Ennius's Annales

Ennius (239–169 BC), called "the father of Roman poetry," was the first to adapt the Greek dactylic hexameter to Latin verse. His Annales narrated Roman history year by year (hence "annales") from Aeneas's flight from Troy through the mythical kings, the founding by Romulus, the Republic's wars, and down to Ennius's own era, ending around 172 BC. The poem was revolutionary: it imported Homeric grandeur into Latin and created the literary language that Virgil, Lucretius, and Ovid would later refine. Cicero quotes Ennius extensively and with evident admiration. The famous opening — in which Ennius dreams that Homer's soul has transmigrated into his body — established a claim of poetic succession that Virgil would later appropriate. After Virgil published the Aeneid in 19 BC, Ennius's more archaic, rougher epic was gradually eclipsed. Roman schoolchildren read Virgil instead of Ennius, and copyists followed the curriculum. By late antiquity, the Annales existed only in quotations preserved by grammarians interested in archaic Latin forms. The surviving 600 lines include some of the most powerful passages in early Latin literature, including vivid battle descriptions and the famous line: "Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque" ("On ancient customs and men stands the Roman state").