Introduction: Ennius and the Traditions of Epic

The challenges involved in writing about Ennius's Annales hardly need restating. Of the works of Ennius (and he was apparently a prolific writer), we have only a list of titles and some fragments—for the Annales approximately 600 full or partial lines—that have been preserved mostly by later authors, especially grammarians.¹ Add to this our patchy knowledge of the social, political, and cultural context in which the Annales was produced, and it becomes evident that any study of this epic will be more likely to raise questions and problems than to give clear and straightforward answers. The reader is thus entitled to ask why we should take the trouble to bring together a collection of papers about an author and a poem the study of which will inevitably involve a significant amount of guesswork.

When we organized the panel "Ennius and the Invention of Roman Epic" for the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in San Francisco in January 2004, our intent was clear. The last twenty years have witnessed a renewed, if still somewhat tentative, interest in the study of archaic Latin literature, spurred, in the first instance, by the appearance of Otto Skutsch's authoritative edition of the fragments of the Annales. In itself the culmination of a scholarly career with its roots in a great tradition,² the work of Skutsch, along with the important textual studies of Sebastiano Timpanaro and Scevola Mariotti, which represent the best of Italian philology,³ have enabled investigations that look beyond metrics and stylistics, beyond arguments about placing fragments in their correct context, and beyond source hunting and influence tracing—all concerns that rightly dominated the study of the fragments of Ennius at one time. The fruits of these advances are now being reaped in an array of studies that, by the application of new theories and new methodologies, many of them influenced by intellectual currents in fields beyond classics, test conventional assumptions and traditional readings of early Roman literary production. It seemed to us, then, that the time was ripe for bringing together a number of specialists in the field of archaic Latin literature and Roman cultural studies in order to reassess Ennius's epic. In all the papers that follow, reassessment of the Annales results, above all else, from approaching the poem within a specifically Roman frame that encompasses the analysis of the Annales' relationship with older Latin preliterary traditions, the social and cultural context in which the text was produced, its role in the articulation of a historical consciousness in the life of the Roman community, and, eventually, its varied reception.

The contributors to this volume will give different and, at times, incompatible answers to the question of where Ennius's Annales stands today. Studies of the Annales, and of archaic Roman literature generally, are not defined by a unity of approach and methodology. To fashion a completely coherent and unified picture would mean denying the true state of affairs and giving up a real source of vitality for studies of this period. For this reason, in our role as editors, we have not attempted to hide disagreement or to reconcile differences. On the contrary, the purpose of this volume is to present the reader with the complex variety of approaches and readings that best characterize contemporary scholarship on the Annales. The eight papers collected here represent a sampling of the work being done both by younger scholars and by established voices in the field. Five of the papers are revised and expanded versions of presentations made originally at the meeting in San Francisco. The three other papers, by Habinek, Rüpke, and Wiseman, were commissioned specifically for this volume in order to carry the discussion beyond the constraints imposed on the original group by the conference-panel format and into the specific areas of expertise of...