The South of Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied to Rome or latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for the first twenty years of his life granted to Ennius leisure to avail himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been born a few years later.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar
The art of Greece was communicated to 'rude latium,' through the medium of those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the Greek language and civilisation.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar
Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in latium, as told in the great Roman epics, bears the mark of the artificial construction of a late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative legend, in a lively and creative age.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar