And it was Ennius who more than any one else kept Roman society upon that foundation. We happen to be able to test his influence by what he did with the portrait of Pyrrhus. Only a generation before Ennius was born this picturesque enemy of Rome had had a friendly alliance with the Messapian tribe to which Ennius himself belonged. The poet, therefore, had heard much about the king. Pyrrhus, in fact, had some very sympathetic traits of character, a remarkable chivalry, and a certain sense of honor and loyalty such as is often found in the chieftains of primitive folk. These qualities stand out in the characterization of him that Ennius has left us; and these are the outstanding traits that we find in all the later Roman references to Pyrrhus. That Ennius should have responded to these qualities is not strange, but that all the rest of the Romans should thus enthusiastically have lauded an enemy who nearly wrecked Rome is less to be expected. The explanation is of course that what Ennius wrote colored the historic conceptions of all who followed. This becomes evident when we read Plutarch, a Greek, and his biography of Pyrrhus. When drawing upon Roman sources for the Italian campaign of the king, Plutarch paints the same picture as Ennius, but when he draws upon Greek authors in describing the Greek campaigns, he reveals the fact that the knightly hero of the Roman historians had a less charming side which certain close observers at home were well aware of. Like all historians Ennius had his enthusiasms, and he had such power of portraiture that not a trait blurred. He was also fair. Pyrrhus got his meed of praise, but the opponents of Pyrrhus, Fabricius and Appius Claudius, were characterized with equal sympathy. Of his own contemporaries, Fabius the Slow-goer was effectively portrayed as we have seen, and Cato “in caelum tollitur,” as Cicero affirms, although Scipio Africanus, who was bitterly opposed by these conservatives, became, as he deserved to be, the outstanding hero of the book.