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TACITUS AND BRACCIOLINI.
THE ANNALS FORGED IN THE XVth CENTURY.
by JOHN WILSON ROSS (1818-1887)
Originally published anonymously in 1878.
Non ulli Tacitus patuit manifestius unquam.
SOSSAGO. Epigrammata.
Excellentissimum Poggium, immortalem quidem virum, sed prope
hac aetate sepultum, redivivium donaveris nobis.
BICCIONI. Epistola Hyacintho de Lan inscripta.
Is … reliquit, quae et facundiam, et mirificam ingenii
facilitatem ostendunt. Tendebat toto animo, et quotidiano
quodam usu ad EFFINGENDUM … Sed habet hoc dilucida illa
divini hominis in dicendo copia, ut estimanti se imitabilem
praebeat, experienti spem imitationis eripiat. Eam
igitur dicendi laudem POGGIUS si non facultate, at certe
voluntate complectebatur. Scripsit … Historiam …
magnuum munus.
PAOLO CORTESE (Bishop of Urbino). De Hominibus Doctis.
Quaestio … contra communem totius orbis traditionem ac fidem,
contra tot historicocum … nemine contradicente, consensum,
demum agitari coepta est; et a nobis … tam abunde ventilate,
ut magis copia quam inopia laborare videamur.
GISBERT VOET. Spicilegium ad Disceptationem Historicam de
Papissa Johanna.
LONDON: 1878
I DEDICATE TO MY ESTEEMED AND ESTIMABLE BROTHER ROBERT DALRYMPLE ROSS
This Research
into
The Authorship of the Annals of Tacitus
AS A VERY SLIGHT TOKEN OF MY AFFECTION AND ALSO OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS RARE ASSEMBLAGE OF QUALITIES LOFTY MORAL RECTITUDE THE KINDLIEST FEELINGS OF THE HEART DEVOTION TO HIGH OCCUPATION APTITUDE FOR BOOKS AS FOR AFFAIRS
AND
A REFINED ENLIGHTENMENT TO APPRECIATE THE GENIUS OF TACITUS AND OF BRACCIOLINI
AND
FULLY TO APPREHEND AN INVESTIGATION UNDERTAKEN IN THE TRUE INTERESTS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE.
PREFACE
The theory broached in this book involves a charge of the grossest fraud against a most distinguished man, who rose to high posts in public affairs and won imperishable fame in letters. There being blots on his moral character, it would be censurable to fasten upon his memory this new imputation of dishonesty, were it not substantiated by irresistible evidence.
The title of this book quite explains what its design is,—to contribute something towards settling the authorship of the Annals of Tacitus, which encomiastic admirers imagine to be the most extraordinary history ever penned, and the writer "but one degree removed from inspiration, if not inspired." This wondrous writer I assert to be the famous Florentine of the Renaissance, Poggio Bracciolini, in favour of which view I have tried to make out a case by bringing forward a variety of passages from the "History" and the "Annals" to show an extensive series of contradictions as to facts and characters, departures from truth about matters connected with ancient Roman life, laches in grammar and use of words that never could have proceeded from any patrician or plebian of the world-renowned old Commonwealth, with a number of other things that will readily strike the intelligent and sober mind as utterly inconsistent with the existing belief of the "Annals" being the production of Tacitus. All this is case in the shade for the fullest light to be thrown on the subject, when not wishing to make my theory a matter of speculation but founded in common sense, I give a detailed history of the forgery, from its conception to its completion, the sum that was paid for it, the abbey where it was transcribed, and other such convincing minutiae taken from a correspondence that Poggio carried on with a familiar friend who resided in Florence.
A reader of acumen and critical faculty following a writer in an inquiry of this nature places himself in the position of a lawyer who will not accept the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, or even a clause in it, as correct, except,—as his phrase goes,—it "runs upon all fours:" he knows that it is with a speculation in a literary matter as with a chapter of a statute: he struggles to raise only a single valid objection against what is advanced: if successful he at one destroys the whole of the theory, from thus exposing it to view as not "running upon all fours;" the fabric is, in fact, discovered to be reared on a false foundation; it must, therefore, fall as at the slightest breath a child's house built of cards; and the theory becomes one more added to the list of those that are apocryphal. If on examination it should be agreed that the theory in this book is without a flaw, I conceived that I shall have done not a small, but a considerable service to the cause of true history.
LONDON, April 3, 1878.
CONTENTS.
BOOK THE FIRST.
TACITUS.
CHAPTER I.
TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.
I. From the chronological point of view.
II. The silence preserved about that work by all writers till
the fifteenth century.
III. The age of the MSS. containing the Annals.
CHAPTER II.
A FEW REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE ANNALS TO BE A FORGERY.
I. The fifteenth century an age of imposture, shown in the
invention of printing.
II. The curious discovery of the first six books of the Annals.
III. The blunders it has in common with all forged documents.
IV. The Twelve Tables.
V. The Speech of Claudius in the Eleventh Book of the Annals.
VI. Brutus creating the second class of nobility.
VII. Camillus and his grandson.
VIII. The Marching of Germanicus.
IX. Description of London in the time of Nero.
X. Labeo Antistius and Capito Ateius; the number of people
executed for their attachment to Sejanus; and the
marriage of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, to the
Elder Antonia.
CHAPTER III.
SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER OF THE ANNALS FROM THE POINT OF TREATMENT.
I. Nature of the history.
II. Arrangement of the narrative.
III. Completeness in form.
IV. Incongruities, contradictions and disagreements from the
History of Tacitus.
V. Craftiness of the writer.
VI. Subordination of history to biography.
VII. The author of the Annals and Tacitus differently illustrate
Roman history.
VIII. Characters and events corresponding to characters and
events in the XVth century.
IX. Greatness of the Author of the Annals.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ANNALS DIFFERS FROM THE HISTORY.
I. In the qualities of the writers; and why that difference.
II. In the narrative, and in what respect.
III. In style and language.
IV. The reputation Tacitus has of writing bad Latin due to the
mistakes of his imitator.
CHAPTER V.
THE LATIN AND THE ALLITERATIONS IN THE ANNALS.
I. Errors in Latin, (a) on the part of the transcriber; (b) on the part of the writer. II. Diction and Alliterations: Wherein they differ from those of Tacitus.
BOOK THE SECOND.
BRACCIOLINI.
CHAPTER I.
BRACCIOLINI IN ROME.
I. His genius and the greatness of his age.
II. His qualifications.
III. His early career.
IV. The character of Niccolo Niccoli, who abetted him in the
forgery
V. Bracciolini's descriptive writing of the Burning of Jerome
of Prague compared with the descriptive writing of the
sham sea fight in the Twelfth Book of the Annals.
CHAPTER II.
BRACCIOLINI IN LONDON.
I. Gaining insight into the darkest passions from associating
with Cardinal Beaufort.
II. His passage about London in the Fourteenth Book of the
Annals examined.
III. About the Parliament of England in the Fourth Book.
CHAPTER III.
BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS
I. The Proposal made in February, 1422, by a Florentine, named
Lamberteschi, and backed by Niccoli.
II. Correspondence on the matter, and Mr. Shepherd's view that
it referred to a Professorship refuted.
III. Professional disappointments in England determine
Bracciolini to persevere in his intention of forging
the Annals.
IV. He returns to the Papal Secretaryship, and begins the
forgery in Rome in October, 1423.
CHAPTER IV.
BRACCIOLINI AS A BOOKFINDER
I. Doubts on the authenticity of the Latin, but not the
Greek Classics.
II. At the revival of letters Popes and Princes offered large
rewards for the recovery of the ancient classics.
III. The labours of Bracciolini as a bookfinder.
IV. Belief put about by the professional bookfinders that
MSS. were soonest found in obscure convents in barbarous
lands.
V. How this reasoning throws the door open to fraud and
forgery.
VI. The bands of bookfinders consisted of men of genius in
every department of literature and science.
VII. Bracciolini endeavours to escape from forging the Annals by
forging the whole lost History of Livy.
VIII. His Letter on the subject to Niccoli quoted, and examined.
IX. Failure of his attempt, and he proceeds with the forgery of
the Annals.
BOOK THE THIRD.
THE LAST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHARACTER OF BRACCIOLINI.
I. The audacity of the forgery accounted for by the mean
opinion Bracciolini had of the intelligence of men.
II. The character and tone of the last Six Books of the Annals
exemplified by what is said of Sabina Poppaea, Sagitta,
Pontia and Messalina.
III. A few errors that must have proceeded from Bracciolini
about the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius, the
Household Gods of the Germans, Gotarzes, Bardanes and,
above all, Nineveh.
IV. The estimate taken of human nature by the writer of the
Annals the same as that taken by Bracciolini.
V. The general depravity of mankind as shown in the
Annals insisted upon in Bracciolini's Dialogue
"De Infelicitate Principum".
CHAPTER II.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
I. The intellect and depravity of the age.
II. Bracciolini as its exponent.
III. Hunter's accurate description of him.
IV. Bracciolini gave way to the impulses of his age.
V. The Claudius, Nero and Tiberius of the Annals
personifications of the Church of Rome in the
fifteenth century.
VI. Schildius and his doubts.
VII. Bracciolini not covetous of martyrdom: communicates his
fears to Niccoli.
VIII. The princes and great men in the Annals the princes and
great men of the XVth century, not of the opening period
of the Christian aera.
IX. Bracciolini, and not Tacitus, a disparager of persons in
high places.
CHAPTER III.
FURTHER PROOFS OF FORGERY.
I. "Octavianus" as the name of Augustus Caesar.
II. Cumanus and Felix as joint governors of Judaea.
III. The blood relationship of Italians and Romans.
IV. Fatal error in the oratio obliqua.
V. Mistake made about "locus".
VI. Objections of some critics to the language of Tacitus
examined.
VII. Some improprieties that occur in the Annals found also in
Bracciolini's works.
VIII. Instanced in (a) "nec—aut".
(b) rhyming and the peculiar use of "pariter".
IX. The harmony of Tacitus and the ruggedness of Bracciolini
illustrated.
X. Other peculiarities of Bracciolini's not shared by Tacitus:
Two words terminating alike following two others with like
terminations; prefixes that have no meaning; and playing
on a single letter for alliterative purposes.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TERMINATION OF THE FORGERY.
I. The literary merit and avaricious humour of Bracciolini.
II. He is aided in his scheme by a monk of the Abbey of Fulda.
III. Expressions indicating forgery.
IV. Efforts to obtain a very old copy of Tacitus.
V. The forgery transcribed in the Abbey of Fulda.
VI. First saw the light in the spring of 1429.
CHAPTER V.
THE FORGED MANUSCRIPT.
I. Recapitulation, showing the certainty of forgery.
II. The Second Florence MS. the forged MS.
III. Cosmo de' Medici the man imposed upon.
IV. Digressions about Cosmo de' Medici's position, and fondness
for books, especially Tacitus.
V. The many suspicious marks of forgery about the Second
Florence MS.; the Lombard characters; the attestation
of Salustius.
VI. The headings, and Tacitus being bound up with Apuleius,
seem to connect Bracciolini with the forged MS.
VII. The first authentic mention of the Annals.
VIII. Nothing invalidates the theory in this book.
IX. Brief recapitulation of the whole argument.
BOOK THE FOURTH.
THE FIRST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.
CHAPTER I.
REASONS FOR BELIEVING THAT BRACCIOLINI WROTE BOTH PARTS OF THE ANNALS.
I. Improvement in Bracciolini's means after the completion
of the forgery of the last part of the Annals.
II. Discovery of the first six books, and theory about their
forgery.
III. Internal evidence the only proof of their being forged.
IV. Superiority of workmanship a strong proof.
V. Further departure than in the last six books from Tacitus's
method another proof.
VI. The symmetry of the framework a third proof.
VII. Fourth evidence, the close resemblance in the openings of
the two parts.
VIII. The same tone and colouring prove the same authorship.
IX. False statements made about Sejanus and Antonius Natalis
for the purpose of blackening Tiberius and Nero.
X. This spirit of detraction runs through Bracciolini's works.
XI. Other resemblances denoting the same author.
XII. Policy given to every subject another cause to believe both
parts composed by a single writer.
XIII. An absence of the power to depict differences in persons
and things.
CHAPTER II.
LANGUAGE, ALLITERATION, ACCENT AND WORDS.
I. The poetic diction of Tacitus, and its fabrication in
the Annals.
II. Florid passages in the Annals.
III. Metrical composition of Bracciolini.
IV. Figurative words: (a) "pessum dare"
(b) "voluntas"
V. The verb "foedare" and the Ciceronian use of "foedus".
VI. The language of other Roman writers,—Livy, Quintus Curtius
and Sallust.
VII. The phrase "non modo—sed", and other anomalous expressions,
not Tacitus's.
VIII. Words not used by Tacitus, "distinctus" and "codicillus"
IX. Peculiar alliterations in the Annals and works of
Bracciolini.
X. Monotonous repetition of accent on penultimate syllables.
XI. Peculiar use of words: (a) "properus"
(b) "annales" and "scriptura"
(c) "totiens"
XII. Words not used by Tacitus: (a) "addubitare"
(b) "extitere"
XIII. Polysyllabic words ending consecutive sentences.
XIV. Omissions of prepositions: (a) in.
(b) with names of nations.
CHAPTER III.
MISTAKES THAT PROVE FORGERY
I. The gift for the recovery of Livia.
II. Julius Caesar and the Pomoerium.
III. Julia, the wife of Tiberius.
IV. The statement about her proved false by a coin.
V. Value of coins in detecting historical errors.
VI. Another coin shows an error about Cornatus.
VII. Suspicion of spuriousness from mention of the
Quinquennale Ludicrum.
VIII. Account of cities destroyed by earthquake contradicted by
a monument.
IX. Bracciolini's hand shown by reference to the Plague.
X. Fawning of Roman senators more like conduct of Italians in
the fifteenth century.
XI. Same exaggeration with respect to Pomponia Graecina.
XII. Wrong statement of the images borne at the funeral
of Drusus.
XIII. Similar kind of error committed by Bracciolini in his
"Varietate Fortunae".
XIV. Errors about the Red Sea.
XV. About the Caspian Sea.
XVI. Accounted for.
XVII. A passage clearly written by Bracciolini.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
FURTHER PROOFS OF BRACCIOLINI BEING THE AUTHOR OF THE FIRST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.
I. The descriptive powers of Bracciolini and Tacitus.
II. The different mode of writing of both.
III. Their different manners of digressing.
IV. Two statements in the Fourth Book of the Annals that could
not have been made by Tacitus.
V. The spirit of the Renaissance shown in both parts of the
Annals.
VI. That both parts proceeded from the same hand shown in the
writer pretending to know the feelings of the characters
in the narrative.
VII. The contradictions in the two parts of the Annals and in
the works of Bracciolini.
VIII. The Second Florence MS. a forgery.
IX. Conclusion.
BOOK THE FIRST.
TACITUS.
"Allusiones saepe subobscurae … mihi conjectandi aliquando,
et aliquando exploratae veritatis fundamento innitendi materiam
praebuere."
DE TONELLIS. Praef. ad Poggii Epist.
TACITUS AND BRACCIOLINI.
CHAPTER I.
TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.
I. From the chronological point of view.—II. The silence preserved about that work by all writers till the fifteenth century.—III. The age of the MSS. containing the Annals.
I. The Annals and the History of Tacitus are like two houses in ruins: dismantled of their original proportions they perpetuate the splendour of Roman historiography, as the crumbling remnants of the Coliseum preserve from oblivion the magnificence of Roman architecture. Some of the subtlest intellects, keen in criticism and expert in scholarship, have, for centuries, endeavoured with considerable pains, though not with success in every instance, to free the imperfect pieces from difficulties, as the priesthood of the Quindecimvirs, generation after generation, assiduously, yet vainly, strove to clear from perplexities the mutilated books of the Sibyls. I purpose to bring,—parodying a passage of the good Sieur Chanvallon,—not freestone and marble for their restoration, but a critical hammer to knock down the loose bricks that, for more than four centuries, have shown large holes in several places.
Tacitus is raised by his genius to a height, which lifts him above the reach of the critic. He shines in the firmament of letters like a sun before whose lustre all, Parsee-like, bow down in worship. Preceding generations have read him with reverence and admiration: as one of the greatest masters of history, he must continue to be so read. But though neither praise nor censure can exalt or impair his fame, truth and justice call for a passionless inquiry into the nature and character of works presenting such difference in structure, and such contradictions in a variety of matters as the History and the Annals.
The belief is general that Tacitus wrote Roman history in the retrograde order, in which Hume wrote the History of England. Why Hume pursued that method is obvious: eager to gain fame in letters,—seeing his opportunity by supplying a good History of England,—knowing how interest attaches to times near us while all but absence of sympathy accompanies those that are remote,—and meaning to exclude from his plan the incompleted dynasty under which he lived,—he commenced with the House of Stuart, continued with that of Tudor, and finished with the remaining portion from the Roman Invasion to the Accession of Henry VII. But why Tacitus should have decided in favour of the inverse of chronological order is by no means clear. He could not have been actuated by any of the motives which influenced Hume. Rome, with respect to her history, was not in the position that England was, with respect to hers, in the middle of the last century. All the remarkable occurrences during the 820 years from her Foundation to the office of Emperor ceasing as the inheritance of the Julian Family on the death of Nero, had been recorded by many writers that rendered needless the further labours of the historian. Tacitus states this at the commencement of his history, and as a reason why he began that work with the accession of Galba: "Initium mihi operis Servius Galba iterum, Titus Vinius consules erunt; nam post conditam urbem, octingentos et viginti prioris aevi annos multi auctores retulerunt." (Hist. I. 1.) After this admission, it is absolutely unaccountable that he should revert to the year since the building of the City 769, and continue writing to the year 819, going over ground that, according to his own account, had been gone over before most admirably, every one of the numerous historians having written in his view, "with an equal amount of forcible expression and independent opinion"—"pari eloquentia ac libertate." Thus, by his own showing, he performed a work which he knew to be superfluous in recounting events that occurred in the time of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
What authority have we that he did this? Certainly, not the authority of those who knew best—the ancients. They do not mention, in their meagre accounts of him, the names of his writings, the number of which we, perhaps, glean from casual remarks dropped by Pliny the Younger in his Epistles. He says (vii. 20), "I have read your book, and with the utmost care have made remarks upon such passages, as I think ought to be altered or expunged." "Librum tuum legi, et quam diligentissime potui, adnotavi, quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer." In a second letter (viii. 7) he alludes to another (or it might be the same) "book," which his friend had sent him "not as a master to a master, nor as a disciple to a disciple, but as a master to a disciple:" "neque ut magistro magister, neque ut discipulo discipulus … sed ut discipulo magister … librum misisti." That Tacitus was not the author of one work only is clear from Pliny in another of his letters (vi. 16) speaking in the plural of what his friend had written: "the immortality of your writings:"— "scriptorum tuorum aeternitas;" also of "my uncle both by his own, and your works:"—"avunculus meus et suis libris et tuis." In the letter already referred to (vii. 20), Tacitus is further spoken of as having written, at least, two historical works, the immortality of which Pliny predicted without fear of proving a false prophet: "auguror, nec me fallit augurium, historias tuas immortales futuras." From these passages it would seem that the works of Tacitus were, at the most, three.
If his works were only three in number, everything points in preference to the Books of History, of which we possess but five; the Treatise on the different manners of the various tribes that peopled Germany in his day; and the Life of his father-in-law, Agricola. Nobody but Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, Bishop of Carthage, supposes that he wrote a book of Facetiae or pleasant tales and anecdotes, as may be seen by reference to the episcopal writer's Treatise on Archaic or Obsolete Words, where explaining "Elogium" to mean "hereditary disease," he continues, "as Cornelius Tacitus says in his book of Facetiae; 'therefore pained in the cutting off of children who had hereditary disease left to them'": "Elogium est haereditas in malo; sicut Cornelius Tacitus ait in libro Facetiarum: 'caesis itaque motum elogio in filiis derelicto.'" (De Vocibus Antiquis. p. 151. Basle ed. 1549). Justus Lipsius doubts whether the Discourse on the Causes of the Corruption of Latin Eloquence proceeded from Tacitus, or the other Roman to whom many impute it, Quintilian, for he says in his Preface to that Dialogue: "What will it matter whether we attribute it to Tacitus, or, as I once thought, to Marcus Fabius Quinctilianus? … Though the age of Quinctilianus seems to have been a little too old for this Discourse to be by that young man. Therefore, I have my doubts." "Incommodi quid erit, sive Tacito tribuamus; sive M. Fabio Quinctiliano, ut mihi olim visim? … Aetas tamen Quinctiliani paullo grandior fuisse videtur, quam ut hic sermo illo juvene. Itaque ambigo." (p. 470. Antwerp ed. 1607.) Enough will be said in the course of this discussion to carry conviction to the minds of those who can be convinced by facts and arguments that Tacitus did not write the Annals.
Chronology, in the first place, prevents our regarding him as the author. Though we know as little of his life as of his writings— and though no ancient mentions the date or place of his birth, or the time of his death,—we can form a conjecture when he flourished by comparing his age with that of his friend, Pliny the Younger. Pliny died in the year 13 of the second century at the age of 52, so that Pliny was born A.D. 61. Tacitus was by several years his senior. Otherwise Pliny would not have spoken of himself as a disciple looking up to him with reverence as to "a master"; "the duty of submitting to his influence," and "a desire to obey his advice":—"tu magister, ego contra"—(Ep. viii. 7): "cedere auctoritati tuae debeam" (Ep. i. 20): "cupio praeceptis tuis parere" (Ep. ix. 10); nor would he describe himself as "a mere stripling when his friend was at the height of fame and in a proud position": "equidem adolescentulus, quum jam tu fama gloriaque floreres" (Ep. vii. 20); nor of their being, "all but contemporaries in age": "duos homines, aetate propemodum aequales" (Ep. vii. 20). From these remarks chiefly and a few other circumstances, the modern biographers of Tacitus suppose there was a difference of ten or eleven years between that ancient historian and Pliny, and fix the date of his birth about A.D. 52.
