"The wise Greek (Ulysses) when severely wounded does not lament overmuch; he curbs the expression of his pain. 'Forward gently,' he says, 'and with quiet effort, lest by jolting me you increase the pangs of my wound.' Now, in this Pacuvius excels Sophocles, who makes Ulysses give way to cries and tears. And yet those who are carrying him, out of consideration for the majesty of him they bear, do not hesitate to rebuke even this moderate lamentation. 'We see indeed, Ulysses, that you have suffered grievous hurt, but methinks for one who has passed his life in arms, you show too soft a spirit.' The skilful poet knows that habit is a good teacher how to bear pain. And so Ulysses, though in extreme agony, still keeps command over his words. 'Stop! hold, I say! the ulcer has got the better of me. Strip off my clothes. O, woe is me! I am in torture.' Here he begins to give way; but in a moment he stops--'Cover me; depart, now leave me in peace; for by handling me and jolting me you increase the cruel pain.' Do you observe how it is not the cessation of bodily anguish, but the necessity of chastening the expression of it that keeps him silent? And so, at the close of the play, while himself dying, he has so far conquered himself that he can reprove others in words like these,--'It is meet to complain of adverse fortune, but not to bewail it. That is the part of a man; but weeping is granted to the nature of woman.' The softer feelings here obey the other part of the mind, as a dutiful soldier obeys a stern commander." We can go with Cicero in admiring the manly spirit that breathes through these lines, and feel that the poet was justified in so far leaving the original as without prejudice to the dramatic effect to inculcate a higher moral lesson. As to the treatment of his models we may say, generally, that Pacuvius used more freedom than Ennius. He was more of an adapter and less of a translator. Nevertheless this dependence on his own resources for description appears to have cramped rather than freed his style. The early Latin writers seem to move more easily when rendering the familiar Greek originals than when essaying to steer their own path. He also committed the mistake of generally imitating Sophocles, the untransplantable child of Athens, instead of Euripides, to whom he could do better justice, as the success of his Euripidean plays prove. [15] His style, though emphatic, was wanting in naturalness. The author of the treatise to Herennius contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_ of Pacuvius; and Lucilius speaks of a word "contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio."