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Ennius The Mystic—1: The Terms of the Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

Every schoolboy knows that Ennius was the first Roman poet to use the hexameter. This series of articles is an attempt to put his action into its literary and social context.

There can have been few more intellectually exciting periods than that which in Rome followed the successful conclusion of the Second Punic War. By their victory over Carthage the tough, brutal, superstitious, conservative peasants who formed the Roman people and most of its rulers had forced their way into the arena of Mediterranean politics. In unmistakable terms they had made it plain to the Hellenistic monarchies of the East that their country was no longer the negligible training-ground on which a Pyrrhos might try his skill, their troops no longer the ignorant levies so easily put in their place by a Xanthippos. Like Peter the Great, when he burst into the England of William and Mary; like Tom Paine, had he lived to see the baroque splendours and know the world-weary diplomats of the Congress of Vienna; perhaps indeed, if we allow ourselves a little hindsight, like the self-confident Oedipus before the Sphinx, the Romans, ambitious, lusty, cunning, and doomed, now encountered for the first time the full impact of a mature civilization.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1963

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References

page 132 note 2 Livy makes him use the same metaphor as Horace in xxxiv. 4. 3.

page 133 note 1 These details are taken from Norden, E., Die römische Literatur (Leipzig, 1954), 25 f.Google Scholar A more technical account of Cato's style and Greek influences thereon may be found in Norden, 's Die antike Kunstprosa (5th ed., Stuttgart, 1958), i. 164ff.Google Scholar

page 133 note 2 Büchner, K., Römische Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1957), 114.Google Scholar

page 134 note 1 Kornemann, E., Römische Geschichte (4th ed., Stuttgart, 1960), i. 250.Google Scholar Cf. also Rostovtzeff, M., Rome (Galaxy reprint, New York, 1960), 86 ff.Google Scholar

page 134 note 2 Hor. Odes, i. 12. 43 f.Google Scholar

page 134 note 3 Livy, , xxx. i. 10.Google Scholar

page 134 note 4 Nepos, , Cato, 3. 4.Google Scholar Perhaps something should be said here, in view of the later argument, about the carmina which Cato declared (Fr. 118 Peter) to have been sung at banquets long before his own day about the exploits of great men.

page 135 note 1 The De Agricultura stands in the same tradition as the Georgics. It is surprising to find the Oxford Classical Dictionary (s.v. ‘Cato’) saying simply, ‘It [i.e. the De Agr.] was… directed to the new capitalistic farming’, since in the introduction Cato took pains to draw a distinction between the countryman and the fenerator and mercator. The general aim was surely to enable the traditional farmer to compete in the new circumstances.

page 135 note 2 The Silver Age satirists in one way and the activities of the agentes in rebus in another show the failure of Roman thought to develop here—and its cost. Ammianus is still quoting Cato with approval in the fourth century a.d. (xiv. 6. 8.).

page 135 note 3 Lucilius, cited by Gellius, , xviii. 8.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 R.E. iv. 1462ff.Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Cornelius’, No. 336.

page 136 note 2 Quoted by Cicero, , De SenectuteGoogle Scholar, ad init. Cf. Kornemann, E., op. cit. 205.Google Scholar

page 136 note 3 Livy, , xxvi. 19. 19Google Scholar, makes interesting reading here.

page 136 note 4 Cf. Plutarch, , Cato Maior, 24. 6Google Scholar, Horace, , Sat. i. 2. 31 ff.Google Scholar, and Livy, , xxx. 14. 4.Google Scholar Note Livy's remark too at 14. 3. Naevius' strictures (Warmington, E. H., Remains of Old Latin, ii (1936), 138Google Scholar, Frr. 13)Google Scholar, even if more than gossip, obviously refer to youthful wild oats.

