The Roman writers recognised the analogy between epic and historic narrative,--and the way in which they apprehended the alliance between them was as injurious to the truthfulness of their history as to the symmetry of their early poetry,--but they did not before the time of Virgil recognise the artistic distinction between them. The Roman epic and Roman history originated in the same feeling and impulse--the sentiment of national glory, the desire to perpetuate the great actions and the career of conquest, which were the constituent elements of that glory. The impulse both of poets and historians was to build up a commemorative monument; not, as among the Greeks, to present the spectacle of human life in its most animated, varied, and noble movements. To a Roman historian and to a Roman poet the character and the fate of individuals derived their chief interest from their bearing on the glory and fortune of the State. In the Greek epic, on the other hand, the interest in Achilles and Hector is much more vivid than that felt in the success of the Greek or Trojan cause. In Herodotus the interest felt in the most important historical crisis through which the world has ever passed is inseparably blended with that felt in a great number of individual men, among the enemies of Greece, no less than among Greeks themselves. In the History of Livy we do not expect to find truthful delineation or sagacious analysis of the characters of the leading men of Rome; still less do we expect to find impartial and sympathetic delineation of the enemies of Rome; but we seek in his pages the image of the nation's life in its onward career of conquest and internal change, as pride and affection shaped it on the tables of the national memory. The idea of Rome, as the one object of supreme interest to gods and men, in the past, present, and future, imparts the unity of sentiment, tone, and purpose which is characteristic of the type of Roman epic poetry and of Roman history.
Naevius in selecting for his epic poem the subject of the First Punic War, and in connecting that war with the events which were supposed to connect the Roman State immediately with a divine origin and destiny, was the first Roman who was moved to write by this powerful impulse. But the man who first gave full expression to the national idea and feeling, who first made Rome conscious of herself, and who was the true founder of her literature, was Ennius. The title which he gave to his epic--Annales--perhaps the most prosaic title ever given to a work of genius, indicates the character of his work and his mode of treatment. The inspiration under which it was written is more truly indicated by the other name--Romais--by which, according to the testimony of an ancient grammarian(437), it was sometimes known. He took for his subject the whole career of Rome, from its mythical beginning in the events which followed the Trojan war onward to the latest events in his own day. The work was recognised as a great epic poem, and at the same time fulfilled the part of a contemporary chronicle. It was a true instinct of genius to feel that the only material suitable for a Roman epic was to be sought in the idea of the whole national life. That alone could supply the essential source of epic inspiration, the sympathy between the poet and those to whom his poem is addressed, by which the epic poet receives from, as well as gives back to, his audience. But on the other hand, while he has the true poetic impulse,--the 'vivida vis' and the strong conceptions of a poet,--he came too soon to acquire the tact and delicacy of conception and execution equally essential to the creation of works destined for immortality. The subject was too vast to be treated within the compass of a poem, which demands to be read as a whole, and to be contemplated as one continuous mental creation. The treatment of a long series of actions in chronological order is incompatible with artistic effect; the treatment of contemporary history is incompatible with the ideality of imaginative representation. The workmanship of the poem, as exhibited in many fragments, is powerful, but at the same time rude and unequal. Yet Ennius was a true representative writer. He appealed powerfully to the national sentiment; he revived the mythical and historic fame of the past; he perpetuated the memory and interpreted the meaning of his own time; he enhanced the glory of the great men and the great families of Rome; and he produced a work of colossal proportions and massive execution. Till his place was taken by a successor who united the fervour of a national poet to the perfect workmanship of an artist, he was justly regarded as the truest representative in literature of Roman character, sentiment, and ideas.