Marco Pacuvio

Editorial Staff 30 May 2022

Marcus Pacuvius was a playwright, poet and painter from Brindisi during the Roman Empire. Grandson of the poet Quintus Ennius, he was the first great Latin tragedian.

He was born around 220 BC in Brundisium, a Messapian city, in an area influenced by Greek culture, from a family of Oscan origins, confirmed not only by his name but also by some linguistic peculiarities found in his works. His mother was, according to the testimony provided by Pliny the Elder, sister of the famous Messapian poet and playwright Quintus Ennius of Rudiae.

Trained under the influence of his uncle and teacher Ennio, from whom he also inherited his philosophical interests and rationalistic tendencies, he moved to Rome at a young age, where he began his career as a painter (in the 1st century BC one of his paintings was still intact in the Temple of Hercules) and as a poet, frequenting the Circle of the Scipios. Pacuvio's poetics, high-sounding and rich in mythological references, was however far from that proposed by the so-called Circle of the Scipios, which instead attempted to spread an ideal of literature that adhered to real life and was attentive to the individual.

He was the first Latin poet who devoted himself exclusively to the genre of tragedy.

Still active in 140 BC, at the age of eighty, Pacuvius composed a tragedy that he staged in competition with the young Lucius Accius, who was then establishing himself and who after the death of Pacuvius himself would become the greatest tragedian active in Rome. Shortly afterwards, however, the old Pacuvius, ill, was forced to retire to Tarentum where, around 135 BC, he received a visit from Accius himself who was preparing to leave for a journey to Asia: on this occasion, according to the narration of Aulus Gellius, the young author read the text of his Atreus to the elderly playwright.

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Marco Pacuvio

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