Ennius' Annals

160 PHOENIX a discipline. Moore finds this transformation apparent when Aristotle in Metaphysics A offers a history of thinkers who, beginning with Thales, investigate the first principles of everything, by testing and revising others’ views on the same question. Aristotle places himself into the lineage of this pursuit of sophia, and so philosophia changes from an other-applied label to a self-described membership. Though our sense of philosophia had basically been established by the time of Aristotle, the more popular, often negative, use remained available for some time. In Chapter Ten, Moore looks at the term’s ambivalences in the later fourth century b.c.e. Heraclides’ story comes once more into view, as it shows that philosophy still needed a protreptic during the fourth century. A brief epilogue forges a bridge to present discussions of what philosophy as a discipline is or should be. To someone who has studied the history of philosophy and its name, it comes as no surprise that philosophy lacks an essential object of investigation. By taking philosophy as “the interpretation of prior experiments in philosophy” (318) and letting go of the idea that philosophy originated from a “love of wisdom,” Moore suggests, philosophy may be able to reclaim “ways of life” as its proper object of attention. Moore’s book is ambitious and fascinating. It deserves to be read widely and discussed intensely. It offers a real and productive change of perspective in understanding the origins and meanings of philosophy, and it provides many new insights that are both eye-opening and convincing. Princeton University Mirjam Kotwick Ennius' ANNALS: Poetry and History. Edited by Cynthia Damon and Joseph Farrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020. Pp. 352. The twenty-first century loves Ennius. New commentaries, new monographs, new Loebs—perhaps no period since antiquity has seen so many people writing about the father of Latin literature at one and the same time.1 And all this attention has been good for him: gone (or at least unfashionable) is Ennius the uncouth court poet, whose primary importance lay in his being a stepping stone on the way to Virgil; now we are getting comfortable with a New Ennius, a sophisticated, urbane revolutionary, a poet whose three hearts embody the explosive diversity of mid-republican Rome. The fourteen chapters of the volume under review, the written record of a 2016 conference in Philadelphia, contribute to this process of reimagining. Although predicated upon more or less the same historicizing-philological principles that have long obtained in Ennian studies, these are nonetheless highly self-conscious, proudly revisionist essays, as skeptical of “received opinion” (2, 17) as they are sure of Ennius’ inherent worth. While, as the book’s title suggests, many of them interpret the Annales alongside and 1 Commentaries: Flores, E. (ed.), Quinto Ennio Annali (Libri I–VIII) (Naples 2000); A. Russo (ed.), Quinto Ennio: Le opere minori 1 (Pisa 2007). Monographs: N. Goldschmidt, Shaggy Crowns: Ennius’ Annales and Virgil’s Aeneid (Oxford 2013); J. Fisher, The Annals of Quintus Ennius and the Italic Tradition (Baltimore 2014). Loebs: S. Goldberg and G. Manuwald, Fragmentary Republican Latin 1: Ennius. Testimonia. Epic Fragments (Cambridge, MA 2018); id., Fragmentary Republican Latin 2: Ennius. Dramatic Fragments. Minor Works (Cambridge, MA 2018). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 161 against historiography, they are united less by any precise theme or coherent set of questions and more by their shared revisionist bent. This can make for an unfocused read at times, and I am not sure that all fourteen of these papers really belong together. On the other hand, their quality is generally very high, many strike out in compelling new directions, and I am grateful they have been published. After an introduction, the editors organize their book into four parts (“Innovation,” “Authority,” “Influence,” “Interpretation”), each containing three or four essays. An afterword by Mary Jaeger follows. The volume starts on a high note: Patrick Glauthier’s essay on “Hybrid Ennius,” which argues that an eccentric “multiplicity” characterizes Ennius’ self-presentation throughout the Annales. Particularly valuable is his reading of the mysterious peacock of Ann. 11: with its dazzling, variegated colours, the bird programmatically embodies poikilia, the multiplicity that defines, in the first place, Ennius

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