Roman poets took many paths to oblivion. Of the 31 included in the Quintilian's famous catalogue, barely a dozen are known from complete texts. Of the rest, only fragments remain. The question is, why? This talk will focus on one particularly notable example of this loss, the Annals of Quintus Ennuis, the first great Roman epic and undoubted pioneer of the genre. What brought that work to the brink of oblivion and what can the study of its loss tell us about the Romans themselves?