PACUVIUS,
who was the nephew of Ennius[328], by a sister of that poet, was born at Brundusium, in the year 534. At Rome he became intimately acquainted with Lælius, who, in Cicero’s treatise De Amicitiâ, calls Pacuvius his host and friend: He also enjoyed, like Terence, the intimacy of Scipio Africanus; but he did not profit so much as the comic writer by his acquaintance with these illustrious Romans for the improvement of his style. There is an idle story, that Pacuvius had three wives, all of whom successively hanged themselves on the same tree; and that lamenting this to Attius, who was married, he begged for a slip of it to plant in his own garden[329]; an anecdote which has been very seriously confuted by Annibal di Leo, in his learned Memoir on Pacuvius. This poet also employed himself in painting: he was one of the first of [pg 210]the Romans who attained any degree of eminence in that elegant art, and particularly distinguished himself by the picture which he executed for the temple of Hercules, in the Forum Boarium[330]. He published his last piece at the age of eighty[331]; after which, being oppressed with old age, and afflicted with perpetual bodily illness, he retired, for the enjoyment of its soft air and mild winters, to Tarentum[332], where he died, having nearly completed his ninetieth year[333]. An elegant epitaph, supposed to have been written by himself, is quoted, with much commendation, by Aulus Gellius, who calls it verecundissimum et purissimum[334]. It appears to have been inscribed on a tombstone which stood by the side of a public road, according to a custom of the Romans, who placed their monuments near highways, that the spot where their remains were deposited might attract observation, and the departed spirit receive the valediction of passing travellers:
“Adolescens, tametsi properas, hoc te saxum rogat,
Uti ad se aspicias; deinde, quod scriptum est, legas.
Hic sunt poetæ Marcei Pacuviei sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses—Vale[335].”
Though a few fragments of the tragedies of Pacuvius remain, our opinion of his dramatic merits can be formed only at second hand, from the observations of those critics who wrote while his works were yet extant. Cicero, though he blames his style, and characterizes him as a poet male loquutus[336], places him on the same level for tragedy as Ennius for epic poetry, or Cæcilius for comedy; and he mentions, in his treatise De Oratore, that his verses were by many considered as highly laboured and adorned.—“Omnes apud hunc ornati elaboratique sunt versus.” It was in this laboured polish of versification, and skill in the dramatic conduct of the scene, that the excellence of Pacuvius chiefly consisted; for so the lines of Horace have been usually interpreted, [pg 211]where, speaking of the public opinion entertained concerning the different dramatic writers of Rome, he says,—
“Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior: aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Attius alti.”
And the same meaning must be affixed to the passage in Quintilian,—“Virium tamen Attio plus tribuitur; Pacuvium videri doctiorem, qui esse docti adfectant, volunt[337].” Most other Latin critics, though on the whole they seem to prefer Attius, allow Pacuvius to be the more correct writer.
The names are still preserved of about 20 tragedies of Pacuvius—Anchises, Antiope, Armorum Judicium, Atalanta, Chryses, Dulorestes, Hermione, Iliona, Medus, Medea, Niptra, Orestes et Pylades, Paulus, Peribœa, Tantalus, Teucer, Thyestes. Of these the Antiope was one of the most distinguished. It was regarded by Cicero as a great national tragedy, and an honour to the Roman name.—“Quis enim,” says he, “tam inimicus pene nomini Romano est, qui Ennii Medeam, aut Antiopam Pacuvii, spernat, aut rejiciat?” Persius, however, ridicules a passage in this tragedy, where Antiope talks of propping her melancholy heart with misfortunes, by which she means, (I suppose,) that she fortunately had so many griefs all around her heart, that it was well bolstered up, and would not break or bend so easily as it must have done, had it been supported by fewer distresses—
“Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiope, ærumnis cor luctificabile fulta.”
The Armorum Judicium was translated from Æschylus. With regard to the Dulorestes, (Orestes Servus,) there has been a good deal of discussion and difficulty. Nævius, Ennius, and Attius, are all said to have written tragedies which bore the title of Dulorestes; but a late German writer has attempted, at great length, to show that this is a misconception; and that all the fragments, which have been classed with the remains of these three dramatic poets, belong to the Dulorestes of Pacuvius, who was in truth the only Latin poet who wrote a tragedy with this appellation. What the tenor or subject of the play, however, may have been, he admits is difficult to determine, as the different passages, still extant, refer to very different periods of the life of Orestes; which, I think, is rather adverse to his idea, that all these fragments were written by the same person, and belonged to the same tragedy, unless, [pg 212]indeed, Pacuvius had utterly set at defiance the observance of the celebrated unities of the ancient drama. On the whole, however, he agrees with Thomas Stanley, in his remarks on the Chœphoræ of Æschylus, that the subject of the Chœphoræ, which is the vengeance taken by Orestes on the murderers of his father, is also that of the Dulorestes of Pacuvius[338]. Some of the fragments refer to this as an object not yet accomplished:—
“Utinam nunc maturescam ingenio, ut meum patrem
Ulcisci queam.” ——
The Hermione turned on the murder of Pyrrhus by Orestes at the instigation of Hermione. Cicero, in his Treatise De Amicitia, mentions, in the person of Lælius, the repeated acclamations which had recently echoed through the theatre at the representation of the new play of his friend Pacuvius, in that scene where Pylades and Orestes are introduced before the king, who, being ignorant which of them is Orestes, whom he had predetermined should be put to death, each insists, in order to save the life of his friend, that he himself is the real person in question. Delrio alleges that the new play here alluded to by Cicero was the Hermione; but that play, as well as the Dulorestes, related to much earlier events than the friendly contest between Pylades and Orestes, which took place at the court of Thoas, King of Tauris, and was the concluding scene in the dramatic life of Orestes, being long subsequent to the murder of his mother, his trial in presence of the Argives, or absolution at Athens before the Areopagus. Accordingly, Tiraboschi states positively that this new play of Pacuvius, which obtained so much applause, was his Pylades et Orestes[339].
In the Iliona, the scene where the shade of Polydorus, who had been assassinated by the King of Thrace, appears to his sister Iliona, was long the favourite of a Roman audience, who seem to have indulged in the same partiality for such spectacles as we still entertain for the goblins in Hamlet and Macbeth.
All the plays above mentioned were imitated or translated by Pacuvius from the Greek. His Paulus, however, was of his own invention, and was the first Latin tragedy formed on a Roman subject. Unfortunately there are only five lines of it extant, and these do not enable us to ascertain, which Ro[pg 213]man of the name of Paulus gave title to the tragedy. It was probably either Paulus Æmilius, who fell at Cannæ, or his son, whose story was a memorable instance of the instability of human happiness, as he lost both his children at the moment when he triumphed for his victory over Perseus of Macedon.
From no one play of Pacuvius are there more than fifty lines preserved, and these are generally very much detached. The longest passages which we have in continuation are a fragment concerning Fortune, in the Hermione—the exclamations of Ulysses, while writhing under the agony of a recent wound, in the Niptra, and the following fine description of a sea-storm introduced in the Dulorestes:—
“Interea, prope jam occidente sole, inhorrescit mare;
Tenebræ conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbûm occæcat nigror;
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, cœlum tonitru contremit,
Grando, mista imbri largifluo, subita turbine præcipitans cadit;
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, sævi existunt turbines,
Fervet æstu Pelagus.” ——
Such lines, however, as these, it must be confessed, are more appropriate in epic, or descriptive poetry, than in tragedy.
It does not appear that the tragedies of Pacuvius had much success or popularity in his own age. He was obliged to have recourse for his subjects to foreign mythology and unknown history. Iphigenia and Orestes were always more or less strangers to a Roman audience, and the whole drama in which these and similar personages figured, never attained in Rome to a healthy and perfect existence. Comedy, on the other hand, addressed itself to the feelings of all. There were prodigal sons, avaricious fathers, and rapacious courtezans, in Rome as well as in Greece[340]. But it requires a certain cultivation of mind and tenderness of heart to enjoy the representation of a regular tragedy. The plebeians thronged to the theatre for the sake of merriment, and the patricians were still too much occupied with the projects of their own ambition, to weep over the woes of Antigone or Electra.
Pacuvius, accordingly, had fewer imitators than Plautus. Indeed, for a long period he had none of much note, except