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ENNIUS' ANNALES
The epithets are qualitative, emotional, and subjective; a riddle, as it were, is
posed in mid-line, which is solved by the corresponding noun at the end. In
hie lustrum panxit maxuma iaoXa. patrum
(see above) two adjectives precede two nouns. This is rare in Ennius' Annales,
but it is simply a duplication of the principle described, an elaboration of a very
common Ennian trait. It became a mannerism of the neoteric poets, and remained
a very important device in all Latin hexameter poetry. That here too
Father Ennius was the ultimate source has not been sufficiently recognized. 1
While Ennius established the norms of Epic rhythm, diction, and wordorder
without which there would be no Latin hexameter poetry, he also experimented
widely with rhythms and stylistic devices which were later restricted or
avoided e.g. the shortening rather than elision of a final long vowel in ...
Enni imaginV formam (cf. Horn. Od. 1.241), the lengthening in arsis of a light
syllable (quom nlhil horrldtus umqudm. ..,(5) 170 V = ROL 474), and Greek
'epicisms' like endo sudm do (see above). Some of these, e.g. Mettoeoque
FufetioeS (Quint. Inst. 1.5.12), 'of Mettius Fufetius', modelled on the Homeric
genitive -010, suggest that Ennius thought of Latin as a much-corrupted Greek
dialect, and here overstepped the bounds of decorum with a spurious archaism.
Others, e.g. (Jib. inc.') 609 V = ROL Enn. spuria 13. . .saxo cere- comminuit
-brum, an absurdly literal and violent tmesis, seem scarcely credible and may
only be schoolmasterly jokes. Ennius sometimes played on words in a manner
hardly appropriate to the majesty of the epic form. He 'seems to have been
joking', we are told, when he wrote inde parum [. . .] ulabant {{lib. inc.') 524
V = ROL 544); evidently there was a pun on parum 'too little' and Parum
' (to) Paros' or ' Pharos'. Again in a line referring probably to the building of the
via Flaminia in 220 B.C. we read ((7) 260 V = ROL 255) sulphureas posuit
spiramina Ndris ad undas ' He set blow-holes by the sulphurous waters of the
river Nar'; here the nonce-word spiramina, literally 'things by which one
breathes', is nothing but a synonym of ndres ' nostrils'; the unfortunate pun was
presumably meant to imply that the river was so called because of its pungent
smell (cf. Vitruv. 7.4).
These and other blemishes offended the taste of the Augustan age. However,
it would have pained Ennius to learn that although his ingenium was acknowledged
by such as Propertius and Ovid, they could not repress an amused smile
when contemplating his ars, his technique — an aspect of his work in which
Ennius took pride. Indeed, the romantic view of Ennius, current in Ovid's
time, as an untutored and therefore artistically hirsute genius has still not
entirely evaporated. He deserves to be judged more analytically and against less
1 Patzer (1955) 77—95 cites Euphorion fr. 9.10—15, Hermesianax fr. 7.21—6 Powell in connexion
with Catullus' practice. There is nothing similar in Apollonius or Callimachus. Norden (1926) 39if.
and Pearce (1966, 1968) are concerned with poets of the first century B.C., not with Ennius.
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