Filled with a desire to refine the taste of his countrymen, Ennius drew upon Euripides for their benefit. The titles of twenty-five of his tragedies survive; but the fragments that are preserved of these, as well as of several comedies, show them to be mere copies of Greek pieces. Though gifted with poetical genius and possessed of remarkable learning, Ennius found imitation easier than original composition.
In the following fragment from one of his plays, Ennius denies the providence of God:—
“Yes! there are gods; but they no thought bestow
On human deeds, on mortal bliss or woe;
Else would such ills our wretched race assail?
Would the good suffer? Would the bad prevail?”
It is not, however, as a dramatic poet that Ennius has won distinction. His renown is based on his “Annals,” or “Metrical Chronicles,” of all their poems the favorite with the Romans, in whose minds they were associated with the heroic achievements they commemorated. The “Annals” must be reserved for the present, while we view the progress of comedy in the works of Plautus and Terence.
Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 B.C.), a contemporary of Ennius, was the first great comic poet of Rome. A boorish country-boy, he left his home among the mountains of Umbria to seek his fortune in the capital, and was at first quite successful as a stage-carpenter and decorator. The sobriquet Plautus, by which he is universally known, was significant of his large flat feet; nor do his personal peculiarities generally, judging from a self-painted portrait in one of his comedies, appear to have been of a very prepossessing type:—
“A red-haired man, with round protuberant stomach,
Legs with stout calves, and of a swart complexion: