Library › Latin: Tragedy › Tragoediae (Fragments)
A handful of lines from the tragedies of Gracchus, a Roman tragic poet of the early Empire, preserved by later grammarians. They include an exclamation at the creaking of the palace door that announces the kings’ approach, a line on someone sinking his footsteps in the damp earth, and a reference to purple and the royal diadem. Titles attributed to him include Atalanta, Peliades and Thyestes.
Gracchus is named by Ovid in his catalogue of contemporary poets, which places him in the Augustan or early Tiberian age, a period when tragedy was still written for reading and performance at Rome. The fragments are too brief to show much of his style, but they add a name to the history of Roman tragedy between Varius and Seneca.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Musisque Deoque, the digital archive of Latin poetry (edition: O. Ribbeck, TRF, 1897), licensed CC BY-SA. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.