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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2021
This note adduces corroborating evidence for Skutsch's ascription of Enn. Ann. 5 to a description of the water cycle in the speech of Homer in the proem to the Annales. Despite the flawed argumentation in Skutsch's presentation and despite a general reluctance among scholars to endorse his ascription, this note argues that his solution should remain part of the scholarly discussion, not least because there are aspects of Skutsch's argument that remain uncontested and because Lucretius seems to endorse this location of the fragment in the original Annales.
1 In his most recent edition of the Annales, for example (Flores, E., Esposito, P. et al. , Quinto Ennio, Annali Vol. II: Libri I–VIII. Commentari [Naples, 2002], 49Google Scholar), Flores rejected Skutsch's conjecture; cf. the caution expressed at Elliott, J., Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales (Cambridge, 2013), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 40 and at Goldberg, S.M. and Manuwald, G., Fragmentary Republican Latin. I: Ennius (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2018), 118–19Google Scholar.
2 Skutsch, O., The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 158–9Google Scholar, who, as far as I know, was the first to connect this fragment with Lucretius’ water cycle.
3 Vahlen, J., Ennianae poesis reliquiae (Leipzig, 1903)Google Scholar alone thought that this fragment described cattle leaving their barns and returning to streams and fields. See below for further discussion of the traditional ascription of this fragment. Most recently, both Flores (n. 1) in his edition of the Annales and Elliott (n. 1) in her extensive study of the poem's architecture have rejected Skutsch's placement.
4 Elliott (n. 1), 149.
5 Fuller discussion of these allusions at Nethercut, J.S., Ennius Noster: Lucretius and the Annales (Oxford, 2021), 135–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Suggestive here is the use of the verb manare at Manilius 2.51 in the context of a passage on literary tradition that begins with Homer and seems specifically to recall Lucretian poetology (Manilius 2.49–52 = Lucr. 1.924–30). In other words, Manilius may offer another instance of a poet using Ennius to discuss the water cycle in a context rich in literary historical implications.
7 Elliott (n. 1), 149–51.
8 Buffière, F., Les mythes d'Homère et la pensée grêcque (Paris, 1956)Google Scholar; Murrin, M., The Allegorical Epic: Essays in its Rise and Decline (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar; Lamberton, R., Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley, 1986)Google Scholar; Hardie, P., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Feeney, D., The Gods in Epic. Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 5–33Google Scholar; and Farrell, J., Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar and id., ‘Philosophy in Vergil’, in M. Garani and D. Konstan (edd.), The Philosophizing Muse: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 2014), 61–89, especially 78–83.
9 Skutsch (n. 2), 147–53 cites all of the testimonia which indicate that metempsychosis was the fundamental doctrine introduced in Homer's discourse.
10 A further connection between Ann. 5 Skutsch and the wider context of metempsychosis in Ennius’ Dream is the fact that ancient etymologists frequently connected the Manes with the verb manare. For example, we find at Festus page 114 Lindsay manes deos deasque … ab inferis ad superos emanant and at Paul. Fest. page 115 Lindsay we read manalem lapidem … ostium Orci per quod animae inferorum ad superos manarent.