Lucius Accius

Lucius Accius (; c. 170 – c. 86 BC), or Lucius Attius, 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. He was the son of a freedman and a freedwoman, probably from Rome.

The year of his death is unknown, but he must have lived to a great age, since Cicero (born 106 BC, hence 64 years younger) reports having conversed with him on literary matters.

Literary works Accius was a prolific writer and enjoyed a very high reputation. The titles and considerable fragments (about 700 lines) of some fifty plays have been preserved. His career as a poet can be traced over the course of 36 years from B.C. 140, to B.C. 104.

Most of his poetical works were imitations or free translations of the Greek, 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. His favorite subjects were the legends of the Trojan War and the house of Pelops. Although the grandiloquence of his literary style was on occasion mocked by some of his peers, he continued to be cited by other writers long after his death.

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.

Politics and temperament 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. 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.

A fragment of Accius' play Atreus features the line oderint dum metuant ("let them hate, so long as they fear").