Lucius Accius
Template:Short description Template:Infobox writer
Lucius Accius (Template:IPAc-en; 170 – c. 86 BC), or Lucius Attius,<ref name="OCD">Template:Cite book</ref> was a Roman tragic poet and literary scholar. Accius was born in 170 BC at Pisaurum, a town founded in the Ager Gallicus in 184 BC.<ref>Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, xxxix, 44</ref> He was the son of a freedman and a freedwoman,<ref name="DCA222">Template:Cite book</ref> probably from Rome.<ref>Svetonius, De Poetis, 8</ref>
The year of his death is unknown, but he must have lived to a great age, since Cicero<ref>Cicero, Brutus, 72–73</ref> (born 106 BC, hence 64 years younger) writes of having conversed with him on literary matters.<ref name="Chisholm">Template:EB1911</ref>
Literary works
[edit]Accius was a prolific writer and enjoyed a very high reputation.<ref>Horace, Epistles, ii.i, 56; Cicero, Pro Plancio, 24</ref> The titles and considerable fragments (about 700 lines) of some fifty plays have been preserved.<ref name=Chisholm/> Judging from the titles and fragments, scholars have surmised that most, if not all, of these poems were tragic in nature, although Pliny the Younger ranks him among the erotic poets.<ref name="OCD"/><ref>Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 5.6</ref> His career as a poet can be traced over the course of 36 years from B.C. 140, to B.C. 104.<ref name="DCA">Template:Cite book</ref>
Most of his poetical works were imitations or free translations of the Greek,<ref name=Chisholm/> especially Aeschylus. The earliest of these was most likely the Atreus, which was performed in 140, but is now lost.<ref>Cicero, Brutus 229</ref> He also wrote on some Roman subjects, one of which, an examination of the tyranny of L. Tarquinius Superbus and his expulsion by Lucius Junius Brutus, was titled Brutus, and was probably written in honor of his patron D. Brutus.<ref name="OCD"/><ref>Cicero De Legibus. ii.21, Pro Archia Poeta. 11</ref> His favorite subjects were the legends of the Trojan War and the house of Pelops.<ref name=Chisholm /> While only fragments remain, the most important of which were preserved by Cicero, they seem sufficient to justify the terms of admiration in which Accius is spoken of by the ancient writers. He is particularly praised for the strength and vigor of his language, and the sublimity of his thoughts.<ref>Cicero pro Plancio 24, pro Sestio 56, &c.; Horace Epodes ii.1.56; Quintilian x.1. § 97; Aulus Gellius xiii. 2</ref><ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Although the grandiloquence of his literary style was on occasion mocked by some of his peers,<ref>Porph. Hor. Serm. 1.10.53</ref> he continued to be cited by other writers long after his death.<ref name="OCD"/>
Accius wrote other works of a literary character: Libri Didascalicon, a treatise in verse on the history of Greek and Roman poetry, and dramatic art in particular; also Libri Pragmaticon, Parerga, and Praxidica, of which no fragments remain; and a hexameter Annales<ref name=Chisholm/> containing the history of Rome, like that of Ennius.
As a grammarian
[edit]Accius also attempted to introduce innovations in Latin orthography and grammar, most of which were attempts to change written Latin to more faithfully reproduce its actual pronunciation. Few of these caught on,<ref name="OCD"/> although his preference against giving Greek names Latin endings had quite a few supporters, particularly Varro, who dedicated his De antiquitate litterarum to Accius.<ref>Varro, De lingua Latina 10.70</ref>
A spelling convention of writing long vowels double (such as aa for long ā) is also associated with him and is found in texts concurrent with his lifetime.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Politics and temperament
[edit]Accius was politically conservative, and generally noted for his dignity and reserve. He did, however, believe that one with literary gifts, such as himself, ought to be accorded more respect than someone who, through no effort of their own, was merely born into the nobility.<ref name="OCD"/> He was, by some accounts, a self-important man,<ref>Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.24</ref> and some writers expressed a wry amusement at the larger-than-life statues of himself that he had erected in the temple of the Muses.<ref>Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 34.19</ref>
A fragment of Accius' play Atreus features the line oderint dum metuant ("let them hate, so long as they fear").
Citations
[edit]General sources
[edit]- G. Manuwald, Accius und seine Zeit (Würzburg 2002).
- B. Baldarelli, Accius und die vortrojanische Pelopidensage (Paderborn 2004).
- Template:SmithDGRBM
The cited Template:EB1911 also includes these authorities:
- Boissier, Le Poète Accius, 1856
- L. Müller, De Accii fabulis Disputatio (1890)
- Ribbeck, Geschichte der römischen Dichtung (1892)
- Editions of the tragic fragments by Ribbeck (1897), of the others by Bährens (1886)
- Plessis, Poésie latine (1909)