He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse, called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology into natural substances[71]. A few slight fragments have been preserved from this poem. They speak of the four elements or principles of the universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the blending of heat with cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth bearing and supporting all nations and receiving them again back into herself.' The following is the longest fragment from the poem:-- Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant Aërem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aër denuo, Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi, Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[72]. These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals, where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius (like the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature, which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge. Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the Roman poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was the first among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the ultimate facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the universe, which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the mind of Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.