It is generally assumed that Quintus Ennius was not brought to Rome as a slave but as a peregrinus ; sources mention that he was given Roman citizenship in 184 - his fifty-fifth year - and no mention is made of manumissio. He came from Tarentum, a Greek city of southern Italy. A cosmopolitan man, he was versed in Greek, Latin and his own local Messopian languages and cultures. All the great Romans of his day commented on how widely read he was (for a «provincial», they were probably thinking).

His early life was relatively serene inasmuch as Carthage had agreed to leave Magna Graecia (Sicily) and southern Italy alone. When the Punic Wars resumed in 217 following Hannibal’s incursion into southern Italy, Ennius was 22 years old.

M. Portius Cato came across him in 204 while campaigning in Sardinia. Cato was 30 years old, 5 years younger than Ennius. The latter’s military and literary skills so impressed him that he brought him to Rome, presumably as part of his personal staff. Cato showed him off to his friends, and his company was soon sought by the «upper crust» - the Cornelii, the Caecilii, the Fulvii, the Scipii.

Ennius allowed himself to be pried away from his mentor and from Rome. When the consul M. Fulvius Nobilior retired to his country estates in 189, Ennius went with him, causing tongues to wag, if Cicero’s rhetoric is to be believed. (1) In spite of being familiar with the most powerful families in Rome, Ennius never got into more trouble than that ; such weighty connections did not tempt him to stray into political tangles. In 184, Fulvius Nobilior’s son obtained Ennius Roman citizenship. Presumably he returned to Rome on his own as he is known to have had a house on the Aventine, living in «poverty» - i.e. not according to the standards of the Fulvii or Caecilii. One of his neighbours was nevertheless Servius Sulpicius Galbus who had been praetor in 187. It is also likely that he became a member of the college of scribae et histriones and other artisans whose patron institute was the Temple of Minerva Aventina. (2)

Ennius’s sole concern was verse. He was himself very much convinced of his poetic genius - to illustrate his conceit, the Suda (E1348) says of him that he claimed to be Homer reincarnate (3). It was he who made Athenian tragedy and comedy palatable and even agreeable to Roman taste. Thanks to him, Latin culture was introduced to Greek culture. He did not just translate Euripides and Sophocles into Latin : he inculturated them. For Ennius himself was in a certain way as Roman as the most Roman families. His one great oeuvre - the Annals - is as much a panegyric of Roman-ness as a poem about Roman history. Ennius is Rome’s champion. Aristocratic Rome, that is. He sings of Rome’s military successes, traditional Roman morality, the importance of fidelity to Roman deities, all of which follow the military tradition of Roman nobility, the priestly offices that devolve on the nobility, the aristocratic structure of the Roman Republic. He sang those virtues so well that he inspired not only the patricians but all of Rome’s population, for even the non-aristocratic young men felt the call to accomplish great deeds, to self-sacrifice for the wonder that was Rome. For over two hundred years, Ennius’s «Republican» work was more or less required reading, since his belief in the immortality of the great Republican Romans lent a cultural aura to the Principate’s habit of deifying its dictators.

Though he did not retain for long his title of «greatest poet», greater poets than he were indebted to him for their art : Pacuvius, his own nephew, that some consider to be the best Roman tragedian, and the Gallic slave who became Caecilius Statius, whom some consider to be the best Roman author of comedy.

The first fifteen books of his Annals were published in his lifetime, the last three, that deal with military men of lesser fame, posthumously. The public soon forgot his adaptations of Greek comedy. He was better at adapting tragedy. The African grammaticus Nonnius Marcellus knew of 18 works : Achilles ; Ajax ; Alcmeo ; Ambracia ; Andromacha ; Andromeda ; Cresphontes ; Cupuncula ; Erecthens ; Eumenides ; Hecuba ; Medea ; Nemea ; Pancratiastes ; Phoenix ; Telamo ; Thyestes ; plus the Book of Satires. There are other fragmentary pieces that as yet cannot reasonably be attributed to Ennius. (4)

1. Cicero, Tusc I, 3.
2. The 19^th of March, dies artificum, was devoted to Minerva Aventina. With his famous patriotism, Augustus restored and embellished the more ancient temples of Roman deities on the Aventine.
3. Ennios ... phesi monon an Homeron epaxios epainous eipein Skipionas.
4. The following sources also mention Q. Ennius in passing : Cicero, Ac., 2.5 ; Arch. 22 ; De oratoribus II, 275 ; Livy, XXXVIII, 56. 4 ; Pliny, Nat. Hist., VII, 114 ; St Jerome, Chroniq., 1777.

Source
Henry D. Jocelyn, "The Poems of Quintus Ennius" in ANRW I, 2, pp. 987ff.

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