Greece and Rome (Second Series)

Table of Contents - 1965 - Volume 12, Issue 01  

Research Article

Ennius the Mystic—II

J. K. Newman

Ennius was brought to Rome in the first place by Cato. How soon he came under the influence of Scipio we do not know, but it is clear that to a poet acquainted with Greek thought the austerely Italian doctrines of his first patron cannot have had much appeal. The partiality which he displays for Euripides, that most sophisticated and troubled of poets, does not harmonize well with the utilitarian views which find their place in the De Agricultura and elsewhere in Cato. (It is interesting to compare the spirit of μxs1F74 S0017383500014777_inline1xs1FF4ην μετ' xs1F00μουσίας from the well-known chorus of the Hercules Furens with that of ‘poeticae artis honos non erat…’.) Eventually Ennius was to eulogize Scipio in a separate volume of that name, and to shock the Censor with his gourmet's handbook, the Hedyphagetica. But the work with which he most commended himself to fame was of course the Annales, for which he introduced the hexameter.