''Annales'' (; ''Annals'') is the name of a fragmentary
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
epic poem written by the
Roman poet Ennius in the 2nd century BC. While only snippets of the work survive today, the poem's influence on
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literatur ...
was significant. Although written in Latin, stylistically it borrows from the Greek poetic tradition, particularly the works of
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
, and is written in
dactylic hexameter. The poem was significantly larger than others from the period, and eventually comprised 18 books.
The subject of the poem is the early history of the
Roman state. It is thought to be based mostly on Greek records and the work of
Quintus Fabius Pictor. Initially viewed as an important cultural work, it fell out of use sometime in the 4th century AD. No manuscripts survived through the Middle Ages. When interest in the work was revived during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
period the poem was largely reconstructed from quotations contained in other works. Subsequent academic study of the poem has confirmed its significance for its period.
Contents
Ennius's ''Annales'' was the first epic poem that covered the early history of the
Roman state.
[ Suerbaum & Eck (2006).][ Fragments of the ''Annales'', as well as reports by ancient scholars, suggest that Ennius opened his epic with a recollection of a dream. In this reverie, the poet claims that ]Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
appeared to him and informed him that, thanks to the transmigration of souls, his spirit had been reborn into Ennius.
The poem—which most speculate proceeded in chronological order—was likely divided into triads with a "concentric, symmetrical structure".[ In the first seven books, Ennius wrote about mythical and historical past episodes, whereas in the following eight (and eventually, eleven), he wrote about contemporary events.][ Boyle (2003), pp. 37–38.] Although most of the poem has been lost, there is a "traditional"—albeit conjectured—organization for the book. Books 1–3 cover the end of the Trojan War in 1184 BC, to the reign of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus 535–509 BC.[ Books 4–6 revolve around the early ]Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...
up until the Pyrrhic War in 281–271 BC. Books 7–9 deal briefly with the First Punic War
The First Punic War (264–241 BC) was the first of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the early 3rd century BC. For 23 years, in the longest continuous conflict and grea ...
(264–241 BC) before covering the Second
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...
(218–201 BC) in more detail. Books 10–12 focus on the Second Macedonian War
The Second Macedonian War (200–197 BC) was fought between Macedon, led by Philip V of Macedon, and Rome, allied with Pergamon and Rhodes. Philip was defeated and was forced to abandon all possessions in southern Greece, Thrace and Asia Minor. ...
. (The ending to these three books is unclear; Ennius might have concluded with an epilogue, or detailed Rome's campaign against Antiochus III the Great, 192 BC.)[ Books 13–15 detail the Roman–Seleucid War (192–188 BC) until the events of the Aetolian War (191–189 BC).][ According to Werner Suerbaum and Werner Eck, it is likely that Ennius chose to end the original portion of his opus with the Aetolian War because of the role played in the conflict by one of his patrons, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior.][
Sometime after Ennius published his poem, he amended it with three additional books, which concern themselves with the Istrian campaigns (177 BC) and the ]Macedonian Wars
The Macedonian Wars (214–148 BC) were a series of conflicts fought by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies in the eastern Mediterranean against several different major Greek kingdoms. They resulted in Roman control or influence over Ancient ...
(214–148 BC).[ Boyle (2003), p. 38.] The final version of the ''Annales'' therefore contained 18 books.[ According to ]Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
in his '' Historia Naturalis'', it was "on heaccount" of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Denter and his unspecified brother—two Romans whom the poet admired—that Ennius penned the sixteenth book.[
]
Sources
According to Suerbaum and Eck, it is likely that Ennius drew mostly on Greek records when he was compiling his poem, although he probably also made use of the Roman historiographer Quintus Fabius Pictor (who wrote in Greek). Additionally, it was assumed for a long time that the structure, title, and contents of the ''Annales'' were based on or inspired by the —that is, the prose annals
Annals (, from , "year") are a concise history, historical record in which events are arranged chronology, chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record.
Scope
The nature of the distinction betw ...
kept by the Pontifex Maximus during the Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...
.[ Goldberg & Manuwald (2018), p. 99.] However, the scholars Sander M. Goldberg and Gesine Manuwald write that while the title of Ennius's poem is reminiscent of the , the idea that the poem is modeled on this official record is "almost certainly anachronistic", since there is very little evidence to suggest that an extensive version of the would have existed around the time that Ennius was writing his work. Given this, they argue that the title "Annales" was likely chosen by Ennius not to connect it to the , but rather to emphasize that he was Rome's very first recorder of historical events (i.e., an " annalist").
