The study of fragmentary classical works is open to two activities. One is the attempt to create a reliable edition of the fragments, thus supplying researchers with a stable tool of interpretation. Another is the writing of innovative scholarship that may question the assumptions followed by editor(s) of a given authoritative collection of fragmentary evidence. Despite their differences, both activities can be complementary. One can aspire to the creation of a more stable edition that admits its limitations, openly recognising that its assumptions or criteria are provisional. On the other hand, it is also possible to engage in innovative and even provocative scholarship that takes as its starting point the major advancements provided by a previous scholarly edition.
The latter quest for a virtuous middle ground can be found in Damon and Farrell's collection of essays on the eighteen lost books of Ennius’ Annals. These fragmentary texts attracted more attention after O. Skutsch's edition and commentary (The Annals of Q. Ennius [1985]), which drew some strong conclusions that are now often taken for granted in Ennian scholarship. In particular, Ennius’ Annals is presented by him as the work of a historian-poet who adapted Homer's metre to Latin for ‘recording all Roman history in verse’. Its material was then incorporated into Livy's Ab urbe condita and Tacitus’ Annales. From the methodological point of view, this implies that these texts are useful for reconstructing the lost contents of the eighteen books of Ennius, and it also implies that the Annals had a considerable impact in posterity (cf. Skutsch, pp. 6–46, 168–9; citation from p. 6). Now, in the footsteps of J. Elliott's Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales (2013), a book that already provided a respectful yet firm critique of Skutsch (ibid., pp. 2–5), Damon and Farrell have collected fourteen essays that together develop the following argument: Ennius’ Annals is more innovative, complex and mysterious than the mere work of a ‘Roman Homer’ with historical interests.
Their volume is divided into four parts: ‘Innovation’, ‘Authority’, ‘Influence’ and ‘Interpretation’. It is also followed by an ‘Afterword’ by M. Jaeger, whose merit consists in presenting a clear summary of the methodologies and key concepts that guide the investigation of the fourteen scholars. Jaeger highlights that these scholars have avoided two risky cognitive tendencies that can hinder scientific reconstruction – namely, reading each fragment as representative of the whole Annals and as something complete in and of itself – and that they recur to three useful metaphors for describing Ennius’ historical poetry: embeddedness, iridescence and shape.
Damon and Farrell are aware that the four parts of this volume cannot be separated. This is particularly true with regard to ‘Influence’. After all, one cannot evaluate Ennius’ authority without considering the judgement of subsequent poets and historians, nor can one consider his innovations apart from the tradition, nor again can one interpret what remains of his works before considering how these were read, quoted and sometimes distorted in antiquity. Therefore, this division serves as an artificial tool for showing that the Annals can be usefully read from different angles. Many stimulating consequences arise if we look at Ennius both in continuity with his predecessors and as the creator of new cultural alternatives.
It is impossible to summarise each essay in the limits of a short review. I will therefore outline the main and unitary theses that emerge from the volume as a whole. The essays on ‘Innovation’ challenge the portrait of Ennius as a ‘Roman Homer’ who adheres to the motifs of the Greek tradition in order to translate the history of Rome. P. Glauthier (Chapter 1) examines three hybrid metaphors that represent Ennius attempting to write poetry (= the variegated peacock of Book 1, the cross-breed Discordia of Book 7, the physical multiplicity of the decaying body of the old Ennius in Book 16), whose aim consists in suggesting the ‘hybridity’ of the contents of the Annals. V. Fabrizi and Farrell (Chapters 2 and 3) also insist on this by noting the Ennian recovery of many philosophical doctrines that normally contradict each other: the theory of the four elements, reincarnation and Euhemerus’ rationalising account of the gods as mortal human beings that were deified for their past merits. These images and motifs either find no direct parallels in the previous tradition or else are recovered with conscious significant changes. For instance, Discordia cannot be completely identified with Empedocles’ cosmic Strife, for the former is also a governing principle of Roman history and imperialism. A further point common to the three contributors is that the poetry of the Annals is ‘historical’ in a complex sense. Its poetry uses bold, polyvocal and hybrid images as symbols of the boldness, polyvocity and cultural hybridity that Ennius apparently recognised in the Romans of his history. The poetic devices of the Annals reflect the historical spirit of ‘Romanness’.
