Contemporary scholarship has taken such pains to remove the label poeta cliens from the reputation of Ennius and to dissociate his Annales from the praise of any one individual that the apparent fixation on Scipio Africanus, much praised in the epigrammatic fragments and subject of the deeply problematic work bearing his name, can come as a shock. What is going on? How do we reconcile the testimony of these works with what we think the Annales preserves of the poet’s loyalties and civic ideology? This chapter explores the nature of praise in early Roman literature in the hope of casting at least a little light on this problematic aspect of Ennius’ career.