This is reconcilable with the belief of Tacitus being the author of the Annals; for when the boundaries of Rome are spoken of in that work as being extended to the Red Sea in terms as if it were a recent extension—"claustra … Romani imperii, quod nunc Rubrum ad mare patescit" (ii. 61),—he would be 63, the extension having been effected as we learn from Xiphilinus, by Trajan A.D. 115. It is also reconcilable with Agricola when Consul offering to him his daughter in marriage, he being then "a young man": "Consul egregiae tum spei filiam juveni mihi despondit" (Agr. 9); for, according as Agricola was Consul A.D. 76 or 77, he would be 24 or 25. But it is by no means reconcilable with the time when he administered the several offices in the State. He tells us himself that he "began holding office under Vespasian, was promoted by Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian": "dignitatem nostram a Vespasiano inchoatam, a Tito auctam, a Domitiano longius provectam" (Hist. i. 1). To have "held office" under Vespasian he must have been quaestor; to have been "promoted" by Titus he must have been aedile; and as for his further advancement we know that he was praetor under Domitian. By the Lex Villia Annalis, passed by the Tribune Lucius Villius during the time of the Republic in 573 after the Building of the City, the years were fixed wherein the different offices were to be entered on—in the language of Livy; "eo anno rogatio primum lata est ab Lucio Villio tribuno plebis, quot annos nati quemque magistratum peterent caperentque" (xl. 44); and the custom was never departed from, in conformity with Ovid's statement in his Fasti with respect to the mature years of those who legislated for his countrymen, and the special enactment which strictly prescribed the age when Romans could be candidates for public offices:
"Jura dabat populo senior, finitaque certis
Legibus est aetas, unde petatur honos."
Fast. v. 65-6.
After the promulgation of his famous plebiscitum by the old Tribune of the People in the year 179 A.C., a Roman could not fill the office of quaestor till he was 31, nor aedile till he was 37,—as, guided by the antiquaries, Sigonius and Pighius, Doujat, the Delphin editor of Livy, states: "quaestores ante annum aetatis trigesimum primum non crearentur, nec aediles curules ante septimum ac trigesimum";—and the ages for the two offices were usually 32 and 38.
From Vespasian's rule extending to ten years we cannot arrive at the date when Tacitus was quaestor; but we can guess when he was aedile, as Titus was emperor only from the spring of 79 to the autumn of 81.
Had his appointment to the aedileship taken place on the last day of the reign of Titus, he would then be but 29 years old; and though in the time of the Emperors, after the year 9 of our aera, there might be a remission of one or more years by the Lex Julia or the Lex Pappia Poppaea, those laws enacted rewards and privileges to encourage marriage and the begetting of children; the remission could, therefore, be in favour only of married men, especially those who had children; so that any such indulgence in the competition for the place of honours could not have been granted to Tacitus, he not being, as will be immediately seen, yet married. In order, then, that he should have been aedile under Titus,—even admitting that he could boast, like Cicero, of having obtained all his honours in the prescribed years—"omnes honores anno suo"—and been aedile the moment he was qualified by age for the office,—he must have been born, at least, as far back as the year 44.
This will be reconcilable with all that Pliny says, as well as with his being married when "young"; for he would then be 32 or 33, and his bride 22 or 23; for the daughter of Agricola was born when her father was quaestor in Asia—"sors quaesturae provinciam Asiam dedit … auctus est ibi filiâ." (Agr. 9). Nor let it be supposed that a Roman would not have used the epithet "young" to a man of 32 or 33, seeing that the Romans applied the term to men in their best years, from 20 to 40, or a little under or over. Hence Livy terms Alexander the Great at the time of his death, when he was 31, "a young man," "egregium ducem fuisse Alexandrum … adolescens … decessit" (ix. 17): so Cicero styles Lucius Crassus at the age of 34;—"talem vero exsistere eloquentiam qualis fuerit in Crasso et Antonio … alter non multum (quod quidem exstaret), et id ipsum adolescens, alter nihil admodum scripti reliquisset". (De Orat. ii. 2): so also does Cornelius Nepos speak of Marcus Brutus, when the latter was praetor, Brutus being then 43 years of age:—"sic Marco Bruto usus est, ut nullo ille adolescens aequali familiarius" (Att. 8); to this passage of Nepos's, Nicholas Courtin, his Delphin editor, adds that the ancients called men "young" from the age of 17 to the age of 46; notwithstanding that Varro limited youth to 30 years:—"a 17 ad 46 annum, adolescentia antiquitus pertingebat, ut ab antiquis observatum est. Nihilominus Varro ad 30 tantum pertingere ait." But Tacitus being born in 44 is not reconcilable with his being the Author of the Annals, as thus:—
Some time in the nineteen years that Trajan was Emperor,—from 98 to ll7,—Tacitus, being then between the ages of 54 and 73, composed his History. He paused when he had carried it on to the reign of Domitian; the narrative had then extended to twenty-three years, and was comprised in "thirty books," if we are to believe St. Jerome in his Commentary on the Fourteenth Chapter of Zechariah:
"Cornelius Tacitus … post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." [Endnote 013] It was scarcely possible for Tacitus to have executed his History in a shorter compass;—indeed, it is surprising that the compass was so short, looking at the probability of his having observed the symmetry attended to by the ancients in their writings, and having continued his work on the plan he pursued at the commencement, the important fragment which we have of four books, and a part of the fifth, embracing but little more than one year. Whether he ever carried into execution the design he had reserved for his old age,—writing of Nerva and Trajan,—we have no record. But two things seem tolerably certain; that he would have gone on with that continuation to his History in preference to writing the Annals; and that he would not have written that continuation until after the death of the Emperor Trajan. He would then have been 73. Now, how long would he have been on that separate history? Then at what age could he have commenced the Annals? And how long would he have been engaged in its composition? We see that he must have been bordering on 80, if not 90: consequently with impaired faculties, and thus altogether disqualified for producing such a vigorous historical masterpiece; for though we have instances of poets writing successfully at a very advanced age, as Pindar composing one of his grandest lyrics at 84, and Sophocles his Oedipus Coloneus at 90, we have no instance of any great historian, except Livy, attempting to write at a very old age, and then Livy rambled into inordinate diffuseness.
II. The silence maintained with respect to the Annals by all writers till the first half of the fifteenth century is much more striking than chronology in raising the very strongest suspicion that Tacitus did not write that book. This is the more remarkable as after the first publication of the last portion of that work by Vindelinus of Spire at Venice in 1469 or 1470, all sorts and degrees of writers began referring to or quoting the Annals, and have continued doing so to the present day with a frequency which has given to its supposed writer as great a celebrity as any name in antiquity. Kings, princes, ministers and politicians have studied it with diligence and curiosity, while scholars, professors, authors and historians in Italy, Spain, France, England, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have applied their minds to it with an enthusiasm, which has been like a kind of worship. Yet, after the most minute investigation, it cannot be discovered that a single reference was made to the Annals by any person from the time when Tacitus lived until shortly before the day when Vindelinus of Spire first ushered the last six books to the admiring world from the mediaeval Athens. When it appeared it was at once pronounced to be the brightest gem among histories; its author was greeted as a most wonderful man,—the "unique historian", for so went the phrase—"inter historicos unicus."
Now, are we to be asked quietly to believe that there never lived from the first quarter of the second century till after the second quarter of the fifteenth, a single individual possessed of sufficient capacity to discern such eminent and obvious excellence as is contained in the Annals? Are we to believe that that could have been so? in a slowly revolving cycle of 1,000 years and more? ay, upwards of 1,300! If that really was the case, it is enough to strike us dumb with stupor in contemplating such a miraculous instance of perpetuated inanity,—among the lettered, too!—the learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case, what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It indicates one of two things,—duncelike stupidity or studious contempt. Both these surmises must be dismissed,—the first as too absurd, the second as too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture—Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence of forty generations of mankind. Again, this supposed probability is too preposterously extravagant to be for an instant credited because it cannot for a moment be comprehended. In short, how marvellous it is! how utterly unaccountable! how inexpressibly mysterious!
Pliny does not say a word about the Annals. The earliest Latin father, Tertullian, quotes only the History (Apol. c. 16). St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Zechariah (iii. 14), cites the passage in the fifth book of the History about the origin of the Jews; he also notices what Tacitus says of another important event, the Fall of Jerusalem, which, having occurred in the reign of Vespasian, must have been narrated in the History. The "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib. V., cc. 5 and 10), and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,—the Temple of Janus being open from the time of Augustus to Vespasian (vii. 3);—the number of the Jews who perished at the siege of Jerusalem (vii. 9); and the possibly large number of Romans who were killed in the wars with the Daci during the reign of Domitian (vii. 10):—all which passages must have been in the lost portions of the History.
In his Epistles and Poems, that man of wit and fancy, with an intellect and learning above the fifth century in which he lived, —Sidonius Apollinaris,—has one quotation from Tacitus and three references to him. The quotation, which occurs in the fourteenth chapter of the fourth book of his Epistles, is from the last section of the History, (that part of the speech of Civilis where the seditious Batavian touches on the friendship which existed between himself and Vespasian); and his three references are, first, to the "ancient mode of narrative," combined with the greatest "literary excellence" (iv. 22); secondly, to "genius for eloquence" (Carm. xxiii. 153-4); and thirdly, to "pomp of manner" (Carm. ii. 192); the not inelegant Christian writer enumerating qualities that specially commend themselves in the History. When Spartian praises Tacitus for "good faith," the eulogy is more appropriate to the writer of the History than the Annals, howbeit that so many moderns, including the famous philologist and polygrapher, Justus Lipsius; the Pomeranian scholar of the last century, Meierotto; Boetticher and Prutz all question the veracity of Tacitus; while for what he says of the Jews Tertullian vituperates him in language so outrageous as to be altogether unbecoming the capacious mind of the Patristic worthy, who calls him, "the most loquacious of liars,"—"mendaciorum loquacissimus;" —in which strain of calumny he was, from the same cause of religious fervour, followed centuries after,—in the seventeenth,—by two of the most renowned preachers and orators of their day, the famous Jesuit, Famianus Strada, and his less known contemporary, but most able Chamberlain of Urban VIII., Augustino Mascardi,—as if all these pious Christians found it quite impossible to pardon a heathen, blinded by the prejudices of paganism, for believing what he did of the Hebrews; and for recording which belief he ought to receive immediate forgiveness, seeing that Justin, Plutarch, Strabo and Democritus said as bad, if not worse things of that ancient people and their sacred books. [Endnote 019]
Cassiodorus, the Senator, is the only writer of the sixth century, who makes any allusion to Tacitus, and that but once, in the fifth book of his Epistles, to what the Roman says in his Germany of the origin of amber, about which naturalists are still divided, that it is a distillation from certain trees. Freculphus (otherwise written Radulphus), Bishop of Lisieux, who died in the middle of the ninth century (856), in the second volume of his Chronicles, —the sixth chapter of the second book,—quotes Tacitus as the author of the History, the passage being in reference to the Romans who fell in the Dacian war. We have no proof that the Annals was in existence in the twelfth century from what John of Salisbury says in his Polycraticon (viii. 18), that Tacitus is among the number of those historians, "qui tyrannorum atrocitates et exitus miseros plenius scribunt;" for in his completed History Tacitus must have expatiated pretty freely on the "atrocious tyranny" of Domitian, and the "unfortunate termination of the lives of tyrants."
From the time of John of Salisbury till shortly before the publication of the Annals, no further reference is made to Tacitus by any writer or historian, monkish or otherwise, not even of erudite Germany, beginning with Abbot Hermannus, who wrote in the twelfth century the history of his own monastery of St. Martin's at Dornick, and ending with Caspar Bruschius, who, in the sixteenth century, wrote an Epitome of the Archbishoprics and Bishoprics of Germany, and the Centuria Prima (as Daniel Nessel in the next century wrote the Centuria Secunda) of the German monasteries. And yet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all kinds of writers quote the Annals about as freely and frequently as they quote the History, and that not once or twice, but five or six, and even seven and eight times, in the same work. It would be impossible to mention them all, the writers being "as numerous as the leaves in Vallambrosa's vale";—a figure that can hardly be considered hyperbolic when the enormous number of these writers can be partially guessed from the following catalogue of those who delighted in antiquarian researches, whose productions cited are archaeological, and who made all their references to the Annals for the purpose of merely illustrating archaic matters; nevertheless, the number of such writers alone amounts to as many as a score; moreover, the whole twenty are to be found in one compilation comprised in but five volumes,—Polenus's New Supplement to the collections of Graevius and Gronovius, entitled "Utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatum Romanarum Graecarumque Nova Supplementa";—the Friesland scholar, Titus Popma in his "De Operis Servorum"; the Italian antiquary, Lorenzo Pignorio, Canon of Trevigo, in his treatise "De Servis"; the renowned critic, Salmasius, in his explanation of two ancient inscriptions found on a Temple in the island of Crete ("Notae ad Consecrationem Templi in Agro Herodis Attici Triopio"); Peter Burmann in his "De Vectigalibus"; Albertinus Barrisonus in his "De Archivis"; Merula, the jurist, historian and polygrapher, in his "De Legibus Romanorum"; Carolus Patinus in his Commentary "In Antiquum Monumentum Marcellinae"; Polletus in his "Historia Fori Romani"; Aegyptius in his "De Bacchanalibus Explicatio"; Gisbert Cuper in his "Monumenta Antiqua Inedita"; Octavius Ferrarius in his "Dissertatio de Gladiatoribus"; William à Loon in his "Eleutheria"; Schaeffer in his "De Re Vehiculari"; Johannes Jacobus Claudius in his "Diatribê de Nutricibus et Paedagogis"; Antonius Bombardinus in his "De Carcere Tractatus"; Gutherlethus in his work on the "Salii," or Priests of Mars; the learned Spaniard, Miniana, in his "De Theatro Saguntino Dialogus"; Gorius in his "Columbarium Libertorum et Servorum"; Spon in his "Miscellanea Erudita Antiquitatis" and Jaques Leroy in his "Achates Tiberianus." In fact, the Annals of Tacitus is noticed, or quoted, or referred to, or commented upon at length (as at the commencement of the sixteenth century by Scipione Ammirato), in an endless list of works, with or without the names of the authors, which by itself is all but conclusive that the Annals was not in existence till the fifteenth century, and not generally known till the sixteenth and seventeenth.
But to return for a moment to what was done by two writers, who lived before the fifteenth century,—Sulpicius Severus, who died A.D. 420; and Jornandez, who, in the time of Justinian, was Secretary to the Gothic kings in Italy. Now, it must not be withheld,—for it would be too uncandid,—that identical passages are found in the Annals ascribed to Tacitus and the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus.
In order that the reader may see the identity of the passages, we place them in juxtaposition, italicising the words that are found in both works:—
Sulpicius (ii. 28). "Inditum imperatori flammeum, dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales; cuncta denique, quae vel in feminis non sine verecundia conspiciuntur, spectata."
Annals (xv. 37). "Inditum imperatori flammeum, visi auspices, dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales; cuncta denique spectata, quae etiam in femina nox operit."
Sulpicius (ii. 29). "Sed opinio omnium invidiam incendii in principem retorquebat, credebaturque imperator gloriam innovandae urbis quaesisse."
Annals (xv. 10). "Videbaturque Nero condendae urbis novae et cognomento suo adpellandae gloriam quaerere."
Sulpicius (v. 2). "Quin et novae mortes excogitatae, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent. Multi crucibus affixi, aut flamma usti. Plerique in id reservati, ut, CUM defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur."
Annals (xv. 44). "Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti, laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi, atque, UBI defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur."
These passages, of course, have, till this moment, been regarded as taken by Sulpicius Severus from the Annals, on the unquestioned assumption that that work was the composition of Tacitus. The passages, however, were taken from the Historia Sacra: they bear traces of having been so appropriated, from Sulpicius Severus composing with a harmony almost equal to Tacitus, and a grammatical correctness on a par with the Roman, while the author of the Annals mars that harmony, here by the change of a word, and there by the reconstruction of a sentence; and the grammatical correctness by substituting for "cum," which strictly signifies "when," "ubi," which strictly signifies "where": hence, from resembling Tacitus less than Sulpicius Severus, he seems, of two writers convicted of plagiarism, to be the one who purloined the passages from the other; and if he introduced but trifling alterations, it was because the accomplished presbyter of the fifth century was the master of a neat Latin style, which will bear comparison with that of the best classical writers. Indeed, Sulpicius Severus is likened for style and eloquence to Sallust; he is known as the "Christian Sallust"; and Leclerc in the twentieth volume of his Bibliothèque Choisie, is loud in praise of his Latin, which is, certainly, purer than could have been imagined for his time. He was, nevertheless the very last authority that the author of the Annals ought to have followed for authentic particulars with respect to Nero; for as that emperor was the first persecutor of the Christians, there was nothing too bad that the church-building ecclesiastical writer did not think it right to state of him, as (in his own language) "the worst, not only of princes, but of all mankind, and even brute beasts"; he went, in fact, to the extreme length of believing, being a ridiculously credulous Chiliast, that Nero would live again as Anti-Christ in the millennian kingdom before the end of the world.
It is generally supposed that Jornandez,—whose works are so valuable for their history of the fifth and sixth centuries of our aera,—when speaking, in the second chapter of his History of the Goths, of one "Cornelius as the author of Annals," is speaking of Tacitus,—"Cornelius etiam Annalium scriptor." Camden in his Britannia questions whether Tacitus is meant by "Cornelius"; and, certainly the passage quoted, which is about Meneg in Cornwall, is nowhere to be found in any of the works written by the ancient Roman. But if Tacitus be meant, the passage is an interpolation, because the historical books ascribed to Tacitus bear in all the MSS. either the title "Augustae Historiae Libri," or "Ab Excessu divi Augusti Historiarum Libri," and so in all the first published editions—that of Vindelinus of Spire about 1470, of Puteolanus and Lanterius about 1475, of Beroaldus in 1515, and the early editions of Venice 1484, 1497 and 1512; of Rome in 1485; Milan 1517; Basle 1519, and Florence (the Juntine Edition) 1527—it not being till 1533, that Beatus Rhenanus first gave those books the name "Annals" (it being Justus Lipsius who, close at the commencement of the last quarter of that century,—in 1574,—first divided the books into two parts, to one of which he gave the name "Annals," and to the other, "Histories"). Then how could Jornandez, who lived in the sixth century, have known any writings of Tacitus by the name of "Annals," when that title was not given to them until the sixteenth century?
We may now, after close research, advance this with extreme caution, and certainty:—no support can be derived from citations or statements made by any writer till the fifteenth century that Tacitus wrote a number of books of the Annals. Should any one extensively read known authors, living between the second and the fifteenth century, besides those mentioned, who quote Tacitus, it will be found that their quotations are from the History, the Germany, or the Agricola; and this can be predicted with just as much confidence, as an astronomer predicts eclipses of the sun and the moon, and, for their verification, needs not wait to see the actual obscuration of those heavenly bodies.
III. In turning to the different MSS., we find that the age of all of them confirms in an equally corroborative manner the theory that Tacitus did not write the Annals. Here let it be noted that the age of a MS. can easily be discovered; and that, too, in a variety of ways:—by the formation of the characters, such as the roundness of the letters; or their largeness or smallness;—the writing of the final l's; the use of the Gothic s's and the Gothic j's; the dotting, or no dotting of the i's; the absence or presence of diphthongs; the length of the lines; the punctuation; the accentuation; the form or size; the parchment or the paper; the ink;—or some other mode of detection. Those MSS. need only be examined which contain either the whole or the concluding books of the Annals.
Of the seven MSS. in the Vatican, that numbered 1,864, (referred to by John Frederic Gronovius, and other editors of Tacitus as the "Farnesian," from its having been transferred from the Farnese Palace to the Vatican,) is supposed to be the oldest, for it is believed to be of the fourteenth century; but the vellum on which it is written is of the sixteenth; so is the vellum of No. 1,422. No. 1,863 was thought by Justus Lipsius to be almost as old as No. 1,864, to have been of the close of the fourteenth century; but it is written on vellum of the middle of the fifteenth century. Nothing can be ascertained, either from its form or the substance on which it is written, of No. 2,965, but the Bipontine editors declared its date to be 1449. No. 1,958, which Puteolanus used in 1475, for his edition (containing the concluding books of the Annals) was copied at Genoa in the year 1448. The two others, numbered 412 and 1,478, are both written on vellum of the fifteenth century.
The oldest Paris MS. is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and is written on paper of the close of the fifteenth century. Nobody knows what has become of the MS., which is supposed to have been anterior to the editions at the end of the fifteenth century, and was in the library of the Congrégation de l'Oratoire, to whom it was presented by Henri Harlai de Sancy, who brought it from Italy and died in the Oratory in 1667.
The MS. of Wolfenbuttel (Guelferbytana), used by Ernesti in his edition, was bought at Ferrara on the 28th of September, 1461; beyond that nothing is known of it. The MS. in the library of Jesus College, Oxford, is of the year 1458; the Bodleian, numbered 2,764, is of the century after, though the great Benedictine antiquary, Montfaucon, in that monument of labour and erudition, Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum MSS. Nova, is of opinion that it is as old as 1463; and that in the Harleian collection of MSS. in the British Museum, also numbered 2,764, stated to date back to 1412, can scarcely be older than 1440 or 1450, from the diphthongal writing, first introduced by Guarino of Verona, who died in 1460. The MS. of Grenoble, written on very fine vellum, and containing the whole of the Annals, is of the sixteenth century. The three Medicean, the Neapolitan and the other Italian MSS. are all of very modern writing. As to the MSS. of Wurzburg and Mirandola, the former is not to be found, and the latter was not in existence even in the time of Justus Lipsius.
