Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.), who is considered the founder of Roman poetry, came from the Magna graecia area of the heel of Italy. He was probably a Messapian, which was a group that were subjects and allies of Rome. He grew up with three languages, Greek, Latin, and Oscan. Cato the Elder found Ennius, who fought in the 2nd Punic War, in a Calabrian regiment of the Roman army in Sardinia and in 204, brought him to Rome where he later obtained Roman citizenship. Ennius gave Greek lessons at Rome. Ennius composed plays for public festivals, but did not perform in them, unlike fellow early Roman playwright Livius Andronicus. Ennius wrote many tragedies, some comedies, and Annales, a narrative epic poem about the history of the Roman people from the fall of Troy of which about 600 lines survive. Livius Andronicus had translated the Odyssey into Latin in Saturnian Verse. Ennius used the less sing-songy dactyllic hexameter -- like Homer, but in Latin - for his epic. Ennius also wrote 6 books of satire. He used the term satura to denote a medley of different types of poems in different types of meter and on a variety of subjects. Others called Ennius' satires a medley.
Sources:
- Roman Literature, by Augustus Samuel Wilkins>
- "Ennius, Quintus" Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World. Ed. John Roberts. Oxford University Press, 2007
