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Encyclopedia entry: Accius, Lucius
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- Who's Who in the Classical World
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Accius, Lucius
(170–
c.
86 BC), stage poet and literary scholar of municipal freedman birth. His family's lands were at Pisaurum in Umbria. He attached himself in Rome to Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus (consul 138). Although of conservative political views, he believed that literary talent demanded in its context more respect than nobility of birth (cf. the anecdote about Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus at Val. Max. 3. 7. 11). He had a touchy sense of his own importance, always avenging insults (
Rhet. Her.
1. 24). Contemporaries were amused by the outsize statues of himself he had placed in the temple of the Muses (Plin.
HN
34. 19).
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