Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
He was not a great poet, but a man of graceful and sprightly talent,
throughout possessing the vivid sensibilities of a poetic nature, but
needing the tragic buskin to feel himself a poet and wholly destitute
of the comic vein. We can understand the pride with which the
Hellenizing poet looked down on those rude strains --
-quos olim Faunei vatesque canebant,-
and the enthusiasm with which he celebrates his own artistic poetry:
-Enni foeta, salve,
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-
The clever man had an instinctive assurance that he had spread his
sails to a prosperous breeze; Greek tragedy became, and thenceforth
remained, a possession of the Latin nation.
