilian, equal to the Greeks[178].
It thus appears that Ennius has little claim to originality or invention as a tragic author. Perhaps it may seem remarkable, that a poet of his powerful genius did not rather write new plays, than copy servilely from the Greeks. But nothing is ever invented where borrowing will as well serve the purpose. Rome had few artists, in consequence of the facility with which the finest specimens of the arts were procured by plundering the towns of Sicily and Greece. Now, at the period in which Ennius flourished, the productions of Grecian literature were almost as new to the Romans as the most perfectly original compositions. Thus, the dramatic works of Ennius were possessed of equal novelty for his audience as if wholly his own; while a great deal of trouble was saved to himself. The example, however, was unfortunate, as it communicated to Roman literature a character of servility, and of imitation, or rather of translation, from the Greek, which so completely pervaded it, that succeeding poets were most faultless when they copied most closely, and at length, when they abandoned the guides whom they had so long followed, they fell into declamation and bombast. Probably, had the compositions of [pg 77]Ennius been original, they would have been less perfect, than by being thus imitated, or nearly translated, from the masterpieces of Greece. But the literature of his country might ultimately have attained a higher eminence. The imitative productions of Ennius may be likened to those trees which are transplanted when far advanced in growth. Much at first appears to have been gained; but it is certain, that he who sets the seedling is more useful than the transplanter, and that, while the trees removed from their native soil lose their original beauty and luxuriance without increase in magnitude, the seedling swells in its parent earth to immensity of size—fresh, blooming, and verdant in youth, vigorous in maturity, and venerable in old age.