The four most important MSS. are those known as the First and Second Florence, the Buda and that from which Vindelinus of Spire published the last six books. The two oldest are the "Second Florence" and the "Buda." It would seem that the "Second Florence", from the note at the end, dates back to the year 395, though the Benedictines in their Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique (vol. iii. pp. 278-9) thought they recognized in it a Lombard writing of the tenth or eleventh century; Ernesti modified that to the ninth; others again changed it to the seventh and even the sixth; but it will be shown to satisfaction in the course of this treatise that it belongs to the fifteenth century. So the Buda MS., believed by Justus Lipsius to be as ancient as the Second Florence (which he thought with the Benedictines was of the tenth or eleventh century) was considered by James Gronovius to be very modern; and very modern it is, being traceable to a little after the same period as the Second Florence, namely, the fifteenth century. The First Florence, which was stated to have been found in the Abbey of Corvey, and which furnished the opening six books of the Annals as first given to the world by Beroaldus, is of an age that has hitherto never been determined; but that age will be shown, towards the close of this work, to be the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The MS. from which Vindelinus of Spire published his edition, was in the Library of St Mark's, Venice, but,—according, to Croll and Exter,—it is no longer to be found.
The case, then, stands thus with respect to the MSS.;—no MS. of the works of Tacitus, whose existence can be traced back further than the sixteenth century, contains the whole of the Annals; and no MS. of the works of Tacitus, whose existence can be traced back further than the first half of the preceding century, has the closing books of the Annals.
Here let me briefly recapitulate;—it being very important for the reader to bear in mind that three things have now been shown:— first, that, from the chronological point of view, Tacitus could barely have written the Annals; secondly, that, from the silence preserved about that book by all writers for upwards of 1300 years from the death of Tacitus, there is cause for supposing it was not in existence from his time, that is, the second century to the fifteenth and sixteenth (the commencement of the fifteenth century being the time of the forgery of the last six books, and the commencement of the sixteenth the time of the publication of the forged first six books);—and thirdly, that there is nothing to contradict this theory of mine in the age of any of the known MSS. containing a part, or the whole of the Annals; but, on the contrary, to verify it, from the age of the oldest being limited to the fifteenth century; and that if there be, or ever have been others older, it is singular, and puzzling to account for, that one of two things should have occurred; either that they are lost, or else that their age cannot be determined,—both which latter things are actually the case with respect to the two MSS. from which the Annals was originally printed,—that which supplied the concluding books being lost, and that which contains the whole of it being of an age that nobody up till now has been able to determine.
CHAPTER II.
A FEW REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE ANNALS TO BE A FORGERY.
I. The fifteenth century an age of imposture, shown in the invention of printing.—II. The curious discovery of the first six books of the Annals.—III. The blunders it has in common with all forged documents.—IV. The Twelve Tables.—V. The Speech of Claudius in the Eleventh Book of the Annals.—VI. Brutus creating the second class of nobility.—VII. Camillus and his grandson.— VIII. The Marching of Germanicus.—IX. Description of London in the time of Nero.—X. Labeo Antistius and Capito Ateius; the number of people executed for their attachment to Sejanus; and the marriage of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, to the Elder Antonia.
I. I have now so far cleared the way as to be in a fair position to enter with feasibleness into an investigation of the Annals, with the view of proving that it was not written by Tacitus.
In beginning the investigation, I shall proceed on the assumption that it is a modern forgery of the fifteenth century, having as grounds for this assumption that it was the age when the original MSS. containing the work were discovered; that the existence of those MSS. cannot be traced farther than that century; that (which is of vast consequence in an inquiry of this description) it was an age of imposture; of credulity so immoderate that people were easily imposed upon, believing, as they did, without sufficient evidence, or on slight evidence, or no evidence at all, whatever was foisted upon them; when, too, the love of lucre was such that for money men willingly forewent the reputation that is the accompaniment of the grandest achievements of the intellect. Take, for example, the noble art of printing; for inventing it any man of genius might reasonably be proud. His name, if known, would be emblazoned on the scroll of imperishable fame; be displayed for ever on the highest pyramid of mind; and his country would receive an additional beam of splendor to its previous blaze of renown. But who, for a certainty, knows the inventor of printing? or the country of its origin? Was it Holland in the person of Coster of Haarlem? Or Germany in the person of Mentel, the nobleman, of Strasburg? Or Guttenberg, the goldsmith, of Mayence? Was it neither of these countries? or none of these men? And why this uncertainty? Because a few men possessing the secret, which they kept cautiously to themselves, of printing by means of movable blocks of wood, preferred accumulating enormous sums, equivalent to fair fortunes, by receiving five, six and even between seven and eight hundred gold sequins from a King of France or a Pope of Rome, a Cardinal or an Archbishop, for a bible, which, printed, was passed off as written. We all know how the whole imposture exploded, by the King of France and the Archbishop of Paris comparing the bibles which they had bought of Faust during his stay at the Soleil d'Or in the Rue St. Jacques, Paris. Each thought his bible so superb that the whole world could not produce such another for beauty,—the books being fine vellum copies of what are now known as the Mazarin Bible;—and what was their amazement on discovering, after a very close comparison, that everything was exactly alike in the two copies,—the flower-pieces in gold, green and blue, with grouped and single birds amid tendrils and leaves, the illuminated letters at the beginning of books with variegated embellishments and brilliant hues of scarlet and azure, the crimson initials to each chapter and sentence, along with astonishing and incomprehensible conformity in letters, words, pagination and lines on every page.
II. The temptation was great to palm off literary forgeries, especially of the chief writers of antiquity, on account of the Popes, in their efforts to revive learning, giving money rewards and indulgences to those who should procure MS. copies of any of the ancient Greek or Roman authors. Manuscripts turned up, as if by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries, obscure as well as famous; from the most out-of-the-way places,— the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History of Velleius Paterculus; or from garrets, where they had been contending with cobwebs and dust, as the Poems of Catullus. So long as the work had an appearance of high antiquity, it passed muster as an old classic; and no doubt could be entertained of its genuineness, if, in addition to its ancient look, it was brought in a fragmentary form. We have no history of the last six fragmentary books of the Annals—at least, up to this time; though I shall give it towards the end of this inquiry; but we are told all about the discovery of the fragmentary first six books by Meibomius, the Westphalian historian, and Professor of Poetry and History at Helmstädt at the close of the sixteenth century in his Opuscula Historica Rerum Germianicarum, while telling the story of the life of Witikind, the monk of the Abbey of Corvey; by Justus Lipsius in note 34 to the second book of the Annals; by Brotier, and other editors of Tacitus.
John de Medici, that magnificent Pope, had been scarcely elected to the Pontifical chair by the title of Leo X. in the spring of 1513, when he caused it to be publicly made known that he would increase the price of rewards given by his predecessors to persons who procured new MS. copies of ancient Greek and Roman works. More than a year, nearly two years elapsed; then his own "Thesaurum Quaestor Pontificius"—"steward," "receiver," or "collector",— Angelo Arcomboldi, brought to him a new MS. of the works of Tacitus, with a most startling novelty—THE FIRST SIX (or, as then divided, FIVE) BOOKS OF THE ANNALS! Everybody was amazed; and everybody was extremely anxious to know where and how it had been obtained. The story of Arcomboldi was that he had found the stranger among the treasures on the well-stored shelves in the Library of the Benedictine monastery on the banks of the Weser, at Corvey, in Westphalia, long famed for the high culture of its learned inmates. The MS. was given out as being of great antiquity, traceable to, at the very least, the commencement of the ninth century; for it was said to have belonged to one of the most distinguished and accomplished scholars of the abbey, Anschaire, whom Gregory IV. in the year 835 appointed his Legate Apostolic in Denmark and Sweden, and who Christianized the whole northern parts of Europe. The MS. was conned with care: it was musty, discoloured and antique-looking; furthermore, it was of the usual orthodox nature of recovered ancient MSS.—it was fragmentary: the genius of Tacitus was believed to be detected in the newly found books: 500 gold sequins were counted out from the Papal Treasury to the greedy discoverer: at the expense of Leo, the scholastic Philippo Beroaldi the Younger, who was Professor of the learned languages in the University of Rome, and who wrote Latin lyric poetry (in the opinion of Paulus Jovius) with the elegance and correctness of Horace, superintended the text; the celebrated Stephen Guilleret came all the way from Lorraine to print it; and the "Historiarum Libri quinque nuper in Germaniâ inventi" were ushered forth to the world in Rome literis rotundis on the first day of March, 1515. From that day to this the imposture has slumbered; the counterfeit coin has passed current, nobody having noticed the absence of the true ring of the genuine metal.
III. The books of the Annals must not merely be assumed to be forgeries; they must be proved to be so; for, if forgeries, they cannot be as invulnerable as walls of adamant. It is nothing that nobody has suspected they were forged;—nothing that the editors and commentators, who, for the most part possessed of remarkable perspicacity and discernment, have applied their minds to minute revision and close examination of these books, have, after such diligent attention never considered them to be spurious, but belonging to the domain of true history;—nothing that they have stood for close on four hundred years unchallenged, deceiving the wisest and the most learned as well as the best and the most experienced in matters of this description. The cause is obvious: the forger fabricated with the decided determination of defying detection. He did not rely upon his own sagacity alone: he called in the assistance of two of his cleverest friends: three of the astutest men in the most enlightened portion then of Europe,— Italy,—sat in conclave over the matter for nearly three years, deliberating in every possible way how to avoid suspicious management and faulty performance: consequently, the forgery is anything but plain and palpable; nay, it is wonderfully obscure and monstrously difficult: nevertheless, like all forged documents, it is bungled—ay, in spite of the pains taken to keep free from bad and blundering work, it is, occasionally (as will be seen in the present book, from this point until the close), clumsily, awkwardly, grossly, ridiculously bungled.
In the last generation there was a famous trial for forgery in Edinburgh. A number of documents, thirty-three, were impounded as forged to obtain for the forger the title of a Scotch Earl and domains covering many millions of acres,—a larger area of square miles than were included in the whole united territories of the now dethroned Dukes of Tuscany, Parma and Modena, or all the possessions put together of the German Electors, Margraves and Landgraves. In such a number of legal documents executed by one man, and that man, too, a civilian, it was almost next to an impossibility that there should not be a good deal of bungling. One of the blunders was the King of Scotland giving away lands and provinces that never belonged to Scotland, for they were lands and provinces in New England; another was the name of Archbishop Spottiswoode as witness to a document executed by King James I. at Whitehall on the 7th of December, 1639, whereas Archbishop Spottiswoode had been dead eleven days, his monument in Westminster Abbey bearing as the date of his death, the 26th of November in that year. So the author of the Annals, who, as will be hereafter shown, lived in the fifteenth century, could not possibly write many books of ancient Roman History without, every now and then doing or saying something that was attended with dreadful fatality to his fraud; for he could not write them without palpable blunders; and some are so clumsy as to surpass conception what bungling can do.
IV. He makes Tacitus commit an error about the contents of the Twelve Tables, which is really as monstrous as if we could fancy ourselves reading in the pages of a native historian of mark, Hume, Henry, or Lingard, some blunder, into which a schoolboy could not fall, about the contents of Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Rights, or any other well known English law, on which the constitution of the country is primarily founded. In a work given out as written by Tacitus we are told that the Twelve Tables first fixed interest for usury at an "uncia," or twelfth part of an as per hundred asses per month, or one per cent per annum:—"Primo Duodecim Tabulis sanctum 'ne quis unciario foenore amplius exerceret,' cum antea ex libidine locupletium agitaretur" (An. VI. 16). Into this error the Author of the Annals must surely have been seduced by some shocking mediaeval writer of ancient Roman history or antiquities, under whose guidance he again falls into another mistake when ascribing to tribunitian regulations the reduction of the interest to one-half per cent. per annum, or the sixth part of an as per hundred asses a month:—"dein rogatione tribuncia ad semuncias redacta" (L. c.). The truth is that, in the year of Rome 398, a hundred and four years after the Twelve Tables were composed,—the Tribunes Duillius and Moenius passed the original law of interest at one per cent: twelve years after,—in the year 410,—the interest was reduced to one half per cent. under the consulate of Lucius Manlius Torquatus and Caius Plautius;—as may be seen by referring to the seventh book (16, 27) of Livy,—or still better, the clear exposition of this error by Montesquieu in the 22nd chapter of the 22nd book of his "Esprit des Loix." The author of the Annals is then only right when stating that originally the interest was one per cent. per annum, and afterwards reduced to half that amount. In everything else he blunders to an extent that is inexplicable in an ancient Roman. Were any staunch upholder of the authenticity of the Annals to be here called upon compulsorily to give a reason, unprepared or premeditated, plausible or probable, why, after this exposure of such an error, he still believed it possible that the blunder could have been made by Tacitus, who achieved a brilliant reputation as an historian writing truthfully of his countrymen, as a lawyer practising successfully among them, as a statesman filling with ability exalted offices, and thus possessed such pledges for being admirably informed and exceedingly cautious, he would be reluctantly forced to take refuge in the quibbling of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff: —"I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason on compulsion, I!"
The Twelve Tables are most fatal for the author of the Annals; they bring out his imposture so clearly to the broad glare of noonday. Tacitus is made to place on record for the enlightenment of posterity that, after those Tables were composed, his countrymen ceased making just and equal laws, only occasionally penal enactments; but more frequently, on account of the differences between the two orders, decrees for attaining illegitimate honours and for banishing distinguished citizens, along with other sinister legislation:—"Compositae Duodecim Tabulae, finis aequi juris; nam secutae leges, etsi aliquando in maleficos ex delicto, saepius tamen dissensione ordinum, et apiscendi illicitos honores, aut pellendi claros viros, aliaque ob prava, per vim latae sunt" (III. 27). The statement is about as contrary to fact as if an English historian were to assert that after Charles I. assented to the Petition of Rights, there was an end to all further enlargement in this country of the rights, liberties and privileges of the subject,—the only laws passed since then being for the repression of crime, the mitigation of the penal code, and the establishment of religious equality; because if we set aside all the laws that were passed by the Romans for the bettering of their State after the year 449 before our aera,—which is the date of the composition of the Twelve Tables,—and look only at those which extended social equality, we find enactments "aequi juris," such as the Lex Canuleia which allowed the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians, and the Leges Liciniae, which put both orders on a par in holding public offices. It is clear that these laws never came to the knowledge of the author of the Annals; and it is for the reader to decide for himself whether he thinks it likely that a lawyer and statesman of the stamp of Tacitus could have been ignorant of the removal of these weighty and vexatious class inconveniences.
V. Had Tacitus written the Annals, he would have known more of the speech which Claudius spake in the Senate (XI. 24), when the inhabitants of Transalpine Gaul petitioned to be rendered eligible to the highest offices of the State, than to direct the eloquence of the Emperor in favour of all the extra-provincial Gauls in general, and the Aedui in particular. From the way in which he wrote harangues—that of Galgacus in his Agricola, for instance, —he would have caught in his alembic the essence of the original, and sublimated it; but he would not have placed before us an offspring that does not reflect one feature of its parent. Yet that is what the author of the Annals did with the speech of Claudius: he fabricated that which bears not the faintest resemblance to the original. If the assumption be considered as true that he forged the Annals, he could not have done otherwise; for when he was engaged in the business of forgery, the speech was not in existence, it not being until 1528, more than a hundred years after the Eleventh Book of the Annals was written by him, and considerably over half a century after it was first printed in Venice, that a copy of the speech of the Emperor Claudius, which had long been lost, was found again buried within the earth at Lyons, and as so discovered is still preserved, engraved on two brass plates in the vestibule of the Town Hall of Lyons, a lasting memento of the modern fabrication of the Annals.
VI. The author of the Annals ascribes to Brutus the creation of the second class of nobility, which Brutus no more created than (as Famianus Strada observes,) "Pythagoras originated the idea of the transmigration of souls." The statement that "few were left of the families to which Romulus gave the title, the 'gentes majores,' or 'old clans,' and Lucius Brutus the 'gentes minores,' or 'young clans'":—"paucis jam reliquis familiarum, quas Romulus 'majorum,' et Lucius Brutus 'minorum gentium' adpellaverant" (XI.25):—could never have been written by a Roman; because, in the first place, it was not Romulus who created the whole patrician body known as the "majores gentes"; the only senators whom he created were the "decuriones," or heads of the various "gentes" of the united Romans and Sabines; to these Tullus Hostilius added the most distinguished citizens of the Albans, when they were removed to Rome in his reign;—and it was the united descendants of these two sets of patricians who were called by subsequent generations "patricii majorum gentium": in the second place, it was Tarquinius Priscus who enlarged the patrician body by creating the 100 representatives of the Luceres, or Etruscans, senators, and it was the descendants of these who were "called," by way of distinction from the others, "patricii minorum gentium." The new sort of nobility which originated with Brutus was a very different kind of thing: the new eminence or dignity conferred on the senators elected by Brutus was confined to themselves only, being strictly personal and purely titular: until then Roman senators had been styled simply "Patres," but from that time downwards they were denominated "Patres CONSCRIPTI." No Roman could have been ignorant of this; and if the author of the Annals did not know it, we ought not to be too severe upon him, when we shall see afterwards that he was a Florentine of the fifteenth century: then on account of his having lived so many centuries after the events of which he writes, it is quite excusable that he should fall into a state of confusion with respect to this rather out of the way matter, though into such a state of confusion no Roman could have fallen on account of his intimate acquaintance with the outlines of his constitution, the customs of his country, and the distinctions of rank in native society.
VII. The author of the Annals takes the grandson of the great dictator Camillus to have been his son, when he observes: "after the illustrious recoverer of the city" (meaning Rome) "and his son Camillus": "post illum reciperatorem urbis, filiumque ejus Camillum," (II. 52). In that case what becomes of the exclamation of Spartian in his Life of the Emperor Severus, when speaking of great Romans who had no illustrious children: "What of Camillus? For had he children like himself?" "Quid Camillus? Nam sui similes liberos habuit?" Why, certainly, "he had children like himself," if Marcus Furius had been his son, and not his grandson; for he was Consul and Dictator like the renowned and noble-minded Lucius Furius. The mistake is easily accounted for in a modern European writing Roman history from the famous Marcus Furius Camillus being Consul only eleven years after his grandfather, which makes it look as if it was the son who succeeded, and not the grandson. But it cannot be explained in a Roman, who must have taken so much pride in the second Romulus of his country as to have known all about his family relations. The error is only comparable to the extreme case of an Englishman being supposed to take such very little interest in Queen Victoria as to mistake her for a daughter of William IV.
VIII. To be called upon to believe that these blunders could have been committed by Tacitus, is to ask one to believe that he, who made no such mistakes in his History, ceased to write like a Roman when composing the Annals. It is truly writing, not like an ancient Roman, but a modern European, when in the first book of the Annals Germanicus is represented consulting whether he will take a short and well known road, or one untried and difficult, though the reason is, that by going the longer, he would go the unguarded way, and really do things quicker: "consultatque, ex duobus itineribus breve et solitum sequatur, an impeditius et intentatum, eoque hostibus incautum. Delecta longiore via, cetera adcelerantur" (I. 50). Were it not for this passage, one would have thought that, in the days of Tiberius, Germany was almost as bare of roads as the present interior of Arabia and Chinese Tartary; and that each tribe in that enormous wilderness of wood and morass was approached, as the present people of Dahomey, Ashantee and Timbucto, by a single path; and that it was only, after the lapse of centuries, when, in the due course of things, Germany had assumed a more civilised character, that there were two, three, or more roads; so that we can quite understand it being said of the Bavarian general, John de Werth, in the seventeenth century, that he did this,—march out of the direct way, which was watched, by another road, which was longer because it was unguarded: thus pouncing on the enemy by night, and taking them so by surprise that they fled in alarm, he gained a bloodless victory, without the drawing of a sword from its scabbard. Any advantage that a modern general would gain in this way was not open to an ancient general, particularly when invading the country of a people like the Germans, mere savages, who knew no more of such arts of warfare, as guarding roads and sending out scouts, than Red Indians, Maoris and Hottentots of the present time. Sir Garnet Wolseley, making his way to Coomassie, as a crow would fly, is just about the manner in which we may be sure that Germanicus made his way into Germany—as straight as he could go. But military history is not the forte of the author of the Annals. He knew it and avoided it as much as he could,—very unlike Tacitus, who, practically acquainted with military as well as civil affairs, writes with an obvious liking, of combats and civil wars, and, according to military authorities competent to pass an opinion, shows everywhere familiarity with battles, marches, management of armies and conduct of generals.
One cannot understand how Tacitus, whose youth was passed in a camp, should not have known the whole minutiae about the Roman army; and that he should, with respect to its ensigns, exhibit extraordinary ignorance. The fact stood thus:—the legions had "signa," or standards; the "socii," or allies, that is, the Latins, had "vexilla," or flags; so, perhaps, had the Romans when marching under arms to a new settlement, or "colony"; but, certainly, soldiers raised in the provinces had no ensigns at all, neither standards nor flags; yet in the first book of the Annals we hear of some "maniples," or "infantry companies" of the legions that had been raised in Pannonia, when the news reached them of the breaking out of a mutiny in the camp, tearing to pieces their flags: "manipuli … postquam turbatum in castris accepere, vexilla convellunt" (I. 20). The mistake is similar to that which would be made if any one among ourselves were to give colours to our volunteers or standards to our yeomanry.
Here it may be noticed that the figures of speech of Tacitus are, like those of most ancient Romans, chiefly military. To be of the highest rank is, with him, "to lead the van,"—"primum pilum ducere" (Hist. IV. 3), or to set about a thing, "to be girt" (as with a sword),—"accingi" (Hist. IV. 79). The author of the Annals, though borrowing the latter phrase, goes anywhere but to the field of battle for his figures; he takes them mostly from the ways of ordinary civil life, selecting his metaphors, now from the trader's shop or the merchant's counting-house, as "ratio constat" (An. I. 6), used when the debtor and creditor sides of an account balance one another; now from seamen steering and tacking vessels, or coachmen driving horses, as "verbis moderans" (An. VI. 2), which Nipperdey says ought to be rendered, "touching-up and reining-in his words, and driving only at this."
