Peculiar Beginnings

Literature is difficult, perhaps impossible, to define: we know what it is, more or less, but there are always things that don’t quite fit into existing categories (such as blogs and comics). For the Romans, however, certainly from the time of the late republic, this was a non-issue. Literature – litterae (‘letters’) – was what was written down, particularly if it conformed to the expectations of poetry and prose familiar from Greek. Indeed, Latin literature, while distinct, always has ‘classic’ Greek literature within its purview, even once there is an ample tradition of Latin literature. And regardless of which of the two languages a work was cast in, it nearly always fitted into these traditions, sometimes with Roman adaptations. From the start, then, Roman conceptions of literature were bi-lingual and bi-cultural. Latin texts were animated by an intimate, often explicit, relationship with Greek literature. There is no other literary sensibility quite like this, anywhere in history.

And, also unusually, Romans never really sought an explanation for this derivative habit. When they looked back on their literary history, they focused not on originality but on innovations and innovators within the pre-existing (Hellenic) framework. By the late republic it was agreed that the first author of Latin literature – certainly, of Latin poetry – was Livius Andronicus, a freed slave, from Tarentum (modern Taranto). In his Letter to Augustus, the poet Horace (see Chapter 9) encapsulates the history of Latin verse by referring to ‘poets from the age of the writer Livius down to our own time’ (poetas | ad nostrum tempus Livi scriptoris ab aevo: Hor. Epist. 2.1.62). The Greek-speaking Livius Andronicus became the father of Latin poetry through translating and adapting Greek epic and drama, and it is on his dramatic poetry that Roman literary history chiefly concentrated. (In this volume, we usually refer to this poet as Andronicus rather than Livius in order to avoid confusion with the historian Livy, on whom see Chapter 6.) This meant that Romans could specify, with a surprising and suspicious exactitude, the moment when Latin letters began: the Roman Games (ludi Romani) of 240 bce (which was also, not coincidentally, the year Rome created its first province outside of Italy).

Literacy and Literature

Literacy, even if not widespread, had been a Roman reality since the eighth century bce (i.e. since Rome’s foundation). Romans set up dedicatory inscriptions, and in 451 they set up the Twelve Tables, a legal code, in the Forum. In 304 the aedile Gnaeus Flavius oversaw the publication and promulgation of Rome’s civil law code. So, too, Roman civic religion relied on written texts, to the extent that even oral prayers to the gods were, we are told, scripted performances of established formulae. The administration of Rome’s many colonies and alliances also required writing, as did treaties with competing powers such as Carthage. Finally, the government of the city – drafting and passing legislation, for example, or conducting the census – demanded an advanced degree of literacy, at least on the part of some of its citizens. And, as in most pre-modern societies, here too literacy fluctuates by demography: wealthy urban men were much likelier to have basic literacy than poor rural women. The Romans, then, were literate for many centuries before 240, but it does not look like they were ‘literary’. And when they did move towards literary production, even their earliest efforts seem to be conspicuously Greek. Why did Greek literature loom so large for Roman writers and readers?

For that we need to look farther back. The Greeks began to establish themselves in Sicily and southern Italy in the eighth century. As a consequence, the rise of Rome occurred in an area in which Greek cities like Syracuse, Croton, and Tarentum were conspicuous for their might, wealth and glamour. In varying degrees and ways, the peoples of central Italy, for all their different languages and cultures, felt the influence of Greek civilisation. Sometimes this took place directly, at other times by way of their neighbours. This eclecticism is most obvious in the different Italian adaptations of the Greek alphabet and in the uses to which it was put. Romans, as we have seen, set up inscriptions, in which practice they followed Greeks: later Romans believed that their Twelve Tables had been drafted in imitation of Greek law codes. Greek influence is reflected in other areas as well, such as pottery. Hellenism had long supplied Italian aristocrats with a universally recognisable form of cultural capital, whether their native language was Oscan, Etruscan or Latin. This preference remains visible in Etruscan tombs and tomb paintings, in the early presence in Rome of the Greek symposium and in the habit, frequent in central Italy, of rendering the iconography of Greek religion into vernacular art. Greek culture, at least some aspects of it, penetrated central Italy not because its peoples aspired to be Greek but because it was high culture, furnishing elite Italians with the trappings of elegance and privilege. It is no accident that Romans came to believe that their city’s mythical founders, Romulus and Remus, must have received a proper Greek education in their youth, or that Romulus’ successor on the throne, Numa, was an expert in Italian religion and Greek philosophy. This was wishful thinking, but it shows us what later Romans thought of when they conceived of sophistication, and how they imagined they could best make the case that they were emerging players in the Mediterranean world.

Certain aspects of Greek culture were attractive, and by the third century bce, Hellenism was conspicuous throughout Mediterranean societies. Indeed, this was one important consequence of Alexander the Great’s conquests in the fourth century. Macedonian dynasts from Egypt to the Black Sea, like Greek cities in the west, competed with one another in displays of Hellenic high culture. The political and social significance of the Greek language was not lost on the Roman aristocracy, for whom bilingualism and acquaintance with Greek literature became increasingly important credentials. But reading Greek literature and administering Roman civic life in Latin are practices that could easily have persisted side by side for centuries: it was by no means inevitable that the Romans would create a literature in Latin that was explicitly, even proudly, modelled on Greek literature. Indeed, this literary turn was in some ways counterintuitive in terms of international prestige in the third century, since few outside Italy and not all within it could understand Latin.

Hellenisation and Latin Literature: The Show Must Go On

Theatrical arts were a conspicuous and, for many, an attractive feature of Greek culture. Drama was a feature of civic life in Sicily from at least the fifth century, and by the fourth century the cities of southern Italy were furnished with handsome theatres. The natural environment for Greek drama was a public festival advertising a city’s sophistication and prosperity, and this facet of Greek theatre obtained in the Greek communities of Italy no less than elsewhere in the Greek world. Neighbouring non-Greek peoples liked what they saw. Hence the profusion in southern Italy of pottery decorated with scenes from comedy or tragedy, intended for Italian consumers. Our evidence is incomplete, but shows that the peoples of central Italy, each in their own way, quickly adapted elements of Greek dramatic performances to their own tastes.

The Romans believed that the introduction of theatrical performances (ludi scaenici) to their city took place in the year 364. In the previous year, according to tradition, the hero Camillus had fallen victim to a plague. This man was esteemed a second founder of Rome because he had repulsed Gallic invaders in 390 and had brokered a resolution to the domestic political strife which had divided Rome against itself. His death, then, was a momentous event, and the disease that took his life, Livy tells us, ravaged the populace unabated. In 364 the Romans turned in desperation to novel methods for appeasing their gods, one of which was the production of theatrical performances at the Roman Games.

