Pacuvius

• Name — Pacuvius • Born — 220 BC • Birthplace — Brundisium • Died — c. 130 BC • Place of death — Tarentum • Genre — Tragedy

He was the nephew and pupil of Ennius, by whom Roman tragedy was first raised to a position of influence and dignity. In the interval between the death of Ennius (169 BC) and the advent of Accius, the youngest and most productive of the tragic poets, Pacuvius alone maintained the continuity of the serious drama, and perpetuated the character first imparted to it by Ennius. Like Ennius he probably belonged to an Oscan stock, and was born at Brundisium, which had become a Roman colony in 244 BC. Pacuvius obtained distinction also as a painter; and Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia xxxv) mentions a work of his in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium. He was less productive as a poet than either Ennius or Accius; we hear of only twelve of his plays, founded on Greek subjects and most of them connected to the Trojan cycle (Antiope, Armorum Judicium, Atalanta, Chryses, Dulorestes, Hermione, Iliona, Medus, Niptra, Pentheus, Periboea, and Teucer) and one praetexta (Paullus) written in connection with the victory of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus at the Battle of Pydna (168 BC), as the Clastidium of Naevius and the Ambracia of Ennius were written in commemoration of great military successes. He continued to write tragedies till the age of eighty, when he exhibited a play in the same year as Accius, who was then thirty years of age. He retired to Tarentum for the last years of his life, and a story is told by Aulus Gellius (xiii.2) of his being visited there by Accius on his way to Asia, who read his Atreus to him. The story is probably, like that of the visit of the young Terence to the veteran Caecilius Statius, due to the invention of later grammarians; but it is invented in accordance with the traditionary criticism (Horace, Epp. ii.1.5455) of the distinction between the two poets, the older being characterized rather by cultivated accomplishment (doctus), the younger by vigour and animation (altus).

Pacuvius' epitaph, said to have been composed by himself, is quoted by Aulus Gellius (i.24), with a tribute of admiration to its "modesty, simplicity and fine serious spirit": Adulescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat Ut sese aspicias, deinde quod scriptum 'st legas Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale. "Young man, though you are in a hurry, this stone asks you to look at it, then to read what is written. Here are placed the poet Pacuvius Marcus's bones. I wished you to know this. Farewell."