ENNIUS, Q., a celebrated poet of Rhudiae, in Calabria, a province of the south of Italy, to the east of Tarentum, born 239 before Christ, in the consulship of Q. Valerius Falto and C. Mamilius Turrinus. Descended from one of the petty princes who ruled over this portion of Italy, he had inherited nothing from them except the barren nobility of blood. His early years, if not spent in the camp, must at least have been disturbed by rumours of war and threatened invasion. The inroad of Hannibal, 218 before Christ, and the fearful struggle which ensued between the two powerful nations of Rome and Carthage, could scarcely have taken place without extending its shock to the most remote villages of Italy. In the earlier period of the contest, we are ignorant of the side to which Ennius adhered; but we find him, in 204 before Christ, when he was thirty-five years of age, serving as a soldier in Sardinia, with such distinction as to attract the notice of Cato the elder, at that time commander of the island. By him he was brought to Rome, where his high character and literary attainments introduced him to the acquaintance of the most distinguished characters of that city. Scipio Africanus the elder became his intimate friend. At Rome he seems to have employed his time in extending the knowledge of the Greek language amongst the younger branches of the nobility. Even Cato did not disdain to become his pupil; and the example which he thus set no doubt tended much to divert the minds of his countrymen towards pursuits of a more refined and intellectual character than had hitherto engaged their attention. His genius procured him the freedom of the city, an honour which had not yet become worthless from an indiscriminate distinction. He passed into Aetolia, in 183 b. c., with the consul Fulvius, to whose care the war in that country was intrusted; and he no doubt seized this opportunity of visiting the various states of Greece. He seems, however, to have returned to Rome, where he died of the gout in 169 b. c., in the seventieth year of his age. Scipio, before he died, had expressed a wish that their bodies should rest in the same grave; and we know that a statue was erected to his honour on the tomb of the Scipios.

Ennius must be considered as the father of Roman epic poetry; and the eminent services which he performed for the literature of Rome were fully appreciated by ancient writers. Throughout his works there ran a strain of noble and passionate feeling. The language, though sometimes rough and unpolished, was full of power, and even of sublimity. The structure of the verse was more regular, from the introduction of hexameters, than that in which his predecessors had sung. The principal work, from which we have numerous fragments, was the Annales, an epie poem in eighteen books, in which Ennius sang the ι history of Rome, from its foundation till his own times. In another work, written in catalectic tetrameter, he celebrated the deeds of the elder Scipio. Besides, he had composed satires and other minor poems, which seem, however, to have been rather translations from the Greek writers: Edesphagetica i or Phagetica, in hexameters, a gastronomie poem after the Greek of Arehestratus; several epigrams; Epicharmus, a didactic poem on the nature of things, in trocheesand hexameters, from the Greek of Epicharmus; Protrepticus, of a moral nature; Preecepta, perhaps the same as the preceding; Asotus, or Sotadicus ; also a Latin prose translation of the well-known Greek work of Euhemerus on the Gods; and perhaps in prose, a work on the Rape of the Sabines.
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His tragedies seem to have been generally composed in imitation of the Greek dramatic writers, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and others. Those whose titles have been preserved to us are the following: Medea, Iphigenia (after Euripides), Achilles, Ajax (after Sophocles), Telamon, Hectoris Lustra, Alexander, Andromache, Hecuba, Eumenides (after Aeschylus), Dulorestes, Erechtheus, Cres-phon, Athamas, Andromeda, Telephas, Thyestes, Phoenix, Melanippa, Alemaeon, Cressae, Alcestis, Nemea, Ilione or Polydorus, and Antiope. The fragments of several of his comedies which have been preserved are, Amphithraso, Ambracia, Pancratiastes. The fragments of Ennius were published by Columna (at Naples 1590), and again in the Corpus Poetarum by Hesselius (4to, Amstel. 1707). The fragments of the Annals were collected and published by P.Merula(Lugdun. Bat. 1595),and by Spangenberg (Leipsic, 1825). The tragedy of Medea was published in part, with a selection of other fragments, and a learned commentary, by H. Μ. Plauck (Hanover, 1807, 4to).