Ennius Beyond Epic

Quintus Ennius (239–169 BCE) was Latin literature's extraordinary founding father: he composed a striking array of texts in a striking array of genres (tragedy, satire, philosophy, epigram, epic, and more), many of which he in fact introduced to, or invented at, Rome. Modern scholarship, however, has focused overwhelmingly on just one Ennian poem: his epic, the Annales. Assembling an international team of literary critics and philologists, Ennius Beyond Epic provides the first assessment of Ennius' corpus in all of its unruly totality. Its thirteen chapters range widely: some examine themes throughout the poet's fragmentary output; others offer analyses of particular non-epic texts (e.g., Andromacha, Sacra historia, Saturae); still others study the Roman reception of Ennius' corpus from Pacuvius to Catullus to Apuleius and beyond. The picture that emerges is of a New Ennius: a daring, experimental, and multiform author.

About the Author

JESSE HILL is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. He works on the Latin poetry and cultural history of Italy in the last three centuries BCE.

C. W. MARSHALL is Professor of Greek at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of numerous works including The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (Cambridge, 2006) and The Structure and Performance of Euripides' Helen (Cambridge, 2014).