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ABSTRACT: Although its opening line raises expectations of a deep engagement with the Odyssey, there are actually many more allusions to the Iliad in the fragments of the Annals of Quintus Ennius. Specifically, there are four extant topical allusions to the Iliad and none to the Odyssey. The fact that the Annals, like the Iliad, is an epic of war is one explanation. The existence of a Latin translation of the Odyssey by Ennius' predecessor, Livius Andronicus, is another. Finally, this lack of allusions to the Odyssey may also be an implicit refutation of a claim that Odysseus founded Rome. In what may be the first line of his Annals, Ennius sends a message that he will not be following in the steps of his predecessors in Roman epic:1
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In what may be the first line of his Annals, Ennius sends a message that he will not be following in the steps of his predecessors in Roman epic:1
Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum (Ann. 1)
Muses who with your feet beat mighty Olympus.2
Ennius' meter here is the Greek hexameter, whereas the two previous Roman epics, the translation of the Odyssey by Livius Andronicus3 and Gnaeus Naevius' Bellum Poenicum, were composed in the Latin Saturnian meter.4 So too, Ennius has replaced the Italian Camena of Livius with the Greek Muses. Early in his epic, or poemata as he would have it (Ann. 4), Ennius refers to Homer as a poeta (Ann. 3). What is more, the word pedibus self-reflexively announces that his epic will be composed in a Greek meter that consists of dactylic "feet."
The Grecisms of Ennius not only bypass the intervention of Livius to engage with the Greek tradition directly, but Musae, the first word of the poem, also leaves the audience momentarily in doubt as to whether Ennius is composing in Greek or Latin.5 Moreover, in the split second before quae follows Musae, the identity of the poem is yet to be determined. Because Hesiod's Works and Days also begins with the word ... of Hesiod: ... ("Muses from Pieria, who glorify by songs. . . ." Op. 1).6 The confusion would, however, be fleeting. The placement of the Muses at the...