The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form, had thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating both of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded by a living and popular idea,—faith in the destiny of Rome. It was through the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It is the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial epics of refined and civilised eras,—such poems, for instance, as the Thebais of Statius, or the Argonautics of Valerius Flaccus,—in general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable conditions than the Pharsalia of Lucan, or the Punic Wars of Silius Italicus—in being the work of an age to which the past had come down as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The imagination of the poet employs itself more happily and legitimately in filling up or modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies and feelings of successive generations, than in venturing to recast the facts that stand out prominently in the actual march of human affairs. By treating of contemporary events, the poem must have receded still further from the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later fragments of the work, while written with something of the minute and literal fidelity of a chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic inspiration. They prove that the author was no unconcerned spectator and reporter of the events going on around him, but that his imagination was fired and his sympathies keenly interested by whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live in the memory of the world.
There must have been many drawbacks to the popularity of the poem in a more critical time, when strong enthusiasm and forcible conception fail to interest, unless they are combined with the harmonious execution of a work of art. Even from the extant fragments the rude proportions and the unwieldy mass of the original work may be inferred. It is still possible to note the bare, annalistic style of many passages which sink below the level of dignified prose, the barbarisms of taste shown by a fondness for alliterative lines and plays upon words, the more common faults of careless haste and redundance of expression, and of a rugged and irregular cadence. There must have been some peculiar excellencies or adaptation to the Roman taste, through which, in spite of these defects, the popularity of the poem was sustained far into the times of the Empire. This late popularity may have been due in part to antiquarian zeal or affectation, but some degree of it, as well as the favour of the age in which the poem was written, must have been founded on more substantial grounds. Apart from other literary interest, this poem first drew forth and established, for the contemplation of after times, the ideal latent in the national mind. The patriotic tones of Virgil have the same kind of ring as these in the older poet—
Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis;
and this other line which Cicero compared to the utterance of an oracle—
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.
While in his other works Ennius was the teacher of an alien culture to his countrymen, in his Annals he represented them. He set before them an image of what was most real in themselves;—an image combining the strength and commanding features of his own time, with the proud memories and traditional traits of the past. As it is by sympathy with what is most vital and of deepest meaning in actual experience that a great poet forms his ideal of what transcends experience, so it is by a vivid apprehension of the present, that he is able to re-animate the past. Dante and Milton gained their vision of other worlds through their intense feeling of the spiritual meaning of this life; and, in another sphere of art, Scott was enabled to immortalise the romance and humour of past ages, partly through the chivalrous and adventurous spirit which he inherited from them, partly through the strong interest and enjoyment with which he entered into the actual life and pursuits of his contemporaries. It is in ages of transition, such as were the ages of Sophocles, of Shakspeare, and of Scott, in which the traditions of the past seem to blend with and colour the activity and enjoyment of a new time in which great issues are involved, that representative works of genius are produced. Living in such an era, deeply moved by all the memories, the hopes, and the impulses which acted upon his contemporaries, living his own life happily and vigorously in the chief centre of the world's activity, Ennius was enabled to gather the life of centuries into one representation, and to tell the story of Rome, if without the accomplished art, yet with something of the native force and spirit of early Greece; to fix in language the patriotic traditions which had hitherto been kept alive by the statues, monuments, and commemorative ceremonies of earlier times; to uphold the standard of national character with a fervent enthusiasm; and to address the understanding of his contemporaries with a practical wisdom like their own, and a large knowledge both of 'books and men:'—
Vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.