Chapter 3 - The Gods in Ennius

Summary

In this chapter I offer some thoughts about the models for Ennius’ divine apparatus and about the balance struck in the Annals among the Varronian theologies. Specifically, I suggest (1) that Ennius’ treatment of the gods owes as much to Hesiod as it does to Homer; (2) that this debt involves structural as well as thematic resemblances between the Annals and Hesiod’s genealogical poetry; (3) that Ennius represents the Olympians as a group very differently from Hesiod or Homer; and (4) that the rationalizing theology of Euhemerus’ Sacred History, which Ennius translated into Latin, is present in the Annals to a larger extent than is commonly assumed. On this basis I suggest (5) that the poem’s representation of the gods evolves in a way that represents the increasing eclecticism of philosophical ideas about divinity over time. The result is that the poem ends with a perspective that is overtly different from, but not fundamentally incompatible with the one with which it began.