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1. Tragedies.—Titles of about forty-five plays, and about seven hundred lines of fragments are extant. The fragments show imitation of Aeschylus as well as of Sophocles and Euripides.

2. Praetextae.—Aeneadae or Decius, and Brutus. Decius treated of the self-sacrifice of P. Decius Mus at Sentinum, B.C. 295. Cf. l. 15, ‘Patrio exemplo et me dicabo atque animam devoro (= devovero) hostibus.’ Brutus treated of the overthrow of Tarquinius Superbus and the establishment of the consulship.

3. Didascalica, in at least nine books, a history of Greek and Latin poetry, with special attention to the drama. The few fragments are mostly in Sotadean metre. Cf. Gell. vi. 9, 16, ‘L. Accius in Sotadicorum libro I.’

4. Pragmaticon libri (in trochaic tetrameters) on literary subjects.

5. Praxidica, on agriculture. Two lines on ploughing are quoted from ‘liber parergon,’ i., but it is not certain whether this is an independent work.

6. Annales, in hexameters.

7. A work in Saturnians.

Accius gave attention to points of language. Cf. Quint. i. 7, 14, ‘Semivocales geminare diu non fuit usitatissimi moris, atque e contrario usque ad Accium et ultra porrectas syllabas geminis, ut dixi, vocalibus scripserunt.’

Accius, like Ennius and Pacuvius, attacks superstition. Cf. ll. 169–70,

‘Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant

alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos.’

That Virgil imitated Accius is mentioned by Macrob. vi. 1, 58, who compares, e.g., l. 156,

‘Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris,’

and Aen. xii. 435–6,

‘Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,

fortunam ex aliis.’

Views on Accius.—A few of these may be referred to. Cic. pro Sest. 120, ‘Summi poetae ingenium.’ Ovid. Am. i. 15, 19,

‘Animosi Accius oris.’

Cf. also Quint. x. 1, 97; Tac. Dial. 20; and Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 55 (see ‘Pacuvius,’ p. 37).

Of the prose writers contemporary with Accius, the most important were the annalists L. Cassius Hemina and L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi; the orators Ti. and C. Graccus, and their opponent C. Fannius, and M. Aemilius Scaurus, the princeps senatus, who also wrote an autobiography (Cic. Brut. 112). L. Coelius Antipater wrote a history of the Second Punic War in seven Books, making use of Silenus, whose account was favourable to the Carthaginians (Cic. de Div. i. 49). His strength lay in style (Cic. de Or. ii. 53); though painstaking, he was apt to exaggerate (Liv. xxvii. 27, 12; xxix, 25, 3).