Lucius Accius (also Attius), Latin poet and playwright, was born in 170 B.C., perhaps at Pisaurum in Umbria, of parents who were former slaves. He lived mainly at Rome, where he formed many useful and influential connections. His patron was the nobleman Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus, He was considered by his contemporaries to be the last and the greatest of the tragic poets of Republican Rome. His plays (no less than 45 titles are known and about 700 lines survive) were mostly free translations from Greek tragedy, many from Euripides, with violent plots, flamboyant characterizations, and forceful rhetoric. His tragedies were performed until the end of the Republic. Their themes were those of classical legend, particularly the Trojan cycle. Accius followed in the line of the great tragedian, Marcus Pacuvius. When Accius was thirty and Pacuvius was eighty (l39 B.C.) they both presented plays at the same games. It is also recorded that he also was able to stay with Pacuvius at Tarentum and to read him his Atreus.

Aside from his tragedies, Accius also wrote two historical plays, Decius and Brutus, based on Roman history. He also wrote several treatises: the Didascalica, a work of nine books which dealt with the history of Greek and Latin poetry; the Annales, written in hexameters, which dealt with the calendar and with festivals; the Pragmatica, which dealt with stage directions; the Sotadica and the Parerga. His other works show him as a scholar with a particular interest in spelling reform (e.g. using u and s, not y and z), and a collector and critic of the works of his predecessors.

For over fifty years Accius was the recognised literary master at Rome, In the 120's he became the official head of the College of Poets and he had erected a gigantic statue of himself at the Templum Herculis Musarum. Cicero records having met Accius in his youth, having heard him lecture and having seen his plays. He quoted with admiration the famous line from his Atreus, "Oderint, dum metuant! ("Let them hate so long as they fear!') , a motto that is said to have appealed to the tyrant Caligula. Cicero also often quoted him and Virgil imitated him . Accius was an influential figure in his day, and of great importance for the development of Latin literature. He and Pacuvius were considered the two great tragedians of the Roman stage.

(1) Fabulae Crepidatae (c. 700 verses): Epigoni, Eurysaces, Philocteta Lemnius, Armorum Iudicium, Astyanax, Atreus, Bacchae, Epinausimache, Medea or Argonautae, Phoenissae, Telephus, Achilles, Aegisthus, Agamemnonidae, Alcestis, Alcmeo, Alpesiboea, Amphitryo, Andromeda, Antenoridae, Antigona, Athamas, Chrysippus, Clytaemnestra, Deiphobus, Diomedes, Hecuba, Hellones, Io, Melanippus, Meleager, Minos or Minotaurus, Myrmidones, Neoptolemus, Nyctegresia, Oenomaus, Pelopidae, Persidae, Phinidae, Prometheus, Stasiastae or Tropaeum Liberi, Tereus, Thebais, Troades.

(2) Fabulae Praetextae : Aeneadae or Decius, Brutus

(3) Scholarly Works : Didascalica, Annales, Pragmatica, Sotadica, Parerga.

Beare, W. The Roman Stage, 3rd ed. revised, 1969.

Coffey, M. in Fifty Years (and Twelve) of Clasical Scholarship, 1968.

Jocelyn, H.D, 'The quotations of Republican dramatists in Priscian's treatise De metris fabularum Terenti' , Antichthon I (l 967),

Warmington, E.H., Remains of Old Latin v. 2. 1967.

Williams, Gordon, in D. Daiches and A. Thorlby, eds., Literature and Western Civilisation, v. 1: The Classical World, 1972.