IX. When Julius Caesar came to this country, he found the Britons, without an exception, thorough barbarians, the best of them living in places that were fortified woods. The author of the Annals, only a century after this wild state of things in the barbarism of the inhabitants and the rudeness of their abodes, speaks of London, in the reign of Nero, in the year 60, as if it were the chief residence of merchants and their principal mart of trade in the civilized world. If there be one thing certain, it is that centuries after,—in the middle of the fourth,—the people of London were only exporters of corn;—no certainty that they carried on any other kind of commerce, except it might be doing a little business in dogs, and slaves whom they captured from neighbouring barbarians,—their imports being polished bits of bone, toys and horse-collars. Progressing, rapidly under the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and in the time of the Plantagenets, they were in the fifteenth century a great and wealthy people, illustrious for their commercial transactions, dealing in every species of commodity, visited by merchants from every part of Europe, and envied by the most flourishing communities, such as the trading oligarchies of Italy. Any one living at that time,—especially in Italy (where many circumstances induce me to believe that the author or forger of the "Annals of Tacitus" lived),—and hearing a great deal of the wealth, greatness and immense antiquity of London, might easily fall into this mistake, grievous in its enormity as it is. But any one living about the time of Nero, as Tacitus did, could never have described London in this flourishing state of commercial greatness and prosperity. The chances are he never would have heard of London; for that would be supposing in a Roman at the close of the first or the commencement of the second century of our aera a geographical knowledge more minute than that of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, unless at the haphazard mention of any particular village in the newly annexed Fiji Islands, Sir Henry Rawlinson could enter into a correct account of its chief characteristic. But if we are to go to the extreme length of supposing that Tacitus had heard of London, he would know that it was a place of no repute, utterly insignificant, far inferior in importance to two now almost forgotten places in Essex and Hertfordshire,—Maldon and St. Alban's,—called then respectively Camelodunum and Verulamium,—the former being a "colonia," and the latter a "municipium,"—London being a mere "praefectura." It is then the height of absurdity to believe that if Tacitus wrote the Annals we should have heard in that work London spoken of as "remarkably celebrated for the multiplicity of its merchants and its commodities": "copia negotiatorum et commeatuum maxime celebre" (XIV. 33).
X. The author of the Annals pretends to know more about prominent individuals in Rome than was known to their distinguished contemporaneous countrymen. He writes of Labeo Antistius, as if that jurisconsult were an example to the age in which he lived of all the virtues and all goodness, and possessed, to a masterly extent, accomplishments and acquirements; for thus he speaks of him in conjunction with Capito Ateius: "Capito Ateius … principem in civitate locum studiis adsecutus—Labeonem Antistium, iisdem artibus praecellentem … namque illa aetas duo pacis decora simul tulit; sed Labeo incorrupta libertate … celebratior" (An. III. 75). Horace, who was a contemporary of Labeo's, says that he was a maniac, or, at any rate—"considered very crazy in the company of the sane":—
"Labeone insanior inter
Sanos dicatur." (Sat. I. III. 82.)
Hitherto Horace by the side of "Tacitus" has been no better than a clay pitcher by a porcelain vase; thus his disparaging, but, doubtless, quite correct estimate of Labeo has been till now altogether disregarded, in consequence of this passage in the Annals, from its author being credited with having exceeded what the ancient Romans had left us in the way of history.
So great is the repute of the Author of the Annals for supremacy in the historian's art that Justus Lipsius places no faith whatever in Suetonius when that, possibly, most veracious historian records in his Life of Tiberius (61) the number of the people who were executed for their attachment to Sejanus as amounting to twenty; the universally applauded, and, generally considered, most judicious Batavian critic of the sixteenth century, without a manuscript or edition for his authority, alters this number for One Thousand, because the author of the Annals speaks of a "countless" mass of slain of all ranks, ages, and both (he says "all") sexes, and further describes corpses as lying about singly or piled up in heaps: "jacuit immensa strages, omnis sexus, omnis aetas, illustres, ignobiles, dispersi aut aggerati" (VI. 19).
Hence, too, Dr. Nipperdey, in drawing up a table of the Augustan family, in order to guard the reader against being perplexed by the relationships of that house, treats the same Suetonius as of no account when he says,—and Suetonius twice says it (Cal. I., Ner. 5),—that Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, married "the younger Antonia." "In default of other evidence on the question of fact," says the learned professor, "we must follow the better author, Tacitus,"—the better author being the writer of the Annals, who, on two occasions (I. 42; XII. 64), makes the "elder Antonia" the wife of Drusus.
Examples of this description could be multiplied. But it is not necessary to pursue this line of argument farther,—at least, at present. What is required just now is not so much proof that the author of the Annals did not write like the Romans, but that he did not write like Tacitus, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts he made to imitate him, and be mistaken for him by contemporaries and posterity. To do this I must bring forward from the History and the Annals an accumulation of coincidences, seeing that the fabricator, being a most acute person, must have proceeded upon the same principle as a man who forges a cheque upon a banker, and who, in the prosecution of his design, endeavours to imitate, as closely as he can, the handwriting of his victim, and do everything carefully enough to escape immediate detection, whatever may afterwards ensue.
CHAPTER III.
SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER OF THE ANNALS FROM THE POINT OF TREATMENT.
I. Nature of the history.—II. Arrangement of the narrative.— III. Completeness in form.—IV. Incongruities, contradictions and disagreements from the History of Tacitus.—V. Craftiness of the writer.—VI. Subordination of history to biography.—VII. The author of the Annals and Tacitus differently illustrate Roman history.—VIII. Characters and events corresponding to characters and events of the XVth century.—IX. Greatness of the Author of the Annals.
I. Before proceeding to point out the imitations, and show where, in the efforts to write, and make history after the likeness of Tacitus, the author of the Annals fails; and, from the signal nature of his failures, his efforts are seen to be counterfeit, I may observe that a constant endeavour on his part to escape detection renders his imposture difficult to perceive and still more difficult to expose. A man of his penetration and power to enter far into subjects was, of course, deep enough to contrive every species of artifice to conceal his fraud; and as we have no record of his having been seen in the act of fabrication, or of his ever having been even suspected of so doing, I must prove the forgery by a detail of facts and circumstances. I can do this only by going through the Annals minutely,—examining the matter, manner, treatment, knowledge, views, sentiments, language, style, —in fact, a variety of circumstances,—everything that can be thought of;—for if it really be a forgery, it cannot be exactly like the History of Tacitus in any one thing, whatever that one thing be;—then I shall leave the reader to himself, to take into account the whole of the circumstances, and judge whether such a combination could have existed in a genuine work by Tacitus, and is compatible with such a production.
We are to look, first, what the nature of the history purports to be;—whether there is nothing peculiar as to its character.
It will be obvious to the least sagacious that the most paramount and absolutely necessary thing to be accomplished was a vast and comprehensive execution that should correspond to the vast and comprehensive execution of Tacitus. Here was something to be done seemingly insuperable; for how can any one hope to imitate the execution of another, with such marvellous nicety that no distinction can be discerned between the two on the minutest test of microscopic investigation? more especially if the execution to be imitated be that of a man of real genius, consequently unparalleled in its way, of a mighty nature, and, in addition to its mightiness, a thing of the purest individuality. Now, the History of Tacitus is an execution of this description; it is a work of real genius; therefore, it is a distinct essence,—a realization of all the special aptitude possessed by the master-spirit that penned it. But though this cannot be done, yet any one having genius,—and a powerful genius,—by following its bent directly, may expect to exhibit in the execution of a work an ability that shall be considered equal to the ability displayed in the execution of another, even though that other be a man of great genius; but it can only be upon this very sage precaution,—that he exercises his ability, which must necessarily be of a very different kind, in quite a different manner. The forger of the Annals had much too acute a discernment not to know this;—he was also well aware that he had a very strong forte. We know the department in which he excelled,—dealing with despotism, servility and bloodshed. But then, if he was to do this, he would do that, which would be a very strong proof that his work was a forgery; for if he was to do this, he could not take up the continuance of history as Tacitus intended to go on with it namely, with Nerva and Trajan;—that he could not do, because in dealing with those two rulers he would have to deal with men remarkable for mildness, generosity, leniency and good- heartedness;—thus he would have to deal with a subject which must be fatal to his attempt; for it would be opposed to the play of his peculiar gifts, which to be brought out properly required that he should write only of Emperors noted for cruel, unnatural, blood-thirsty tyranny. The plan of his undertaking, to be attended with success, therefore compelled him, whether he liked it or not, to go back to Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
II. This must have been greatly against his will as a forger, because this difficulty must have risen up before his mental vision in colossal magnitude—that nobody, on careful consideration, could admit that Tacitus would have written the narrative of the half-century from the death of Augustus to the accession of Galba, after what he says at the commencement of his History, that the subject next to engage his attention would be the events that happened in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. This, I repeat, is a point that brings forcibly before us the certainty of the Annals being forged, unless any one can believe with Niebuhr that, if Tacitus completed his History before the death of Trajan, and could not write of that Emperor as long as that Emperor lived, but "feeling a void," and "desiring to produce another work," he resumed History with the rule of Tiberius; but nobody can believe this, because it gets us into this enormous, nay, inexplicable difficulty—Why the writer, who, in the History, had shown an epic construction, with an epic opening and an epic story, should observe in the Annals quite another arrangement, and distribute the narrative in a studiously annalistic form? when, too, the disjointed record of the journalist was to be combined with the distinct arrangement of the historian who took the continued transactions of a nation in their multiplicity of details as they occurred at the same time in different places, and related them in clear and due unity in the subject.
III. Out of this variance in the two works arises another tremendous difficulty which we have to look at:—The Annals and the History are intended, the one to be the complement to the other. Then two works, which are necessary to each other, ought to be, when separated, incomplete: if one man wrote them they would be incomplete when separated; but if two men wrote them, they would be complete in themselves. Now, are the History and the Annals incomplete, when separated? or complete in themselves? Everybody acknowledges that they are complete in themselves; each contains everything requisite for the full understanding and enjoyment of each; each has its peculiar force; each its distinct beauty; and for uniformity to exist in the two many passages in both must be destroyed; and the most ingenious can give no just or adequate cause for the destruction of the passages, even as he can give no just or adequate cause for their existence, except that which I am advancing that it was because two men wrote the two works.
IV. This accounts at once for all the incongruities they owe their existence naturally enough to the following simple causes:—the different kinds of information possessed as well as the different views of things entertained by two different individuals; and, along with these, an occasional failing of the memory; for a man, who forges such a very long work as the Annals, must every now and then forget,—however tenacious his memory may be,—what the man, whom he simulates, has said, here and there, in this or that work, upon some minor point in Roman history, not associated with nor essential to the principal thing he has always to keep steadily in mind,—his main matter. Thus we find no end of little trips in the Annals, many of which we will point out in their proper places as we proceed with this investigation: at present it is sufficient for the illustration of our remark to call the reader's attention to this fact:—In the Annals Augustus is represented having as his successors in the first degree Tiberius and Livia; in the second degree his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and in the third degree the leading nobles, including even some of those whom he hated, such, we may presume, as Labeo, his detractor, Gallus Asinius, who was thirsting for empire, and Lucius Arruntius, who would have made the attempt to unseat him had the opportunity presented itself:—"Tiberium et Liviam haeredes habuit … in spem secundam, nepotes pronepotesque: tertio gradu primores civitatis scripserat, plerosque invisos sibi, sed jactantia gloriaque ad posteros" (An. I. 8). Such an account of Augustus adopting these relations, and, after them, strangers and enemies, "out of vain-glory and for future renown,"—that is, to be admired by posterity for an unexampled display of humanity,—could not have been written by Tacitus, being different in every respect from what he relates,—and what he says, by the way, is also said by Suetonius,—that Augustus, looking for a successor in his own family, placed next to himself in dignity, so as to be prepared to be his successor, his nephew, Marcellus, then his son-in-law, Agrippa, next his grandsons, and lastly, his step-son, Tiberius Nero:—"divi Augusti, qui sororis filium, Marcellum, dein generum, Agrippam, mox nepotes suos, postremo Tiberium Neronem, privignum, in proximo sibi fastigio collocavit" (Hist. I. 15).
Such disagreements, due,—in all probability, more than to anything else,—to the occasional failure of the memory,—are sufficient in themselves to prove that the Annals and the History did not proceed from the same source. Accordingly, the man who forged the Annals, having apparently, this overwhelming and troublesome difficulty ever uppermost in his mind, seems to have taken measures for guarding against it as well as he could, and with as much care as he could. This taking precautions against the failure of memory must have been one of the main reasons, why he elected writing of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when, as Tacitus, he ought to have written of Nerva and Trajan. He was thus enabled to relate a series of events prior to, and entirely different from the series of events related by Tacitus; there was thereby no possibility of his narrative clashing with that of his archetype; the most trying difficulties were in this way got over with sufficient ease; the only danger was with regard to a few individuals who lived during the two periods, and a few facts, that trailed their circumstances from one period into the other; but his main history would have nothing in common with the main history of Tacitus.
V. To borrow a phrase of Gualterius—he ran the risk of "falling into Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis":
"Incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charybdin."
How could he convince the world that Tacitus would act with such twofold inconsistency as to write of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when he had said that he would not do so, on account of the number of writers who had recorded the occurrences of their reigns, and that if he resumed the duties of an historian it would be with the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. The world,—and nobody knew it better than the author of the Annals,—is easily convinced; and there is no inconsistency, however monstrous, that it considers unaccountable. He, therefore, set about the task of convincing the world that Tacitus did this. Acting up to his own maxim, that "the way to get out of disgraceful acts that are evident is by audaciousness": "flagitiis manifestis subsidium ab audacia petendum" (An. XI. 26), he resorted to audacity in a trick, which has been hitherto eminently successful,—making the world believe from a single remark which he introduced into his narrative as the double of Tacitus, that that noble Roman was really guilty of this twofold inconsistency, so that changeableness, unsteadiness of purpose and self-contradiction should seem to be his leading characteristics. Without ever intending to write the history of Augustus,—or he never would have begun the Annals with an introduction in which he epitomizes principal events in the Roman State from its very foundation, otherwise what had he left to himself in a subsequent historical composition of a prior date for an appropriate exordium,—he says in his third book that he would make the memorable events in the reign of Augustus the subject of a new history, should his health and life continue:—"cetera illius aetatis memorabo, si plures ad curas vitam produxero" (An. III. 24)—evidently only because Tacitus had said at the commencement of his History, that he had reserved as the employment of his old age, should his life be long enough, the reigns of Nerva and Trajan:—"quod si vita suppeditet, principatum Divi Nervae et imperium Trajani … senectuti seposui" (Hist. I. 1). There was then one and the same man saying in one place:—"I am going to write the History of Augustus when I am an old man;"—(and this being said in the Annals, the author of that book must have wanted the world to presume that the writer would have chosen the form of biography for it):—and in another place: "I am going to write the history of Nerva and Trajan when I am an old man"; (and this being said in the History, the author of the Annals must have supposed that the world might presume that the writer would have chosen the form of history for this continued production).
The author of the Annals having done this, opened out before himself the very widest field for indulging in all sorts of contradictions; for, after this, who would not be, and who is not, prepared for any contradictions? The contradictions come; and they are strange and numerous.
VI. There is a systematic subordination of history to biography throughout the Annals, in which imperial events are sacrificed to the prominence and effect of individual delineations: in the History there is a general, comprehensive review of the Empire at the time of Nero's death; Rome is the centre, and the subject matter the condition of a people affected by the imperial system of government. The History conveys political instruction; the Annals supplies materials for studying the human mind and the motives of human conduct: in imparting a knowledge of events respecting the Roman nation, the writer of the History, who is gifted with graphic power, places images before us, whereas the writer of the Annals, aware that in picturesqueness he was inferior to Tacitus, gives us impressions, while he investigates social phenomena and elucidates the principles of human nature. One work is historic, the other philosophic. One man generalizes, the other particularizes. We are presented with one set of interests in the History, with another set in the Annals. In the History we see the struggles of an empire and the convulsions of the world; in the Annals we are shut out from such a prospect, to have our view limited to the deeds of one or two emperors, and a few renowned individuals.
VII. Such differences, so striking and so essential, prove the Annals to be a forged book; for all these differences in the two works can only be ascribed to the entirely different turns of mind peculiar to two writers. Tacitus wrote as he did, from having a profounder knowledge of the springs of action in the political world than the author of the Annals. The author of the Annals, surpassing Tacitus with respect to the moral world, wrote as he did, from knowing better the motives that influence men's minds, and the passions that sway their hearts. The result of two such very different men composing two such very different works, is, that the contrast is almost as great when we turn from the History to the Annals, as when we turn from a general history of England by a Hume or a Lingard where we notice the origin of Englishmen's liberties and privileges, the chivalrous scenes of the past and the proud glories of the present, to the local record of some county, as Kent or Lancashire, by a Hasted or a Baines, embodying information of boroughs and parishes, town councils and corporations, where such things become of substantial importance as the clauses of charters, the collection of market dues, donations of maces and drinking cups to mayors, and gold or silver cradles to their ladies on the birth of babies during the year of office.
If the Annals is really to be considered a forgery, this, instead of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and conviction of others, the incompatibility of the workings of one spirit in one book with the workings of the other spirit in the other book, when the two compositions were so differently contrived. But if the Annals is to be considered as genuine, then nobody can explain why the same individual should illustrate Roman history in this singular fashion,—both works being designed, as universally admitted, the one to be a complement to the other. What should be the inducement of the author of the Annals if he did not wish the world to deny that it was his handiwork to write his book so very differently from the History of Tacitus? For what was there in the times of Rome under Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian so very different from what the Roman Empire was under their immediate predecessors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, that the part which has to do with events in the days of the first-named four emperors should treat of imperial transactions and be deficient in many of the memorials which claim notice in the part dealing with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero; and, that the part which has to do with events in the times of the last-named four emperors should all but avoid what is amply recorded in the part, dealing with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, imperial occurrences finding but an occasional and almost accidental notice in the Annals, where the mind is encumbered with the minutiae of circumstantial details of individual deeds.
VIII. The author of the Annals, who (as I shall convincingly show hereafter) lived in the XVth century, seems, on account of that, to have had a still stronger reason than those just given for selecting as his subject the half century after the death of Augustus: its characters and events corresponded closely to the characters of the princes who ruled, and the nature of the movements that were going on all over Europe in his time; for in forging history, that was to pass as written by Tacitus, it was incumbent that he should have the same advantage as the Roman,—be on the same level with him in the occupation of ground. Now, the ground occupied by Tacitus was the time of himself, which enabled him to give a complete and copious reflex of a period through which he had lived with thoughtful attention. Thus his colours are bright. Unless antiquity supplied the author of the Annals only the framework of his picture, and the events of the time when he lived gave the scenes for the painting, his colours would fail, and his outlines become unsteady. In other words, there could not be the scrupulous minuteness and the perfect freedom which make history live and breathe, unless, like Tacitus, he registered facts in which he took the deepest interest, from feeling their influence directly and powerfully exerted over himself, and the living and loved around him. Thus his hand, by being guided as the hand of Tacitus, would throw life into his work. And, truly, there is as much life in the Annals as in the History; but, instead of the air of the first century breathing around it, it is the air of the fifteenth.
This can be tested by many a character; one will suffice, that of Caius Piso in the fifteenth book (48). Pliny and Juvenal tell us that Piso was consul suffectus under Claudius: the Tabulae Arvales add that he was a member of the College of Twelve who offered sacrifice when there was increase in the produce of the soil. Writers and records of antiquity say no more of Caius Piso, not even mentioning the name of his father. On such a little known man a forger of Roman history could safely expatiate; the author of the Annals does so in a portraiture that bears the stamp of the fifteenth century: this is particularly observable when Piso is spoken of as "of brilliant repute among the populace for virtues," or, rather, "qualities that wore the form of virtues,"—"species virtutibus similes";—that he was "far from being morosely moral, or restrained by moderation in pleasures; mild in temper and soft in manners; given to pompous show and occasionally steeping himself in luxurious excesses,"—"procul gravitas morum, aut voluptatum parsimonia: lenitati ac magnificentiae et aliquando luxui indulgebat." This does not appear to be at all applicable to the character of any conspicuous personage belonging to the Roman Empire in the first century, when Romans were warriors still, preserving, amid some effeminacy, much of the hardy vigour of their Republican predecessors, ever and anon throwing aside the toga for the sagum, and rushing from the Forum to the field, to battle with ferocious and demi-nude savages, whom ever subduing they carried home captives chained to their triumphal chariots; but it does seem to be uncommonly applicable to a time when many a priest, whose writings manifest a lax habit of thinking and betray a levity, indeed, licentiousness, ill according with a religious turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind. As that was an age when Alexander VI. was a Pope, and Lucretia Borgia the daughter of a Pontiff and consort of a reigning Duke of Italy, we can readily credit the author of the Annals, and laud him for admirable, life-like portraiture, when he says that a character and conduct, such as Piso's, "met with the approbation of a large number of people, who, indulging in vice as delightful, did not want at the head of affairs a strict practiser of the moral duties and an austere abstainer from vice:"—"pluribus probabatur, qui in tanta vitiorum dulcedine summum imperium non restrictum nec perseverum volunt."
The character is too vague in its outlines to be any particular individual's; but as all its points fit many an Italian priest who became a Cardinal or a Bishop and a chief minister to a prince, in the time of the Renaissance, as well as in the period immediately before it, and that immediately after it,—it shows how men reflect the age they live in,—how the principal biographies in any certain time convey a pretty accurate idea of the tone of mind then prevailing; further, and above all, it shows to what a great degree the books of the Annals reflect the chief features of the period when they were written, and how deeply their author enters into the spirit of his age.