The Roman Games (ludi Romani) were perhaps the oldest of Rome’s festivals. They were held in September in honour of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (‘Best and Greatest’), the chief god of the city. The central concern of Roman civic religion was the preservation of harmony between the gods and Roman people, a relationship the Romans described as pax deorum (‘peace with the gods’). The ludi Romani, then, which included processions, sacrifices, and horse races, were administered by elected magistrates as a sacred duty but also as a celebration for and of the Roman people. These games therefore supplied Rome’s leadership with a natural occasion on which to inaugurate an extraordinary appeal to the city’s gods in their time of need. As it turned out, the novel performances of 364 did nothing to mollify divine hostility. Indeed, the historian Livy (see Chapter 6) reports that they were interrupted when the Tiber overflowed its banks, and the plague persisted for another year. Notwithstanding this negative verdict on the part of the gods, the theatrical games (presumably some form of staged performances; see Chapter 2) proved popular with the public and the authorities who governed them: from that year on, they remained a part of the Roman Games.

We do not know whether this story is historically accurate, but it is nonetheless telling – and was meant to be. For one thing, it is remarkable that the Romans associated the introduction of the theatre with momentous public events. These new performances were foreign imports and reflected the complicated nature of the influence of Greek drama in central Italy, for it was not to the Greeks directly but rather to their Etruscan neighbours to the north that the Romans turned for aid in incorporating elements of theatrical games. (The usual distinction between ‘Roman’ and ‘Etruscan’ is somewhat unhelpful: the two peoples had been entwined with one another from the very beginning of Rome’s foundation.) Performers who were skilled in dancing to music were invited from Etruria. Very soon, we are told, the Romans added their own touches to this Greco-Etruscan art form, including jests delivered in what Livy describes as ‘unsophisticated verses’. Over time Roman dramatic technique became more refined and performances less improvisational. Indeed, these events came to rely on careful crafting and, if Livy is right, the use of a script (Liv. 7.2.4–13). The Etrusco-Roman theatrical scene was soon well established and catered to by groups of professional actors who were probably itinerant. The Romans, then, devised their own brand of dramatic art within the context of an important civic festival. Performances of this hybrid kind could still be viewed in Rome as late as 115, and probably even later. And the Etruscan language left a lasting impression on Latin vocabulary for stagecraft, supplying it with terminology like scaena (‘stage’) and persona (‘mask’).

Popular though Etrusco-Roman performances remained, Roman drama was radically transformed when Livius Andronicus ‘was the first to be so bold as to compose a play with a plot’ (ausus est primus argumento fabulam serere), as Livy’s version puts it. This took place, we are told by Cicero and Aulus Gellius (though not by Livy), in 240, more than a century after the Romans had adapted the dramatic arts of Etruria. Andronicus’ plays were without question written works, and they became a feature of Rome’s literary canon down to Cicero’s day and beyond.

Remarkably, no ancient writer mentions what seems to moderns the most innovative feature of this event: that Andronicus’ ‘play with a plot’ was a Latin translation of a Greek play. Andronicus did not compose a play in Latin about Roman heroes of the past, though of course he could have. Nor did Roman authorities produce a Greek play in its original language (although by the second century bce Romans did produce Greek dramas – in Greek – in Rome). Instead, Andronicus adapted the concepts, techniques, and storylines of Greek drama to Latin and to the distinctive circumstances of stage performance in Rome. This was, so far as we know, an achievement unprecedented in the ancient Mediterranean world. Indeed, Andronicus has aptly been described as Europe’s first literary translator, and he made a career composing both comedies and tragedies, all in Latin and adapted from Greek originals (see too Chapter 2). He also composed a Latin version of Homer’s epic Odyssey, using a native Italian versification rather than Homeric hexameters. These are the first Latin poems we know of, and later Romans considered them foundational. Andronicus, although we know little about him, provides the first model of a Roman author, and later writers emulated him as they attempted to move beyond his influence.

Literature before Andronicus?

Was there no literature in Rome before Livius Andronicus? The question is complicated, not least because the Romans, when the question finally occurred to them, had little evidence to go on. Modern scholars have offered arguments in support of various pre-Livian kinds of structured verbal jousting – such as ‘Fescennine verses’, which we are told were rude, sometimes obscene, songs sung at wedding celebrations, or the shaming invective known as occentatio employed by Romans in the informal enforcement of civil conduct. There is no reason to reject these claims despite the lack of evidence for them. After all, both forms were features of Roman society in periods that are better documented. And speaking on issues of public import was central to Roman civic and military life from earliest times, presumably often if not usually in written and pre-rehearsed formats (Cicero, writing in the first century bce, claimed to have read the text of a speech that was delivered in 280; see Chapter 3). So too, long before Andronicus, Roman priests sang hymns when worshipping their gods, hymns influenced by Greek poetry. Whether these activities constituted a distinctively Latin literature or a Roman literary sensibility is a matter for debate. But the Romans had very little to say about such matters, remaining fixated on Andronicus whenever they thought about origins.

When Romans did attempt to recover their early literary history, they appear to have done so largely by way of speculation modelled on the methods and conclusions drawn by Greek scholars about the origins and early history of Greek literature. Here is a prime example: the elder Cato (see Chapter 3) reports that ‘among our ancestors there had been a custom at banquets that while reclining they would take it in turns to sing, accompanied by a flute, of the glorious virtues of famous men’ (FRHist. 5 f. 113). These poems, routinely denominated carmina convivalia (‘banquet songs’), suggest the existence of an early Latin poetry which, by Cato’s day, the Romans had abandoned. Cato’s observation is cited by Cicero and is reflected in Varro (see Chapter 3), but neither they nor Cato had ever heard or read such a poem. Indeed, what they say suggests that it was an exclusively oral art form. Which raises the question: how did later Romans know about them? Perhaps Cato possessed this cultural memory because it was handed down by tradition, or perhaps he found it recorded in a now-lost source. But the Roman carmina convivalia closely reflect the practices of the Greek symposium, where skolia (‘songs sung in turn’) were performed. Naturally the Roman version of such singing concentrates on military renown and not the much broader subject matter of Greek skolia. This is not to say that the Romans consciously fabricated this early tradition, but rather that, stymied by ignorance of their earliest practices and keen to recover them, they may have looked to the recorded behaviour of another culture to find suitable comparative evidence to aid them in envisioning their own literary past. This is a pattern that recurs often in Roman literary history.

That said, it is likely that there were songs and stories and poetry in early Rome, even literature in the sense of texts that could be circulated, read, and studied. And it is not certain that Andronicus was the first writer to translate Greek poetry into Latin. Indeed, there are good reasons to think he was not, given the nature of Latin poetic metre. Although Latin and Greek exhibit many similarities, the two languages are different enough to make it impossible for anyone composing in Latin to employ unchanged the rules and practices governing the metres of Greek poetry. Early Latin poetry adopted the metrical schemes of Greek by accommodating the different shape and sound of Latin words. These differences suggest that the imposition of Greek metrical techniques onto Latin verse would have taken a fair amount of trial and error, over several years at least. Two centuries later Horace (see Chapter 4) faulted his early predecessors for their inability to reproduce Greek metrical effects exactly. But even Horace, a metrical virtuoso, had occasionally to yield to the realities of Latin. And by Horace’s day the Romans had accumulated more than two centuries of experience. From this perspective it is nothing short of astonishing that we do not see Andronicus or his early successors struggling to make their Latin verse fit into its adopted metre. Quite the contrary: the difficulties of translating Greek verse into Latin are mostly resolved in his poetry, by way of a system that is both sophisticated and fully operational. It is (barely) possible that Andronicus alone devised and executed this remarkable and technical adaptation, but it is far more likely that exploratory attempts at the creation of Latin dramatic verse in Greek-like metres had begun before the breakthrough year of 240.

