Geese and Rabbits

A few kilometers from the gentle town of Lecce, hidden among the ploughed fields, the villas and the undergrowth, lay the ruins of a nearly forgotten Messapic town called Rudiae. Here, in 239 BC, Quintus Ennius of Rudiae, father of Latin literature, who introduced the hexameter into Roman poetry, was born. It was of him that Nicola De Giorgi and Stefania Scopinich thought when the moment came to decide on a name for the third child with whom God had blessed them. They called him Ennio, following the classical tradition, and breaking with the norm that imposed the names of ancestors on newborns. They may also have chosen the name to highlight their connection with the land in which they had decided to raise a family, Salento, where Romans, Greeks and Messapians lived. For Stefania, who came from Capodistria, this was a brave choice. Those were different times, and women who came from other lands, with their own habits and different mentalities, were viewed with suspicion in Southern Italy. But she was determined to follow the man she loved to the farthest southeastern limb of the Italian peninsula.