Ennius was raised at Evasendia by Cristofer's first student Clement, the Order's Chief Librarian. Unlike his parens, however, Ennius was interested in the Evasendian political situation. On the Council, he was a staunch ally of Cristofer's politically-involved second student, Cassius, and from 225 on he lent his support to the revolutionary party led by Cassius and the Tympanian Tyrus.
After Cassius' execution in 231, Tyrus' supporters on the Council looked to Ennius for direction, and it was largely due to his influence that they were willing to lay aside their anger and join forces with the erstwhile supporters of Gaultere to bring down Gaultere's government.
As the effective leader of House Cristofer during the crisis of 232, his decisive action ensured the preservation of many of the Order's most valued documents and books. While the rest of the Order seemed paralyzed by the witch-hunt, Ennius led his younger brother Arrius and his student Cassidore on a daring mission to rescue the sole Touccian survivor of the attacks, Cyril, from the hands of the Order's enemies. An attempt to recover his own apprentice, also taken captive in the attacks, proved a failure, however, and as more and more of the Order's previously hidden outposts were ransacked by the mob, Ennius realized that the Order had a hard decision to make.
As the Order's primary liaison with sympathetic members of the mundane world, Ennius' parens Clement had kept careful files of arcane connections to all of the Order's mundane contacts and allies. Early in 232, Ennius approached the Eleanorean Monedula to ask for her help in performing a ritual spell to ensure the silence of those mundane allies of the Order who could not be accounted for, and who therefore might have fallen into the hands of their enemies.
Historians have often wondered why Ennius should have approached Monedula—a follower of Gaultere—rather than her parens Merula—who was one of his political allies—for aid with this unpleasant task. Perhaps the reason was that he was shamed to be seen a murderer by his own allies. Or perhaps it was simply that he and Monedula had been raised alongside one another as apprentices, and so he felt that he knew her better. In any case, she agreed with him that necessity demanded this drastic action; late in the winter of 232, a large number of the Order's erstwhile mundane allies suddenly and inexplicably died. Ennius' own apprentice was among their number. So, too, should he have been: in the piles of hair and nail clippings that he had handed to Monedula, he had included a lock of his own hair, intending to die along with all of the others he had doomed. Monedula, however, noticed this and plucked it out; it is said that she later handed it back to him with the words: "Your House will need a leader. Live."
When the Council finally reconvened in the spring of 232, Ennius confessed his action—omitting any mention of Monedula's participation—and submitted himself to the reconvened council for judgement. He was very much surprised indeed when, rather than condemning him to death, the council nearly unanimously lauded him as a hero. The Order's perception of Ennius as the hero of the hour caused a bit of tension with his uncle Lemuel, Cristofer's third student and his recognized heir. Ennius would always, however, insist on deferring to Lemuel's judgement in matters pertaining to the House; he refused even to remain on the Council, choosing instead to join with his parens Clemens in the founding of a new library for the Order, Annalum, near Semelwater on lower Ballicastra.
Over the next twenty years, it became more and more apparent that it was really Annalum, and not the Council of Cholae in Evasendia, which was to serve as the communications center and regulatory authority for the Order as a whole. As the eldest founder of Annalum who could be truly said to be a mage (Clement was never to practice magic again after 232), Ennius was viewed by many, particularly after the founder's death in 252, as the true leader of House Cristofer. There is quite a bit of evidence that this fact annoyed and embarrassed Ennius nearly as much—if not even more so—as it annoyed Cristofer's actual successor Lemuel. Once, when questioned on a matter of House policy by a younger Cristoferean, he is said to have flown into a rage and stalked throughout the library, demanding of each and every person he passed: "Does this look like Evasendia to you?"
Probably the follower of Cristofer most deeply committed to the founder's vision of a unified Order, it was Ennius' dream to lead the Order to a new level of organization and unity through the creation of Order-wide Tribunals, to be held at regular intervals as a way of ensuring that the Order of Cholae maintain some unity and purpose, even through its diaspora. The death of his parens Clement, with whom he had shared this dream, only seemed to spur him on to greater efforts to see it realized: through the 260s, he campaigned tirelessly for his Tribunal, a process which involved a good deal of negotiations with the far-flung and recalcitrant magi of the diaspora. His dream was finally realized, after fifteen years of planning, in 269—one year later than the original planned date of the seventieth birthday of the founding of the Order— when the First Tribunal was held at Annalum, with Ennius himself seated as the representative of the library covenant.
It did not go as planned. Ennius initially supported the investigation into the accusations against Eleanor in 270, and it was due to his influence that the guidelines for such investigations outlined in Cristofer's Revised Code were adopted for the proceedings. His enthusiasm for the purge waned, however, as the anti-Eleanorean hysteria mounted, and by the time of the execution of the Annalum Cristoferean Austyn, his cooperation with the prosecution seemed motivated purely by fear. It was not until the trial of Procopius' apprentice that he was even to begin to rally, and when the prosecution next leveled charges against the Council Cristofereans, Ennius managed to reassert his authority even to the extent of ordering the prosecution and its allies out of his library, threatening to use force, if necessary, to evict them.
It was a bit too little, though, and a bit too late; and once the hysteria had subsided and the Tribunal dispersed, Ennius felt so deeply shamed by his earlier cowardice and complicity in the trials that he declared the student of Procopius the Elder mage without even testing his abilities. This action was the final proof in the eyes of the prosecutor Nexus that the Annalum magi were hopelessly corrupt: early in 272, Nexus led a band of Savacion magi against Annalum with orders to leave none inside alive save Nexus' ally Arrius and his student Alayne. Ennius was killed in the destruction of the covenant, some say at the hands of the Ultorum Savacion Aglaspis. He had raised two students to magehood:
- Cassidore (C9), from 220 to 235
- Symond (C14), from 240 to 255
His death in the destruction of Annalum horrified the Order, and it marked the end of the Eleanorean purge. Thereafter his students, Cassidore and Symond, took over the position of the leadership of House Cristofer, refounding Annalum in 279. Their descendants comprise the vast majority of House Cristofer.