This view receives some support from Andronicus’ translation of the Odyssey, which he entitled the Odusia. This work remains undated, but it is probable that it preceded the commission for the Roman Games of 240. After all, on what other grounds would his talent have been observed and esteemed? If this is the correct order, then the Odusia complicates the Roman emphasis on the year 240 as the starting point for Latin literature. Andronicus’ epic is composed in saturnians, a metre with strong if unclear Italian affiliations but also evidence of Greek influence. In other words, the metre of Rome’s first epic reflected the previous effects of Greek poetry on an Italian metre that was already available for Andronicus to employ as a medium for literary translation. The situation for tragedy and comedy was likely similar, even if we lack the evidence of earlier metrical experimentation in those literary forms.

Why Greek Literature? Why Now?

Why would the Romans have invented a Latin version of Greek literature? And what was it about the middle of the third century that made it the moment for the Romans to embrace this cultural revolution? We have seen already that Greek culture was deeply influential amongst the peoples of central Italy, and that from its beginnings Roman culture incorporated Hellenic elements. This was a reality which the Romans did not try to hide; rather, they affirmed it, often. An important aspect of Roman identity was its creative and masterful engagement with Greek culture: the quintessentially Roman literary act was to domesticate a Greek form. And this reflects a general attitude towards Greece. Even in a matter so fundamental as religion, the means of preserving the pax deorum, the Romans regarded it as essential that some sacred actions be conducted ritu Graeco (‘in accordance with Greek ritual’), a remarkable designation that reveals how important Greek culture was to Roman self-identification. To be sure, Roman society was regularly marked by recurring and often intense controversy over which Greek practices to accept or reject and how to sustain the proper balance between Roman and Hellenic sensibilities. But this itself makes clear how central Greek culture was.

The year 240, however, marked a new era in Rome’s international stature. Not that the city had been inconspicuous before, but the third century saw Rome become the leading power in Italy, reducing its neighbours to ‘allies’ who were functionally subjects. And this did not happen without formidable resistance. The Greek city Tarentum went so far as to ally itself with Epirus and its king Pyrrhus, who styled himself a descendant of Alexander the Great, in the hope of deflecting Roman expansion. Pyrrhus, proverbially, could not ultimately defeat the Romans, and his failure attracted the attention of other dynasts. In 273, for instance, Ptolemy II of Egypt sent an embassy to Rome seeking the city’s friendship. In general, however, affairs closer to home occupied Roman energies during this period. From 264 until 241 the Romans were locked in a gruelling war with Carthage, the greatest power of the western Mediterranean, over the possession of Sicily. Victory gave Rome its first possessions outside mainland Italy and solidified the city into a great power. This enhanced status did not go unappreciated by the Romans, who recognised the importance of publicising their new standing.

It remains unclear why literature was a part of the articulation of that status: perhaps it was precisely the fact that it was conceived of as Greek. But it is not obvious why a society should require literature of the kind the Romans adapted from the Greeks. By the third century, however, some members of the aristocracy wished to possess more than a faculty for speaking Greek. Education, which always entailed a robust training in Greek literature, continued to seem important, and this is probably why Andronicus’ translation of the Odyssey, a text designed to appeal to readers of Latin who also knew Homer’s original, stimulated fascination on the part of its Roman audience. Whatever its merits or blemishes, here was a work that permitted Romans to relish their bilingualism while exhibiting a gratifying degree of biculturalism. And for readers lacking Greek, Andronicus supplied an ancient Greek poem, the mythology of which was already known in Italy, in a version that demonstrated the appropriation and appreciation of Greek culture (or really, just ‘culture’ itself) by a civilisation on the rise.

But Latin drama did not – could not – hope to influence the Greek-speaking wider world, which had its own robust tradition. Nor is there any evidence that, before imperial times (several centuries in the future), the Greeks took much notice of Latin literature as a whole. Still, the Romans’ poetic innovations will certainly have had an effect across Italy, where it conveyed to their subjects the city’s advanced cultural capacities and ambitions. After all, as we have seen, the prestige of Greek civilisation was felt strongly across Italy, and Latin was hardly an unrecognised language. Doubtless the hegemonic aspect was an important incentive in the invention of a Helleno-Latin literature. But most of all the invention of Latin poetry and, especially, drama spoke to the Romans’ own cultural identity. Dramatic festivals were exuberant and appealing, and Andronicus’ drama exhibited Roman annexation not merely of Greek cities but of a central dimension of Greek civilisation. The Romans could create literature that was identifiable as literature because it was like Greek literature, but in Latin. We might say that Latin literature mattered because it helped the Romans talk about what it meant to be Roman.

Livius Andronicus

Our sources for the life of Lucius Livius Andronicus are fragmentary and contradictory. We do not know the year of his birth or death. His name, exhibiting the three parts reserved for Roman citizens (see Sidebar I), suggests that he was a Roman citizen of Greek origin, and indeed Suetonius describes him as ‘half-Greek’ (Suet. Gram. 1.2). The second century poet and scholar L. Accius reports that Andronicus was a native of Tarentum, a fact that is generally accepted although much of Accius’ biography of Andronicus was repudiated by later figures. Accius told how Andronicus had been enslaved after Tarentum was taken by the Romans in 209, at which time he became part of the household of M. Livius Salinator (cos. 219 and 207; see Sidebar V). Salinator, according to Accius, later freed Andronicus in appreciation for the education he had furnished the great man’s sons. Manumission in Rome entailed citizenship (see Sidebar IV), so it would have been as a citizen that Andronicus composed a ritual hymn, now lost, performed in honour of Juno Regina in 207, the year in which the consul Salinator celebrated a triumph and was made dictator. This is the first lyric hymn in Latin of which we have any knowledge. The immediate difficulty with Accius’ account is that it brings Livius Andronicus to Rome too late for him to have furnished Rome’s first drama in 240. It is more commonly concluded that Andronicus came to Rome as a prisoner of war following the defeat of Tarentum in 272. That he became a slave of an aristocratic Livius (perhaps even a Livius Salinator) and was subsequently set free is a natural inference. Nor is there any reason to dispute Accius’ assertion that Andronicus was a teacher – given the importance of Greek literature to Roman education, many Greeks of this time were – and Suetonius records that Andronicus gave instruction in both Latin and Greek (Suet. Gram. 1.2). We are informed that the versatile Andronicus, in addition to writing for the stage, performed as an actor in his own plays. And it is a regular feature of Latin literature, perhaps deriving from this fact (if it is a fact), that Roman authors are often conceived of as performing or reciting their own compositions. After receiving his freedom, Andronicus very likely remained a part of the Livian household, as many freed slaves did. A gifted man in the service of a distinguished family, he doubtless became known to others in Rome’s aristocracy through his teaching and writing, which would explain his commission in 240. Andronicus’ subsequent career was long, enabling him to compose a sacred hymn decades later, in 207, as a very old man.