As with characters so with events. Heaps of passages in the Annals read like incidents in the fifteenth century. It is more like a picture in an Italian court at that period than in a Roman Emperor's in the first century, when the arrest is made of Cneius Novius for being found treacherously armed with a dagger while mixing with the throng of courtiers bowing to the prince; and then when he is stretched on the rack, no confession being wrung from him as to accomplices; and the doubt that prevailed whether he really had fellow-conspirators. "Cneius Novius, eques Romanus, ferro accinctus reperitur in coetu salutantium principem. Nam, postquam tormentis dilaniabatur, de se non infitiatus conscios non edidit, incertum an occultans." (An. XI. 22.)
IX. In this way do I fancy I perceive the author of the Annals chose his subject and worked his materials, so as to do most justice to his talents, and more easily reach the height attained by Tacitus. When he had apparently thus sketched the plan of his edifice, and set about struggling with the difficulties of the elaboration, he encountered these with such eminent success that the reality of his literary labour is one of the most surprising facts in the history of the human mind. He seems never to have once deviated from his design nor to have ever been perplexed by embarrassments in the course of his undertaking, notwithstanding the voluminousness of its nature. In such a procedure, where the time he chose to descant upon fits in with all he wanted to accomplish, we see the first indication of the vast judgment he possessed, as well as the correct notion he had formed of the extent of his superior powers. In detecting in the author of the Annals so much judgment and such an exact estimate of his great mental faculties, we see the difficulty to be coped with in distinguishing between him and Tacitus, and thus in distinguishing between the spurious and the genuine: but this distinguishing can be accomplished by a minute, and only a most minute examination of the two works.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ANNALS DIFFERS FROM THE HISTORY.
I. In the qualities of the writers; and why that difference. —II. In the narrative, and in what respect.—III. In style and language.—IV. The reputation Tacitus has of writing bad Latin due to the mistakes of his imitator.
I. Statesmen learn the things which are of use to them in government by reading the History, because Tacitus recounts the actions of the world under the imperial rule of Rome. All men can profit in the choice of morals from reading the Annals, on account of its writer relating principally the actions of sovereign princes and illustrious persons in their private capacity.
This diversity of treatment results from the difference in the qualities of the writers. Tacitus possessed a consummate knowledge of the true policy of States, and the use and extent of government. Accordingly, he reveals measures necessary for the successful carrying on of war, or the proper and equitable administration of affairs in peace, while he places before us a graphic and presumably true picture of the mode in which the Romans ruled their Empire in the first century of the Christian aera. The author of the Annals was acquainted with an entirely different form and order of statesmanship and politics. Hence he immerses us in crooked turnings of false policy and dark intrigues of bad ambition, forcibly reminding us of what made the greatest portion of the European art of government in the fifteenth century towards the close of the mediaeval and the commencement of the modern periods. He favours us with a paucity of maxims relating to government in general, or the different branches and offices which make up the body politic; but enters, with tedious fulness, into the rise, operation, consequences and proper restraint of the genuine passions and natural propensities of mankind in individuals, public and private.
We search in vain in the History for any trace of the melancholy that we find in the Annals; and in vain do we look in the Annals for any pictures of virtue and lessons of wisdom which in the History are taught us by bright examples and illustrious actions. Had the same hand that wrote the Annals written the History, we should have had in the latter work a very different treatment. The record would have been dark and dismal, even to repulsion, the opportunities being ample for an historian of gloomy disposition to indulge his humour, when the character of the History is thus described with truth in the Preface to Sir Henry Saville's translation of it:—"In these four books we see all the miseries of a torn and declining state; the empire usurped; the princes murdered; the people wandering; the soldiers tumultuous; nothing unlawful to him that hath power, and nothing so unsafe as to be securely innocent." Then, after stating what we learn from the examples of Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, the writer adds: "In them all, and in the state of Rome under them, we see the calamities that follow civil war, where laws lie asleep, and all things are judged by the sword." In going over such a dreary period of human history, Tacitus is as composed and cheerful as if he was dwelling on the gayest and brightest of themes.
The cause of this is to be found in the fact that there was nothing to overshadow the soul of Tacitus with gloom. However painful and dire may have been the constraint to other Romans during the fifteen years' rule of Domitian, he had no ground of complaint: far from that; for he says that he was advanced by that Emperor further in dignity than by Vespasian and Titus. In the reign of Trajan he must have been supremely happy; for he speaks of it himself as "a time of rare felicity,"—"rara temporum felicitate,"—when men might "think what they pleased and express what they thought." His domestic life must have been blest by the perfect devotion and tender attachment of a wife, who, then in her prime, had surely verified the brilliant hopes of the promising bride. (Agr. 9.) In the maturity of his days he lived again in his children; for that he had children we know from the Emperor Tacitus, a century and a half after, boasting of being his descendant, a pride that was shared in the fifth century by Polemius, a Prefect of Gaul, as we learn from a remark of the Prefect's friend, Sidonius Apollinaris. He enjoyed the most brilliant of literary reputations, as the anecdote sufficiently reveals of a stranger, who, addressing him at a public spectacle, and being informed that he must know him well from his writings, remarked: "Then you must be either Tacitus or Pliny." He was happy in the friendship of Pliny the Younger, and men as good, eminent and distinguished as that elegant disciple of Cicero's.
There was then nothing, in the fortunes of Tacitus to make him trenchant, biting and cynical; but, on the contrary, most gentle, as he was, and most placid and benign. Such being his character, a kind interpretation and a candid sense of actions and individuals meet us on every page of his History. Still in enumerating the virtues of eminent persons he does not omit their vices or failings: his way of doing this is peculiar. He tells us Sabinus served the State for five and thirty years with great distinction at home and abroad, and was of unquestionable integrity, but adds jestingly "he talked too much."—"Quinque et triginta stipendia in republicâ fecerat, domi militiaeque clarus; innocentiam justitiamque ejus non argueret: sermonis nimium erat." (Hist. III. 75.) Otho and Vitellius quarrel and charge each other with debaucheries and the grossest crimes; the historian then, with dry humour, remarks, "neither was wrong":—"Mox, quasi rixantes stupra et flagitia invicem objectavere: neuter falso." (Hist. I. 74.) This witty and ridiculing vein does not prevent him from being always kindly. The benignity of his nature is seen in all his portraitures (which look, by the way, like the portraitures of real men); it is observable in his character of Licinius Mucianus (I. 10), Cornelius Fuscus (II. 86), Helvidius Priscus (IV. 5), and others;—lovely portraits where defects or peccadilloes are given along with real and positive virtues, and in an antithetical manner. His antithetical manner is preserved in the Annals; but, instead of blandness, we come across a propensity to form unfavourable opinions of character and conduct, as when the Athenians are designated "that scum of nations":—"colluviem illam nationum" (II. 55); and Octavia, "the sprig of a gipsy fiddler" [Endnote 074]:—"tibicinis Aegyptii subolem." (XIV. 61) There is wit and ridicule in both works, but it is not the wit and ridicule of the same individual; it is sprightly and amusing in the History; it is ungracious and actually cruel in the Annals.
This difference in the writing of Tacitus and the author of the Annals may be accounted for in many ways,—perhaps in none better than this:—When Tacitus lived no one despaired of public cares being attended to, or the plans of the wise being employed in advancing the national welfare; but when the author of the Annals lived, everybody despaired; private profligacy was as rampant as public misery, and, amid the universal degeneracy, scheming politicians disregarded the good and greatness of their country to be intriguers at court for the improvement of their position.
Those were the times when Louis XI. supplied the places of the ministers and marshals, the generals and admirals of France, the Dunois, the La Tremoilles, the Brézés and the Chabannes with mere creatures—new and obscure men who aided him in his artful schemes and plans of government: he made his barber an ambassador, his tailor a herald at arms, and his phlebotomist a chancellor: he imposed enormous taxes on the people, and when the people revolted, he ordered some of the ringleaders to be torn to pieces alive by horses, and the others to be beheaded, as occurred at Rheims, Angers, Alençon and Aurillac. Francis of Carrara, the Lord of Padua, cruelly murdered the Venetian General, Galeaz of Mantua, when the Doge and Council of Venice refused to ratify the terms of a capitulation. Suspicion attached to the peace in which Ivan Basilowitch lived and ruled in his palace at Moscow, surrounded completely by a wooden wall. Enclosed, too, by a very large tract of land, and in a most magnificent mansion which he built for himself and his companions at Ripaglia, a place pleasantly situated on the Lake of Geneva, Amedeus, the last Count and first Duke of Savoy, so abandoned himself in his unobserved private and solitary life, to all kinds of debaucheries, that Desmarets says in his "Tableau des Papes" (p. 167) that from that originated the phrase "to feast and make merry,"—"faire repaille"; yet this very Amedeus afterwards acted the part of the only true Pope at Tonon during the greater portion of the two years, 1440 and 1441, having been elected to the Pontificate by the Fathers of Basle during the Papacy of Eugenius IV. When the throne of Don Carlos, the Infant of Navarre, was usurped, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Navarre, by her husband, John I. of Aragon, a disgraceful quarrel and a prolonged war ensued between father and son, when the son, being repeatedly defeated in battle, was finally captured and cast into prison by the father, and poisoned by his mother-in-law; although he was deserving of a better fate, being an enlightened prince who wrote a History of the Kings of Navarre, which is still preserved in the archives of Pampeluna. A blind and feeble old monarch, Muley Albohaçan, King of Granada, ordered the massacre of a number of children by his first marriage; Ziska destroyed 550 churches and monasteries in Germany alone; and, for attempting reforms in religion, Huss and Jerome of Prague were cruelly burnt alive at the stake. These and similar horrors of those distressful times, which find fit counterparts in revolting incidents in the Annals, could not but deeply affect the soul of a man ardently loving liberty and devoted to humanity as, unquestionably, was the forger of that work: hence throughout his book the sting which misfortune gives, and the moodiness which melancholy begets.
A spirit of liberty runs through his work; but the spirit is not the same as that which pervades the History of Tacitus any more than that his merits are like the Roman's in precision of delineating actions and characters. The good temper of Tacitus causes him to differ from other writers in the estimation of character. He gives a better account of Galba and Vitellius than Suetonius; of Vitellius and Nero than the abbreviator of Cassius Dio, Xiphilinus, of Otho than Juvenal; and of Vinius than Plutarch. Galba, who, in Suetonius, puts to death, with their wives and children, the Governors in Spain and Gaul who did not side with his party during the life of Nero, is, with Tacitus, a prince remarkable for integrity and justice, and such faults as he has are not, strictly speaking, his own, but those of worthless friends who abuse his confidence, for we are told that it is the pernicious counsels of Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, the former depraved and profligate, the other slothful and incapable, which first lose him the popular favour and ultimately prove his ruin: "Invalidum senem Titus Vinnius et Cornelius Laeo, alter deterrimus mortalium, alter ignavissimus, odio flagitorum oneratum, contemptu inertiae destruebant." (Hist. I. 6 in.) Vitellius, who, according to Suetonius, puts one of his sons to death, and poisons his mother, or starves her to death, is, in Tacitus, a tender father doing all for his offspring that fortune permits him to do in his excess of adversity (Hist. II. 59), and a respectful, sensitive son seeking to abdicate his empire in order to rescue his parent from impending evils. (Hist. III. 67.) Juvenal shows us Otho carrying into the tumult of the battle-field the effeminacy that disgraces him in time of peace; Tacitus represents Otho as an active warrior (Hist. II. 11); and convinces us that there was more of good than evil in that emperor. Xiphilinus paints the wife of Vitellius as wickedly dissolute; Tacitus as a respectable woman of whom the State had no complaint to make in her misfortune. He can find virtues even in Vinius (Hist. I. 13), whom the Roman people execrated and whom Plutarch castigates in terms of unmeasured reprehension.
The Author of the Annals brings before our vision quite opposite reflections from the mirror of life: his pictures are quite horrid of revolting crimes unrelieved by virtuous actions in Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Sejanus, Agrippina, Messalina, Albucilla, and other men and women. His character of Tiberius is the wonderfully drawn portrait of the most absolute and artful tyrant that was ever created by the fancy of man; and we may be as certain that such a character never existed as we may be assured that that the wise maxims and fine things were ever uttered which he tells us passed the lips in private of Emperors and Ministers of State. Though not a single virtue relieves the vices of Tiberius in the Annals, Suetonius speaks of him as showing clemency when a public officer; Cassius Dio describes him as so humane that he condemned nobody for his estate, nor confiscated any man's goods, nor exacted money by force; and Velleius Paterculus makes him all but a pattern of the virtues,—if Velleius Paterculus is an authority,—it being just possible that his "Historiae Romanae ad Marcum Vinicium Consulem" may some of these days be as clearly proved to be as glaring a modern forgery, as I am now attempting to prove the Annals of Tacitus to be: certain it is that what we have of Velleius Paterculus is supplied by only one MS., which was found under very suspicious circumstances in very suspicious times.
II. The general train of the narrative may be as nervous in the Annals as in the History; but the latter is proof against all objections to imperfection and hurry of narrative: every now and then errors of this description mar the workmanship of the Annals, showing at once that it was not composed by Tacitus. From what he did in the History, he never would have abruptly dropped the proceedings in the Senate with regard to Tiberius and the honours paid to his family: there would have been a measure of time and place in the campaigns of Germanicus: he would have told us what urged Piso to his acts of apparent madness; and whether he was guilty or innocent of poisoning Germanicus: we should have known whether the adopted son of Tiberius came to a violent end; whether Agrippina perished on account of food withheld from her in her dungeon; and how Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus died. This habit of occasionally neglecting to impart complete information, which is not at all in the manner of Tacitus, cannot be due to the difference of arrangement in the two works; which, in itself, is a very suspicious difference; for the plan in the Annals is to give the transactions of every year in chronological order, whereas that in the History is not to keep each year distinct in itself, but allow occurrences to find their proper place according to their nature, before the time when they happen. [Endnote 081]
In addition to this very suspicious difference, there is another producing so much doubt that alone it seems to stamp with truth the theory of the Annals being a forgery.
Tacitus passes over in silence men renowned for learning who took no part in the historical events related by him. The author of the Annals, at the end of one historic year, before passing on to record the events of that which follows, mentions their deaths, as of the two famous juris-consults, Capito Ateius and Labeo Antistius. (III. 74.) In this style of writing we detect two men differing from each other as widely as De Thou differs from Guicciardini: De Thou, confining himself to his own times, descends into minutiae, so as to record the deaths of the great men of his day; Guicciardini, with his eye fixed on his country, passes over memorials of individuals to dwell on the various causes which brought about the great changes in the civil and ecclesiastical policy of his stirring period.
Another thing extremely suspicious is that nowhere in his History, nor even in his biographical work, Agricola, does Tacitus introduce a whole letter. All that he does is to give the substance, and not the contents, as the letter from Tiberius to Germanicus in Germany. (Hist. V. 75.) Elsewhere he refers merely to the contents of letters, as in the second book of the History (64). Speeches are found in his works, for this reason:—Speeches form no small part of what is transacted in the senate, at the army and before the emperor; they issue to the public, they pass through the mouths of men, and they form much weighty matter. Tacitus then seems to have thought that if he inserted speeches, he would be maintaining the majesty of history by attending to great matters, but that if he inserted letters, as they refer generally to private affairs, he would be faulty as an historian, by ceasing to be grave and becoming trifling. There is no accounting, then, for the letter that is found in the Annals (III. 53), if we are to assume that that work was the composition of Tacitus, except we are ready to admit that he was capable of descending from the accustomed gravity of his lofty historical manner to be a rival for supremacy in the small style of such indifferent memoirists, as Vulcatius Gallicanus, who has almost as many letters as there are pages in his very short life of the Emperor Avidius Cassius. [Endnote 083]
Nobody can satisfactorily explain why, or how it was possible that, Tacitus should have contradicted in the Annals what he says in the History of the Legions of Rome and the Praetorian and Urban Cohorts. He tells us in his History that his countrymen had legions in Britain, Gaul, and Italy; in the Annals we are told that the Romans had no troops in those countries. We gather from the Annals, that there were eight legions in Germany, three in Spain, and two each in Moesia, Africa, and Pannonia; from the History we find that there were seven legions in Germany, three in Moesia, two in Spain, and one each in Africa and Pannonia. We are told in the History that the Praetorian Cohorts were nine, in the Annals ten. So we are told in the History that the Urban Cohorts were four (quatuor urbanae cohortes scribebantur) (Hist. II. 93), and in the Annals three (insideret urbem proprius miles, tres urbanae). (An. IV. 5.) It matters not what are the right statements in these several instances; all that concerns us in our inquiry is that, here beyond all question are two different men, possessing quite a different knowledge, informing us about the same things; and the disagreements would be mighty puzzling on any other theory than that which we are advancing,—that two different men wrote the History and the Annals.
So, again, with respect to the twenty-one, and afterwards twenty-five priests of Apollo, the "Sodales Augustales," otherwise styled "Sacerdotes Titii," the latter name being given to them, according to Varro, after birds similarly called, whose motions it was their duty to watch in certain auguries (though what the ancients called the "titius," by the way, is about as little known as what Pliny calls the "spinthurnyx,"—Servius and Isidorus thinking they might have been "doves," from such fowls being styled by the common people "tetas" and "tetos"). Livy makes no mention of these priests; neither does Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though Dionysius was very fond of entering into details of Roman antiquities. Tacitus gives one origin to this priesthood, the author of the Annals another; Tacitus, describing the gladiatorial shows by which the birthday of Vitellius was celebrated in the year 15, says, that the Emperor Tiberius consecrated those priests to the Julian House, in imitation of their first institutor, Romulus, who consecrated them to King Tatius: (facem Augustales subdidere: quod sacerdotium, ut Romulus Tatio regi, ita Caesar Tiberius Juliae genti, sacravit.) (Hist. II. 95.) The author of the Annals, as if this passage had entirely slipped his attention, or dropped from his memory, or forgetting that he was engaged in the forgery of a work by Tacitus, corrects that view by making quite a different statement, that it was King Tatius, and not Romulus, who first instituted, and apparently consecrated that order of priesthood to himself, his exact words being: "that same year saw established a new religious ceremony, by the priesthood being added of the 'Augustales Sodales,' as of yore Titus Tatius, to retain the holy rites of the Sabines, had instituted the 'Sodales Titii'":—Idem annus novas caermonias accepit, addito sodalium Augustalium sacerdotio, ut quodam Titus Tatius retinendis Sabinorum sacris sodales Titios instituerat. (An. I. 54.) As many writings bearing upon the remote time of Romulus and the Sabine kings may be lost, and the author of the Annals may have had, in the fifteenth century, authorities not extant now, to warrant him in writing history so very differently from Tacitus; and as that Roman in such matters must have taken what he said on trust from others, we cannot here decide who was right and who wrong; but what is most important in this investigation is that the disagreement is quite sufficient to convince us that Tacitus did not write the Annals.
We shall hereafter more particularly distinguish the two works by other differences in their matter and form, the manner of their authors, and the substance of the things treated of: for the present we may proceed to distinguish them by some differences in their style and language.
III. In these respects nothing is easier than to detect two writers, no matter how careful they may be in endeavouring to imitate the style and language of each other: there will always be some shade,—and indeed, a very strong shade,—whereby to distinguish their manner of thinking and their choice and arrangement of words; there will be more or less purity, simplicity, grace and propriety in their choice of language; more or less beauty, precision, cadence and harmony in their collocation of words: their cogitative faculty will vary in measure of thought—in force or tenuity; nor will they resemble in their train of ideas,—be that regular, methodical and uniform, or unsteady, scattered and disorderly. There must ever be these important differences; they spring out of individual idiosyncrasy; their exercise is involuntary, being dependent upon the native taste and turn of mind of the writer; from such influence he can no more escape, than he can avoid in his physical qualities a peculiar gait or tone of voice, look, laugh, or mode of bearing. If any one question this, let him take up any of the dramas written conjointly by members of the School of Shakespeare in the reign of James the First. They all tried to shape themselves in the same mould; they served apprentices to one another in constructing and composing the drama; Cartwright strove to write like his instructor, Ben Jonson; Massinger like his master, Shakespeare; Shakespeare, too, like Marston and Robert Green (for Marston taught him how to write tragedy, and Green taught him how to write comedy): they believed that they eminently succeeded in catching each other's manner, and to such a nicety, that they could write together, without the handiwork of one being distinguishable from the handiwork of the other. In this spirit Shakespeare wrote with Fletcher; Dekker with William Rowley; Ford, too, with Dekker; numerous others similarly composed in companionship, Middleton, Marston, Day and Heywood; but any one acquainted with their separate productions, consequently, with their style and language can hardly fail to point out what this one wrote, and what was written by the other. Test this by Shakespeare, who, it would be supposed, is the most difficult to detect because it is generally stated and believed that he wrote in a variety of styles; it is only a seeming variety; his mode of versification certainly differs—he changed his measures with his subjects; still the same fancy is always at work, impressing images with strength on the mind; there is no change in the weightiness of the style, the quaintness of the language, the justness of the representations, the depth of the reflections, whether he be writing the two worst plays in which he took part (for portions only seem to have been supplied by him), Pericles and Titus Andronicus, or his two best, conceived so massively and executed in such a masterly manner, Macbeth and Othello. In the Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with Fletcher, any body familiar with his acknowledged dramas, can trace him as easily as a traveller follows with his finger the course of the Rhone while that river is traversing the Lake of Geneva; for one can tell with as much certainty, as if assured of it, that he wrote the whole opening of that tragedy, or First Act, while his light, airy and more sprightly collaborator wrote all the closing part, or last Act.
Now, the author of the Annals seems to have displayed remarkable diligence in a careful study of the style and language of Tacitus with the view of reproducing them in the multiplicity and variety of expressions that would necessarily occur in the course of the very long work he meditated forging. To judge from his handiwork, he was specially struck by certain peculiarities:—such as dignified and powerful expression, with extraordinary conciseness joined to loftiness of diction;—hence, his brevity, being dissembled, and altogether foreign to his own natural diction, which was most copious, has a hardness and obscurity, of which the brevity of Tacitus is totally void. He seems to have furthermore observed how the language of Tacitus has a poetical complexion, is figurative, nor altogether free from oratorical tinsel with mixture of foreign, especially Greek construction, and the most peculiar, new and unusual turns of expression, alliterations and similar endings of words. Yet notwithstanding all this care and diligence he was utterly incapable of approaching in language and style so close to the great original he pretended to be as to be confounded with him; he was, indeed, not a bit more successful in approaching his prototype, than that emulous imitator of Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus.
