Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

ENNIUS' ANNALES
gation and as such it is important, for it is the earliest known example of
specifically Latin 'research', and it reminds one in its field, if only humbly, of
the famous and important chronographiae of Eratosthenes. In these Eratosthenes
presented in summary form a continuous chronology of the Greek world from
the fall of Troy (which he put in the equivalent of 1184/3 B - c 0 to tne death of
Alexander (32.3 B.C.), and popularized the Olympiad-system for Greek dating.
This greatly facilitated the composition of the kind of universal history at which
Polybius aimed, and gave a more exact perspective and depth to Greek history
as a whole by linking the mythical age to the modern by measured steps. Fabius
Pictor's Greek history, composed probably in the 190s, used the Olympiadreckoning
where appropriate (809 F 3b Jacoby).
The title of Ennius* poem looks immediately to the priestly Armales, ' yearbooks',
instituted by the Pythagorean king Numa Pompilius and kept by the
pontifices. * But, from a different point of view, here were chronographiae of a new
kind, indirectly made possible, like Fabius' history, by Alexandrian scholarship.
The epic form had been used in modern times in Greek for poems about the
foundation of cities (e.g. the ' foundation' poems of Apollonius Rhodius), the
chronicles of a people (e.g. Rhianus' Messeniaca, Euphorion's Mopsopia), and
the praise of living kings (e.g. Simonides of Magnesia's poem about Antiochus
III, and Leschides' about one of the Attalids of Pergamum: see the Suda under
these names). The conception of Ennius' verse-history of the Roman People
was on a grander and more consciously ambitious scale than anything before,
or, it can be argued, since. His practical debt to Fabius Pictor was probably
great, and Ennius was not a scientific historian in our sense or the Alexandrians'
or even Cato's. In the prose Origines Cato made a point of referring to officers
on active service simply as 'the consul', 'the praetor', without naming them: in
this, he followed the tradition of the priestly armales, and implicitly asserted the
subordination of the individual to the community (Nepos 24.3.4, cf. Gell. N.A.
3-7). z Whether conscious or not, this was a reaction against the individualism of
Ennius, who praised not only famous men by name, but also adapted Homer to
celebrate the bravery of'other ranks', e.g. a lone stand by a tribune whose name
is now, ironically, corrupt ((15) 401-8 V = ROL (16) 409-16; Iliad 16.102-11,
on Ajax; Macrob. Sat. 6.3.i). 3 Ennius receives short measure in accounts of
Roman historiography: this is unfair, for two reasons. His poem remained until
1
Jocelyn (1972), 1008—23; published only in the 120s B.C. by P. Mucius Scaevola Pontifex
(Serv. auct. Aen. 1.373, Cic. De or. 2.52).
x
See Leo (1913) 292, 296?. It is usually assumed (as by Leo) that Cato did not name the heroic
tribune whose story is reported by Gellius, loc. cit., just as Caesar left unnamed the brave signifer who
led the way on Caesar's first British expedition {Bell. Gall. 4.25.3). There must be some doubt about
this, however, since Gellius' narrative reads as though he had the name Caedicius from Cato's text,
and Nepos (loc. cit.) refers to bellorum duces only, which does not necessarily mean that no one was
named.
3 G.W. Williams (1968) 687-9.
64
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008