the commissioners of public works under the Irish Church Act of 1869. Steamers ply between Enniskillen and Belleek on the lower lake, and between Enniskillen and Knockninny on the upper lake.
ENNIUS, QUINTUS (239–170 B.C.), ancient Latin poet, was
born at Rudiae in Calabria. Familiar with Greek as the language
in common use among the cultivated classes of his district, and
with Oscan, the prevailing dialect of lower Italy, he further
acquired a knowledge of Latin; to use his own expression
(Gellius xvii. 17), he had three “hearts” (corda), the Latin
word being used to signify the seat of intelligence. He is said
(Servius on Aen. vii. 691) to have claimed descent from one of the
legendary kings of his native district, Messapus the eponymous
hero of Messapia, and this consciousness of ancient lineage is in
accordance with the high self-confident tone of his mind, with his
sympathy with the dominant genius of the Roman republic,
and with his personal relations to the members of her great
families. Of his early years nothing is directly known, and we
first hear of him in middle life as serving during the Second
Punic War, with the rank of centurion, in Sardinia, in the year
204, where he attracted the attention of Cato the elder, and was
taken by him to Rome in the same year. Here he taught Greek
and adapted Greek plays for a livelihood, and by his poetical
compositions gained the friendship of the greatest men in Rome.
Amongst these were the elder Scipio and Fulvius Nobilior,
whom he accompanied on his Aetolian campaign (189). Through
the influence of Nobilior’s son, Ennius subsequently obtained the
privilege of Roman citizenship (Cicero, Brutus, 20. 79). He lived
plainly and simply on the Aventine with the poet Caecilius
Statius. He died at the age of 70, immediately after producing
his tragedy Thyestes. In the last book of his epic poem, in
which he seems to have given various details of his personal
history, he mentions that he was in his 67th year at the date of
its composition. He compared himself, in contemplation of
the close of the great work of his life, to a gallant horse which,
after having often won the prize at the Olympic games, obtained
his rest when weary with age. A similar feeling of pride at the
completion of a great career is expressed in the memorial lines
which he composed to be placed under his bust after death,—“Let
no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning;
for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of
men.” From the impression stamped on his remains, and from
the testimony of his countrymen, we think of him as a man of a
robust, sagacious and cheerful nature (Hor. Epp. ii. 1. 50;
Cic. De sen. 5); of great industry and versatility; combining
imaginative enthusiasm and a vein of religious mysticism with a
sceptical indifference to popular beliefs and a scorn of religious
imposture; and tempering the grave seriousness of a Roman
with a genial capacity for enjoyment (Hor. Epp. i. 19. 7).
Till the appearance of Ennius, Roman literature, although it had produced the epic poem of Naevius and some adaptations of Greek tragedy, had been most successful in comedy. Naevius and Plautus were men of thoroughly popular fibre. Naevius suffered for his attacks on members of the aristocracy, and, although Plautus carefully avoids any direct notice of public matters, yet the bias of his sympathies is indicated in several passages of his extant plays. Ennius, on the other hand, was by temperament in thorough sympathy with the dominant aristocratic element in Roman life and institutions. Under his influence literature became less suited to the popular taste, more especially addressed to a limited and cultivated class, but at the same time more truly expressive of what was greatest and most worthy to endure in the national sentiment and traditions. He was a man of many-sided activity. He devoted attention to questions of Latin orthography, and is said to have been the first to introduce shorthand writing in Latin. He attempted comedy, but with so little success that in the canon of Volcacius Sedigitus he is mentioned, solely as a mark of respect “for his antiquity,” tenth and last in the list of comic poets. He may be regarded also as the inventor of Roman satire, in its original sense of a “medley” or “miscellany,” although it was by Lucilius that the character of aggressive and censorious criticism of men and manners was first imparted to that form of literature. The word satura was originally applied to a rude scenic and musical performance, exhibited at Rome before the introduction of the regular drama. The saturae of Ennius were collections of writings on various subjects, written in various metres and contained in four (or six) books. Among these were included metrical versions of the physical speculations of Epicharmus, of the gastronomic researches of Archestratus of Gela (Hedyphagetica), and, probably, of the rationalistic doctrines of Euhemerus. It may be noticed that all these writers whose works were thus introduced to the Romans were Sicilian Greeks. Original compositions were also contained in these saturae, and among them the panegyric on Scipio, unless this was a drama. The satire of Ennius seems to have resembled the more artistic satire of Horace in its record of personal experiences, in the occasional introduction of dialogue, in the use made of fables with a moral application, and in the didactic office which it assumed.
But the chief distinction of Ennius was gained in tragic and narrative poetry. He was the first to impart to the Roman adaptations of Greek tragedy the masculine dignity, pathos and oratorical fervour which continued to animate them in the hands of Pacuvius and Accius, and, when set off by the acting of Aesopus, called forth vehement applause in the age of Cicero. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known to us, and a considerable number of fragments, varying in length from a few words to about fifteen lines, have been preserved. These tragedies were for the most part adaptations and, in some cases, translations from Euripides. One or two were original dramas, of the class called praetextae, i.e. dramas founded on Roman history or legend; thus, the Ambracia treated of the capture of that city by his patron Nobilior, the Sabinae of the rape of the Sabine women. The heroes and heroines of the Trojan cycle, such as Achilles, Ajax, Telamon, Cassandra, Andromache, were prominent figures in some of the dramas adapted from the Greek. Several of the more important fragments are found in Cicero, who expresses a great admiration for their manly fortitude and dignified pathos. In these remains of the tragedies of Ennius we can trace indications of strong sympathy with the nobler and bolder elements of character, of vivid realization of impassioned situations, and of sagacious observation of life. The frank bearing, fortitude and self-sacrificing heroism of the best type of the soldierly character find expression in the persons of Achilles, Telamon and Eurypylus; and a dignified and passionate tenderness of feeling makes itself heard in the lyrical utterances of Cassandra and Andromache. The language is generally nervous and vigorous, occasionally vivified with imaginative energy. But it flows less smoothly and easily than that of the dialogue of Latin comedy. It shows the same tendency to aim at effect by alliterations, assonances and plays on words. The rudeness of early art is most apparent in the inequality of the metres in which both the dialogue and the “recitative” are composed.
But the work which gained him his reputation as the Homer of Rome, and which called forth the admiration of Cicero and Lucretius and frequent imitation from Virgil, was the Annales, a long narrative poem in eighteen books, containing the record of the national story from mythical times to his own. Although the whole conception of the work implies that confusion of the provinces of poetry and history which was perpetuated by later writers, and especially by Lucan and Silius Italicus, yet it was a true instinct of genius to discern in the idea of the national destiny the only possible motive of a Roman epic. The execution of the poem (to judge from the fragments, amounting to about six hundred lines), although rough, unequal and often prosaic, seems to have combined the realistic fidelity and freshness of feeling of a contemporary chronicle with the vivifying and idealizing power of genius. Ennius prided himself especially on being the first to form the strong speech of Latium into the mould of the Homeric hexameter in place of the old Saturnian metre. And although it took several generations of poets to beat their music out to the perfection of the Virgilian cadences, yet in the rude adaptation of Ennius the secret of what ultimately
