Les généalogies d’Accius

TL;DRAbstract

Poet and grammarian, Accius betrays his attraction to the Pergame aesthetic particularly in the way he uses mythical geneaologies both in his tragedies and in his didactic works. In his tragedies, the geneaologies form either scenes within the play, particularly in the prologue, or else they form imposing fresco-type portraits over a vast cycle of plays or saga. In this second case, which also represents the original aspect of Accius’ work, tragedy is drawn closer to history and justifies the place of the praetextae in Rome. Generally speaking, Accius' conception of the theatre is not only historic, but ethical. This can be seen in particular in his didactic works where he defends the idea of characters being used to symbolize a moral value and where, furthermore, we see that his curious chronology of the authors of Roman theatre since Livius Andronicus, far from being a geneaological fantasy in the manner of ‘Crates de Mallos’, is based on the idea of a literary aristocracy.

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