quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light of common sense, not of humour, that he viewed the follies of the world. The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be ascertained from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the early tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed in the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters. His peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality, are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in the sequel, along with passages from the Annals, as important contributions to our estimate of the poet's genius and intellect. It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero. While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his life. Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the celebration of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's death[77]. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known, and a few fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these bear the titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan cycle of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_, _Ajax_, _Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_, _Hecuba_, _Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his tragedies, the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of Euripides, whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to the older Attic dramatists. Cicero[78] speaks of it, along with the Antiope of Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek; and a comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in the Medea of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original. In one place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med. 215), οἶδα γὰρ πολλοὺς βροτῶν σεμνοὺς γεγῶτας, τοὺς μὲν ὀμμάτων ἄπο τοὺς δ᾽ ἐν θυραίοις, being thus rendered in Latin,-- Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul. The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the language:--