PACUVIUS, MARCUS (c. 220-130 B.C.), Roman tragic poet, was the nephew and pupil of Ennius, by whom Roman tragedy was first raised to a position of influence and dignity. Like Ennius he probably belonged to an Oscan stock, and was born at Brundusium, which had become a Roman colony in Hence he never attained to idiomatic purity of style. Pacuvius obtained distinction also as a painter ; and the elder Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxv. 19) mentions a work of his in the temple of Hercules in the Forum boarium. We know of 12 plays on Greek subjects, mostly connected with the Trojan cycle, and one praetexta, the Paulus, written to commemorate the victory of Pydna in 168, He continued to write tragedies till the age of 8o, when he exhibited a play in the same year as Accius, who was then 3o years of age. He retired to Tarentum for the last years of his life, and a story is told by Genius 2) which is probably fictitious, of his being visited there by Accius on his way to Asia, who read his Atreus to him. The story is designed to illustrate the traditionary criticism (Horace, Epp. II. i. 54) of the two poets, the elder noted for elegance, the younger for vigour. Cicero, who frequently quotes from Pacuvius with admiration, appears (De optimo genere oratorum, i.) to rank him first among the Roman tragic poets.
The fragments of Pacuvius quoted by Cicero in illustration or enforcement of his own ethical teaching appeal, by the fortitude, dignity, and magnanimity of the sentiment expressed in them, to what was noblest in the Roman temperament, while revealing a humanity of sentiment that was more unusual. Among the
passages quoted from Pacuvius are several which indicate a taste both for physical and ethical speculation, and others which expose the pretensions of religious imposture, tendencies common to the tragic poets of the period. These poets also contributed to the development of the language into an organ peculiarly suited to oratory. But the new creative effort in language was accompanied by considerable crudeness of execution, and the novel word-f or mations and varieties of inflexion introduced by Pacuvius ex posed him to the ridicule of the satirist Lucilius. But, notwith standing the attempt to introduce an alien element into the Roman language, which proved incompatible with its natural genius, and his own failure to attain the idiomatic purity of Naevius, Plautus or Terence, the fragments of his dramas are sufficient to prove the service which he rendered to the formation of the literary language of Rome as well as to the culture of his contemporaries.
Fragments in 0. Ribbeck, Fragmenta scaenicae romanorum poesis (1897), vol. i.; see also his Romische Tragodie (1875) ; L. Muller, De Pacuvii fabulis (1889) ; W. S. Teuffel, Caecilius Statius, Pacuvius, Attius, Afranius (1858) ; and Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. iv. ch. 13.