Livius Andronicus’ native language will have been Oscan or Greek, but presumably, like many, he was multilingual. In any case, his virtuosity in the Latin language is conspicuous. So, too, are his intimacy with Roman culture and his patriotic sensibilities toward his new homeland. This is evidenced in part by his decision to translate the Odyssey and not the Iliad: Odysseus’ journey brought him to Sicily and Italy, the dominion of contemporary Rome. In Italy, according to some Greek legends, Odysseus was a founder of cities, sometimes including Rome itself. But the centrality of Rome in Andronicus’ poetry is more profound than that. This becomes apparent in an examination of the first line of his Odusia, which we are fortunate enough to possess and can compare with Homer’s:

Homer implores the Muse to tell him – ennepe is the Greek word – the story of Odysseus. Andronicus deploys the similar-sounding insece, a word that even in his day was old-fashioned, recreating thereby something of the archaic feel of Homer’s poetry. Homer’s Odysseus is polytropos, a Greek adjective that literally means ‘of many turns’ and can indicate either ‘well-travelled’ or ‘shifty’, which is to say, cunning. Odysseus was both, and consequently Hellenistic critics argued over the correct meaning of this word in Homer. Andronicus gives his verdict when he translates polytropon with versutum, which means ‘wily’ or ‘tricky’. Versutum derives from vertere (‘to turn’), and so Andronicus’ choice is an apt one. Furthermore, vertere is the Latin word that indicates translation from one language into another. So Andronicus’ Ulysses (the Romans’ version of the name Odysseus) becomes the trickster of Homer’s epic and the translated man of the Odusia. And, just as in Homer, the reader is confronted by an adjective that can be taken, should be taken, in two different senses.

These are meaningful and even striking points, but they only become apparent through a careful, bilingual, reading. More immediately noticeable is Andronicus’ substitution of Homer’s Muse with a Camena. An invocation of the Muses was, by Andronicus’ day, a familiar element of Greek epic, although there was in Rome not yet a native tradition for depicting epic inspiration. Instead of invoking a Muse, however, Andronicus assigns the role to a Camena, a divinity associated with a spring outside Rome’s city wall. For Andronicus, Camena probably suggested the Latin word carmina, ‘songs’ or ‘poems’ (originally, a formalised utterance, often rhythmical or metrical). In any case, by appealing to a Camena, Andronicus makes it clear that his Odusia is a Roman poem. While the Muses are Greek (usually located on Mount Helicon, near the Hippocrene spring), the source of Andronicus’ song lies in Rome, which becomes the new centre of the literary cosmos. This raises the question of how a reader should take ‘to me’ (moi in Greek; mihi in Latin) in this line. In the Odyssey, it refers to Homer. In the Odusia, however, it both is and is not Homer (who certainly never heard a Camena singing in Latin). But nor can it refer straightforwardly to Livius Andronicus.

This is complicated stuff. It will be obvious that the Odusia is not simply a crib designed to help beginning Greek pupils. Naturally, Andronicus’ epic could be read and relished on its own by any Roman lacking Greek. Still, a Roman who knew nothing of Homer could only be perplexed by the appeal to a Camena for inspiration. Only a reader with some familiarity with the Odyssey could appreciate just how Roman Andronicus’ poem truly was. The Odusia’s ideal audience, then, was Roman readers with enough Greek to appreciate its bilingual and bicultural deftness, and its translation of Rome to the centre of its literary landscape.

Andronicus’ Other Works

In addition to his epic and his hymn, Andronicus composed tragedies and comedies, all Greek in origin (see Chapter 2). We know the titles of eight tragedies, which refer to myths associated with the Trojan War (we have about forty lines); a few fragments of comic verse and the titles of two comedies are on record, and about forty lines of his Odusia remain. Of his ritual hymn, nothing survives. No chronology of his work is possible between the dramatic production in 240 and the hymn in 207, though, as we have noted, it is very likely that the Odusia was Andronicus’ first important composition.

Andronicus was a distinguished author, as we can tell by his selection to compose, on behalf of the state, the sacred hymn in 207, during a moment of religious crisis and military desperation in the Punic wars. His poem, the Romans believed, was instrumental in their legions’ success at the battle of Metaurus against Hannibal’s brother later that year. Andronicus’ lofty reputation lasted until the late republic, by which time tastes had plainly changed. Cicero regarded the Odusia as interesting only for its antiquity, and Andronicus’ plays he deemed not worth a second reading (Cic. Brut. 71); his opinions were probably typical. Horace was obliged to study Andronicus during his school days and conceded that there were some good lines to be found in his work, but that in general his poetry was overrated. This in turn suggests that there were still readers who esteemed Andronicus, even if perhaps not all of them actually read him. Livy suggests as much: moderns, he insists, would be shocked at the hymn’s lack of refinement (Liv. 27.37.13). By the imperial period, Andronicus’ works had become no more than repositories of grammatical and lexical oddities to be mined by scholars. Only recently has Andronicus’ reputation risen again, for some of the reasons we have discussed.

Gnaeus Naevius

Gnaeus Naevius was the author of Rome’s first national epic, the Bellum Punicum (‘Punic War’). He also wrote plays (see Chapter 2), but here we focus on him as the successor of Andronicus in the genre of epic. Naevius, unlike Andronicus, possessed an old Latin name and was almost certainly a Roman citizen by birth. The date of that birth is unknown, and he died at some point after 204. Aulus Gellius, writing in the second century ce, criticises Naevius for his Campanian arrogance (superbia Campana), which suggests that the poet was born there. Like many regions of central and southern Italy, Campania was a crossroads of cultures and languages, including Latin, Greek, and Oscan (all of which Naevius would have known). Campanians by Naevius’ day enjoyed a form of Roman citizenship, and relations between the Campanian gentry and the Roman governing class were close if not always cordial. Naevius campaigned for Rome during the First Punic War, very likely in the cavalry for which Campania was renowned. He deemed this service important enough to mention it in his Bellum Punicum (Gellius NA 17.21.45, who adduces Varro as a source). That Naevius was highly educated, and therefore from a prosperous family, is obvious from his literary career. By 235, if not before, Naevius had taken up residence in Rome, where he began to produce plays. Thus he was a rough contemporary of Andronicus and was apparently a quick student of Andronicus’ dramaturgical and metrical techniques. Why Naevius should have turned to literature is unclear. Perhaps he was supported by a patron or patrons, as seems to have been the case for many of our early authors. Perhaps literature, especially drama, offered Naevius the opportunity to attract publicity or contribute to Roman civic life. It is notable that the native Roman Naevius, unlike Andronicus or Plautus or other playwrights, did not act in his own dramas: performance on stage incurred a degree of social stigma (see Chapter 2), and it may be that Naevius was unwilling to lower himself.

Naevius did not, however, shun controversy. He was remembered for a line of verse that attacked a noble and powerful family, the Caecilii Metelli (Pseudo-Asc. 215 Stangl):

Why this line was insulting requires explanation. According to one common view, Naevius is maintaining that the Metelli advanced to the consulship not because of merit but owing to destiny or perhaps simply luck. But for a public figure to enjoy the backing of good fortune, the gods or even fate was ordinarily regarded by Romans as a positive quality: Cornelius Sulla, Pompey the Great, and Julius Caesar would all later trumpet their role as destiny’s child. And yet it is clear from its context that Naevius’ reference to fatum counts against the Metelli. An attractive but often overlooked suggestion takes fatum here as signalling the forecast of omens, especially bad omens, so that the line means something like ‘it bodes ill when the Metelli are made consuls at Rome’, or ‘the Metelli are made consuls unfortunately for Rome’.

