Note 32 — Chapter V

L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 b.c., of parentage similar to that of Horace—'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 b.c.; and an estate in that district was known in after times by the name 'fundus Accianus.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the exact date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born b.c. 106, speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius Brutus—Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, b.c. 138, and one of the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that age—on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the poet: 'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus32.' The meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is remarkable, as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which stand so widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are respectively characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Archias, mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the poet33. The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,' like that of 'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's dialogue, to Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets (men of humble or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and soldiers, was in that age one of familiar intimacy rather than of patronage and dependence.