The main literary sources for Servius ' life and achievements are the Roman historian Livy ( 59 BC – AD 17 ), his near contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch ( c. 46 – 120 AD ); their own sources included works by Quintus Fabius Pictor, Diocles of Peparethus and Quintus Ennius.

With the rediscovery of the text in first-century Rome ( the play was adapted by the tragedians Ennius, Lucius Accius, Ovid, Seneca the Younger and Hosidius Geta, among others ), again in 16th-century Europe, and in the light of 20th century modern literary criticism, Medea has provoked differing reactions from differing critics and writers who have sought to interpret the reactions of their societies in the light of past generic assumptions ; bringing a fresh interpretation to its universal themes of revenge and justice in an unjust society.

Additionally, some of these reproduced lines are themselves adapted from works by Virgil's earlier literary models, including Homer ’ s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica, Ennius ' Annals, and Lucretius ' On the Nature of Things.

The use of double consonants, which has been already pointed out in the Messapian inscriptions, has been very acutely connected by Deecke with the tradition that the same practice was introduced at Rome by the poet Ennius who came from the Messapian town Rudiae ( Festus, p. 293 M ).

The following lines of Ennius would not have been felt admissible by later authors since they both contain repeated spondees at the beginning of consecutive lines:

** Annales by Quintus Ennius ( Roman History )

Ennius was born at Rudiae, an old Italian ( predominantly Oscan ) town historically founded by the Messapians.

Here Oscan, Greek, and Latin languages were in contact with one another ; according to Aulus Gellius 17. 17. 1, Ennius referred to this heritage by saying he had " three hearts " ( Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret ).

* Ennius: translation of selected fragments at elfinspell. com ; from Specimens of the Poets and Poetry of Greece and Rome by Various Translators ( 1847 )

According to Ennius, unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem – " one man, by delaying, restored the state to us.

First mention was in 200 BC by the poet Quintus Ennius.

His epic Annales, a narrative poem telling the story of Rome from the wanderings of Aeneas to the Ennius ' own time, remains the national epic until it is later eclipsed by Virgil's Aeneid ( b. 239 BC )

9 ) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius ( i. 124 ) and by Horace ( Epist.

His epic Annales, a narrative poem telling the story of Rome from the wanderings of Aeneas to the Ennius ' own time, remains the national epic until it is later eclipsed by Virgil's Aeneid

Already perhaps he had a basic knowledge of Greek, for, it is said by Plutarch, that, while at Tarentum in his youth, he became in close friendship with Nearchus, a Greek philosopher, and it is said by Aurelius Victor that while praetor in Sardinia, he received instruction in Greek from Ennius.

In fact, Cruttwell admits " The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, but it may be questioned whether the advance would be perceptible by us.

The first extensive translation of Aesop into Latin iambic trimeters was done by Phaedrus, a freedman of Caesar Augustus in the 1st century AD, although at least one fable had already been translated by the poet Ennius two centuries before and others are referred to in the work of Horace.

However, it has been noted that later poets like Ennius ( by extension Virgil, who follows him in both time and technique ) preserve something of the Saturnian aesthetic in hexameter verse.

Ennius explicitly acknowledges Naevius ' poem and skill ( lines 206 – 7 and 208 – 9 in the edition of Skutsch, with translations by Goldberg ):

The Roman poet Ennius gives the Roman equivalents ( the Dii Consentes ) as six male-female complements, preserving the place of Vesta ( Greek Hestia ), who played a crucial role in Roman religion as a state goddess maintained by the Vestals.

Quintus Ennius is the poet who is generally credited with introducing the Greek hexameter in Latin, and dramatic meters seem to have been well on their way to domestic adoption in the works of his rough contemporary Plautus.

* 169 BC – Quintus Ennius, epic poet, dramatist, and satirist, the most influential of the early Latin poets, and often called the founder of Roman literature or the father of Roman poetry.

* Quintus Ennius ( b. 239 BC ), epic poet, dramatist, and satirist, the most influential of the early Latin poets, and often called the founder of Roman literature or the father of Roman poetry.

It is regarded as the passage of the Aeneid most imitative of the Annales of Ennius.

Skutsch ( 1961 ) regards Ennius ' variant as the most likely, with Romulus's Palatine augury as a later development, after common usage had extended the Aventine's name – formerly used for only the greater, northeastern height – to include its lesser neighbour.

In the interval between the death of Ennius ( 169 BC ) and the advent of Accius, the youngest and most productive of the tragic poets, Pacuvius alone maintained the continuity of the serious drama, and perpetuated the character first imparted to it by Ennius.

He was less productive as a poet than either Ennius or Accius ; and we hear of only about twelve of his plays, founded on Greek subjects ( among them the Antiope, Teucer, Armorum Judicium, Dulorestes, Chryses, Niptra, & c., most of them on subjects connected with the Trojan cycle ), and one praetexta ( Paulus ) written in connexion with the victory of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus at the Battle of Pydna ( 168 BC ), as the Clastidium of Naevius and the Ambracia of Ennius were written in commemoration of great military successes.

The author of the abridged life of Cato which is commonly considered as the work of Cornelius Nepos, asserts that Cato, after his return from Africa, put in at Sardinia, and brought the poet Quintus Ennius in his own ship from the island to Italy ; but Sardinia was rather out of the line of the trip to Rome, and it is more likely that the first contact of Ennius and Cato happened at a later date, when the latter was Praetor in Sardinia.

Each author ( and work ) in the Roman lists was considered equivalent to one in the Greek ; for example Ennius was the Latin Homer, the Aeneid was a new Iliad, and so on.

Euhemerus ' work was translated into Latin by Ennius, possibly to mythographically pave the way for the planned divinization of Scipio Africanus in Rome.

The earliest example of the use of hexameter in Latin poetry is that of the Annales of Ennius, which established the dactylic hexameter as the standard for later Latin epic.

Quintus Ennius wrote a historical epic, the Annals ( soon after 200 BC ), describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to his own time.

Virgil made use of several models in the composition of his epic ; Homer the preeminent classical epicist is everywhere present, but Virgil also makes especial use of the Latin poet Ennius and the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes among the various other writers he alludes to.

Goldberg's book is an excellent treatment of the development of Roman epic from Livius Andronicus to Ennius to Virgil.

* Annales ( Ennius ), an epic poem by Quintus Ennius covering Roman history from the fall of Troy down to the censorship of Cato the Elder

Cicero, who frequently quotes from him with great admiration, appears ( De Optimo Genere Oratorum, i ) to rank him first among the Roman tragic poets, as Ennius among the epic, and Caecilius among the comic poets.

The traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, was introduced into Latin literature by Ennius ( 239-169 BC ), virtually a contemporary of Livius, who substituted it for the jerky Saturnian meter in which Livius had been composing epic verses.

Its followers rejected the national epic and drama in favor of the artificial mythological epics and elegies of the Alexandrian school, and preferred Euphorion of Chalcis to Ennius.

Cicero called these local innovators neoteroi ( νεώτεροι ) or ' moderns ' ( in Latin poetae novi or ' new poets '), in that they cast off the heroic model handed down from Ennius in order to strike new ground and ring a contemporary note.

It is interesting to note that the Latin poet Ennius, as reported by Cicero, called the heroic metre of one line versum longum, to distinguish it from the brevity of lyrical measures.

* Ennius ' Annales: translation of all fragments at attalus. org ; adapted from Warmington ( 1935 )

Her story is told in the first book of Ab Urbe Condita of Livy and in fragments from Ennius, Annales and Fabius Pictor.

The standard edition of Ennius ' Annales is that of Skutsch.