Style
Whereas Ennius's contemporaries like Livius Andronicus and Gnaeus Naevius wrote in Saturnian verse, Ennius penned ''Annales'' in dactylic hexameter, in imitation of the works of Homer. According to Alison Keith, by doing this, "Ennius acknowledged the importance of Greek culture in contemporary Rome".[ Because of Ennius's decision, dactylic hexameter became the standard ]metre
The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
for subsequent Latin epic poetry.[ Keith (2013), p. xiv.]
But in addition to what Alison Sharrock and Rhiannon Ash call the "Romanisation of Greek poetic sophistication", Suerbaum and Eck note that by borrowing from Homer's verse style, the work also "Homerized" the Roman historiographical tradition.[ Suerbaum and Eck cite "the appearance of deities, speeches, '' aristeiai'', similes, '' ekphraseis'', and the subdivision of events in single days" as decidedly Homeric elements that Ennius injected into Roman historiography.][ With all this said, Suerbaum and Eck do argue the ''Annales'' is also set apart from the works of Homer by so-called "'modern' traits". These include its focus on and reference to "factual aspects" (with the aforementioned scholars citing its emphasis on "cavalry and naval battles"), as well as its use of "]autobiographical
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...
, meta-literary and panegyric elements".[
The scope and size of Ennius's poem was at the time of its penning also "unprecedented"; for instance, both Livius Andronicus's ''Odusia'' and Naevius's ''Bellum Punicum'' were substantially shorter. Sander M. Goldberg and Gesine Manuwald postulate that Ennius may have started writing a smaller historical poem that grew until it eventually comprised over a dozen books.][ The two write, "An expanding work of this kind would better align Ennius with his predecessors, making his achievement more comprehensible but no less remarkable."][ Goldberg & Manuwald (2018), p. 103.]
Many scholars have declared that Ennius's poem functions as "a mediator between Homer and Vergil"; in other words, it is claimed the ''Annales'' transmits the style of Homer into a decidedly Latin tradition, which would eventually be used by Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...
when it came time for him to pen his own epic poem, the ''Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...
''. A large reason for this is that much of what is preserved of the ''Annales'' comes from Virgilian commentators, who were quoting Ennius's work to compare or contrast it to passages in the ''Aeneid''. Jackie Elliott, however, points out that many of the extant fragments which were not derived from the quotations of commentators do not display the same "epic" style of either Homer or Virgil. Thus, she argues, "To the extent that the ''Annales'' today seem to the modern reader crucial to the epic tradition, they are the creation of Vergil and of the Vergiliocentric sources."[ Elliott (2013), p. 134.] Put another way, the understanding of the ''Annales'' as decidedly "epic" is largely a ''post facto'' one, prompted by its recontextualization in "Vergiliocentric" commentaries on the ''Aeneid''.[ Expressing a related sentiment, Goldberg and Manuwald write, "Critics have grown more skeptical of a procedure that postulates echoes n other poemsand then bases reconstructions f the ''Annales''upon them."
For centuries, it was believed that Ennius focused on episodes in Roman history that would appeal to his patrons.][ However, Goldberg and Manuwald once again note that this view has come into question in recent years and has yielded to a "more nuanced view that recognizes in the very sweep of the story he tells the subordination of personal interests to larger community values."
]
Remains
Over time, almost all of the work has been lost, and today only around 620 complete or partial lines remain, largely preserved in quotations by other authors (primarily Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
, Festus, Nonius, and Macrobius).[ Goldschmidt (2013), p. 1.] Papyrus fragments of the poem were also found in the Villa of the Papyri
The Villa of the Papyri (, also known as ''Villa dei Pisoni'' and in early excavation records as the ''Villa Suburbana'') was an ancient Roman Empire, Roman villa in Herculaneum, in what is now Ercolano, southern Italy. It is named after its un ...
in the ruins of Herculaneum
Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Like the nearby city of ...
.
According to Goldberg and Manuwald, nearly one-fourth of the ''Annales''s extant fragments can be traced back to the work's first book. The two note that because this section of the poem was heavily quoted and commented upon in antiquity, reconstructing the contents and order of this book is less difficult than it is with the work's other books. Consequently, given the relative dearth of fragments from other books—especially that of the climactic book 15—the two write the reconciliation of "scholarly methods and interpretive desires with the inconsistencies and silences of the fragmentary record" is "no easy task."
