Quintus Ennius was born in 239 BC in Rudiae, near Lecce, a city in which three cultures coexisted at the time: the Greek one with Taranto as its centre, the Oscan one of the smaller indigenous Italic centres, and that of the Roman occupier.
He has been considered, since ancient times, the father of Latin literature. In fact, as Dante did later with Italian, he was the first poet to use Latin as a literary language in competition with Greek.
His national poem, the Annales, tells the story of the Roman people from their origins to 171. The work was structured in 18 books, divided into three groups of six, called hexads, but only 600 verses of the original 30,000 or so remain.
In Lecce there is a monument near Porta Rudiae that celebrates the Latin poet.
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