Much might be taken from the Excursus of Roth and the Prolegomena of Döderlein and Bötticher greatly to strengthen this part of my argument; but, their treatises being well known, I abstain, merely observing that, from their remarks, it will be seen that only in the Annals are verbs constructed in a very uncommon and frequently archaic manner, as the ancient perfect, conpesivere (IV. 32), of which there is no example in Tacitus, as there is in Catullus:
O Latonia, maximi
Magna progenies Jovis,
Quam mater prope Deliam
Deposivit olivam. XXXIV. 5-8.
It will be also seen in the above-mentioned most able production of Döderlein that the infinitive and the particles ut, ne and quod are joined with many verbs; that there is an interchange of ad and ut (An. II. 62); a joining of the present and the perfect, and a joining of the infinitive with those two tenses. In the midst of this damaging criticism Döderlein quotes Walther, who has also commented upon the Annals, but in terms of enthusiastic commendation, for he praises such writing as first-rate workmanship—"adjustments by design," says the ingenious German; not, of course, the unconscious errors, that a modern European might make in a case of forgery: the discovery reminds me of Mr. Ruskin's unqualified eulogies of everything done by the brush of Turner, which caused the great artist to observe: —"This gentleman has found out to be beauties what I have always considered to be blemishes."
Professor Hill, also, in his "Essay upon the Principles of Historical Composition" has noticed in the Annals some modes of construction not to be met with in any Roman writer, such as a wrong case after a verb,—a genitive after apiscor which governs an accusative: "dum dominationis apisceretur" (VI. 45); and an accusative after praesideo which governs a dative: "proximum que Galliae litus rostratae naves praesidebant" (IV. 5).
IV. Here let me pause for a moment to glance at a prodigious thing that has been done to Tacitus: it really has no parallel in literature: a number of foreigners have impugned his knowledge of his native tongue. The learned German, Rheinach (Beatus Rhenanus), began, for he could not admit in his Basle edition in 1533 of the works of Tacitus that the language of that Roman was equal to the language of Livy, being florid, affected, stiff and unnatural; his observation being, that "though Tacitus was without elegance and purity in his language, from Latin in his time being deteriorated by foreign turns and figures of speech; yet there was one thing he retained in its entirety, and that was blood and marrow in his matter": "Quamvis Tacitus caruerit nitore et puritate linguae, abeunte jam Romano sermone in peregrinas formas atque figuras; succum tamen et sanguinem rerum incorruptum retinuit." Eight years after the famous Tuscan lawyer and scholar, Ferretti, followed by accusing Tacitus in the preface to the edition of his works published at Lyons in 1541, of writing with inelegance and impurity: "consequently," he says, "in the estimation of eminent literary men Tacitus is not to be ranked after, but rather before Livy; and yet his style, which was florid, though smacking of the thought and care that pleased in the days of Vespasian and his son, and which, from that time,—on account of the Latin language gradually declining in purity,—steadily degenerated into a kind of affected composition, ought not to be placed on a par with nor preferred to Livy's, whose language flows naturally and agreeably, for his was the age of the greatest purity": "Unde factum, ut praestantium in literis virorum judicio Livio non sit postponendus Tacitus, quin potius anteferendus: non quod hujus floridum, ac meditationem et curam olens dicendi genus, quale sub Vespasianis placuit, ac indies exin degeneravit in affectatam quandam compositionem, exolescente paulatim sermonis latini puritate, Livianae dictioni, illi naturaliter amabiliterque fluenti (nam id seculum purissimum fuit), aequari debeat, aut praeferri." Next came the Milanese schoolman, Alciati, who preferred the certainly sometimes elegant and polished phrases of Paulus Jovius (in his letter to Jovius himself prefixed to the edition of 1558 of the renowned Bishop of Nocera de' Pagani's principal production, the 45 books of Historia Sui Temporis):—"they will not ask of you the reason why you have not reached the soft exuberance of Livy, after you have thoroughly regretted imitating the calm solemnity of Sallust, and been satisfied with only the few flowers you have plucked with a discriminative hand out of the gardens of Quintus Curtius more frequently than the thorny thickets of Cornelius Tacitus": "Non reposcent a te rationem, cur lacteam Livii ubertatem non sis assecutus; postquam et te omnino piguerit Sallustii sobrietatem imitari, et satis tibi fuerit pauculos tantum flores ex Quinti Curtii pratis, soepius quam ex Cornelii Taciti senticetis arguta manu decerpsisse." Then succeeded, as fast as flakes falling in a snow-storm, a long string of acute critics, each with his just objections, and each more pointed than his predecessors in his animadversions, down to the present day, when, I suppose it may be said that the eminent Dr. Nipperdey stands foremost amongst the exposers of the bad Latinity of Tacitus. The Tacitus, thus universally proclaimed, and for nearly a dozen generations, not to be a competent master of his own tongue, is not the Tacitus of the History, it is the "Tacitus" of the Annals; and when hereafter I point out who this "Tacitus" of the Annals was,—an Italian "Grammaticus," or "Latin writer" of the fifteenth century,—the reader will not be at all surprised that he every now and then slips and trips in Latin;—on the contrary, the reader would be amazed if it were not so; because he would regard it as a thing more than phenomenal,—as a matter partaking of the miraculous;—he must consider himself as coming in contact with a being altogether superhuman;—if the "Tacitus" of the fifteenth century, who, as a Florentine, may have been a complete master of the choicest Tuscan, had written with the correctness of the Tacitus of the first century, who, as befitted a "civis Romanus" of consular rank, was perfectly skilled in his native tongue;—aye, quite as much so as Livy, Sallust, or any other accomplished man of letters of ancient Rome.
CHAPTER V.
THE LATIN AND ALLITERATIONS IN THE ANNALS.
I. Errors in Latin, (a) on the part of the transcriber; (b) on the part of the writer.—II. Diction and Alliterations: Wherein they differ from those of Tacitus.
I.—An anecdote is told of our present sovereign that, on one occasion, conversing with the celebrated scene painter and naval artist, Clarkson Stanfield, her Majesty, hearing that he had been an "able-bodied seaman," was desirous of knowing how he could have left the Navy at an age sufficiently early to achieve greatness by pursuing his difficult art. The reply of Stanfield was that he had received his discharge when quite young in consequence of a fall from the fore-top which had lamed him,—and for the remainder of his life,—whereupon the Queen is stated to have exclaimed: "What a lucky tumble!" In a similar strain the author of the Annals, after he had handed over his work, according to the custom of his time, for transcription, must have been induced to exclaim, when he marked how the monk who had put his thoughts on vellum, had made him write nonsense in almost every other sentence: "What a lucky transcriber!" The knowledge that he would have a transcriber, who was no adept in Latin, must have been one of the greatest factors in his calculations as a forger. Otherwise how could he entertain the shadow of a hope that his book could pass current, when, in order that it should take its place in the first rank of Roman classics, it was imperative that he should write Latin to perfection. That was impossible; and his fabrication must have been detected immediately upon its publication, even though his age was destitute of philological criticism, unless everybody had known that the scribes in convents who copied the classics were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions. Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during the subsequent stages of it.
There was in his time a regular profession of transcribers, who may be looked upon as the precursors of printers. Numbered among them were some who had great fame for transcribing;—learned men, who knew Latin almost, if not quite, as well as they knew their mother-tongue, Cosimo of Cremona, Leonardo Giustiniani of Venice, Guarino of Verona, Biondo Flavio, Gasparino Barzizza, Sarzana, Niccoli, Vitturi, Lazarino Resta, Faccino Ventraria, and some others;—in fact, a host; for nearly all the literary men, in consideration of the enormous sums they obtained for copies of the ancient classics carefully and correctly written, devoted themselves to the occupation of transcription, as, in these times, men of the highest attainments in letters, some, too, of the greatest, even European, celebrity, give their services, for the handsome remunerations they receive, to the newspaper and periodical press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of writers of manuscripts,—those who were in general employment from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack" transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us, suppliers of scraps of news to the papers,—were still to be found only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for literary acquirements standing on a par with professors of handwriting and dancing masters of the present day. These monkish transcribers wrote down words as daws or parrots articulate them; for just as these birds do not know the meaning of what they utter, so these scribes in monasteries did not understand the signification of the phrases which they copied. We can easily understand how to these manipulators of the pen an infinite number of passages in the Annals, which are still "posers" to the most expert classical professors in the leading Universities of Europe, must have been as dark as the Delphic Oracle,—or the Punic speech of the Carthaginian in Plautus's Comedy of Poenulus to everybody (except, of course, the great Oriental linguist, Petit, who knew all about it, for in the second book of his "Miscellaneorum Libri Novem" he explains the whole speech, without the slightest fear of anybody correcting the mistakes into which he fell).
The jumble occasioned by the interminable blunders of the monastic writers (for there were two of them, as will he hereafter seen) causes both the codices of the Annals to be phenomena for confusion. Unique as literary gems, and preserved in the Laurentian Medicean Library in Florence, they are the greatest attraction to literary sightseers visiting the lucky library in which they are carefully deposited; and, I believe, have a fancy value set upon them as a fancy value is set upon the Koh-i-noor.
Any member of the medical faculty, even the latest licentiate of the Apothecaries Hall, who knows the fatal effect of wear and tear upon the system caused by ceaseless worry, can explain why Philippo Beroaldi the Younger departed this life five years after undergoing the labour of preparing for the press at the order of Leo X. the MS. found in the Westphalian Convent, containing the first six books of the Annals. When we consider the chaos in which that dismal MS. presented itself to the eyes of the unfortunate Professor in the University of Rome, we can readily conceive how he must have consulted, as he told us he did, "the learned, the judicious and the subtle" about the correction of errors of the knottiest nature which came upon him so fast that, to express their abundance, he instinctively borrows his figure of speech, from water gushing from a fountain or coming down in a cataract:— "the old manuscript," says he, "from which I have undertaken to transcribe and publish this volume, gushes forth with a multiplicity of blunders:"—"vetus codex, unde hunc ipsum describendum atque invulgandum curavi, pluribus mendis scatet." One example, out of a legion, will suffice:—In the passage in the eleventh book where Narcissus is represented begging pardon of Claudius for not having told him of Messalina's intrigue, the MSS. at Florence and Rome run thus (according to the report of James Gronovius): "Is veniam in praeteritum petens quod ci CIS V&CTICIS PLAUCIO DIMU-lavisset." Half a century before, Vindelinus of Spire,— who distributed books to all the inhabitants of the world as Triptolemus of old distributed corn,—broke the back-bone of this gibberish, when first publishing the concluding books (from that Vatican MS. which is no longer to be found), by editing "quod eicis Vecticis Plautio dissimu lavisset." Beroaldi altered this to "quod ei cis Vectium Plaucium dissimu lavisset." This was retained in all editions, as the best that could be thought of, till Justus Lipsius, who collated the MSS. of Tacitus in the Vatican Library, as he collated the MSS. of other ancient authors in that and the Farnese and Sfortian Libraries, during his two years stay in Rome, changed it to "quod ei cis Vectium cis Plautium dissimu lavisset." So for a century that remained as the latest improvement till again amended by John Frederic Gronovius, who, seeing the Vatican and Florentine MSS. while searching the treasures of literature in Italy during his tour in that country, edited cis Vectios cis Plautios. Most editors adopt, according to fancy, the rendering of Lipsius or Gronovius, on account of Vectius Valens and Plautius Lateranus being two distinguished Romans in the days of Claudius who intrigued with Messalina. For my own part, I prefer the conjectural emendation of the Bipontine editors who, giving up as hopeless the corrupted passage, edit "quod incestae uxoris flagitia dissimu lavisset," which, if not precisely what was written, carries with it the recommendation of being intelligible, and doing away with the unmeaning cis.
On account of the corruption of the text in the two oldest MSS. that supply the Annals,—the First and Second Florence,—I am aware what care must be taken, when touching upon the Latin in the Annals, not to ascribe to the author faults that were the errors of other people. One ought to be guarded when coming across "reditus," which ought to be "rediturus" (II. 63), and "datum," which ought to be "daturum" (II. 73).
I must pause to observe that, here as elsewhere, in examining the Latinity of the Annals, I cite from the original editions of the last six books by Vindelinus of Spire published in 1470, and the first six books by Beroaldus published in 1515, all editions now in use having "rediturus" and "daturum," but without the authority of a single MS.
These blunders we may fairly father on the monkish transcribers, the more so as their handiworks abound with faults, arising from one of these four causes,—inability of perceiving propriety of expression; which people call "stupidity"; disinclination to the requisite exertion; known as "laziness";—misunderstanding the meaning of the author, or destitution of knowledge.
The errors that spring from ignorance are the most striking; they show the purely negative state of the transcribers' minds; how uninformed they were of facts, and how uninstructed in arts, literature or science. Evidently the transcriber of the first Six Books had never heard of the "Sacerdotes Titii," and seeing that the author had mentioned Tatius in the first portion of the clause in a passage in the First Book (54), he writes "Sodales _Ta_tios," instead of "Sodales _Ti_tios";—"ut quondam Titus Tatius retinendis Sabinorum sacris sodales Tatios instituerat"; just as evidently, from ignorance of the language, having no notion what the author was saying in another passage in the Second Book (2), but seeing that he had used the word "majorum" in the previous sentence, he writes nonsensically "ipsorum majoribus" for "ipsorum moribus" (II. 2); nor knowing what the "propatulum" was in a Roman house, but misled by the author having almost immediately before (IV. 72) spoken of "soldiers being fastened to the patibulum"—or, as we should say, "hanged on the gallows,"—he writes (IV. 74), "in propatibulo servitium" instead of "in propatulo servitium," the "propatulum" being an open uncovered court-yard, differing from the "aedium," as being in the forepart of the dwelling.
How illiterate he and the transcriber of the last Six Books were will be seen in examples and remarks by Kritz in his Prolegomena to Velleius Paterculus; by Döderlein in his Preface to his edition of Tacitus; by Ernesti in his Notes to the Annals; by Sauppe, the able editor of the Oratores Attici, in his Epistolae Criticae, addressed to his learned relation, Godfrey Hermann, and, above all, by Herä, in his "Studia Critica," or elaborate treatise on the Florentine Manuscripts of Tacitus. Both transcribers seem to have had a taste for rhyming and to have thought that the beauty of writing Latin consisted in obtaining jingles, to get which they mix up two words into one, as "san_us_ repert_us_," for "san_e_ is repertus" (VI. 14); or coining, as "templores flores," for "templorum fores" (II. 82); or changing the termination of a word, in order that it may resemble in sound, the word that follows, as "don_aria_ mili_taria_" for "dona militaria" (I. 44); or the word that precedes, as "potu_isset_ tradi_disset_" for "potuisset tradi" (XII. 61).
The same bungling is shown with respect to adjectives, the number, gender and case of which are changed, as "tris_tios_ primordio," for "tris_tiores_ primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incert_as_" for "amore an odio incert_um_" (XIII. 9), and "conqueren_tium_ irritum laborem," for "conqueren_te_ irritum laborem" (XV. 17). The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens concordes agunt sper_nun_tur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords agunt, sper_ni_tur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habe_re_" for "nationes promptum habar_et_," and "neque dubium habe_retur_" for "neque dubium ha_betur_." (XII. 61).
They sometimes succeed, from their stupidity or laziness, in completely puzzling the reader by omitting syllables, and transposing and substituting consonants and vowels, thus producing the most confounding gibberish, as "pars nipulique" for "Pharasmani Polemonique" (XIV. 26); or adding a letter, as "m_orte_m" for "m_ore_m" (III. 26), or omitting a syllable, as "eff_unt_" for "eff_und_unt" (VI. 33). From the same fault they every now and then double a letter, as "Ami_ss_iam" for "Ami_s_iam", or omit one of the double letters, as "antefe_r_entur" for "antefe_rr_entur" (1. 8); or, when two words occur, one ending, and the other beginning with the same letter, they either omit the last letter of the preceding word, as "event_u_ Suetonius" for "event_us_ Suetonius" (XIV. 36), or the first letter of the following word as "quipped _l_apsum" for "quippe _e_lapsum" (V. 10). But it is in single syllables or words or letters that they most abound in errors, frequently omitting them without the mark of a lacuna, or any defect; now they omit single letters, when the second word begins with the same letter as that with which the first ends; at times in the first word, as "victori_a_ sacrari," for "victoria_s_ sacrari" (III. 18); at times in the second word, as "ad _e_os" for "ad _d_eos" (I. 11) now they add single letters as "vitae ejus" for "vit_a_ ejus" (I. 9), or "a_u_diturus" for "aditurus" (XV. 36); or voluntarily add a syllable, that the termination of one word may correspond to the commencement of another, as "Stratonicidi_ve_ _ve_neri" for "Stratonicidi Veneri" (III. 63), or repeat syllables or words (what is called "dittography"), as "Cujus adversa pravitati ipsius, prospera ad fortunam ipsius referebat" (XIV. 38). Puteolanus was the first to throw out the second ipsius, and substitute for it "reipublicae," which most of the editors of Tacitus have retained, though Brotier edits, I cannot help thinking properly, on account of the antithesis in which the Author of the Annals delighted:—"whose adversity he ascribed to his depravity, and whose prosperity to his good fortune":—"cujus adversa, pravitati ipsius; prospera, ad fortunam referebat" (XIV. 38); so that the second ipsius in the MS. is not wrong, only inelegant and unnecessary.
Having thus seen the nature of the errors committed by the transcribers, we may now pass on to what we must consider as the errors of the writer. There is very little doubt that he alone is responsible for the following: using the poetic form "celebris" for the prose form "celeber"—Romanis haud perinde celebris (II. 88, in fin.), which so startled Ernesti that he is almost sure the author must have written "celebratus;" still he would not dare to alter it on account of its being repeated on two other occasions—Pons Mulvius in eo tempore celebris (XIII. 47): Servilius, diu foro, mox tradendis rebus Romanis celebris (XIV. 19);—so merely contents himself with the observation that "those who are desirous of writing elegant Latin will not imitate it:" "studiosi elegantiae in scribendo non imitabuntur." Those desirous of attaining an elegant style would not write as in the Annals, "exauctorare," with the meaning of "putting out of the ranks and into the reserve," as when we find it stated that "a discharge should be given to those who had served twenty years, and that those should be put out of the ranks and into the reserve, who had gone through sixteen years' service, there to be kept as auxiliary troops, free from the other duties which it was customary to render to the State, except that of repelling the invasion of an enemy":—"missionem dari vicena stipendia meritis; exauctorari, qui senadena fecissent, ac retineri sub vexillo, ceterorum immunes nisi propulsandi hostis" (An. I. 36);— here we have a meaning of the word "exauctorare" very different from its sense of "a final discharge," in which it is understood by Tacitus towards the opening of his History, when he is describing the distracted state of Rome, and continues: "during such a crisis tribunes were finally discharged, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso, from the body guard; Aemilius Pacensis from the troops garrisoned at Rome, and Julius Fronto from the watch": "exauctorati per cos dies tribuni, e praetorio Antonius Taurus et Antonius Naso; ex urbanis cohortibus Aemilius Pacensis; e vigiliis Julius Fronto" (Hist. I. 20);—nor would a person desirous of writing graceful Latin use "destinari" for being "elected" to an office, as "destinari consules" (An. I. 3) where Tacitus uses "designari,"—"consule designato" (Hist I. 6).
Grammatical mistakes of the most extraordinary character are sometimes made. There is neglect of indispensable attraction; "non medicinam illud" (I. 49) for "illam," and "non enim, preces sunt istud" (II. 38) for "istae;"—proper Latinity requires that, in "nihil reliqui faciunt quominus invidi_am_, misericordi_am_, met_um_ et ir_as_ _per_mov_erent_ (I. 21), the four nouns should be in either the ablative or genitive, and the verb in the present, with (as Dr. Nipperdey says) moveant in preference to permoveant. "An" is used as an equivalent to "vel;"—"metu invidiae, an (vel) ratus" (II. 22,) and as if synonymous with "sive," "sive fatali vecordia, an" (seu, or sive) "imminentium periculorum remedium" (XI. 26.) In the sentence where Tiberius is described as, according to rumour, being pained with grief at his own and the Roman people's contemptible position for no other "reason" more than that Tacfarinas, a robber and deserter, would treat with them like a regular enemy:— we have the only instance in a classical composition reputed to be written by an ancient Roman, of "alias" conveying the idea of cause, instead of being an adverb of time:—"Nec alias magis sua populique Romani contumelia indoluisse Caesarem ferunt, quam quod desertor et praedo hostium more agerat" (III. 73).
These errors we must believe to be the author's; considering their gravity, we are compelled to ask ourselves the question: "Could this writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a monosyllabic preposition thus standing frequently between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun (judice ab uno: III. 10—urbe ex ipsa: XII. 56—senatuque in ipso and urbe in ipsa: XIV. 42 & 53.—portu in ipso XV. 18); there are other occasional abnormal collocations of the preposition, such as, after two words combined by a copulative particle, or two of them: diisque et patria coram (IV. 8), Poppaea et Tigellino coram (XV. 61) and between two words connected by apposition: montem apud Erycum (IV. 43), uxore ab Octavia (IV. 43—XIII. 12). These usages are not found in the other works ascribed to Tacitus, nor any of the ancient Latin prose-writers; though common enough in the poets, the three instances being found in Virgil;—the first in the Aeneid:—
"Cum litora fervere late
Prospiceres arce ex summa:"
Aen. IV. 409-10;
"Vespere ab atro
Consurgunt venti:" Aen. V. 19-20
And—
"Graditur bellum ad crudele Camilla:"
Ib. XI. 535;
The second in the Georgics:
"Si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque
Inter:"
Georg. II. 344;
And shortly after,
"Pagos et compita circum:"
Ib. 382;
And the third in the Aeneid:
"Duros mille labores
Rege sub Eurystheo, fatis Junonis iniquae,
Pertulerit:"
Aen. VIII. 291-3.