‘At Rome’ (Romae) also calls for comment: after all, elections always took place at Rome, so unless the word merely fills space, it too, should be negatively charged. A likely context is supplied by the consular elections for 206. The two consuls of 207, M. Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero, the victors at Metaurus, devoted themselves to securing the election of Q. Caecilius Metellus, who had not yet held the praetorship or distinguished himself in war (see Sidebar V on Roman political offices). At the time of this political campaign, Metellus was appointed master of the cavalry (magister equitum; this made him second in command) to Salinator, who, by way of an unusual arrangement, had been made dictator and was therefore responsible for conducting the elections. These circumstances, and Metellus’ unexpected distinction, can only have influenced voters, and he easily secured election to a consulship. It was only natural that many among Rome’s political class should have felt that the man enjoyed extraordinary, perhaps unfair, advantages. Hence the pungency of the claim that Metellus’ success was gained not through valour in the field but by way of political machinations at Rome – Romae. This assertion lends specificity to the general ‘bad sign’ (fato) in the opening of Naevius’ line. Invective like this, and worse, was characteristic of political contests in Rome, and this line, if it appeared during the actual canvassing for office, would have made an attractive slogan for Metellus’ competitors. Still, Naevius’ much-circulated line may have originated, not as propaganda, but as a joke. And, importantly, it sets a politically engaged tone which remains important for much of later Latin literature, both prose and poetry.

In any case, the line gives a rich sense of Naevius’ political involvement. And the Metellus in question, once elected to the consulship, replied, in the style of a modern tweet, with a witty but menacing poetic line of his own:

This was clever stuff. Malum, bad thing, evokes malum fatum, a terrible fate (note the implicit play on fato from Naevius), and this line decisively contrasts the consular Metelli with Naevius’ less-than-exalted status as a poet, reminding everyone of the very real clout enjoyed by Rome’s nobility. And by responding to Naevius through poetry, the man’s own medium, Metellus exhibited his own cultural credentials and therefore his comprehensive superiority to his opponent. Here again, we see the foreshadowing of an important function of literature throughout our period: it mattered, was relevant enough to provoke a response, even from those powerful in other realms.

Presumably that was the end of it. But as Rome’s literary history was subsequently elaborated, this so-called quarrel between Naevius and the Metelli attracted colourful elaborations. Naevius, we read in some sources, was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour, but he managed to regain his freedom by composing dramas that won him the support of the public. Eventually, it was believed, Naevius was driven into exile and the author of Rome’s epic about the First Punic War ended his days in, of all places, Carthage. These stories are suitably fanciful. Still, they demonstrate the view held by later generations that Naevius’ was an independent and strong-willed personality.

The Bellum Punicum and the First Punic War

Naevius’ poem Bellum Punicum told the story of the First Punic War (264–241), a conflict whose significance we have encountered already. It is our first Latin account of history from a participant in the events. Indeed, it is our first historical work of any kind in Latin. It was the product of his mature years, if Cicero is correct that composing it was one of the pleasures of Naevius’ old age (Cic. Sen. 50). If so, it may well have been written during the Second Punic War, which for the Romans was an existential struggle attracting international attention, including many negative judgments of Rome and its policies (see further the discussion of Naevius’ contemporary Fabius Pictor in Chapter 6). Perhaps, then, it was in this moment of crisis that Rome’s first truly national epic was conceived and composed, by a poet who was an eyewitness to the war he recorded.

Naevius’ epic appears to have been no more than five thousand lines, of which only about sixty short fragments survive. Originally the Bellum Punicum was a continuous work, but in the second century it was divided into seven books. Like Andronicus’ Odusia, Naevius’ poem is composed in the saturnian metre. This metrical imitation was hardly inevitable and at least one of its effects will have been to establish the beginnings of a Latin tradition of Roman epic. Like Andronicus, Naevius creates an epic atmosphere through archaisms. He also elevates his poetry by including Homeric-style compound words (e.g. Naev. fr. 18: silvicolae, ‘forest-dwelling’; fr. 25: arquitenens, ‘bow-bearing’) along with mannerisms such as alliteration (e.g. fr. 33: vicissatim volvi victoriam, ‘victory rolls this way and that’) and assonance (e.g. frr. 34–35: verum praetor advenit, auspicat auspicium / properum, ‘but the praetor comes; he receives favourable auspices’), features which the Romans associated with sacred, solemn texts.

Naevius adheres to the style pioneered by Andronicus’ in other ways. His epic opens with an appeal for divine inspiration, which he addresses to Jupiter’s daughters (fr. 1):

These figures, although clearly very much like the Muses of Greek epic and although left anonymous in the surviving fragments of the Bellum Punicum, must be Andronicus’ Camenae. This is made certain by the flourish with which the Muses are later introduced in the epic poetry of Ennius (see this chapter, below). And in Naevius’ epitaph, which he is said to have composed for himself (see below), the poet is mourned not by Muses but by Camenae. The Bellum Punicum’s closeness to the Odusia emphasises continuity: Andronicus relocated epic inspiration to Rome in order to put into Latin a Homeric epic that was already important to cultural identities in Sicily and Italy; Naevius, in celebrating Rome’s military domination of these same regions, depicted his country’s victory as an achievement of legendary proportions. And the line is a neat one, with the sisters enclosing Jupiter and his daughters, thus emphasising their concord.

The subject of Naevius’ epic went beyond the First Punic War. It also included an ample account of the fall of Troy and the flight to Italy of a Trojan band of refugees led by Anchises and Aeneas. This version of early Roman history becomes, in part because of Naevius, the standard story (see Sidebar XI and Chapter 8). Naevius’ Aeneas experienced a long and arduous journey, the telling of which almost certainly echoed the Odyssey and appropriated elements from Andronicus’ Odusia. Early in the poem, the Trojan hero’s mother, Venus, confronts Jupiter and, it appears, exacts a promise of Rome’s future greatness, a scene that Vergil later imitated (both poets reprise and combine the Iliad’s Thetis and the Odyssey’s Athena). Naevius also related the origins of Carthage, perhaps introducing the Carthaginian queen Dido who would play such a pivotal role in Vergil’s Aeneid (see Chapter 8). And in Italy, Aeneas’ grandson Romulus founds the city of Rome. Naevius, by incorporating into contemporary history the traditions associated with Rome’s origins, presents Aeneas and Romulus not as characters from a timeless mythical world, but divinely aided men of the past who were, like the men of Naevius’ own day, devoted to fulfilling Rome’s destiny.

Naevius’ approach to his material was not, it appears, strictly chronological. He begins, like Homer and like Andronicus, in medias res, in his case in the middle of the First Punic War. Naevius transitions back and forth in time through various narrative devices, including digressions, origin-stories, and descriptions of works of art. The exploitation of these techniques was already a feature of Hellenistic epics concentrating on the history of Greek cities or myths regarding their foundation. Many of these works are lost, but in Apollonius’ third-century Argonautica one finds these same literary moves in an epic that includes a long and adventurous journey on the part of its heroes, violent confrontations with hostile natives and memorialising explanations of the origins of places and future events. It is obvious that Naevius’ epic represents a bold and sophisticated adaptation of this Greek literary tradition, putting it to use in the service of Roman imperial sensibilities.

