Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit.
Quem super ingens
Porta tonat caeli.
Spiritus austri imbricitor. Naves velivolae, etc. etc.
These and similar phrases, some of which have already been quoted, imply poetical creativeness. They tend to justify the estimate of the genius of Ennius, indicated in the language of high admiration applied to him by Lucretius,—
Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno
Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret;[99]
and in the signs of the careful study of the Annals which may be traced in the elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid.
The longest specimen of narrative vivified by poetical feeling, from the hand of Ennius, is the passage in which the vestal Ilia relates to her sister the dream that portended her great and strange destiny:—