He was less productive as a poet than either Ennius or Accius; we hear of only twelve of his plays, founded on Greek subjects and most of them connected to the Trojan cycle (Antiope, Armorum Judicium, Atalanta, Chryses, Dulorestes, Hermione, Iliona, Medus, Niptra, Pentheus, Periboea, and Teucer) and one praetexta (Paullus) written in connection with the victory of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus at the Battle of Pydna (168 BC), as the Clastidium of Naevius and the Ambracia of Ennius were written in commemoration of great military successes.
Pacuvius' epitaph, said to have been composed by himself, is quoted by Aulus Gellius (i.24), with a tribute of admiration to its "modesty, simplicity and fine serious spirit": Adulescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat Ut sese aspicias, deinde quod scriptum 'st legas Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita ossa.
The fragments of Pacuvius quoted by Cicero in illustration or enforcement of his own ethical teaching appeal, by the fortitude, dignity, and magnanimity of the sentiment expressed in them, to what was noblest in the Roman temperament.
They are inspired also by a fervid and steadfast glow of spirit and reveal a gentleness and humanity of sentiment blended with the severe gravity of the original Roman character.
But the new creative effort in language was accompanied by considerable crudeness of execution, and the novel word-formations and varieties of inflexion introduced by Pacuvius exposed him to the ridicule of the satirist Gaius Lucilius, and, long afterwards, to that of his imitator Persius.