page 136 note 5 Quoted by Gellius, , xi. 2. 5.Google Scholar

page 136 note 6 Bloch, R., The Origins of Rome (London, 1960), 98 ff.Google Scholar, supports Rostovtzeff (op. cit. eh. 3) in attaching little importance to the Regifugium as such in marking any cultural or economic break. But he does note a definite decline after the final withdrawal of the Etruscans about 475. We may suppose that painting at Rome underwent the coarsening visible after a similar ethnic take-over at Paestum and Cumae (see Maiuri, A., Roman Painting (New York, 1953), 20 ff.)Google Scholar if it survived at all. Satire and the Saturnian verse bear Etruscan names (Stolz, F. and Debrunner, A., Geschichte der lateinischen Sprache (Berlin, 1953), para. 86)Google Scholar, and they must have suffered in the same way. In 364 the satura had to be reimported (Livy, , vii. 2. 3 ff.).Google Scholar

page 137 note 1 Ennius has a list of them (Warmington, E. H., op. cit. iGoogle Scholar, Ann. Frr. 60 f.Google Scholar All the fragments of Ennius' works will be cited throughout from Warmington). Varro's distinction (Res Rustica, i. i. 4—1Google Scholar owe this reference to the kindness of the Editor) between rustic and urban di consentes emphasizes the emptiness of the latter for what is usually the most conservative and traditional part of any society—the peasantry.

page 137 note 2 vi. 56. off.; cf. Latte, K., Römische Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1960), 253, 277 n. 2.Google Scholar

page 137 note 3 The argument here is not that the Romans became irreligious after the Punic Wars (Lucretius' anxiety to avoid scandalizing Memmius—e.g. i. 80 if.— and Catullus's insertion of si fas est in his translation of Sappho's ode (li) should warn us against underestimating the survival of belief even in the first century). But it was belief switched into new channels. It is interesting to note the appearance of Bacchus on the coinage of the rebellious allies in the Social War (picture in Vogt, J., Römische Geschichte [Freiburg, 1955], vol. iGoogle Scholar, facing page 272), which looks very much like an underground current of faith bursting out again at a favourable moment. The frescoes from the ‘Villa of the Mysteries’ at Pompeii (Maiuri, op. cit., 50ff.) are an object lesson for those who, like Pentheus, attach too much importance to laws in these matters.

page 137 note 4 The fact that Scipio's daily visits to the Capitol aroused such comment (Livy, xxvi. 19. 5 if.) shows that whatever Jupiter meant to him it was something outside the traditional framework of worship. A very good description of the differences between the personal and official views of a Roman of the upper classes on religion is given in an article by E. A. Berkova in a symposium, Cicero, published by the Gorky Institute of World Literature (Moscow, 1958).

page 137 note 5 Livy, , xxii. 57. 6.Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 Cf. the passage at Thuc. ii. 43, ad init.

page 138 note 2 Ep. 3. 5.Google Scholar

page 138 note 3 Glaube der Hellenen (3rd ed., Basel-Stuttgart, 1959), ii. 126 ff.Google Scholar, 258 ff. Cf. Lesky, A., Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (Bern, 19571959), 189f., 633 ff.Google Scholar

page 138 note 4 Richter, G., Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (New Haven, 1957), Pll. 55 and 57Google Scholar; see too the instructive comments by Lullies, R. and Hirmer, M., in whose Greek Sculpture (London, 1957)Google Scholar Richter's Pl. 57 is Pll. 250 f. Compare these statues in turn with Lullies and Hirmer 98 and 128 for the difference between god and man in the classical period. The contrast between the treat ment on the eastern metopes of the Parthenon and the Pergamon altar of the same theme must have been very illuminating.

page 138 note 5 Ennius gave expression to misgivings here which the Romans never over came (Trag. Fr. 407Google Scholar, echoing Euripides).

page 139 note 1 For an impressive map of Hellenistic city-foundations see Schachermeyr, F., Griechische Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1960), facing p. 288.Google Scholar A sympathetic view of the function of these cities is given by Berve, H., Griechische Geschichte (Freiburg, 1951), ii. 257 ff.Google Scholar: ‘They… enjoyed a peaceful prosperity and allowed the positive forces of Greek civilization of this period free play.’

page 138 note 2 Bengston, H., Griechische Geschichte (Munich, 1950), 407 ff.Google Scholar Bengston emphasizes the support lent to the new monarchies by the Stoics; thus Tarn's phrase in Oxf. Class. Dict, about ‘Stoic opposition’ to the memory of Alexander must not rouse any thoughts of Thrasea Paetus.