This literary successor was the poet Quintus Ennius, who may almost be said to have met Nævius at the gates of Rome, since he arrived at Rome at about the time when Nævius went into banishment. Ennius was not a Roman citizen at this time, having been born and reared down in the extreme heel of Italy, at Rudiæ in Calabria, a section which had for many generations been under Greek influence. He was of good local family, familiar with the rough Oscan speech of his native village, with the polished Greek of neighboring Tarentum, where he was probably at school, and with the Roman tongue, which had become the official language of his district after Rome had pushed her conquests to the limits of Italy. He was wont to say of himself that he had three hearts--Oscan, Latin, and Greek; and certainly by the circumstances of his birth and education he was a good representative of the threefold national influences which were rapidly converging. Ennius was born in 239 B. C., shortly after the close of the First Punic War; but he comes first into notice as a centurion in the Roman army in Sardinia during the Second Punic War. Here Cato, while acting as quæstor in the island, found him, and no doubt attracted by the sturdy scholarly soldier, took him to Rome in 204 in his own train. The poet afterward accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior on that general's expedition to Ætolia, a privilege which he richly repaid later by immortalizing in verse the Ætolian campaign. He obtained Roman citizenship in 184 through the instrumentality of the son of Fulvius. He was most fortunate, moreover, in enjoying the friendship of the great Scipio, with whom he lived on the most intimate terms. For himself, he lived always at Rome in humble fashion on a slope of the Aventine Hill, and gained a modest living by teaching Greek to the youths of Rome. There is a tradition not very trustworthy that it was of him that Cato himself "learned Greek at eighty." That Ennius was fitted to be a confidential friend to great men of affairs we may well believe if, as Aulus Gellius, who has preserved the passage, would have us understand, the following picture was intended by the poet as a self-portraiture. The passage is from the seventh book of the "Annals," and has a setting of its own, but may well represent the familiar intercourse of the poet with Marcus Fulvius or with Scipio. If this is indeed a portrait, it is a passage of great value, for it pictures the character in great detail.