Postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancu' reliquit
is familiar from its reappearance in one of the most impressive passages of Lucretius.
The fourth and fifth books contained the history of the State from the establishment of the Republic till just before the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus. One short fragment is taken from the night attack of the Gauls upon the Capitol. The sixth book was devoted to the war with Pyrrhus; the seventh, eighth, and ninth, to the First and Second Punic Wars. In the fragments of the sixth are found a few lines of the speeches of Pyrrhus, and of Appius Claudius Caecus. In the account of the First Punic War, the disparaging allusion to Naevius occurs—
Scripsêre alii rem, etc.
It is mentioned by Cicero that Ennius borrowed much from the work of Naevius; and also that he passed over (reliquisse) the First Punic War, as it had been treated by his predecessor. Several fragments however must certainly refer to this war; but it is probable that that part of the subject was treated more cursorily than either the war with Pyrrhus, or the later wars. The passage in which the poet is supposed to have painted his own character, under the form of a friend of Servilius Geminus, occurred in the seventh book. Two well-known passages have been preserved from the ninth book—viz. that characterising the 'sweet-speaking' orator, M. Cornelius Cethegus—
Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla,
and the lines in honour of Q. Fabius Maximus,
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, etc.
The tenth and eleventh books, beginning with a new invocation to the muse—
Insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator