The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius, and attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as those which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit. Cicero testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and to the didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains illustrate these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense and vigorous understanding of the older writers, and afford some traces of a new vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable in earlier fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that of 'animosus' to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et ingeniosus poeta,' and attests the didactic purpose of a particular passage in the words, 'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with the view of stimulating, not those princes who no longer existed, but us and our children to energy and honourable ambition[156].' The style of a passage from the Atreus is described by the same author in the dialogue '_De Oratore_', as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a certain impassioned gravity of feeling[157].' Oratorical fervour and dignity seem thus to have been the most distinctive characteristic of his style. Virgil, whose genius made as free use of the diction and sentiment of native as of Greek poets, has cast the ruder language of the old poet into a new mould in some of the greatest speeches of the Aeneid, and seems to have drawn from the same source something of the high spirit and lofty pathos with which he has animated the personages of his story. The famous address, for instance-- Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis, though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to Virgil in the line of Accius-- Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris. The address of Latinus to Turnus-- O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus, is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic poet-- Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo, Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere. The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius. The following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which may be recognised in many other fragments of Accius-- Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo, Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia Confingit.[158]