His favourite model was Euripides: nor is it surprising that he should have been better able to appreciate the inferior excellencies of this dramatic poet, when we remember that the birth of Latin literature was coincident with the decay of that of Greece. Callimachus died just as Livius began to write.[161] Theocritus expired when Ennius was twenty-five years old;[162] and by this decaying living literature his taste must have been partially educated and formed. In comedy, as in tragedy, he never emancipated himself from the trammels of the Greek originals. His comedies were _palliatæ_; and Terence when accused of plagiarism defends himself by an appeal to the example of Ennius. Fragments are preserved of four only. The poems which he wrote in various metres, and on miscellaneous subjects, were, for that reason, entitled _Satiræ_ or _Saturæ_. Ennius does not, indeed, anticipate the claim of Lucilius to be considered the father of Roman satire in its proper sense; but still there can be little doubt that the scope of these minor poems was the chastisement of vice. The degeneracy of Roman virtue, even in his days, provoked language of Archilochian bitterness from so stern a moralist, although he would not libellously attack those who were undeserving of censure. The salutation which he addresses to himself expresses the burning indignation which he felt against wickedness:— Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus _Versus_ propinas flammeos medullitus. Amongst his minor works were epitaphs on Scipio and on himself, a didactic poem, entitled Epicharmus, a collection of moral precepts, an encomium on his friend Scipio Africanus, a translation in hexameters of a poem on edible fishes and their localities, by Archestratus (Phagetica,) and a work entitled Asotus, the existence of which is only known from its being mentioned by Varro and Festus for the sake of etymological illustration; by some it is thought to have been a comedy. The idea that he was the author of a piece called “Sabinæ” is without foundation. Cicero[163] mentions a mythological work (Evemerus,) a translation in trochaics of the Ἱερα Ἀναγραφη of the Sicilian writer who bore that name. It was a work well adapted to the talent which Ennius possessed of relating mythical traditions, in the form of poetical history. The theory embodied in the original was one which is often adopted by Livy in his early history, and therefore most probably entered into the ancient legends, namely, that the gods were originally mighty warriors and benefactors of mankind, who, as their reward, were deified and worshipped.