ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a number of plays in the Roman Tragedy. In 151 bce a stone theatre being built on the Palatine Hill near the Lupercal was demolished by order of the senate. It had been commissioned by the censors three years earlier, and was the culmination of several attempts to erect a permanent theatre in Rome. Atreus, celebrated and relatively early play dramatised the traditional struggle over the throne of Argos/Mycenae between the two sons of Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, focusing on Atreus revenge for Thyestes earlier seduction of his wife, Aerope, and subsequent theft of the golden-fleeced ram/lamb on which the throne depended. Accius concern with genealogy is well known; it is allied with his admiration of the ancient Greek genealogical poet, Hesiod, to whom the first book of Accius Didascalica gave chronological priority over Homer.
