The _Armorum Judicium_ was translated from Æschylus. With regard to the _Dulorestes_, (Orestes Servus,) there has been a good deal of discussion and difficulty. Nævius, Ennius, and Attius, are all said to have written tragedies which bore the title of _Dulorestes_; but a late German writer has attempted, at great length, to show that this is a misconception; and that all the fragments, which have been classed with the remains of these three dramatic poets, belong to the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius, who was in truth the only Latin poet who wrote a tragedy with this appellation. What the tenor or subject of the play, however, may have been, he admits is difficult to determine, as the different passages, still extant, refer to very different periods of the life of Orestes; which, I think, is rather adverse to his idea, that all these fragments were written by the same person, and belonged to the same tragedy, unless, indeed, Pacuvius had utterly set at defiance the observance of the celebrated unities of the ancient drama. On the whole, however, he agrees with Thomas Stanley, in his remarks on the _Chœphoræ_ of Æschylus, that the subject of the _Chœphoræ_, which is the vengeance taken by Orestes on the murderers of his father, is also that of the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius(338). Some of the fragments refer to this as an object not yet accomplished:— “Utinam nunc maturescam ingenio, ut meum patrem Ulcisci queam.” —— The _Hermione_ turned on the murder of Pyrrhus by Orestes at the instigation of Hermione. Cicero, in his Treatise _De Amicitia_, mentions, in the person of Lælius, the repeated acclamations which had recently echoed through the theatre at the representation of the _new play_ of his friend Pacuvius, in that scene where Pylades and Orestes are introduced before the king, who, being ignorant which of them is Orestes, whom he had predetermined should be put to death, each insists, in order to save the life of his friend, that he himself is the real person in question. Delrio alleges that the _new play_ here alluded to by Cicero was the _Hermione_; but that play, as well as the _Dulorestes_, related to much earlier events than the friendly contest between Pylades and Orestes, which took place at the court of Thoas, King of Tauris, and was the concluding scene in the dramatic life of Orestes, being long subsequent to the murder of his mother, his trial in presence of the Argives, or absolution at Athens before the Areopagus. Accordingly, Tiraboschi states positively that this _new play_ of Pacuvius, which obtained so much applause, was his _Pylades et Orestes_(339). In the _Iliona_, the scene where the shade of Polydorus, who had been assassinated by the King of Thrace, appears to his sister Iliona, was long the favourite of a Roman audience, who seem to have indulged in the same partiality for such spectacles as we still entertain for the goblins in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_.