Ennius
historical figure · 13 works · 27 mentions · 36 anchored passages
our Ennius · old Ennius · that nurse in Ennius · the Roman poet
spoken of as
1 expressionMedea's nurse“Ennius”1 mention
Tusculan Disputations (Latin)
But there are others whom, in mourning, it often delights to speak with solitude itself, as that nurse in Ennius:
in the texts
Tusculan Disputations
Early Roman epic poet, quoted on his own posthumous fame and cited for reports about ancient beliefs and Romulus.
Do not poets too wish to be ennobled after death?
And so this one belief was implanted in those men of old, whom Ennius calls the "ancients" (casci):
From this, and by the belief of our own people, Romulus dwells in heaven and passes his days with the gods, as Ennius said, assenting to the common report;
On the Nature of the Gods
Roman poet quoted for his line on the ape's resemblance to man.
Is not a dog like a wolf (and, as Ennius says, "How like to us, that foulest of beasts, the ape!
This theory was handled chiefly by Euhemerus, whom our Ennius above all others both translated and followed;
but while he judges with his palate what is best, he never looked up to the 'palate of the heaven,' as Ennius says.
On Moral Ends
Early Roman poet who translated Greek tragedy (Medea) into Latin and drew on Homer.
Certain passages I shall translate, if it seems good — chiefly from those I have just named, when occasion arises that it may be aptly done, as Ennius is wont to draw from Homer, and Afranius from Menander.
For who is so hostile, almost, to the very name of Rome as to scorn or reject the Medea of Ennius or the Antiopa of Pacuvius, on the ground that, though he delights in the same plays of Euripides, he hates Latin letters?
'Too much of good has he, to whom there is no evil.
On the Commonwealth
Early Roman poet, author of the Annals and tragedies, repeatedly quoted as a literary and historical authority.
" And in this matter there is so much reckoning and skill, that from this day, which we see marked down in Ennius and in the great Annals, earlier eclipses of the sun have been reckoned back as far as that one which befell on the Nones of Quintilis in the reign of Romulus;
For my part, just as I judge that "great and imperious cities"—as Ennius calls them—are to be preferred to hamlets and forts, so I hold that those who preside over these cities by their counsel and authority are far to be set above, in point of wisdom itself, those who have no share in any public business.
in his father's own line there was that friend of ours, worthy to be imitated by this man, 'a man notably wise and shrewd, Aelius Sextus,' who was 'notably wise' and 'shrewd' and was so called by Ennius—not because he sought out things he would never find, but because he gave answers that freed those who had asked from care and trouble;
Lucullus
Roman poet whose accounts of waking experience and dream-visions (of Homer, and in the Epicharmus of his own death) are used as evidence for the difference between waking and dreaming impressions.
Do you suppose that Ennius, when he had walked in his gardens with his neighbour Servius Galba, said, "I seemed to myself to be walking with Galba"?
Unless indeed we think that Ennius did not so hear that whole "O piety of soul" — if only he dreamed it — as if he had heard it waking.
Letters to Lucilius
Early Roman epic poet whose verses on Scipio Africanus and on heaven are quoted
" Ennius, he says, filched this from Homer, and Virgil from Ennius.
Then he gathers the verses of Ennius, and first of all those written about Africanus:
I am not pressing this point now with such care to show how much time I wasted with the grammarian, but that from this you may understand how much disuse has overtaken the words in Ennius and Accius, when even in this author, who is gone over daily, some have been withdrawn from us.
Academica
Roman poet cited as an example of successful Latin imitation of Greek literary models.
Or is it because Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and many others give delight, men who expressed not the words but the force of the Greek poets—how much more will the philosophers delight us, if, as those poets imitated Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, so these were to imitate Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus!
On Fate
Roman poet whose verse about the felling of Pelion's fir-trees is cited to illustrate the fallacy of tracing causes back without limit.
Of this kind is that passage of Ennius:
The Freedom of the Seas (Mare Liberum)
Early Roman poet quoted on the ethics of sharing that costs the giver nothing.
If any person should prevent any other person from taking fire from his fire or a light from his torch, I should accuse him of violating the law of human society, because that is the essence of its very nature, as Ennius has said:
“No less shines his, when he his friend’s hath lit.”
De Rerum Natura
Quintus Ennius, the celebrated early Roman poet, described as the first to bring poetic glory from Helicon to the Italian clans. He is cited for his depiction of Acheron, his belief in metempsychosis, and his vision of Homer's ghost revealing nature's secrets.
Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse
Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,
Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,
On Anger
Early Roman poet cited as a hypothetical example of a writer who could take offense at criticism.
Then Ennius, in whom you take no delight, would have hated you, and Hortensius, if you disapproved his speeches, would declare a feud against you, and Cicero, if you derided his verses, would be your enemy.
Adversus Valentinianos
Roman poet who spoke of heavenly dining-halls, used as a comparison point
First of all, Ennius, the Roman poet, spoke simply of "the great dining-halls of heaven," by the name of an elevated situation, or because he had read in Homer of Jupiter banqueting there.
De Anima
Roman poet who claimed in a dream-vision that Homer had previously been a peacock.
Homer remembered that he had been a peacock, when Ennius dreamed it;