The first collection of the ''Annales'' fragments was published in the later part of the 16th century. In the 19th century, the German philologist Johannes Vahlen was a key figure in the study of Ennius's ''Annales''. Goldschmidt, however, argues that the British classicist Otto Skutsch's book ''The Annales of Ennius'' (1985) is the "standard" for anyone interested in examining the fragments of the poem. A later edition supervised by Enrico Flores sought to reconsider "both the textual scholarship of the sources and the contextual placement of the fragments."[ In 1935, E. H. Warmington prepared a version of the ''Annales'' for the ]Loeb Classical Library
The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...
; this version was later superseded by Sander M. Goldberg and Gesine Manuwald's 2018 version.
Fragment locations
This chart lists in chronological order the authors whose works have preserved fragments of Ennius's ''Annales'', alongside the Ennian books quoted and the number of fragments total, as determined by Goldberg & Manuwald (2018).[ Goldberg & Manuwald (2018), pp. 108454.] The chart excludes 14 fragments that many scholars consider ''dubia'' (that is, unlikely parts of the ''Annales'').
Reception
Nora Goldschmidt writes that when Virgil was writing the ''Aeneid'', most grammarians and poets celebrated the ''Annales'' as a "national epic" and a "carrier of Rome's culture".[ As a result, the poem was extensively studied in schools around this time,][ Goldschmidt (2013), pp. 17, 35.] as Ennius himself was viewed as one of Rome's greatest poets, historians, and writers. Goldberg and Manuwald concur with this latter point, writing that the ''Annales'' cemented Ennius' fame.
With that said, while many subsequent Roman poets found Ennius and his epic poem to be important (for having laid the groundwork of Latin epic poetry), many also found it to be somewhat crude. For instance, Virgil—who made heavy use of Ennius—is reported by the historian Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is ''De vita Caesarum'', common ...
to have once been reading Ennius' poem only to be asked what he was doing; the poet replied that "he was gathering gold from Ennius' muck, for this poet has outstanding ideas buried under not very polished words".[ The later Latin poets Propertius and ]Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...
, too, found Ennius' work to be "crude and unkempt".[ (The latter, for instance, referred to Ennius as "outstanding ... in talent utlacking in art" and noted that "nothing is rougher than" his poem.)][ Goldberg & Manuwald (2018), p. 44.]
Regardless of some of Ennius' "crudeness", his ''Annales'' was read for hundreds of years.[ Sharrock and Ashley (2013), p. 173.] During the time of Nero
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his ...
, it began to wane in popularity,[ although it remained a popular text with certain grammarians like Festus and Nonius (whose commentaries preserve much of the ''Annales'' as we now have it).][ According to David Scott Wilson-Okamura, "by the end of the fourth century, it was hard to find even one copy".][ Wilson-Okamura (2010), p. 121.] At the turn of the fifth century, the work had become critically endangered. Because of unknown circumstances, not a single complete manuscript of Ennius survived textual transmission into the Middle Ages.[
By the time Renaissance humanists turned their attention to the work, they were forced to rely on small quotations embedded in other works and the testimonia of other writers—many of whom had taken to deriding Ennius for his supposed stylistic "crudeness". Given that they only had the briefest of snippets to analyze, many of these humanists—such as ]Petrarch
Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists.
Petrarch's redis ...
and Richard Stanyhurst—were forced to defer "to classical critics, not out of reverence only, but from necessity."[ Thus, much of the discussion about Ennius from this time also revolved around his poetic primitivism, and in time he came to be seen as "Virgil's foil".][ Wilson-Okamura (2010), p. 123.] With that said, a number of works from this time reference Ennius, suggesting that these humanists found him and his epic poem worthy of interest. (He is, for instance, a major character in Petrarch's unfinished epic ''Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
''.) Golderg and Manuwald also write that Ennius' reception during this time is indicated by the zeal with which humanists attempted to collect the fragments of the ''Annales'' that they could find.[ Goldberg & Manuwald (2018), pp. xxviii–xxix.]
Notes on fragment locations
References
Bibliography
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2nd-century BC poems
Epic poems in Latin
Works set in Italy
Works about history in Latin
Lost poems
Works about ancient Rome
Old Latin literature