La concezione della poesia nell’opera di Ennodio (ipotesi su carm. 2, 66-68)

In the corpus of Ennodius’ works, the manuscripts preserve a triptych of metapoetic epigrams (carm. 2, 66-68 = 187-189 V.), the first of which is entitled "Praefatio totius operis poetici quod fecit". In this paper, I suggest that the three epigrams were composed at the same time to be the cornerstones of an overall collection of poems conceived by Ennodius and probably never realized: the first (2, 66) and second (2, 67) could serve respectively as preface and epilogue to a section of secular verse, the third (2, 68) could introduce a series of Christian poems. The different postures assumed by the poetic self in the three epigrams, and the different conceptions of poetry he expresses, could be explained by the different inspiration of the two parts of the supposed collection, while their succession could represent the author’s literary and spiritual evolution from worldly to religious poetry.