Part 2 highlights the reasons for Ennius’ ‘Authority’. His authority was not due to his engaging in the usual practice of historians of demonstrating the truth of their reconstruction by doubting the findings of their predecessors. Indeed, Damon shows in Chapter 6 that in his fragments we find ‘no sign of historiographical dubiety in the face of the unknowable’ (p. 146). Nor were his Annals authoritative because they narrated past ‘facts’, since learned readers like Cicero recognised the fictional dimension of his historical accounts and characters (e.g. Cic. Div. 2.116, Off. 1.38). Ennius’ authority is therefore tentatively found in his adoption of the genre of ‘verse-historiography’, namely a narrative that combines divine inspiration and autopticity (T. Biggs in Chapter 4), in his capacity to present Roman conquests as a collective achievement of heroic individuals that provide moralising exempla (J. Elliott in Chapter 5) or in fictions that paradoxically convey the real spirit of ‘Romanness’ (L. Spielberg in Chapter 7). These suppositions seem mutually exclusive. It seems one cannot praise the same individual both as an eyewitness and a creator of inspiring fictions. However, the contributors solve this puzzle by connecting Ennius’ authority to his hybridity. It is precisely for their ‘hybrid’ mixture of fiction and reality that the Annals received their authoritative aura, along with such contradictory responses.
The four chapters on ‘Influence’ critique Skutsch's portrait of Ennius as a poet-historian who was carefully read by all Romans and even imitated by later poets/historians. The contributions of S.M. Goldberg and J.S. Nethercut (Chapters 8 and 9) address this criticism in general terms. If we reconstruct the reception of the Annals through a careful analysis of the evidence, we can draw the surprising conclusion that only a few of his books may have been read by a few cultured individuals and that early Latin epics may have not found in Ennius an essential model of composition. A. Haimson Lushkov and A.J. Woodman (Chapters 10 and 11) meanwhile cast Livy's and Tacitus’ Ennian pedigree into doubt. Here, too, a close comparison with the fragments of the Annals shows the presence of stylistic echoes and only occasional references to Ennius as a historical source, not the strong dependence on contents, structure and form that was assumed by Skutsch. Though the conclusions of this third part of the collection are negative, they also positively allow for interesting speculation. Ennius’ ‘hybrid’ Annals may have been a work unique in its genre, one that attracted more admirers than followers and heirs.
Finally, the part on ‘Interpretation’ is focused on the practice of commenting on Ennian fragments, which goes back to antiquity. In Chapter 12 B.W. Breed analyses Lucilius’ ‘literary commentary’ of Ennius, provided by his Satires, as ‘a foundational component of the role of the satirist’ (p. 250) and a way to self-represent himself as a champion of satire in contrast with historical epics. J.H. Clark instead isolates the case of Servius. Starting from the specimen of a fragment of Incertae sedis (fr. **lxii Skutsch: qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur), Clark highlights how Servius observes that Ennius meant that no victory is definitive, unless the defeated party admits defeat (Chapter 13, pp. 273–6). The rest of Clark's contribution, as well as Chapter 14 by C. Shuttleworth Kraus, concentrate on the assessments made by recent commentaries, which tend to interpret Ennius’ claims as documents of Roman military or cultural values. To return to the specimen of the fragment Incertae sedis, commentators usually select parallels that undermine the reading according to which Ennius presents his personal stance, while neglecting evidence that shows how Romans may have considered themselves victorious without consent from the defeated party. The greatest collective achievement of the fourth part consists in the presentation of methodological questions. A sound method would be to reconsider the poetics at play in the Annals and to suppress the inclination to read poetic claims immediately as historical data.
This volume successfully fulfils its intention of opening new research paths that go beyond the familiar assumption that Ennius’ Annals is an epic poem of Homeric ascendance that aimed exclusively at synthesising the history of Rome. The repeated metaphor of hybridity is particularly useful. Although this is not totally original, for J. Fisher had already proposed it in The Annals of Quintus Ennius and the Italic Tradition (2014), the idea of Ennius ‘the hybrid’ provides a promising and flexible tool for studying his opus maius and its often complex (if not contradictory) elements.
As a final observation, however, I wonder if this metaphor of hybridity might benefit from further focused research. For instance, might further clarifications and interesting results be derived from a more detailed look at Ennius’ tragedies? The latter works are also ‘hybrid’ productions combining fiction and reality, tradition and innovation, moral exempla and tales of the past, abstract philosophical views and concrete discussions of Realpolitik. In short, how does the hybridity of the tragedies differ from the hybridity of the Annals? Are there essential discrepancies? Or does there exist a continuity between the two, so that we can conclude that the Annals possesses a ‘dramatic spirit’? Farrell (pp. 79–80), Spielberg (pp. 155–7) and Goldberg (pp. 174–81) address the problem by arguing in favour of the latter hypothesis, but not as fully as they could. I would suggest that an additional chapter analysing this particular topic would be welcome to provide a scholarly desideratum.
But this possible lack in the collection does not compromise its merits. On the contrary, it gives further indication that its editors have opened a research path that will lead its readers to this and other interesting investigations.
