From the Saturnian he turned to the hexameter, whose "ocean-roll of rhythm" had resounded in the great epics of Homer. But it was one thing to admire the Greek dactylic hexameter, with its smooth-flowing cadences, and quite another to force the heavy, rough Latin speech into this measure. But this task, difficult as it was, Ennius essayed, and by the very attempt to force the Latin into the shapely Greek mold, he modified and polished that language itself, and handed it down to his literary successors as a far more fitting vehicle of noble expression than he had found it. It is true that in comparison with the hexameters of Vergil and Ovid the lines of Ennius are noticeably rough and heavy; but still it must be remembered that it was the older poet's pioneer labors that made the verse of Vergil and Ovid possible. The "Annals" of Ennius is an attempt to gather up the traditions of early Roman history and the facts of later times, and present them in a continuous narrative. Ennius was the pioneer in this work, and shows, as he says in the supposed self-portraiture quoted above, a very extensive knowledge of Roman antiquities, as well as a vivid first-hand perception of contemporary men and events. His active service as a soldier in the Second Punic War especially fitted him to write the story of a warlike nation. His descriptions of wars and stirring events are _con amore_. He breathed the air of victory in the long series of Roman triumphs following the Second Punic War, and infused into his great national poem something of that exaltation of spirit which animated his times, and which raised his work far above the plane which his modest title suggests. The poem sank deep into the national heart, and became a very bible of the race, from which his successors drew freely as from a public fountain. This poem, the work of the poet's old age, contained eighteen books, of which only about six hundred lines of fragments remain. The first book covers the period from the death of Priam to the death of Romulus. This period is, however, not as long as it is usually represented by tradition, for Ennius passes over the three hundred years of the Alban kings and represents Æneas as the father of Ilia, the mother of Romulus. One of the longest fragments describes the dream of Ilia in which the birth of Romulus and Remus is foreshadowed. Then follow scattered fragments relating to the birth and exposure of the twins, their nourishment by the wolf, their growth to manhood, a long fragment on the taking of the auspices by which the sovereignty of Romulus over his brother was decided, and at the end a spirited passage from the lamentation of the Romans over the death of Romulus.