The Bellum Punicum was a celebrated work in its own day and thereafter. It stimulated a creative and complex reaction in Ennius, as we shall see. Cicero writes that, despite its age, the poem remained enjoyable (Cic. Brut. 75–76) and Horace, less impressed, concedes nonetheless that in his day Naevius’ epic was widely read (Hor. Epist. 2.1.53–54). Vergil’s enormous debt to Naevius is documented by imperial commentators (e.g. Serv. Auctus ad Aen. 1.198; Macrob. Sat. 6.2.31). Naevius’ plays, too, endured and were performed into the late republic (Cic. Fam. 7.1.2; see Chapter 2). Imperial writers, however, show little interest in Naevius’ poetry apart from matters of diction or its preservation of antiquarian curiosities. Still, Naevius was hardly forgotten. Gellius takes the trouble of preserving his epitaph, which consists of four saturnian lines marked by suitably solemn effects (Gell. NA 1.24.2). Its verdict on Naevius’ literary achievement Gellius describes as fair (iustum), even though, he complains, Naevius furnished it himself. Not all modern scholars believe Gellius’ attribution is correct, but, if it is, we find, for the first but not the last time in Latin poetry, a forceful assertion of personal, poetic greatness:

The location of the epitaph on a tomb perhaps clarifies the conjunction of mortals and gods (in Latin, either noun could be the subject of to mourn here); noteworthy too are the alliteration and anadiplosis (repetition of flere/flerent over two lines). There is also chiasmus in the second line, which juxtaposes the Camenae with Naevius. And in the third line, Orcus (an Italic god) is placed near the Greek word thesauro to show the poet’s mastery over both cultures. Without Naevius, this epitaph asserts, an epoch in Latin poetry is ended: it is the Muses now, no longer the Camenae, who give voice to Latin verse. These lines furnish a fitting conclusion to the life of the author of the first history composed in Latin.

Ennius

Quintus Ennius was surely the most accomplished of all the early Roman poets. Famous in his own lifetime, he continued to enjoy high literary esteem throughout the republic. The range of his achievement is striking: epic, drama, satire, epigram, and didactic verse elaborating a disparate variety of topics, including theology (the Euhemerus) and gastronomy (the Hedyphagetica). At least twenty-four plays survive in title only (see Chapter 2). Of his so-called minor works, about two hundred lines remain, most of them quoted as single lines, sometimes something even shorter – frequently in order to illustrate some point about diction or grammar or antiquarianism. His most important work, however, was the epic poem, Annales. Originally in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, Ennius’ epic told the story of Roman history from the fall of Troy to the poet’s own day. It became an instant classic and was highly influential, but only about six hundred lines remain, preserved in quotation, usually in small fragments, for their linguistic features (rare vocabulary, archaisms, etc.). Admired by Cicero, Lucretius, and Vergil, Ennius’ influence on Latin literature belies the few fragments we have of him.

Ennius was born in 269 in Rudiae, a Messapian community in the south of Italy (near modern Lecce). The Messapians were an Italian people who, during the Pyrrhic War (280–275), joined forces with Pyrrhus, the dashing and formidable king of Epirus, the Alexander of his age, and with the city of Tarentum, the latter a traditional enemy, in opposition to Rome. After Pyrrhus’ departure the south lay open to the Romans, and in 266 both consuls of that year celebrated a triumph for victories over the Messapians. Thereafter Rudiae remained under Roman domination. Ennius received a Greek education in Tarentum. Along the way, he also learned Latin, later boasting that he possessed three hearts because he could speak Greek, Oscan, and Latin (Gell. NA 17.17.1 – not a word about the Messapian language, which apparently carried less cachet for Roman readers).

During the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, and especially after Rome’s defeat at Cannae in 216, Rudiae, like other cities in southern Italy, was rocked by military and political disturbances caused by Hannibal’s presence there. Hannibal and his army remained in Italy until 203. In the midst of this conflict, in 204, we find Ennius in Sardinia, almost certainly serving as an officer in the Roman auxiliaries. He enjoyed sufficiently high status to win the friendship of Cato the Elder (cos. 195), who was quaestor under P. Cornelius Scipio (cos. 205, soon to be dignified with the honorific ‘Africanus’). Cato, passing through Sardinia, met Ennius, was apparently impressed by his culture (there is even a story that Ennius tutored Cato in Greek literature; see Chapter 3), and encouraged him to move to Rome. Which Ennius did.

Ennius’ Relationships in Rome

At Rome, Ennius, like Livius Andronicus before him, established himself as an authority in Greek and Latin learning (Suet. Gram. 1.2). Drama, by the time Ennius arrived on the scene, was a flourishing enterprise, and Ennius quickly made a reputation as a writer of comic and, especially, of tragic works. Like Naevius, Ennius was never an actor. In addition to his dramatic compositions, Ennius’ poetry ranged widely, and won an admiring audience. Even before he turned his hand to epic poetry, then, Ennius was a literary celebrity, with numerous friends in the Roman aristocracy. Although in his Satires he depicted himself as a man leading a modest lifestyle, he in fact lived in a mansion on the Aventine Hill with posh neighbours (see Chapter 4 for his satires). Ennius also enjoyed close relations with Scipio Africanus – at some point in his career, possibly after Africanus’ death, Ennius composed a work of praise entitled Scipio – and he was on friendly terms with Publius Scipio Nasica (cos. 191).

Ennius’ most notable aristocratic connection, however, lay with M. Fulvius Nobilior (cos. 189). Fulvius was put in command of the Romans’ war against the Aetolians, and took Ennius with him – not, presumably, as an advisor on military affairs, but rather as a poet who might chronicle, or even embellish, Fulvius’ campaign. Fulvius’ action (not Ennius’ compliance with it) was denounced by Cato the Elder as shameless. Nevertheless, this was an arrangement that worked out well for both the consul and his literary companion: Ennius included Fulvius’ campaign in the fifteenth book of his Annales, which may have suggested, before Ennius’ later expansion of the epic by three books, that Fulvius’ achievement was, in some sense, the climax of Roman history to date. Ennius also composed a separate work, the Ambracia (the siege of Ambracia was the central operation of the Aetolian War), probably a historical drama (see Chapter 2). Despite some opposition, Fulvius celebrated a triumph in 187. In 184, Fulvius’ son, the consul Q. Fulvius Nobilior, enrolled Ennius as a citizen of Rome.