The Latinity, therefore, is good; but though good, it can scarcely be said to be that of an ancient Roman; for an ancient Roman never resorted to such inflexions in prose, only when writing poetry to get over the difficulties of rhythm; hence a modern European would easily fall into the error, from taking the Latin of Virgil to be most perfect; and from deeming that what was done in verse could, with equal propriety, be done in prose.
Though nothing could be more natural than for a modern European to think that the right Latin for "good deeds," was "bona facta" (III. 40), an ancient Roman would have written "bene facta," just as he would have used for the expression "if bounds were observed," "si modus adhiberetur," not "si modus adjiceretur" (III. 6). He would have followed "inscitia" with a genitive, as Tacitus, "inscitiam ceterorum" (Hist. I. 54), and not with a preposition, as "finis inscitiae erga domum suam" (XI. 25), for "an end of ignorance of his family"; nor have used that noun absolutely, as "quo fidem inscitiae pararet" (XV. 58); "in order that he should create a belief in his ignorance." Instead of "hi molium objectus, hi proximas scaphas scandere" (XIV. 8), for "some clambered up the heights that lay in front of them, some into the skiffs that were nigh at hand," he would have used the participle, "moles objectas"; and written "loca opportuna" instead of "locorum opportuna permunivit" (IV. 24), for "he fortified convenient places."
Ancient writers among the Romans, such as Cicero and Livy, used the comparative in both clauses with quanto and tanto; the more recent writers, such as Tacitus and Sallust, used the comparative with them in, at least, one clause. We find in the Annals these ablatives of quantus and tantus, as if their real force was not known, used with the positive in both clauses. A European putting into Latin: "the more closely he had at one time applied himself to public business, the more wholly he gave himself up to secret debaucheries and vicious idleness;" would think his language quite correct when he wrote: "quanto intentus olim publicas ad curas" (mark the place of the monosyllabic preposition), "tanto occultos in luxus" (again), "et malum otium resolutus" (IV. 67).
A Roman did not use the verb "pergere" in the sense of "continuing or proceeding" in a matter, only of "continuing or proceeding" where there is bodily motion. Yet the author of the Annals for "things would come to a successful issue, that they were going on with," has "prospere cessura, quae pergerent" (I. 28); an ancient Roman would have written "per_a_gerent," as may be seen from Livy, who expresses "I will go on with the achievements in peace and war": "res pace belloque gestas peragam" (II. 1); Pliny, "let us now go on with the remainder": "reliqua nunc peragemus" (N.H. VI. 32, 2); and Cornelius Nepos, "but he went on, not otherwise than one would have thought, in his purpose": "tamen propositum nihilo secius peregit" (Att. 22). As many will believe, contrary to myself, that this was a blunder of the copyist (notwithstanding that it is not in the style of his blundering), I will not insist upon it; though I must insist upon the following being an error on the part of the writer for "giving praises and thanks":—"laudes et grates habentem" (I. 69): A Roman could not have said that: had he used "laudes et grates," his phrase would have been "laudes et grates agentem";—had he used "habentem," his phrase would have been "laudes et grat_iam_" (or grat_ias_) "habentem." "Diisque et patria coram)" (IV. 8), is much more in keeping with the ragged language of St. Jerome in his Vulgate than the precision of Tacitus in his History:—There are two mistakes: the first is the collocation of the preposition which has been already noticed; the second is the phrase "standing before the eyes of a country," which is the real meaning of "patria coram"; it is akin to "looking a matter in the face," which is met with,—(and which I almost deem elegant,)— in the cumbrous oratory of Lord Castlereagh, but which I should be very much astonished to discover had originated from the lips of another statesman, the very opposite in speech of the renowned Foreign Secretary,—the ornate and correct rhetorician, so famed for the concinnity of his phrases, the Earl of Beaconsfield.
II. From the diction point of view, the Annals could not have been written by Tacitus, as the language at times is anybody's but his. When "ubi" signifies "where" (at the place itself), and not "whither" (to a distance from the place where a person stands), "Answer me, Blaesus, whither have you thrown the corpse?" "Responde, Blaese, ubi" (quo?) "cadaver abjeceris?" (I. 22) it is the language of Suetonius in that passage in the life of Galba, where he speaks of Patrobius casting the Emperor's head into that place, where by Galba's order Patrobius's patron had been assassinated; "eo loco, ubi" (quo) "jussu Galbae animadversum in patronum suum fuerat, abjecit" (Galb. 20). When two words are coupled with que—que we have the language of the poets, Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Silius Italicus, Manilius, and among prose writers, Sallust (exempli gratia) "meque regnumque" (Jug. 10) when "infecta" is used in the sense of "poisoned," "infected": "the times were so infected and soiled with sycophancy"—"tempora illa adeo infecta et adulatione sordida fuere" (III. 65), we have the language of Pliny the Elder, when speaking of honey "not being infected with leaves," that is, not having the taste of leaves—"minime fronde infectum" (N.H. XIII. 13); and when "que," as if it were "et," means "too," or "also,"—"till that was also forbidden": "donec id_que_ vetitum" (IV. 74), and "his mines of gold, too": "aurarias_que_ ejus"(VI. 19), we have the language of Pliny the Younger, "me, too, from boyhood," "me_que_ a pueritia" (Ep. IV. 19). Just as Cicero uses "domestic" for "personal;"—"exempla domestica, "my own speeches" the author of the Annals uses "at home" for "personal," and "personally";—"domi artes" (III. 69), "personal qualities;"—"domi partam" (XIII. 42), "personally acquired." When he desires to put into Latin: "How honourable their liberty regained by victory, and how much more intolerable their slavery if again subdued," he writes: "quam decora victoribus libertas, quanto intolerantior servitus iterum victis" (III. 45), misapplying "intolerantior" for "intolerabilior" with Florus (IV. 12), who is clever in committing errors in grammar and geography. There is ringing the changes with Livy, when we read in the Annals (II. 24) "quanto violentior, tantum" (for tanto) "illa," and in the great Roman historian, "quantum" (for quanto) "laxaverat, tanto magis" (Livy XXXII. 5). It is using, too, in the sense of Livy (XLI. 8, 5) the verb "differere," instead of the customary expression, "rejicere." The language is peculiar to himself when he uses "differre" for "spargere" in the phrase "and to be spread abroad among foreigners": "differique etiam per externos" (III. 12), as the style is peculiar to himself in omitting the past time (fuisse) when no doubt is left by the preceding context or the immediate sequel in the same sentence, that the past time is referred to in the passage where Silius boasts that "his soldiers continued to be loyal, while others fell into sedition; and that his empire would not have remained to Tiberius, if there had been a desire for revolution also in those legions of his": "suum militem in obsequio duravisse, cum alii ad seditiones prolaberentur: neque mansurum Tiberio imperium, si iis quoque legionibus cupido novandi fuisset" (IV. 18), where after "mansurum," according to Dr. Nipperdey, there should be "fuisse."
Further proof is afforded by the use of the word "imperator," that the diction in the Annals is not that of Tacitus. Having lived in the time of the Caesars, he never could have heard a countryman in speech or writing use "Imperator" other than as signifying one individual, not the commander in chief of the army, but the occupant of the supreme civil authority, "Imperator" being the noun proper of "imperium." In this restricted sense Tacitus always uses the word, because it was understood with that signification by every Roman of his time. For example, in his Agricola (39), he means by "imperatoria laus" "the renown in arms of the Emperor," who was then Domitian. The author of the Annals, who was not aware of this nice distinction, uses Imperator, not as it was used in the time of Tacitus, but as it was used in the days of the Republic. He, too, like Tacitus, uses the noun in its adjectival form, but he does not apply it, as Tacitus does, to that which belongs to the Emperor, but to that which belongs to a general; for he means by "imperatoria laus" (II. 52), "the fame of a general," even of Germanicus. He seems to have thought that it could be given to any member of the imperial house, for he applies it without distinction to Germanicus, who was the son of an Emperor, as to the Emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when speaking of the daughter of Germanicus, Agrippina, who was the mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of Caligula: "quam imperatore genitam, sororem ejus, qui rerum potitus sit, et conjugem et matrem fuisse" (XII. 42); he applies it even to the wife of an Emperor's son, for he styles Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, "imperatoria uxor" (I. 41); he gives the title to the barbarian generals among the Germans (II. 45), which no Roman in the time of the Empire, or, perhaps, even of the Republic, could have possibly done; and, further, to military chiefs, who corresponded then to our present generals of division, for, when speaking of Caractacus as "superior in rank to other generals of the Britons," he expresses himself: "ceteros Britannorum imperatores praemineret" (XII. 33).
That a modern European wrote the Annals is also very clear from the undistinguishing use in that work of the cognate word, "princeps," which, like "imperator," had two different meanings at two different periods of Roman history, meaning, in the time of the Republic, merely "a leading man of the City," and, in the time of the Empire, the Emperor only. This every Roman, of course, discriminated; hence Tacitus everywhere uses the word in its strictly confined sense of "Emperor" (Hist. I. 4, 5, 56, 79 et al.). For "the leading men of the Country," his phrase is not, as a Roman would have expressed himself in the Republican period, "principes viri urbis," but "primores civitatis." The author of the Annals, who was in the dark as to this, uses "principes" in the Republican sense of "leading men," as occurs in the observation: "the same thing became not the principal citizens and imperial people" (meaning, the aristocracy and freemen), "as became humble" homes (meaning, the dregs of the populace), or, "States" (meaning, the occupants of thrones): "non cadem decora principibus viris et imperatori populo, quae modicis domibus aut civitatibus" (III. 6). He also misapplies the word to the sons of Emperors, as if he were under the impression that they were styled "princes" by the ancient Romans as by modern Europeans, for thus he speaks of the sons of Tiberius, Drusus and Germanicus: "except that Marcus Silanus out of affront to the Consulate sought that office for the princes": "nisi quod Marcus Silanus ex contumelia consulatus honorem principibus petivit" (III. 57).
The author of the Annals is quite as remarkable as Tacitus for antithesis: sometimes two antitheses occur together in Tacitus in the same clause. He is as remarkable for an equal balancing of phrases. But only in the Annals is the style of Tacitus mingled with the manner of some other Roman writer, as the easy and flowing redundance of Livy (I. 32, 33); the peculiar alliterations, triplets, ring of the sentences and flow of narrative of Sallust (XIV. 60-4), the antiquated expressions, new words, Greek idioms, and concise and nervous diction throughout of that historian; along with words and phrases, borrowed from the poets, especially Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus, above all, Virgil.
There is neither in Tacitus, nor the author of the Annals, the strength and sublimity of expression found in that great master of rhetoric, Cicero. The eloquence of Tacitus is grave and majestic, his language copious and florid. The language of the author of the Annals is cramped; and he maintains a dignified composure, rather than majesty; occasionally he has an inward laugh in a mood of irony, as when commending Claudius for "clemency," in allowing a man,—whom he has sentenced to execution, to choose his own mode of death. His close, dry way, too, of saying things savours of harshness, and differs widely from the Greek severeness of manner observable in Tacitus. The crucial test is to be found in a few trifling matters of style. So far from displaying the same care as Tacitus to avoid a discordant jingle of three like endings, he will write bad Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather than have a similar ending to three words Tacitus will depart from his rule of composition which is to balance phrases,—"dissipation, industry"; "insolence, courtesy";—"bad, good";—but to avoid a jingle he writes "luxuria, industria"; comitate, arrogantia"; "malis bonisque artibus mixtus" (Hist. I. 10), his usual style of composition requiring "luxuri_a_, industri_a_; arroganti_a_, comitate." He prefers incorrect Latin to such sounds. He writes, "coque Poppaeam Sabinam—deposuerat" (Hist. I. 13), instead of what the best Latinity required, "coque j_am_ Poppae_am_ Sabin_am_." The author of the Annals, not having his exquisite ear, nor abhorrence of inharmonious concurrence of sounds, actually goes out of his way, by disregarding grammar, carefully to do Tacitus, also by disregard of grammar, as carefully avoided, to procure three like endings, as "uter_que_ opibus_que_ at_que_ honoribus pervignere" (An. III. 27), when Tacitus would have unquestionably written, "uterque opibusque et," and, moreover, have written correctly, because the Romans never followed "que" with "atque," always with "et."
The author of the Annals falls into the opposite fault of having three like beginnings as "_a_dhuc Augustum _a_pud" (I. 5), which is in the style of Livy or Cicero, but not Tacitus. At the same time no writer is so fond of alliteration as Tacitus; yet he resorts to it with so much judgment, that it never grates on the ear, and with so much art that it all but passes notice. It is perceptible in the Germany and the Agricola as well as the History; though in the latter work it is carried to greater perfection, and is more systematically used, being found in almost every paragraph. The rule with Tacitus is this:—When he resorts to alliteration in the middle of a sentence where there is no pause, he uses words that differ in length, as "justis judiciis approbatum" (Hist. I. 3), "tot terrarum orbe" (I. 4), "pars populi integra" (6); and so throughout the History, till at the close, we find the same thing uniformly going on:—"miscebantur minis promissa" (V. 24); "poena poenitentiam fateantur" (V. 25); "Vespasianum vetus mihi observantiam" (V. 26). But—and particular attention is called to this—when the alliteration is found at the end of a sentence, or (where there is a pause) in the middle of a sentence, he prefers words of the same length, but different quantities, as, at the beginning of the History;—senectuti seposui (I. l); "plerumque permixta; "sterile saeculum" (ibid); and so throughout the work to the end, where we still find the same regularity of identical alliteration: "clamore cognitum" (V. 18); "coeptâ coede" (V. 22); "oequoris electum" (V. 23); "merito mutare" (V. 24). This peculiarity of composition, so distinctive of Tacitus, unfortunately for his forgery, ENTIRELY escaped the attention of the author of the Annals; he seems to have thought that any kind of alliteration, so long as it was constantly carried on, would sufficiently mark the style of Tacitus. Accordingly he has all kinds of alliterations, except the right ones, for they are quite different from, and, indeed, the very reverse of those of Tacitus; sometimes they are twofold (I. 6); sometimes threefold (I. 5); sometimes even four together—"posita, puerili praetexta principes" (I. 8);—from which last Tacitus would have shrunk with horror at the sight, as Mozart is stated to have rebounded and swooned at the discordant blare of a trumpet. As to using in the middle of sentences words that differ in length as a rule they do not, from the first of the kind, "ortum octo" (I. 3), to the last of the kind, "voce vultu" (XVI. 29); at the end of sentences, he uses words that, instead of not differing, do differ in from the first of the kind, "Augustum adsumebatur" (I. 8), to the last of the kind "sortem subiret" (XVI. 32) and "sestertium singulis" (XVI. 33).
After this overwhelming proof of forgery, I need not press another syllable upon the reader. If not convinced by this, he will be convinced by nothing; for here is just that little blunder which a forger is sure to make: so far from being insignificant it is all- important; it swells out into proportions of colossal magnitude, at once disclosing the whole imposture, it being absolutely impossible that Tacitus should have so systematically adhered to a particular kind of alliteration in that part of his history which deals with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and have so suddenly and utterly neglected or ignored it in that part of the history which deals with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
END OF BOOK THE FIRST.
BOOK THE SECOND.
BRACCIOLINI.
Si per se virtus sine fortuna ponderanda sit, dubito an hunc
primum omnium ponam.
CORNELIUS NEPOS. Thrasybulus.
CHAPTER I.
BRACCIOLINI IN ROME.
I. His genius and the greatness of his age.—II. His qualifications. —III. His early career.—IV. The character of Niccolo Niccoli, who abetted him in the forgery.—V. Bracciolini's descriptive writing of the Burning of Jerome of Prague compared with the descriptive writing of the Sham Sea Fight in the Twelfth Book of the Annals.
Though I have dwelt on the harshness of style and manner, and the occasional inaccuracies in grammar and language of the author of the Annals, it must not be supposed that I fail to appreciate his merit. In some of the qualities that denote a great writer he is superior to Tacitus; nor can anyone, not reading him in his original form, conceive an adequate notion of how his powers culminate into true genius,—what a master he is of eloquence, and how happy in expressing his very beautiful sentiments, which, sometimes having the nature of a proverb or an epigram, please by the placing of a word. His general ideas are scarcely retained in a translation: such a reproduction deprives them of the train of images and impressions which cluster round them in his language of poetry and suggestion, giving them spirit and interest, and imparting to them strength and ornament:—As winter is thrown over a landscape by the hand of nature, so coldness is thrown over his page by the hand of a translator: the student who can familiarize himself with his thoughts as expressed in the tongue in which he wrote, and reads a translation, is in the position of a man who can walk in summer along the bank of a majestic river flowing beautifully calm and stately by meadows pranked with flowers and woods waving in varied hues of green, yet prefers visiting the scene in winter when life and freshness are fled, the river being frozen, the flowers and greenness gone from the fields, and the leaves fallen from the trees.
The question arises,—Who was this wonderful man? If unknown, can he not be discovered?
John Leycester Adolphus, famous for his History of George the Third, discovered the author of the Waverley Novels in Sir Walter Scott, when the Wizard of the North was styled "The Great Unknown," by pointing out coincidences in the pieces and poems, known to be the productions of Scott, in such matters as the correct morals, the refined manners, the Scotch words and idioms, the descriptive power, the picturesque and dramatic fancy, the neat, colloquial turns in dialogue, the quaint similes, the sprinkle of metaphors, the love of dogs, the eloquent touches with regard to the pure and tender relations of father and daughter; and clinched the investigation by showing the freedom and correctness in the use of law-terms and phrases, which indicated clearly that the author was a lawyer. It being easy when a way has been shown to follow in the track, I turned to the period in question, which, I knew, must be the first half of the fifteenth century, to look for a writer, whose qualities, literary and moral,—or rather immoral,—could win for him the triumphal car of being the Author of the Annals—if triumph can, in any way, be associated with such ingloriousness as forgery,—and, after a little looking about, I found him in one whose compositions display, not to a remote, but in a close degree the energy, the animation, the feeling, the genius, the true taste, the deep meaning, and glimpses, ever and anon, of that signal power, which, rising into truly awful magnificence, of looking deeply into the darkest recesses of the human heart, runs through the Annals like the shining waters of a river in whose rich sands roll grains of gold.
The age of that writer was instinct with mental power: men were giants of intellect: Italy had soared to the highest pinnacle in the domain of mind, unequalled by preceding ages, except those of Pericles and Augustus: beginning in the fourteenth Century with Dante and Petrarch, and ending at the beginning of the sixteenth with the father of the modern political system, Machiavelli, it rose to the highest point of its altitude, and remained there through the whole of the fifteenth, when such bright lights shone constantly in the meridian of mind, as that Prince of the Church, Cardinal Sadoleti, great as a poet, equally great as a philosopher, whose poems on Curtius and the Curtian Lake and the Statue of Laocoon would have done honour to Virgil, while in his "De Laudibus Philosophiae" Cicero lives again in style and manner of thinking.
During that long interval of splendour, achievements of the intellect are upon record that fully establish the existence of the most remarkable genius. Poliziano in a letter (Ep. XII. 2) to Prince Pico of Mirandola tells of one of these marvellous feats that was done by a youthful prodigy, only eleven years old, of the great family of Orsini (Fabius Ursinus). First young, Fabio Orsini sang; then recited verses of his own: requested to turn the verse into prose, he repeated the same thoughts unfettered by measure in an unassuming manner, and with an appropriate and choice flow of expression. After that subjects were proposed to him for epistolary correspondence, on which he was to dictate ex tempore to five amanuenses at once, the subjects given being "of a nature so novel, various, and withal so ludicrous that he could not have been prepared for them": after a moment's pause he dictated a few words to the first amanuensis on one subject; gave his instructions on a different theme to the second; proceeded in like manner with the rest, then returning to the first, "filled up every chasm and connected the suspended thread of his argument so that nothing appeared discordant or disjointed," and, at the same instant, finished the five letters. "If he lives," concluded Poliziano, "to complete the measure of his days," and "perseveres in the path of fame, as he has begun, he will, I venture to predict, prove a person, whom, for admirable qualities and attainments, mankind must unite to venerate as something more than human."
In that age some men had such an enthusiastic predilection to antiquity that they were animated by an ardent zeal for collecting ancient manuscripts, medals, inscriptions, statues, monumental fragments, and other ancient and classical remains. Others, again, were suspected of the intention to impose their own productions on the public as works of antiquity; one man, who never ceased to regret that it had not been his lot to live in the days of Roman splendour, Peter of Calabria, styled himself in his Commentaries on Virgil, Julius Pomponius Sabinus, and in his notes to Columella, Julius Pomponius Fortunatus, his object in both instances being that he should be mistaken for some Roman who had flourished in the purest ages of Latinity; and Foy-Vaillant, the celebrated numismatist of the seventeenth century, actually places him, in one of his numismatical works, in the list of ancient authors, while Justus Lipsius and Pithaeus both took him to have been a "Grammaticus", or "writer in Latin," of the earlier middle ages, all the time that he was an Italian academician, who flourished in the fifteenth century, having been born in 1425 at a place that has been called "The Garden of Almond Trees,"— Amendolara, in Upper Calabria.
It would be idle to suppose that the author of the Annals was actuated by the simple purpose of Peter of Calabria; there is ground for believing that some deeper, and less pure, motive instigated him to commit forgery. Though no Peter of Calabria, he was a matured Fabio Orsini; and the only drawback from his fabricated work is that it is not to be looked upon as Roman history, always in the most reliable shape, but rather as a form of the imagination which he selected for expressing his views on humanity;—to paint crime; to castigate tyranny; to vindicate honesty; to portray the abomination of corruption, the turpitude of debauchery and the baseness of servility;—to represent fortitude in its strength and grandeur, innocence in its grace and beauty, while standing forth the sturdy admirer of heroism and freedom; the tender friend of virtue in misfortune; the austere enemy of successful criminality, and the inflexible dispenser of good and evil repute.
