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 of great issues, 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.
The manifest defects, as well as the peculiar power of the poem, show how widely it departed from the standard of the Greek epic which it professed to imitate. Its vast dimensions and solid structure are proofs of that capacity of long labour and concentrated interest on one great object, which was the secret of Roman success in other spheres of action. So large a mass of materials held in union only by a pervading national enthusiasm would have been utterly repugnant to Greek taste, intolerant above all things of monotony, and most exacting in its demands of artistic unity and completeness. The fragments of the poem give no idea of careful finish; they produce the impression of massiveness and energy, strength and uniformity of structure, unaccompanied by beauty, grace, or symmetry. The creation of an untutored age may be recognised in the rudeness of design,—of a Roman mind in the national spirit, the colossal proportions, and the strong workmanship of the poem.
The originality of the Roman epic will be still more apparent if we compare the fragments of the Annals, in some points of detail, with the complete works of the poet, whom Ennius regarded as his prototype. There was, in the first place, a marked difference between Homer and the Roman poet in their modes of representing human life and character. The personages of the Iliad and of the Odyssey are living and forcible types of individual character. In Achilles, in Hector, and in Odysseus,—in Helen, Andromache, and Nausicaa, we recognise embodiments the most real, yet the most transcendent, of the grandeur, the heroism, the courage, and strong affection of manhood, and of the grace, the gentleness, and the sweet vivacity of woman. The work of Ennius, on the other hand, instead of presenting varied types of human nature, appears to have unfolded a long gallery of national portraits. The fragments of the poem still afford glimpses of the 'good Ancus'; 'of the man of the great heart, the wise Aelius Sextus'; 'of the sweet speaking orator,' Cethegus, 'the marrow of persuasion.' The stamp of magnanimous fortitude is impressed on the fragmentary words of Appius Claudius Caecus; and sagacity and resolution are depicted in the lines which have handed down the fame of Fabius Maximus. This idea of the poem, as unfolding the heroes of Roman story in regular series, may be gathered also from the language of Cicero: 'Cato, the ancestor of our present Cato, is extolled by him to the skies; the honour of the Roman people is thereby enhanced: finally all those Maximi, Fulvii, Marcelli, are celebrated with a glory in which we all participate[41].' This portraiture of the kings and heroes of the early time, of the orators, soldiers, and statesmen of the Republic, could not have exhibited the variety, the energy, the passion, and all the complex human attributes of Homer's personages. The men who stand prominently out in the annals of Rome were of a more uniform type. They were men of one common aim,—the advancement of Rome; animated with one sentiment,—devotion to the State. All that was purely personal in them seems merged in the traditional pictures which express only the fortitude, dignity, and sagacity of the Republic.
Ennius also followed Homer in introducing the element of supernatural agency into his poem. The action of the Annals, as well as of the Iliad, was made partially dependent on a divine interference with human affairs, though exercised less directly, and, as it were, from a greater distance. Yet how great is the difference between the life-like representation of the eager, capricious, and passionate deities of Homer's Olympus and that outline which may still be traced in Ennius, and which is seen filled up in Virgil and Horace, of the gods assembled, like a grave council of state, to deliberate on the destiny of Rome. In one fragment, containing the familiar line,—
Unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli
Templa,—
they are introduced as debating, 'tectis bipatentibus,' on the admission of Romulus into heaven. Again, in the account of the Second Punic War, Jupiter is introduced as promising to the Romans the destruction of Carthage; and Juno abandons her resentment against the descendants of the Trojans,—
Romanis coepit Juno placata favere.