D

ENNIUS

(239-169 B. C.)

BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON

SOUBTLESS every human race-surely every Aryan clan - has felt, and in some measure gratified, the need of lyric utterance, in joy, in grief, and in wrath. The marriage song, the funeral chant, the banqueters' catch, the warriors' march, the hymn of petition and of thanksgiving - these must have been heard even in early Latium. Yet this Latin peasant soldier was surely as unimaginative a type of man as ever rose to the surface of selfconscious civilized life. His folk-song, like his folk-lore generally, must have been heavy, crude, monotonous, clinging close to the soil. Macaulay's Lays still stir the boyish heart, though Matthew Arnold did repeat, with uncharacteristic severity, that he who enjoyed the barbaric clash of their doggerel could never hope to appreciate true poetry at all! But good or bad, they are pure Macaulayese. No audible strain has come down, even of those funeral ballads and festival lays whose former existence is merely asserted, without illustration, by Cato and by Varro.

At the threshold of Hellenic literature stand the two epics whose imaginative splendor is still unrivaled. The first figure in Roman letters, seven centuries later, is a Greek slave, or freedman, Livius Andronicus, translating into barbarous Saturnian verse the Iliad and Odyssey, and rendering almost as crudely many a famous tragedy. Next Nævius sang, in those same rough Saturnians, the victory of Rome in the Punic wars. Joel Barlow's Columbiad' and "meek drab-skirted» Ellwood's 'Davideis' might have made room between them for this martial chant, if it had survived. Then Plautus, funmaker for the Roman populace, "turned barbarously" into the vulgar speech plays good and bad, of the Middle and New Attic Comedy. The more serious of these dramas, like the 'Captivi,' seem like a charcoal reproduction upon a barn door of some delicate line engraving, whose loss we must still regret. Yet much of the real fun in Plautus is Roman, and doubtless his own. Moreover, he or his Greek masters- probably both - knew how to make a comedy go in one unpausing rush of dramatic action, from the lowering to the raising of the curtain. But to true creative literature these versions of Menander and Philemon bear about the same relation as would

adaptations of Sardou and Dumas, with local allusions and "gags," in Plattdeutsch, for the Hamburg theatre.

The next figure in this picturesque line is Ennius, who like nearly all the early authors is no Roman gentleman, not even a Latin at all. Born (239 B. C.) in the village of Rudia of far-off Calabria, he heard in this cottage home the rough Oscan speech of his peasant race. This language held for them somewhat the position of Aramaic among the fisher folk of Galilee two centuries and a half later. In both lands, Greek was the ordinary speech of the market-place; Latin, at most, the official language of the rulers. The boy Ennius seems to have been educated in the Hellenic city of Tarentum. Even there, he may not yet have spoken Latin at all. Cicero apparently confesses in the 'Archias' (62 B. C.) that his native speech had even then made no headway "beyond the narrow boundaries" of Latium. In Magna Græcia, Ennius probably often heard classic Greek tragedy acted, as Virgil intimates he still did in his time.

We have referred elsewhere to the dramatic incident, that Cato the Elder brought in his train from Corsica the man who, more than all others, was to establish in Rome that Hellenic art most dreaded by the great Censor. Cato was the younger of the two. Ennius was just

"Midway upon the journey of our life.»

He was then a centurion in rank; that is, he had fought his way, no doubt with many scars, to the proud place at the head of his company. (A young Roman gentleman, invited by the general to join his staff, knew little of such campaigning.) This was at the close of Rome's second and decisive struggle with Carthage, so long the queen of the Western Mediterranean. Ennius lived on, chiefly in Rome, as many years longer; his death coinciding with the equally decisive downfall of Macedonia (168 B. C.). His life, then, spans perhaps the greatest exploits of Roman arms. This was doubtless also the age in which the heroic national character reached its culmination-and began to decay.

Of this victorious generation the Scipios are probably the best type. Its chief recorder was their friend and protégé, the Calabrian peasant and campaigner. Of all the missing works in the Latin speech, perhaps not even the lost books of Livy would be so eagerly welcomed- -so helpful in restoring essential outlines, now lacking, of Roman action and character- as the 'Annals' of Ennius, in eighteen books, which followed the whole current of Roman tradition, from Eneas and Romulus down to the writer's own day. And this work was, at the same time, the first large experiment in writing Homeric hexameters in the Latin speech! So true is it, that the Hellenic Muse was present at the birth of Roman literature. Though no work of

Ennius survives save in tantalizing fragments, he is the manliest, the most vivid figure in the early history of Latin letters.

Gellius preserves a saying of Ennius, that in his three mother tongues he had three hearts. But his fatherland had accepted in good faith, long before, the Italian supremacy of Rome. His love for the imperial city quite equaled that of any native. He became actually a citizen through the kindness of his noble friend Fulvius, who as one of the triumvirs appointed to found Potentia, enrolled Ennius among the "colonists" (184 B. C.).

"Romans we now are become, who before this day were Rudini!»

is his exultant cry, in a line of the Annals.'

