[6] Judging from the titles and fragments, scholars have surmised that most, if not all, of these poems were tragic in nature, although Pliny the Younger ranks him among the erotic poets.
[6] While only fragments remain, the most important of which were preserved by Cicero, they seem sufficient to justify the terms of admiration in which Accius is spoken of by the ancient writers.
[12][13] Although the grandiloquence of his literary style was on occasion mocked by some of his peers,[14] he continued to be cited by other writers long after his death.
Few of these caught on,[1] although his preference against giving Greek names Latin endings had quite a few supporters, particularly Varro, who dedicated his De antiquitate litterarum to Accius.
[1] He was, by some accounts, a self-important man,[17] and some writers expressed a wry amusement at the larger-than-life statues of himself that he had erected in the temple of the Muses.
[18] A fragment of Accius' play Atreus features the line oderint dum metuant ("let them hate, so long as they fear").