So having spoken, he called for a man with whom often and gladly Table he shared, and talk, and all his burden of duties, When with debate all day on important affairs he was wearied, Whether perchance in the Forum wide, or the reverend Senate; One with whom he could frankly speak of his serious matters,-- Trifles also, and jests,--could pour out freely together Pleasant or bitter words, and know they were uttered in safety. Many the joys and the griefs he had shared, whether public or secret! This was a man in whom no impulse prompted to evil, Whether of folly or malice; a scholarly man and a loyal, Graceful, ready of speech, with his own contented and happy; Tactful, speaking in season, yet courteous, never loquacious. Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime Made him master of earlier customs as well as of newer. Versed in the laws was he of the ancients, men or immortals. Wisely he knew both when he should talk and when to be silent. So unto him Servilius spoke in the midst of the fighting.... Lawton. Ennius died in 169 B. C., and tradition says that his bust was placed in the tomb of the family of his great patron, whereby the poet-soldier and the soldier-statesman were mutually honored. Upon that sarcophagus of Scipio surmounted by the poet's bust might well have been inscribed the saying of Sellar: "Ennius was in letters what Scipio was in action--the most vital representative of his epoch." Ennius wrote satires and tragedies as we have seen; but it is because of his great epic poem the _Annales_, the work of his ripe age, that he deserves the high title accorded to him by the Romans themselves--"the father of Roman literature." This work is epoch-making because of its form and because of its important contribution to the development of the Latin language itself. The poet perceived that the native Saturnian verse was rude and unfitted to serve as a vehicle for the highest form of literary expression. His feeling toward this verse is shown in a fragment upon the First Punic War in which he refers to the _Bellum Punicum_ of Nævius: Others have treated the subject in the verses which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had climbed to the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style. Sellar.