It is not likely that he had any assistance on this occasion from Cato, who had already discovered his own grievous error. Some years earlier one of the Fulvii had taken Ennius with him on a campaign in Greece (189 B. C.); but evidently not as a centurion! It is of this Fulvius that Cicero says in the 'Archias, "He did not hesitate to consecrate to the Muses memorials of Mars." The alliteration suggests a poetic epigram; and Cato is known to have complained in a public oration that Fulvius "had led poets with him into his province." Ennius might have been useful also as an interpreter, as a secretary, and as a table companion.

One of the longest fragments from the 'Annals' describes such a friend of another Roman general. Gellius, who preserves the lines, quotes good early authority for considering them as a self-portraiture by Ennius.

S

PORTRAIT OF A SCHOLAR

O HAVING spoken, he called for a man, with whom often and gladly Table he shared, and talk, and all his burden of duties, When with debate all day on important affairs he was wearied, Whether perchance in the forum wide, or the reverend Senate; One with whom he could frankly speak of his serious matters,Trifles also, and jests,- could pour out freely together Pleasant or bitter words, and know they were uttered in safety. Many the joys and the griefs he had shared, whether public or secret!

This was a man in whom no impulse prompted to evil,

Whether of folly or malice. A scholarly man and a loyal,
Graceful, ready of speech, with his own contented and happy;

Tactful, speaking in season, yet courteous, never loquacious.

Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime Made him master of earlier customs, as well as of newer.

Versed in the laws was he of the ancients, men or immortals.
Wisely he knew both when he should talk and when to be silent.-
So unto him Servilius spoke, in the midst of the fighting

The soldier-scholar who could draw this masterly portrait must have been somewhat worthy to sit for it. Certain touches indeed were hardly possible without self-consciousness. The rare combination of antique lore and modern knowledge of the world is one such. Another is the "content with his own"; for though a friend of the wealthiest, Ennius, we are told, lived simply in a small house, attended by one servant only. This same handmaid takes part in a little comedy, which in the arid waste of Roman gravity may almost count as funny:

"When Scipio Nasica once came to call on the poet Ennius, and asked for him at the door, the maid said Ennius was not at home. Now, Nasica perceived that this was said at the master's bidding, and that he really was within. A few days later Ennius came to his friend's house, in his turn, and called for Nasica, who bawled out that he was not at home. (What! don't I know your voice?' said Ennius.-You're a shameless fellow!' came the response. (When I asked for you, I took your maid's word for it that You don't believe me myself ?>>>

you were out.

Scipio's resentment does not seem very deep. He had realized, probably, that two callers were already with Ennius, both unsocial dames, Podagra and Calliope; for however ill it agrees with the pleasing picture of poetic simplicity and contentment, we have Ennius's own word in the matter:

"Only when housed with the gout am I a maker of verses. >>

Horace indeed, waging the old contest which neither Demosthenes nor Franklin has fully decided in favor of the water-drinkers, declares:

"Even in the morning the Muses have mostly reeked of the wine-cup.
Homer confesses his fondness for wine by chanting its praises.
Father Ennius, too, leaped forward to sing of the battle
Never unless well drunk!»

That same aristocrats' disease, the Nemesis of port wine and good living, gout,-is reputed to have carried off this austere and contented poet at threescore and ten (in 169 B. C.). Perhaps the hospitalities of the Scipios and Fulvii must bear the blame. Horace too loved his " mess of watercress," at home;- and dined by preference with Mæcenas! At any rate, Ennius had no prolonged last illness nor dotage. Says Gellius: "Ennius tells us in the twelfth book of his

'Annals' that he is in his sixty-seventh year when composing it." The completion of eighteen books is made certain by many quotations.

The total amount of these citations by later authors is about six hundred hexameters, perhaps a twentieth of the whole. Many are mere half-lines or single verses, quoted by a grammarian for a rare word, or by literary critics to illustrate Virgil's method of graceful borrowing. The latter tribe, by the way, make a strong showing. Plagiarism is not quite the nicest word. The ancients seem to have felt there was one right way to say anything. If they found a block, large or small, shaped to their hand, they merely tried to set it where it should be more effective than even where its maker put it! Often the open transfer was a loyal courtesy.

"Muses, ye who beneath your feet tread mighty Olympus »

were the first words of the 'Annals. Other early fragments are:

This opening vision may be connected with the assertion attributed to Ennius, that the soul of Homer had transmigrated, through many other incarnations, into his own body.

The tale of Rome, it would seem, began as with Virgil in the Troad,

"Where in Pelasgian battle the ancient Priam had fallen.»

Romulus appeared as the child of Eneas's daughter Rhea Silvia. It was apparently Cato who, first among Romans, noted the gap of some four centuries between the traditional time of Troy's downfall and the accepted Roman founder's date, and so caused the shadowy kings of Alba to defile in long uneventful line, like Banquo's descendants, across the legendary stage. Cato may have published his discovery as a savage criticism upon this very poem.

However diversified in scale and tone of treatment, the entire history of Rome of course constitutes a subject hopelessly beyond the limits of epic unity. The sections of the long poem must have fallen apart, like those of all later rhythmical chronicles. Yet we may well believe that the energy of the manly singer, his patriotic spirit, his faith in Rome's high mission, never flagged nor failed.

The tenderest passage extant seems modeled on a briefer sketch in Io's account of her own sorrows, in Eschylus's Prometheus.' The Vestal Rhea Silvia has been startled by a prophetic dream: