Note 17 — Chapter V

Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies, founded on Greek subjects; and of one, Paulus, founded on Roman history. Among these, the Antiope was perhaps the most famous and most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred to by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius is described by Cicero17 as one who made war on all philosophy; and the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and the use of virtue. Two dramas, the Dulorestes and the Chryses, the latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures of Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the Niptra, was founded on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles18; and the title seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of Ulysses by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc. The subjects of his other dramas may be inferred from their titles:—Armorum Judicium, Atalanta, Hermione, Ilione, Io, Medus (son of Medea), Pentheus, Periboea, Teucer.