It is related of Livius Andronicus that he at first formed and sung his pieces in the manner of his predecessors, despairing of being able to accomplish any improvement in the Roman theatre, but that one day being surrounded by the multitude and excessively fatigued, he called a slave to relieve him while he recovered his breath. Displeased with the bungling manner in which the slave performed this new task, Livius rebuked him very severely, the slave justified, the master replied, and a dialogue ensued which the spectators imagining to be a part of the plan of the piece, greatly applauded. The drama at once broke upon their view in a new and superior aspect--they perceived that it was in familiar colloquial communications, such as men use in real life, that human affairs and the hearts of men could be justly imitated, and Andronicus taking advantage of this singular and felicitous incident, composed and represented regular dramas in dialogue. To Livius Andronicus is due the praise of having first refined the Roman taste in dramatic poetry, as Ennius had but a short time before done in Epic, by introducing the Greek model, as the standard of literature. Both were, according to Suetonius, half Greeks, and were masters of both languages. The taste for tragedy, however, held its ground but for a short time; for the Romans, as fickle as ferocious, soon grew weary of it, and were falling back into their barbarous enjoyment of gladiators and cruel spectacles, when the poet Pacuvius arose, and restored tragedy as far as it could be restored among such a people. He was a nephew of Ennius, and, by descent, tinctured with the Grecian manner. Pacuvius was not only a poet of considerable merit, but a painter also, whose productions were greatly admired; particularly his decorations of a temple of Hercules, which Pliny has mentioned with lavish praise. To Pacuvius succeeded his disciple ACCIUS, whose first drama appeared in the very same year that Pacuvius produced his last. By the advice of his master he chiefly adhered to the subjects which had before made the business of the dramatists of Athens, translated several of the tragedies of Sophocles into the Latin language, and wrote a vast number of pieces, some of which were comedies. Thus he gained a considerable share, and in fact reaped the harvest of which Andronicus and Pacuvius had sown the seed. Thus it often happens in life that the fruits of one man's virtues, genius, and industry are devoured by a successor.[A] Yet Accius was unquestionably a lofty and excellent poet, though his style was censured for harshness. Being told of this fault by Pacuvius, he replied "I have no cause to be ashamed of it: I shall hereafter write the better for it. It is with genius as with fruit, that which is sour, grows sweet as it ripens, while that which is early mellow rots before it ripens."