But whatever may have been the merits of the works of Ennius, of which we are now but incompetent judges, they were at least sufficiently various. Epic, dramatic, satiric, and didactic poetry, were all successively attempted by him; and we also learn that he exercised himself in lighter sorts of verse, as the epigram and acrostic[218]. For this novelty and exuberance it is not difficult to account. The fountains of Greek literature, as yet untasted in Latium, were to him inexhaustible sources. He stood in very different circumstances from those Greek bards who had to rely solely on their own genius, or from his successors in Latin poetry, who wrote after the best productions of Greece had become familiar to the Romans. He was placed in a situation in which he could enjoy all the popularity and applause due to originality, without undergoing the labour of invention, and might rapidly run with success through every mode of the lyre, without possessing incredible diversity of genius.
The above criticisms apply to the poetical productions of Ennius; but the most curious point connected with his literary history is his prose translation of the celebrated work of Euhemerus, entitled, Ἱερα Αναγραφη. Euhemerus is generally supposed to have been an inhabitant of Messene, a city of Peloponnesus. Being sent, as he represented, on a voyage of discovery by Cassander, King of Macedon, he came to an island called Panchaia, in the capital of which, Panara, he found a temple of the Tryphilian Jupiter, where stood a column inscribed with a register of the births and deaths of many of the gods. Among these, he specified Uranus, his sons Pan and Saturn, and his daughters Rhea and Ceres; as also Jupiter, Juno, and Neptune, who were the offspring of Saturn. Ac[pg 95]cordingly, the design of Euhemerus was to show, by investigating their actions, and recording the places of their births and burials, that the mythological deities were mere mortal men, raised to the rank of gods on account of the benefits which they had conferred on mankind,—a system which, according to Meiners and Warburton, formed the grand secret revealed at the initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries[219]. The translation by Ennius, as well as the original work, is lost; but many particulars concerning Euhemerus, and the object of his history, are mentioned in a fragment of Diodorus Siculus, preserved by Eusebius. Some passages have also been saved by St. Augustine; and long quotations, have been made by Lactantius, in his treatise De Falsa Religione. These, so far as they extend, may be regarded as the truest and purest sources of mythological history, though not much followed in our modern Pantheons.
Plutarch, who was associated to the priesthood, and all who were interested in the support of the vulgar creed, maintained, that the whole work of Euhemerus, with his voyage to Panchaia, was an impudent fiction; and, in particular, it was urged, that no one except Euhemerus had ever seen or heard of the land of Panchaia[220]: that the Panchaia Tellus had indeed been described in a flowery and poetical style, both by Diodorus Siculus and Virgil—
“Totaque thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis[221].”
but not in such a manner as to determine its geographical position.
The truth, however, of the relation contained in the work of Euhemerus, has been vindicated by modern writers; who have attempted to prove that Panchaia was an island of the Red Sea, which Euhemerus had actually visited in the course of his voyage[222]. But whether Euhemerus merely recorded what he had seen, or whether the whole book was a device and contrivance of his own, it seems highly probable that the translation of Ennius gave rise to the belief of many Roman philosophers, who maintained, or insinuated, their conviction of the mortality of the gods, and whose writings have been so frequently appealed to by Farmer, in his able disquisition on the prevalence of the Worship of Human Spirits.
It is clear, that notwithstanding their observance of prodigies and religious ceremonies, there prevailed a considerable spirit of free-thinking among the Romans in the age of Ennius. [pg 96]This is apparent, not merely from his translation of Euhemerus, and definition of the nature of Jupiter, in his Epicharmus, but from various passages in dramas adapted for public representation, which deride the superstitions of augurs and soothsayers, as well as the false ideas entertained of the worshipped divinities. Polybius, too, who flourished shortly after Ennius, speaks of the fear of the gods, and the inventions of augury, merely as an excellent political engine, at the same time that he reprehends the rashness and absurdity of those who were endeavouring to extirpate such useful opinions[223].
The dramatic career which had been commenced by Livius Andronicus and Ennius, was most successfully prosecuted by