Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies, founded on Greek subjects; and of one, _Paulus_, founded on Roman history. Among these, the _Antiope_ was perhaps the most famous and most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred to by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius is described by Cicero[138] as one who made war on all philosophy; and the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and the use of virtue. Two dramas, the _Dulorestes_ and the _Chryses_, the latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures of Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the _Niptra_, was founded on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles[139]; and the title seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of Ulysses by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc. The subjects of his other dramas may be inferred from the following titles:--_Armorum Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Hermione_, _Ilione_, _Io_, _Medus_ (son of Medea), _Pentheus_, _Periboea_, _Teucer_. The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them, however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty. A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in the Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful attraction for many of the Roman poets:-- Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet Terram Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret, Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera: Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat, Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater, Indidemque eadem quae oriuntur, de integro aeque eodem incidunt.[140]