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A METRICAL SCANDAL IN ENNIUS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2014

Llewelyn Morgan
Llewelyn Morgan*
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Ennius' Scipio is represented for us by three fragments explicitly attributed to the poem by our ancient sources, frr. 31, 32 and 33 Courtney (= var. 9–12, 13 and 14 Vahlen), along with a detail from the Suda s.v. Ἔννιος (Ε 1348, p. 2.285 Adler = fr. 29 Courtney = var. I Vahlen) asserting Homer's pre-eminence as a panegyrist (and Scipio's as a recipient of panegyric), which is echoed (and perhaps amplified) by Valerius Maximus (8.14.1).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 152 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This article benefited immeasurably from the guidance of CQ's anonymous referee, who acutely identified the weaknesses and potential of my original draft. Ed Bispham and Matthew Leigh were both erudite and willing sources of information at critical points in its composition.

References

1 ‘Ennius in Scipione’, Macrob. Sat. 6.2.26, 6.4.6; ‘ex libro qui Scipio inscribitur’, Gell. 4.7. The ‘dicit Ennius de Scipione’ that introduces fr. 30 Courtney (SHA 25.7.7 = var. 1 Vahlen) does not entirely preclude a reference to Scipio in another of Ennius' works, but we return to this fragment on p. 158.

2 Russo, A., Quinto Ennio. Le Opere minore, vol. 1 (Pisa, 2007)Google Scholar, 191.

3 Russo (n. 2), 208–10. The most popular of the favoured dates is 201 b.c., coinciding with Scipio's return from Africa to Rome to public acclamation and a triumph after his defeat of Hannibal. Also suggested have been 180 b.c.; after Scipio's death in 183 b.c.; and after 187 b.c. but before his death, when Scipio found himself under intense political attack.

4 Fr. 32 Courtney (Courtney, E., The Fragmentary Latin poets [Oxford, 1993]Google Scholar) is explicitly identified by Gellius as a trochaic septenarius (quadratus numerus), and fr. 31 Courtney is also in septenarii. Inevitably attention has focussed on fr. 33 Courtney, securely attributable to the Scipio but also ostensibly a hexameter, although by any standards an atypical example. Attempts have been made to read the verse as an incomplete trochaic septenarius rather than an inept dactylic hexameter, notably Ribbeck, O., Comicorum Romanorum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1873 2)Google Scholar, cxvii, and Mackay, L.A., ‘In defence of Ennius’, CR 13 (1963), 264–5Google Scholar, accepted by Scholz, U.W., ‘Der “Scipio” des Ennius’, Hermes 112 (1984), 183–99Google Scholar, at 189 and (with qualifications) Courtney (this note), 29. On the other hand its status as a hexameter has been defended by Jocelyn, H.D., ‘Ennius, Varia 14 V2’, CR 15 (1965), 146–9Google Scholar, and Mariotti, S., Gnomon 70 (1998), 207Google Scholar, elaborated by Russo (n. 2), 234–41 with further scholarly bibliography. Where there is a degree of consensus is in the recognition that the criticism of the Ennian line by Lucilius apparently recorded by Servius on Verg. Aen. 11.602 is not of the metrical structure of the line, but rather of Ennius' expression, either his use of homoeoteleuta (Courtney, 29), or of the banal verb horrere to describe a battlefield: Pasoli, E., ‘Spunti di critica letteraria nella satira oraziana’, Convivium 32 (1964), 449–78Google Scholar, at 474–5, Russo (n. 2), 242. Cf. Scholz (this note), 186–9.

The metre of fr. 30 Courtney, a fragment preserved within the Historia Augusta (SHA 25.7.7) which is unlikely to have been quoted verbatim, has also been interpreted in a diversity of ways, recorded by Russo (n. 2), 211–13, who himself prefers the view of Mariotti, S. (Lezioni su Ennio [Urbino, 1991 2]Google Scholar, 37), that the text is, as it stands, in trochaic octonarii, or perhaps an octonarius followed by a septenarius, That the lines are trochaic, at any rate, is reasonably widely accepted, and Courtney (26) is able to turn it into a trochaic septenarius with minimal supplementation.

5 Russo (n. 2), 195–208. A resilient idea, now abandoned, was that the Scipio was to be understood as part of the Ennian collection generally referred to as Saturae, specifically constituting Book 3 of Ennius' Satires. Russo rehearses the arguments, and successfully demolishes them (75, 195–9). Russo also (199–208) revives the idea, until recently comparably out of fashion, that the Scipio was in fact a dramatic work, a fabula praetexta addressing, in a way easily paralleled in Ennius or other Roman dramatists, contemporary events: on the praetexta see, succinctly, Kenney, E.J. and Clausen, W.V.The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II (Cambridge, 1982), 127–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (A. Gratwick). The major obstacle to this idea, as Russo acknowledges, is the notice in the Suda, which implies that Ennius' project was in some sense comparable to Homer's, that is, presented itself as some kind of epic. Cf. Ribbeck (n. 4), cxviii: ‘si ad poema Scipionem recte referuntur [sc. the Suda's words], propter canendi verbum et Homeri laudem non possunt sana interpretatione nisi de epico carmine intellegi.’ Russo canvasses the possibility that the Suda is not actually referring to the Scipio (206–8), but not convincingly. However, he makes the valid point that if the Scipio was indeed an epic rather than a drama, it was in metrical terms a decidedly peculiar one (204).

6 For the metre, see Lindsay, W.M., Early Latin Verse (Oxford, 1922), 284–5Google Scholar; Raven, D.S., Latin Metre (London, 1965), 74–83Google Scholar.

7 That honour goes to Ribbeck (n. 4), cxvi–cxviii; cf. id., Geschichte der römischen Dichtung, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1894 2), 32–3Google Scholar.

8 Morgan, Ll., Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 296.

9 Courtney (n. 4), ad loc.

10 Leo, F., Geschichte der römischen Literatur (Berlin, 1913)Google Scholar, 198.

11 Vahlen, J., Ennianae poesis reliquiae (Leipzig, 1903 2)Google Scholar, 212 interprets the paraphrase of Ennius as extending as far as ἀξιάγαστον. Suerbaum, W., Untersuchungen zur Selbstdarstellung älterer römischer Dichter. Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius (Hildesheim, 1968)Google Scholar, 105 is sceptical.

12 Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, 439.

13 Id., ‘Die Vorgeschichte des Versus Quadratus’, Hermes 62 (1927), 357–70Google Scholar, at 368 = Kleine Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie (Rome, 1964), 2.11–24, at 22.

14 Morgan (n. 8), 23–7. Representative examples of Ennius' metrical adventurousness might be Skutsch, O., The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 3–4Google Scholar on the metrical peculiarities of the hexametrical Hedyphagetica; Hinds, S.J., Allusion and Intertext (Cambridge, 1998), 56–7Google Scholar on the opening line of the Annals; and Gowers, E., ‘The cor of Ennius’, in Fitzgerald, W. and Gowers, E. (edd.), Ennius Perennis: The Annals and Beyond (Cambridge, 2007), 17–37Google Scholar, at 22–3 on an iconically anomalous Ennian hexameter. The latter two scholars are in turn explicitly indebted to Skutsch.

15 Leo (n. 10), 198; Richter, W., ‘Staat, Gesellschaft und Dichtung in Rom im 3. und 2. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius)’, Gymnasium 69 (1962), 286–310Google Scholar, at 301: both scholars also cited by Scholz (n. 4), 192–3.

16 Gerick, T., Der versus quadratus bei Plautus und seine volkstümliche Tradition (Tübingen, 1996)Google Scholar, with conclusions about patterns of usage of the metre in Roman comedy at 187–8.

17 Scholz (n. 4), 194.

18 Ribbeck, locc. cit. (n. 7); cf. The New Pauly 4.987 s.v. ‘Ennius’ (W. Suerbaum).

19 Ribbeck (n. 7), cxvii.

20 Scholz (n. 4), 195–6.

21 Ibid. 194.

22 Courtney (n. 4), 470.

23 Courtney (n. 4), 483–4.

24 Beard, M., The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 248, citing Plut. Aem. 34.7; Marc. 8.2; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.34.2 (τὸν ἡγεμόνα κυδαίνουσα ποιήμασιν αὐτοσχεδίοις); Livy 4.53.11–12.

25 Other examples include a chant that circulated in Galba's camp (Suet. Galba 6.2), a riddle at Petron. Sat. 58.8 (qui de nobis longe uenio, late uenio? solue me), verses a populo dicta about Sarmentus the scurra (Σ Juv. 5.3), and possibly also shouts of the people directed at Plautianus, the praetorian prefect of Septimius Severus, and at Caracalla in the circus (Dio Cass. 77.2.2, 78.10.3), the last a suggestion of Courtney (n. 4), 482. Courtney's commentary is the source of numerous suggestive remarks on the versus quadratus: see his notes on vers. pop. 1–2, 5, 10, 12, 15, 19 and 20, and vers. triumph. 1–5.

26 Scholz (n. 4), 194. Beard (n. 24), 247 notes Livy's tendency to use the word inconditus of them.

27 See n. 14 above.

28 Thus, for example, Hills, P.D., ‘Ennius, Suetonius and the genesis of Horace, Odes 4’, CQ 51 (2001), 613–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, on the Scipio in particular, Suerbaum (n. 11), 242–5; Davis, G., ‘Quis … digne scripserit? The topos of alter Homerus in Horace C. 1.6’, Phoenix 41 (1987), 292–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 294–5.

29 Steinmetz, P., ‘Horaz und Pindar. Hor. Carm. IV 2’, Gymnasium 71 (1964), 1–17Google Scholar; Morgan (n. 8), 224–37. For a more recent discussion of the metre of 4.2, see T. Phillips, ‘Between Pindar and Sappho: Horace Odes 4.2.9–12’, Mnemosyne (forthcoming).

30 Thus Davis (n. 28), on Odes 1.6.

31 Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden (Berlin, 1917 6)Google Scholar, ad loc.

32 Fraenkel (n. 12), 439.

33 Varro, Ling. 6.68 cum imperatore milites redeuntes clamitant per urbem in Capitolium eunti ‘io triumphe’; Beard (n. 24), 244–6.

34 Fraenkel (n. 12), 439–40.

35 Morgan (n. 8), 20, 40–8, 92–7.

36 Suerbaum (n. 11), 105.

37 Ribbeck (n. 7), cxviii.

38 OLD s.v. 1c.

39 Mommsen, Th., Römisches Staatsrecht I3 (Leipzig, 1887), 365–6Google Scholar; the praeco need not even necessarily be literate. Purcell, N., ‘The apparitores: a study in social mobility’, PBSR 51 (1983), 125–73Google Scholar talks of ‘the lowly heralds’ (135), bottom of the ladder of the apparitores, the latter as a group being ‘neither menial nor exalted’ (132).

40 Mommsen (n. 39), 363–6 for a full account of their functions.