Ennius

Quintus Ennius (239 - 169 BCE) was a writer during the Roman Republic period, and often considered the father of Roman poetry. Though only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was quite significant.

Ennius' more famous works include: the Epicharmus, the Euhemerus, the Hedyphagetica, Saturae, and the Annals (Annales in Latin).

The Epicharmus presented an account of the gods and the physical operations of the universe. In it, the poet dreamed he had been transported after death to some place of heavenly enlightenment.

The Euhemerus presented a theological doctrine of a vastly different type in a mock-simple prose modelled on the Greek of Euhemerus of Messene and several other theological writers. According to this doctrine, the gods of Olympus were not supernatural powers still actively intervening in the affairs of men, but great generals, statesmen and inventors of olden times commemorated after death in extraordinary ways.

The Hedyphagetica took much of its substance from the gastronomical epic of Archestratus of Gela, a work commonly with Epicureanism. The eleven extant hexameters have prosodical features avoided in the more serious Annales.

The remains of six books of Saturae show a considerable variety of metres. There are signs that Ennius varied the metre sometimes even within a composition. A frequent theme was the social life of Ennius himself and his upper-class Roman friends and their intellectual conversation.

The Annals was an epic poem covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid.

"The idle mind knows not what it wants." - Ennius

See: H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (1967); R. A. Brooks, Ennius and Roman Tragedy (1981); O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (1985).