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PISAURON (Ancient city) MARCHE
Attius, Lucius. An early Roman poet of distinction, who forms a link between the ante-classical and classical periods of Latin literature; for Cicero, when a boy, had met him, and in after-life admired his verse. Attius was, like Horace, the son of a freedman, settled at Pisaurum. He began his career with a tragedy, the Atreus, and was the author of thirty-six more, besides Annales in hexameter verse, a history of Greek and Roman poetry (Didascalia), and two praetextae. His literary characteristics are dignity, vigour, and much rhetorical skill in the choice of words. Considerable fragments of his works remain to us, and can be found in Ribbeck's Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1874); and L. Muller's Lucilius (1872). He is the author of the famous maxim of the tyrant, Oderint dum metuant, quoted by Cicero. He is said to have introduced some changes into the received forms of spelling, such as doubling the vowels when long, as in modern Dutch--thus aara, vootum. He died B.C. 94. See Boissier, Le Poete Attius (Paris, 1857).
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
L. Attius was born at Pisaurum, a Roman colony in Umbria, in 170 B.C. The forms Attius and Accius are equally well-attested; but in the Imperial age the form with tt became predominant; and the Greeks always wrote Attios (Teuffel, Hist. Rom. Lit. § 119, 1). The aged Pacuvius, having left Rome in ill-health, was spending the evening of his days at Brundusium, when Attius, then a young man, passed through that place on his way to Asia. Attius was entertained by Pacuvius, and read to him his tragedy Atreus. The old man found it sonorous and elevated, but somewhat harsh and crude; and the younger poet, admitting the defect, expressed his hope that the mellowing influence of time would appear in his riper work. The excellences which Pacuvius recognised must have been present in the maturer writings of Attius, whom Horace calls altus, and Cicero, gravis et ingeniosus poeta. The harshness of his earlier style was due, perhaps, to a youthful excess of that nervous and impetuous character, as Cicero calls it (de Orat. iii. 58, 217), which afterwards distinguished him, and which Ovid expresses by the epithet animosus. Attius was far the most productive of the Roman tragic dramatists. The extant notices and fragments indicate, according to one estimate, about 37 pieces; according to another, about 50. Two of these were praetextatae;--the Brutus, on the downfall of the Tarquins and the Aeneeadae, dealing with the legend of the Decius who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum. There are indications that Attius was a student of Sophocles, though Euripides was probably his chief model. Thus the verse in his Armorum indicium (fr. 10), virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris, is translated from Soph. Ai. 550 f. Among his other celebrated tragedies were the Atreus, Epigoni, Philocteta, Anstigona, Telephus. Cicero, in his youth, had. often listened to the reminiscences of Attius (Brutus, 28, 107). The poet, who was sixty-four at the date of the orator's birth (106 B.C.), must therefore have lived to an advanced age.
This extract is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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