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THE SCOPE AND CONTENTS OF THE ANNALES
sack of Troy, Aeneas' escape, his arrival in Italy, his alliance with Latinus, and
his death. Thus in less than half of the first book Ennius covered more ground
than Virgil in the whole Aeneid. Ilia, whom Ennius represented as Aeneas"
daughter, had a prominent part in the sequel. She narrated a strange dream
presaging her future, 1 and bore to Mars the twins Romulus and Remus, who in
this version were therefore Aeneas' grandsons. 2 By telescoping the twins'
ancestry, Ennius put Ilia at the centre of the stage, as it were, and he evidently
presented her in tragic manner, as if she were one of his dramatic heroines. This
emphasis on female character and psychology was typically Hellenistic. The
rest of the book told the story of the twins, apparently following the usual
version as recorded some years earlier in Greek by Fabius Pictor, and the
climax of Book i was the foundation of the City. An important fragment ((i)
77—96 V = ROL 80—ioo) 3 describes the taking of the auspices with precise
regard for modern Roman ritual, and the silence of the onlookers is strikingly
compared to that of the people at the games as they wait with bated breath for
the consul to signal the start of the chariot-race. 4 These anachronisms characteristically
imply the tradition, continuity, even timelessness of Roman public
institutions. Somewhere in this book there was a Council of the Gods in
Homeric style, at which the deification of Romulus was discussed as if at a
meeting of the Senate. This was later parodied by Lucilius and Seneca. Books
a and 3 are badly represented. Somehow they narrated and filled out the regal
period; but on any view there is a chronological problem. An unassigned
fragment makes some orator state that 'it is now more or less seven hundred
years since Rome was founded' ({lib. inc.') 5oif. V = ROL 468f.). If 'now'
were the poet's own time, the foundation of Rome would fall early in the nindi
century B.C.; it is, however, probable that Ennius followed Eratosthenes on the
date of the fall of Troy (1184/3 B.C.), and since as we have seen Romulus and
Remus are Aeneas' grandsons in this version, this implies a date around 1100
B.C. for the foundation of Rome, coeval that is with the Return of the Sons of
Heracles (the Dorian invasion) in mythological history. In this case, the fragment
belongs in the mouth of someone like Camillus, and the occasion might
be the Gallic invasion (390 or 387 B.C.). S On either view, of course, it remains
unclear how Ennius reconciled his chronology with the usual story of only
seven kings, the last of whom, Tarquin the Proud, fell just when the Athenian
democracy was being established (c. 510 B.C.).
1 1
(') J5-5 V = ROL 31-48; Leo (1913) I78f.; G. W. Williams (1968) 689f.
2
So also Naevius (Serv. auct. Am. i.irrf); Eratosthenes made the twins grandsons of Aeneas
through Ascanius, not Ilia (ibid.). These versions contradict Tiraaeus (cf. Lycophron, Alex. I2i6ff.
with the Scholiast) and Fabius Pictor (Plut. Rom. 3), whose account is the dominant one.
J
References to Ennius' Annales are given with the numeration of Vahlen (1918) ( = V) and
Warmington ( = ROL). The figure in parentheses indicates the book number.
• Williams (1968) 6&4S., 698.
s Skutsch (1968) izf.
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