When Ennius agreed to accompany Fulvius in the Aetolian War, what was at stake? Even if we agree that Ennius could have refused an offer from a Roman consul, what dynamics animated their relationship, and what role did their connection play in Ennius’ poetry and its reception once he said yes instead of no? These issues can hardly be decided from our distance, and the question of literary patronage (see Sidebar II) inevitably arises. Indeed, Ennius seems to address exactly this phenomenon, but in a way that does not clinch matters. In the Annales, Ennius furnishes a depiction of a trusted companion to a great man, in this case the noble Cn. Servilius Geminus, almost certainly the consul of 217. The detail quoted below from this rather long passage (by far our longest from the epic) is lavish, and in it, Servilius’ associate is painted as a discreet confidant, reliable and sound but also intelligent and delightful (8.280–282 Sk.):

Later sources decided that Ennius was describing himself here, which says something about how they imagined his dealings with great men. The relationship Ennius portrays is described by (the much-later) Gellius, who preserves it, not as a manifestation of patronage but of the unequal friendship that obtains when one of two men is of a higher station than the other. Servilius’ friend, then, is an amicus inferior. But he is a friend for all that, and their association, as portrayed by Ennius, is an exemplary one – or so Gellius thought. Ennius’ description proves important for many later writers trying to clarify their own relationships with great men (see, e.g. Chapter 9).

Still, the warmth and affection conjured by Ennius’ lines are rendered less straightforward when we recognise that the poet is alluding to Hellenistic writings about the deportment proper for a man designated a friend to a king, an official title in Hellenistic courts and one in which sentimentality was much attenuated. Royal friends serve at the bidding of their king, motivated to do so by patriotism and personal ambition. That was a distinguished relationship, but a utilitarian one. How, then, should we view Ennius according to Ennius? Two different issues emerge. The institution of patronage clearly constituted an important literary concern, as a prime Roman vehicle for examining human relationships – and because the topic can be traced to Ennius, it possessed for later poets a distinguished pedigree that rendered it worth returning to. Whether a poet’s references to patronage supply readers with information about his real-life circumstances, however, or whether a poet’s friendship with a great man indicates that he was somehow in the service of that great man, obliged to sing his praises or celebrate the themes he was instructed to versify, is less certain – and always a matter of opinion. Each poet’s career must be assessed individually, and we must neither discount nor overrate the degree of autonomy enjoyed by all Roman citizens wealthy enough not to require a patron in the literal sense of the word.

Ennius’ Annales

Ennius, as is clear from a list of his wide-ranging works, was a pioneering poet, even if his literary sensibilities were rooted deeply in contemporary Greek poetics. Livius and Naevius had also been influenced by the operations of Hellenistic literature, but Ennius, in ways sometimes provocative, sometimes polemical, undertook to represent himself as a radical reformer of the Roman epic tradition.

The Annales tell the tale of Rome from the fall of Troy until the poet’s own lifetime. The rudiments of this story were fairly fixed, but Ennius introduced novel features. He is, so far as we know, the first Roman poet to organise his poem by way of individual books, making each a discrete literary unit that also contributes to the larger structure. This was a common feature of Hellenistic poetry, but new to Rome. Ennius used books arranged in triads to impose a meaningful shape on the events making up Roman history. So the first phase in the story of Rome begins with the fall of Troy and ends with the establishment of the Roman republic, encompassing most of what will become the standard stories about this early period (Books 1–3). Roman conquest of Italy follows (Books 4–6), an extraordinary achievement punctuated by the placement of Rome’s near-death experience at the hands of the Gauls in 390 at the end of Book 4. The two Punic Wars come next (Books 7–9), then the conquest of Greece (Books 10–12). The wars in Asia and in Aetolia, climaxing in Fulvius’ victory at Ambracia in 189, completed the epic’s first edition (Books 13–15). Books 16–18, continuing the story, were added later, but survive in fragments too meagre for us to be certain of their contents. Like Naevius, Ennius blended contemporary Roman history with the city’s legendary past. For all the variety of the Annales’ episodes, throughout the work Ennius remains focused on Rome’s political institutions and the city’s great men – and on the moral values that animate them (Enn. Ann. 156Sk):

The meaning of this portentous line is clear, but its artistry deserves note. There is a chiasmus which emphasises two sources of Rome’s power (men and their characters, with viris perhaps alluding to the word virtus, virtue, a close cousin to moribus. See sidebar VII). And the first letters of the first four words spell out MARS, the god of war who was responsible for Rome and the source of its military glory.

Ennius’ epic, like its Naevian antecedent, was predominantly historical, but on a far grander scale. And it is also unique in a Greek context: we know of no Greek poem that furnished a complete record of a city or nation. As the above outline of the work indicates, Ennius’ narrative structure was linear, but there were important gaps. His account of the First Punic War, for instance, deferred to Naevius’ Bellum Punicum. And it is probable that, like Homer, Livius Andronicus and Naevius before him, Ennius employed narrative devices like compression, flashbacks and prophecies to create complexities in his epic reconstruction of the past. Like Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius used linguistic elements from Oscan and Umbrian, archaic diction and alliteration to give his work a very particular feel. A remarkable example of the last is Enn. Ann. 109Sk., an address to Titus Tatius, Romulus’ partner in monarchy, whom the people of Lanuvium slew in retaliation for his despotic behaviour:

The alliteration has particular point, as the repeated t-sounds express derision. The Latin is deliberately, disdainfully, grotesque.

The continuities between Ennius’ epic and those of Andronicus and Naevius are important. More striking, however, are his innovations, the most conspicuous of which is metrical. For the Annales is not composed in saturnians but in dactylic hexameter, the metre of Greek epic poetry. This was a drastic break from the expectations of Roman epic, and a potentially risky one. The use of saturnians by Andronicus and Naevius had set a tone for Roman epic that, notwithstanding its obvious indebtedness to Greek literature, was distinct, even native. In Ennius, saturnians are replaced by hexameters, Camenae by Muses. The first fragment of the Annales, presumably the first line of the poem, underlines Ennius’ remarkable break:

The first word in the poet’s prayer for inspiration is ‘Musae’, and for his contemporaries it is an extraordinary one, because it is a transliteration. Pulsatis, beat, refers to dancing, but pedibus, feet, like its English equivalent, is also a metrical term and signals, as the ear could not miss, the new metre of Ennius’ epic (which was, of course, also the old metre of Homer).

Suddenly Roman epic sounded different, less Italian and more Greek, one might say (and one might say that either in admiration or in objection). Negotiating the correct relationship with Greek culture was as lively a matter in Ennius’ day (see Chapters 3 and 5 on Cato the Elder) – as it was at any time in Roman history. So the move toward Greek might be seen as a step backward, or even an insult to his predecessors. Perhaps this is why, in Book 15, Ennius made explicit the equation between Muses and Camenae (Enn. Ann. 487Sk):

This fragment is a riddle, and it certainly suggests that Ennius knew what he was up to, and that he viewed his innovations as superior expressions of Roman cultural self-confidence to what had gone before. Indeed, the Annales, commencing with the Muses, was originally designed to conclude with the triumph in 187 of Ennius’ friend and patron, M. Fulvius Nobilior (cos. 189), who founded the temple of Hercules of the Muses, a sacred and political act which relocated the Muses from Greece to Rome (see below). This powerful figuration of the majesty of Roman epic looks back to Andronicus’ Camenae even as it supersedes them. It was a confident, even bold literary move, and one which a majority of Ennius’ contemporaries and many later Romans profoundly appreciated. At the time of their invention, however, the success of Ennius’ poetic innovations was hardly a certainty.

