The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature. They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language a vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the metrical conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully to elicit the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national imagination. The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance with Greek literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of his time, the serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which he carried out his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was in action, the most vital representative of his epoch. It has happened too that the fragments from his writings and the testimonies concerning him are more expressive and characteristic than in the case of any other among the early writers. There are none of his contemporaries, playing their part in war or politics, and not many among the writers of later times, of whom we can form so distinct an image. I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS. I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus, he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he resided at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome, 'very plainly, on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city), 'attended only by a single maid-servant[1],' and supporting himself by teaching Greek and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior in his Aetolian campaign. Through the influence of his son, he obtained the honour of Roman citizenship, probably at the time when the colony of Pisaurum was planted in B.C. 184. This distinction Ennius has himself recorded in a line of the Annals which indicates the high value which the Roman allies attached to this privilege:-- Nos sumu' Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini.