While Plautus, Cæcilius, Afranius, and Terence, raised the comic drama to high perfection and celebrity, Pacuvius and Attius attempted, with considerable success, the noblest subjects of the Greek tragedies. PACUVIUS, who was the nephew of Ennius(328), by a sister of that poet, was born at Brundusium, in the year 534. At Rome he became intimately acquainted with Lælius, who, in Cicero’s treatise _De Amicitiâ_, calls Pacuvius his host and friend: He also enjoyed, like Terence, the intimacy of Scipio Africanus; but he did not profit so much as the comic writer by his acquaintance with these illustrious Romans for the improvement of his style. There is an idle story, that Pacuvius had three wives, all of whom successively hanged themselves on the same tree; and that lamenting this to Attius, who was married, he begged for a slip of it to plant in his own garden(329); an anecdote which has been very seriously confuted by Annibal di Leo, in his learned Memoir on Pacuvius. This poet also employed himself in painting: he was one of the first of the Romans who attained any degree of eminence in that elegant art, and particularly distinguished himself by the picture which he executed for the temple of Hercules, in the _Forum Boarium_(330). He published his last piece at the age of eighty(331); after which, being oppressed with old age, and afflicted with perpetual bodily illness, he retired, for the enjoyment of its soft air and mild winters, to Tarentum(332), where he died, having nearly completed his ninetieth year(333). An elegant epitaph, supposed to have been written by himself, is quoted, with much commendation, by Aulus Gellius, who calls it _verecundissimum et purissimum_(334). It appears to have been inscribed on a tombstone which stood by the side of a public road, according to a custom of the Romans, who placed their monuments near highways, that the spot where their remains were deposited might attract observation, and the departed spirit receive the valediction of passing travellers: “Adolescens, tametsi properas, hoc te saxum rogat, Uti ad se aspicias; deinde, quod scriptum est, legas. Hic sunt poetæ Marcei Pacuviei sita Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses—Vale(335).”