Epic Inspirations

For Ennius, the Annales constituted a new beginning for Roman epic and for epic full stop, a claim he asserted explicitly in the openings of Book 1 and Book 7. By composing in dactylic hexameters an account of heroic deeds performed by great men, Ennius invited readers to compare his achievement not with Andronicus’ or Naevius’, but with Homer’s. And this move was more than simple emulation. In contemporary Greek critical circles, there was sharp debate over the desirability or even the possibility of matching the excellence of Homeric epic. Better, many thought, to write different hexameter verses altogether, looking to Hesiod for inspiration, either concentrating on didactic subjects (see Chapter 5) or other less elevated topics, such as mythology or personal poetry (see Chapter 4). Indeed, this is a major trend in Greek poetry of the third and second centuries. Ennius was not unaware of this literary point of view or its implications for his epic project, and he dealt with it, in the opening of the Annales, by transcending it.

In the opening of his Theogony, Hesiod relates how he was given instruction and transformed into a poet by the Muses. The Alexandrian Callimachus, who took Hesiod instead of Homer as his model (e.g. Anth. Pal. 7.42), introduces his most famous work, the Aetia, by claiming intimacy with the Muses, who appeared to him in a dream and expressed their preference for delicate and refined poems (see Sidebar VI). Ennius, too, had a dream, modelled on Callimachus’, which he relates in the Annales. But in his dream, Ennius meets Homer, not the Muses. And from Homer he learns that he, Ennius, is the great poet’s reincarnation (‘alter Homerus’, a second Homer). This is elaborated by way of extensive Pythagorean philosophising (see Chapter 8 for Ovid’s take on this), but its literary point is clear: Ennius may ignore Callimachean strictures against imitating Homer because he is the man himself, reintroduced to the world to compose Roman epic. And so, he has the authority to re-orient Latin epic away from the Camenae, back to the Muses by offering an authentic and masterly vision of bicultural poetics. This is not to say that Ennius rejects the Hesiodic/Callimachean model; given his opening gambit, we might say that he attempts to unify the two different Greek hexametric traditions.

Ennius does not claim, exactly, to be the ancient genius who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey. His reincarnation is more complex, more suited to its times, than that. He is a Homer who, like Callimachus, is capable of creating highly refined and learned poetry. In the proem to Book 7, Ennius revisits the nature of his epic project. He explains to his reader that, in the Annales, an account of the First Punic War will largely be dispensed with because Naevius has already written one (Enn. Ann. 206–7Sk):

It is typical for Roman poets not to mention their predecessors by name. Here, however, this gesture toward Rome’s existing epic tradition immediately introduces a polemical assertion of Ennius’ literary superiority (Enn. Ann. 208–209 Sk.):

These lines are mangled because they are preserved in piecemeal quotations by Cicero, who more or less agrees with Ennius’ estimation of his own genius. In these lines, Ennius appears to depict himself as the first initiate of the Muses. In Rome – or anywhere? He is, after all, an updated Homer. He is also dicti studiosus, a strange phrase which seems to mean something like ‘possessing a scholarly interest in language’. This is almost certainly Ennius’ translation of the Greek term philologos, the lover of language who was a model for Hellenistic scholars and poets. In this way Ennius makes it clear that as a poet and as a man of learning he excels his epic predecessors, and perhaps not only those in Rome. It is a defiant assertion of poetic ascendancy, following an implicit admission that he will not compete with Naevius.

Muses at/and Rome

Ennius had assistance in bringing the Muses to Rome. After his victory in the Aetolian War, Fulvius Nobilior looted Ambracia, and these spoils allowed him to install in Rome, in the Campus Martius, a temple to Hercules of the Muses (aedes Herculis Musarum). This temple may have been dedicated as early as the year of Fulvius’ triumph in 186 or his celebratory games in the subsequent year, but it is more probable that the dedication took place in 179, when Fulvius was censor (see Sidebar V). The particulars of Fulvius’ edifice remain uncertain, but its symbolism is not. Fulvius placed in his temple statues of the nine Muses and one of Hercules playing the lyre. There was also a shrine to the Camenae, which suggests the success of the conflation between the two. Fulvius’ Hercules is a Roman representation of the Greek god Heracles Mousagetes, ‘leader of the Muses’, a divinity whose combination of brute masculinity with the appurtenances of high culture appealed to Rome’s aristocracy. And it was owing to Rome’s unequalled might that these Greek divinities were removed to Rome and appropriated for the city’s civic religion.

This was also a site for literary recognition. Fulvius’ complex soon became the meeting place of Rome’s association of poets, the collegium poetarum, perhaps replacing the sessions conducted in the temple of Minerva in honour of Livius Andronicus. And it is plausible, though far from certain, that the dedication of this temple constituted the final action represented in the original fifteen-book edition of the Annales. In any case, the role of Ennius in making the Muses welcome in Rome, even (or perhaps especially) if in tandem with the violence of Roman conquest of their representations, is hard to discount. The relationship between the poet and his senatorial friend was clearly a cooperative one, the cross-fertilisation of which altered Roman literature, the city’s landscape and its religion: owing to the literary skill and the cultural collaboration of Ennius, the Muses came to Rome in both song and in concrete reality.

Ennius’ creative career was a long one. In the final year of his life, in 169, his tragedy Thyestes was composed and performed (see Chapter 2). Ennius’ heir was his nephew, the distinguished playwright Marcus Pacuvius (see Chapter 2). Ennius continued to be read, and his plays performed, through the late republic. His Annales remained enormously influential on later poets, even those, like Catullus (see Chapter 4) or Horace, who rejected key aspects of Ennian style. Indeed, the Annales remained the Latin masterpiece until it was superseded by Vergil’s Aeneid (see Chapter 8). In the empire, although Ennius’ poetry continued to be studied, the Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses began to be primary frames of reference, though it is obvious that Silius Italicus, who wrote a vast epic on the Second Punic War, had read Ennius closely. The emperor Hadrian (r. 117–138 ce) claimed to prefer Ennius to Virgil (SHA Hadr. 16.6), and Ennius remained very quotable in late antiquity, although by then, it seems clear, his poetry was no longer being read in its entirety.

The End of the Beginning

The origin of literature at Rome is something we can date to 240, with – as we have noted – a specious degree of accuracy. From the beginning, Latin literature does not merely appropriate and redeploy Greek literature, it signals this relationship as one of its essential and defining qualities. And the Romans’ passion for parading the Hellenic nature of their literary achievements never really diminishes. On the contrary, the mightier Rome becomes, the more emphatically it draws attention to the bicultural character of its literary identity. Early Latin literature is never untethered from the cultural and political realities of its society, nor do Rome’s poets compose in splendid isolation. They compose plays for civic festivals; they write epics that give shape to Rome’s military and political past. Even when they declare themselves independent, they do so in contexts deeply implicated in civic life. That their works made a contemporary impact and represented a very real focus of concern for Rome’s senatorial elite is obvious even from our sparse evidence. These dynamics must help to explain the rapid pace of Rome’s literary development. In not quite a century, from 240 BC to the death of Ennius in 169, as the central Italian state became the Mediterranean world’s superpower, Rome simultaneously became the scene of a robust literary tradition, an environment thick with a wide range of genres animated by competing poetic ambitions.

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