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Of more interest were the treatise on the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable for political objects, and the metrically composed -Didascaliae- of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the Latin drama.
Accius, the nephew of Pacuvius, had died as a very old man when Cicero was a boy; and in the national comedy no one had been found to follow Afranius. The times were disturbed, the population was restless, and continually incorporating heterogeneous elements: much amusement could be found in the life of the Forum, and in rioting and disorder; gladiatorial shows were organised on a large scale.
His style, like that of Andronicus, was rough and unpolished, in conformity to the language of those times; but for grandeur of sentiment and energy of expression, he was admired by the greatest poets in the subsequent ages. Other writers of distinguished reputation in the dramatic department were Naevius, Pacuvius, Plautus, Afranius, Caecilius, Terence, Accius, etc.
Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. From the times before the Augustan age no tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of Accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the Greeks. The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written by Seneca the philosopher.
The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, but it may be questioned whether the advance would be perceptible by us.
Pitt's administration had settled, after the victory which the Tory alliance of King and people had gained for him, left but little to excite the activity of party spirit, or to call forth those grand explosions of eloquence, which a more electric state of the political world produces. Accius, ap.
Unless, perhaps, you think that it was Accius who was applauded on that occasion, and who bore off the palm sixty years after his first appearance, and not Brutus, who was absent from the games which he himself was exhibiting, while at that most splendid spectacle the Roman people showed their zeal in his favour though he was absent, and soothed their own regret for their deliverer by uninterrupted applause and clamour.
At the conclusion of their speech, they threw their javelins into the enemy's confines, and departed. The first of Tarquin's hapless race was he, Who odium tried to cast on augury; But Nævius Accius, with an augur's skill. Preserved its fame, and raised it higher still. Robertson.
I do not conceive, as things are at present, how Hercules, Burn'd with fiery torches on Mount Oeta, as Accius says, should rise, with the flames, To the eternal mansions of his father. Besides, Homer also says that Ulysses met him in the shades below, among the other dead.
I cannot, therefore, neglect to take some notice of those worthy knights, and my intimate friends, very lately deceased, P. Comminius Spoletinus, against whom I pleaded in defence of C. Cornelius, and who was a methodical, a spirited, and a ready Speaker; and T. Accius, of Pisaurum, to whom I replied in behalf of A. Cluentius, and who was an accurate, and a tolerably copious Advocate: he was also well instructed in the precepts of Hermagoras, which, though of little service to embellish and enrich our Elocution, furnish a variety of arguments, which, like the weapons of the light infantry, may be readily managed, and are adapted to every subject of debate.
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