Quorum virtutei belli fortuna pepercit,
Horumdem me libertatei parcere certum est:
Dono ducite, doque volentibus cum magneis Dîs[190].”
Cicero, in his Brutus, says, that Ennius did not treat of the first Punic war, as Nævius had previously written on that subject[191]; to which prior work Ennius thus alludes:—
“Scripsere alii rem,
Versibus, quos olim Faunei, vatesque canebant.”
P. Merula, however, who edited the fragments of Ennius, is of opinion, that this passage of Cicero can only mean that he had not entered into much detail of its events, as he finds several lines in the seventh book, which, he thinks, evidently apply to the first Carthaginian war, particularly the description of naval preparations, and the building of the first fleet with which the Carthaginians were attacked by the Romans. In some of the editions of Ennius, the character of the friend and military adviser of Servilius, generally supposed to be intended as a portrait of the poet himself[192], is ranged under the seventh book:—
“Hocce locutus vocat, quicum bene sæpe libenter
Mensam, sermonesque suos, rerumque suarum
Comiter impertit; magna quum lapsa dies jam