That a man of such great parts and extensive learning, with such fine thoughts, beautiful sentiments and wise reflections;—such a cool, abstracted philosopher, yet such an over-refined politician;—such a gloomy moralist, yet such an acute, fastidious observer of men and manners, was a cloistered monk or any obscure individual whatever was an idea to be immediately dispelled from the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a Christmas pantomime could think out the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton or the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. The fact was, the author was a conspicuous, shining light of his generation; the associate of princes and ministers; who, from the commanding position of his exalted eminence, cast his eyes over wide views of mankind that stretched into sweeping vistas of artifice and dissimulation; and who, for close upon half a century, participated prominently in the active business,—the subdolous and knavish politics,—of his time.
II. Everybody knows the fable of the old man, the boy and the ass; but not one in a thousand knows that it was written nearly four hundred years ago by a man who for forty years was a member of the Secretariate to nine Popes, from Innocent VII. to Calixtus III. First in the Bugiale of the Vatican, where the officers of the Roman Chancery, when discussing the news of the day, were making merry with sarcasms, jests, tales and anecdotes, one of the party having observed that those who craved popularity were chained to a miserable slavery, it being impossible from the variety of opinions that prevailed to please everybody, some approving one course of conduct, and others another, the fable in question was narrated in confirmation of that statement.
Poggio Bracciolini was not only the author of that fable, I am now about to bring forward reasons for believing, and with the view of inducing the reader to agree with me, that he,—and nobody else but he,—was the writer of the Annals of Tacitus.
He was in every way qualified to undertake, and succeed in, that egregious task. He was one of the most profound scholars of his age, more learned than Traversari, the Camaldolese, and if less learned than Andrea Biglia, superior to the Augustinian Hermit in a more natural, easy and cultivated style of composition and in a wider knowledge of the world: acquainted somewhat with Greek and slightly with Hebrew, he possessed a masterly and critical knowledge of Latin which he had carefully studied in his native city, Florence, with the most accomplished Latinist of the day, Petrarch's valued friend, the illustrious Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna.
Bracciolini was not of a character to have revolted at the baseness of fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw how those who were esteemed the most learned as well as the most able gained the best lucrative posts under the governments of the Popes and Princes of his day: he, therefore, employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of attaining high rank and great wealth; knowledge was, accordingly, only so far pursued by him as it would be productive of money, and get him through the world in honour and affluence. Up to the age of twenty-six he had the run of, what was then considered,—when good manuscripts were uncommonly costly and very scarce,—a magnificent library of 800 volumes, that belonged to his veteran friend, Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of the Republic of Florence; amid those stores of knowledge he courted the Muses ardently, all the while cultivating diligently the acquaintance of the leaders of society, uniting the character of the scholar with that of the man of the world, and becoming as accomplished in politeness and as profound in mastery of the human heart as in scholarship and learning;—qualities conspicuous in his acknowledged writings, no less than in that extraordinary masterpiece, the Annals of Tacitus.
Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. Guarino of Verona, in spite of the severity with which he was treated by him in his controversies, likens him, in one of his Epistles (Ep. Egreg. Viro Poggio Flor. 26 Maji 1455), to "the purest models of antiquity," and commends him for his "vigorous eloquence and encyclopaedic stores of information": "pristini socculi floret, et viget eloquentia, virtutisque thesaurus." Another of the best spirits of that age, Benedotto Accolti of Arezzo, in his work on the Eminent Men of his Time, puts him on a level with, if not superior to any of the ancient historians, Livy and Sallust alone excepted; for he says, "some of whom" (he is speaking, along with Bracciolini, of Bruni, Marsuppini, Guarino, Rossi, Manetti, and Traversari) "so wrote history, that, with the exception of Livy and Sallust, there were none of the ancients to whom they might not justly be considered as equal or superior"—"quorum aliqui ita historias conscripserunt, ut Livio et Sallustio exceptis, nulli veterum sint, quibus illi non pares aut superiores fuisse recte existimentur" (Benedict. Accoltus Arez. in Dial. de Praest. Viris sui aevi. Muratori. t. XX. p. 179). L'Enfant does not make this exception, for, speaking of Bracciolini's History of Florence, he says, that in "reading it one is reminded of Livy, Sallust and the best historians of antiquity":—"A légard de son Histoire, on ne sauroit le lire sans y reconnoître Tite Live, Salluste, et les meilleurs historiens de l'antiquité" (Poggiana, Vol. II. p. 83). Sismondi, too, in the opening pages of the 8th volume of his "Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age," says in a footnote (p. 5) that Bracciolini, in common with Leonardo Bruni and Coluccio Salutati carried off the palm as a Latin writer from all his predecessors in the fourteenth century:—"à la fin du siècle on vit paroitre Leonardo Bruni, dit d'Arétin, Poggio Bracciolini, et Coluccio Salutati, qui devoient l'emporter, comme écrivains Latins, sur tous leurs prédecesseurs." Although Sismondi is quite right as to the date when Bruni and Salutati flourished, he is altogether wrong in supposing that Bracciolini made an appearance before the public at any time in the fourteenth century; quite at the end of it he was only in his twentieth year: the next century had well advanced towards the close of its first quarter before (with the exception of some Epistles) he began to write, which was not until after he had passed his fortieth year.
Along with these superior merits of an intellectual writer thus freely accorded to him by some of his more distinguished contemporaries and by illustrious historians, Bracciolini possessed the plastic power that makes the forger. He wrote in a great variety of styles and manners; sometimes treating subjects with condensation, and sometimes with diffusiveness. His language is elevated and his sentences are rounded and smooth in his Funeral Orations, in which there is no inflation, nothing declamatory, a perfect absence of straining after effect, yet a rising with ease into veins of sublime rhetoric, while he is close, severe and antique:—hence the principal position that is given to him as an orator by Porcellio in a poem where Marsuppini is called upon to chaunt the praises of Ciriano of Ancona (see Tiraboschi, VI. 286): in ascribing to Marsuppini the place of honour, Porcellio leaves others who are inferior in verse-making to follow; such as, he says, "the Orator Poggio, the sublime Vegio, and Flavio, the Historian":—
Tuque, Aretine, prior, qui cantas laude poetam,
Karole, sic jubeo, sit tibi primus honos.
Post alii subeant: Orator Poggius ille,
Vegius altiloquus, Flavius Historicus.
Then it would seem that, as Vegio and Biondo Flavio were, in the opinion of Porcellio, unsurpassed, the first, for the sublimity of his diction, and the second, by his historical writing, so Bracciolini was lifted by his oratory above all his contemporaries. Wit, polish, and keen sarcasm, with abundance of acute observations on the human character, distinguish his Essay on Hypocrisy, published at Cologne in 1535 by Orthuinus Gratius Daventriensis in his "Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et Fugiendarum." His Letters are written in an easy, agreeable style, with constant sportiveness and endless felicity of expression. In his Dialogues he is delicate, lively, and careful. Facility and happiness of diction are conspicuous in his "Description of the Ruins of the City of Rome," along with accuracy and picturesqueness in representation of objects. But whatever he did, all his writings (including the Annals), bear the stamp of one mind: they indicate alike the predominance of three powers exercised in an equal and uncommon degree, and without which no one can stand, as he does, on the loftiest pedestal of literary merit,—sensibility, imagination and judgment, working together like one compact, indivisible faculty.
In addition to this versatility in composition, which enabled him to imitate any writer, his career fitted him for the production of the Annals by instilling into his mind the peculiar principles of morals and behaviour which find apt illustration in that work. No one could have written that book who had not been admitted within the veil which hides the daily transactions of the great from the profane eyes of the vulgar; and who had not come into frequent personal contact with courts that were corrupt, and with princes, ministers and leading men of society who were objects of unqualified abhorrence.
III. Young Bracciolini who as the son of a notary of Florence in embarrassed circumstances, inherited no advantages of rank or fortune, when he had attained, at the age of 23, a competent knowledge of the learned languages under the instruction of Malpaghino, Chrysolaras [Endnote 136] and a Jewish Rabbi, made his first entry into life by receiving admission, perhaps,—it being the common custom in the fifteenth century,—by purchase, into the Pontifical Chancery as a writer of the Apostolic Letters. At that early age the scene that opened itself to his eyes was calculated to destroy all faith in the goodness of human nature. He found in the occupant of St. Peter's Chair, in Boniface IX., a man, ambitious, avaricious, insincere in his dealings, and guilty of the most flagrant simony, bestowing all Church preferments upon the best bidder, without regard to merit or learning, and making it his study to enrich his family and relations.
Bracciolini did not come into the closest communion with the Popes till he became their Principal Secretary, which was when he was between forty and fifty years of age, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pius II., stating in the 54th chapter of his History of Europe that he "dictated" (or caused to be written) "the Pontifical Letters during the time of three Popes";-"Poggium … qui Secretarius Apostolicas tribus quondam Romanis Pontificibus dictarat Epistolas";—and though Aeneas Sylvius does not mention the names of the Pontiffs, he must have meant Martin V. (1417), Eugenius IV. (1431) and Nicholas V. (1447). Nevertheless, as one of the writers of the Apostolic Letters, Bracciolini was in a position to have seen a great deal that left a lasting impression on his mind of the wickedness of a corrupt court, the Papal one at this period being thus described by Leonardo Bruni, to Francis, Lord of Cortona:—"full of ill-designing people, too apt to suspect others of crimes, which they themselves would not scruple to commit, and some, out of love for calumny, taking delight in spreading reports, which they themselves did not credit"; so that when Innocent VII. died suddenly of apoplexy, the rumour gained belief that he had been poisoned, a violent death seeming quite a natural end to a life of leniency to murder.
Not one star of light shone across the long and dreary gloom of the papal court experiences of Bracciolini. On the deposition of Gregory XII. for that Pope's duplicity and share in the intrigues and dissensions which disgraced the Pontifical palace for three years, Bracciolini seems to have retired from Rome, and to have remained a resident in Florence during the greater part of the ten months' reign of the mild, pious and philosophical Alexander V., the only able and virtuous divine, who sat in those dark times on St. Peter's throne.
IV. For losing that one glimpse of light in public life, Bracciolini was more than compensated by a beam of beneficent Fortune in his private career, which threw such lustre on his path, that it rescued him from what must have been his inevitable fate, morbid cynicism: it was one of the happiest incidents that ever occurred to him:—he formed the acquaintance of a man, seventeen years his senior—who, in the lapse of a very short time, became to him a father and adviser, to whom present or absent he imparted every one of his schemes, thoughts, cares, sayings and doings; who was the unfailing allayer of his anxieties, alleviator of his sorrows, and most constant support of all his undertakings,—Niccolo Niccoli,—of whom I must take notice, as he was one of the most active stimulators of the forgery of the Annals.
Though by no means affluent, and frequently straitened in circumstances ("homo nequaquam opulens, et rerum persaepe inops," says Bracciolini of him, Or. Fun. III.), nevertheless, he made enough money, as well as possessed the munificent spirit to build at his own expense, and present to the Convent of the Holy Spirit in Florence an edifice in which to deposit the books bequeathed to the Brothers by Boccaccio; and, at his death, he left to the public in the same City his own manuscripts, which he had accumulated at great cost and with much pains. He was one of the few laymen, not to be found out of Italy, who had learning and a knowledge of Latin, which he had acquired with that eminent scholar, philosopher and theologian, about half a dozen of whose works have come down to us, Ludovicus Marsilius; but learning and Latin were essential to the carrying on of his very pleasant and most lucrative occupation;—that of amending and collating manuscripts previous to their disposal for coin; a business, in which, we are told by Bracciolini, that he surpassed everybody in excessive expertness ("solertissimus omnium fuit in emendis ac comparandis libris fructuosissima ac pulcherrima omnium negotiatione," Or. in Fun. Nic. Nic.); we can, consequently, conceive what immense sums he must have received for manuscripts of the best ancient Greek and Roman classics, when properly spelt, correctly punctuated, and freed from errors.
His qualities, as enumerated by his friend, Bracciolini, in a most enthusiastic Funeral Oration over his remains (Pog. Op. 273-4), were such as to show, if there be no exaggeration in the description of him, that he was as much a wonder as any of the great Oracles of his age. His attainments were varied; his information extensive; his judgment sound, and to be relied upon, being given not for the mere sake of assent nor for flattery, but for what he believed to be true; "he got into a considerable sweat," says Bracciolini, "when he read Greek," ("in Graecis literis plurimum insudavit"), but was enabled to range over every department of literature in Latin, of which his knowledge was critical and most masterly, for the same authority assures us "not a word could be mentioned, the force and etymology of which he did not know"—"nullum proferebatur verbum cujus vim et originem ignoraret" in geography he stood without a rival; for, his memory, being like a vice, retaining everything he read, even to names, he knew the minutiae, of every country better than those who had been residents in them; though he rarely practised the art, he was a master of rhetoric; as a conversationist he held his company in entranced silence from the wisdom of his remarks, the dulcet flow of his words, and his transcendent memory bringing together from all quarters, with appropriateness to every subject under discussion, the valuable stock of his miscellaneous reading. Nothing could be more natural than that such a wonderful instance of the human intellect should court the congenial society of lovers of learning; he made his house the resort for them; and he placed at the disposal of the studious his library, which was the best in Florence, now that Salutati's, after his death, had been disposed of by his sons at auction.
Bracciolini was so struck by the attainments and captivated by the character of this man, that an acquaintance casually formed speedily ripened into an intimacy of the most confidential, cordial and communicative kind. Bracciolini, during his stay in Florence, was a guest in the house of Niccoli; and there, for nearly a year, he resumed and pursued his studies with ardour amid the rich stores of the large and select assortment of manuscripts, amounting to not far from a thousand in number. He was thus adding to the treasures of his lore with daily assiduity, when the news reached Florence that Cardinal Cossa had (notwithstanding the well-known virtues of Alexander V.) poisoned his predecessor, and had been elected to the pontifical chair by the title of John XXIII.
Behold Bracciolini once more in the palace of the Pontiffs of Rome; and now acting, in the capacity of Secretary, or, more properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them before the public. One can imagine how agreeable must have been the occupation to that Pope of a military rather than an ecclesiastic turn, and fonder of deeds of violence and bloodshed than of acts of meekness and Christianity, when he was presiding at Constance over that General Council, which sent to the stake those Bohemian followers of the Morning Star of the Reformation, Huss and Jerome of Prague, to be burnt alive, according to general belief, with their clothes and everything about them, even to their purses and the money in them, and their ashes to be thrown into the Rhine; but, as will be immediately seen, from the account of an eye-witness, in a state of perfect nudity.
V. Bracciolini, who witnessed the burning of Jerome of Prague, gives a description of it in one of his Epistles, in a manner equal to anything that may be found in the Annals;—indeed, many of his contemporaries thought that his Epistles reflected the style and spirit of antiquity,—Beccadelli of Bologna, for example, who says, writing to Bracciolini: "Your Epistles, which, in my opinion, reflect the very spirit of the ancients, and, especially, the antique style of Roman expression":—"Epistolae tuae, quae veterum sane, et antiquum illum eloquentiae Romanae morem, prae ceteris, mea sententia exprimunt" (at the end of Lusus ad Vencrem, p. 47). The style is simpler, more unambitious, and more flowing and smooth than is usually found in the Annals; but, (as in the descriptive passages in that work), free play is given to the fancy which works unclogged by verboseness; and judgment marks the circumstances in a description which progresses, apparently without art, to the close of the beautiful climax, and strongly moves the compassion of the reader:—"When he persisted with increased contumacy in his errors, he was condemned of heresy by the Council, and sentenced to be burnt alive. With an unruffled brow and cheerful countenance he went to his end; he was unawed by fire, or any kind of torture, or death. Never did any Stoic suffer death with a soul of so much fortitude and courage, as he seemed to meet it. When he came to the place of death, he stripped himself of his clothes, then dropping on his bended knees clasped the stake to which he was to be fastened: he was first bound naked to the stake with wet ropes, and then with a chain, after which not small, but large logs of wood with sticks thrown in among them were piled around him up to his breast; then when they were being set on fire he began to sing a sort of hymn, which the smoke and the flames hardly put a stop to. This was the greatest mark of his soul of fortitude: when the executioner wanted to light the fire behind his back, so that he should not see it, he called out, 'Come here, and set fire to it before my eyes; for if I had been afraid of it, I never should have come to this place, which it was in my power to have avoided.' Thus did this man, perish, who was excellent in everything but faith. I saw the end of him; I watched every scene of it. Whether he acted from conviction or contumacy, you would have pronounced his the death of a man who belonged to the school of philosophy. I have laid before you a long narrative for the sake of occupation; having nothing to do I wanted to do something, and give an account of things very different, indeed, from the stories of the ancients; for the famous Mutius did not suffer his arm to be burnt with a soul so bold, as this man his whole body; nor Socrates drink poison half so willingly as he endured burning."
I shall now place the passage before the reader in the Latin, as it was written by Bracciolini, with some words in Italics, upon which I shall afterwards comment:—
"Cum pertinacius in erroribus perseveraret, per Concilium haeresis damnatus est, et igni combustus. Jucunda fronte et alacri vultu ad exitum suum accessit, non ignem expavit, non tormenti genus, non mortis. Nullus unquam Stoicorum fuit tam constanti animo, tam forti mortem perpessus, quam iste oppetiisse videtur. Cum venisset ad locum mortis, se ipsum exuit vestimentis, tum procumbens, flexis genibus, veneratus est palum, ad quem ligatus fuit: primum funibus manentibus, tum catena undus ad palum constrictus fuit; ligna deinde circumposita pectore tenus non minuscula, sed grossa palaeis interjectis, tum flamma adhibita canere coepit hymnum quendam, quem fumus et ignis vix interrupit. Hoc maximum constantis animi signum: cum lector ignem post tergum, ne id videret, injicere vellet: —'huc,' inquit, 'accede, atque in conspectu accende ignem; si enim illum timuissem, nunquam ad hunc locum quem effugiendi facultus erat, accessissem.' Hoc modo vir, praeter fidem, egregius, consumptus est. Vidi hunc exitum, singulos actus inspexi. Sive perfidia, sive pertinacia id egerit, certe philosophiae schola interitum viri descripsisses. Longam tibi cantilenam narravi ocii causa, nihil agens aliquid agere volui, et res tibi narrare paulum similes histories priscorum. Nam neque Mutius ille tam fidenti animo passus est membrum uri, quam iste universum corpus; neque Socrates tam sponte venenum bibit, quam iste ignem suscepit." [Endnote 145]
It will be seen, as a peculiarity in composition, that, in this not very long sentence, several words are re-introduced, and sometimes over and over again, when the repetition could have been avoided, as: "accedere," "agere," "videre," "narrare," "pertinacia," "constans," "animus," "mors," "exitus," "ignis," "vir," "locus," "palus," "cum," "tum," "tam," &c. As this runs through the whole of Bracciolini's compositions with much frequency, it is to be expected that it would be found to some extent in the Annals; because a man who so writes, writes thus unconsciously and unavoidably, and even when engaged in a forgery, striving to imitate the style and manner of another, he could not escape from so marked and distinctive a mannerism. Bracciolini, accordingly, is found adhering in the Annals to this uniformity of manner: many passages more forcibly illustrative of this peculiarity might be quoted; but I select the sham sea-fight in the XIIth book, for two reasons, because it is pretty much of the same length as the burning of Jerome of Prague, and because it is of a similar nature,—descriptive:—
"Sub idem tempus, inter lacum Fucinum amnemque Lirin perrupto monte, quo magnificentia operis a pluribus viseretur, lacu in ipso navale proelium adornatur; ut quondam Augustus, structo cis Tiberim stagno, sed levibus navigiis et minore copia ediderat. Claudius triremes quadriremesque et undeviginti hominum millia armavit, cincto ratibus ambitu, ne vaga effugia forent; ac tamen spatium amplexus, ad vim remigii, gubernantium artes, impetus navium, et proelio solita. In ratibus praetoriarum cohortium manipuli turmaeque adstiterant, antepositis propugnaculis, ex quis catapultae ballistaeque tenderentur: reliqua lacus classiarii tectis navibus obtinebant. Ripas et colles, ac montium edita, in modum theatri multitudo innumera complevit proximis e municipiis, et alii urbe ex ipsa, visendi cupidine aut officio in principem. Ipse insigni paludamento, neque procul Agrippina chlamyde aurata, praesedere. Pugnatum, quamquam inter sontes, fortium virorum animo; ac, post multum vulnerum, occidioni exempti sunt. Sed perfecto spectaculo apertum aquarum iter. Incuria operis manifesta fuit, haud satis depressi ad lacus ima vel media. Eoque, tempore interjecto, altius effossi specus, et contrahendae rursus multitudini gladiatorum spectaculum editur, inditis pontibus pedestrem ad pugnam. Quin et convivium effluvio lacus adpositum, magna formidine cunctos adfecit; quia vis aquarum prorumpens proxima trahebat, convulsis ulterioribus, aut fragore et sonitu exterritis. Simul Agrippina, trepidatione principis usa, ministrum operis Narcissum incusat Cupidinis ac praedarum. Nec ille reticet, impotentiam muliebrem nimiasque spes ejus arguens." (An. XII. 56-7).
In this passage it will be observed that the same thing takes place in the repetition of words:—"lacus," "ratis," "vis," "navis," "ac," "multitudo," "Cupido," "princeps," "tempus," "spectaculum," "edere," "proelium," "visere," "proximus," "aqua," "opus" and "pugna." The conjunctive particle "ac," is more particularly to be noted as an out of the way word for the ordinary copulative "et": "ac tamen spatium amplexus"; "ac montium edita"; "ac post multum vulnerum," occurring so frequently in such a brief sentence is just like the monotony of composition in the extract from Bracciolini with respect to "cum": "cum pertinacius in erroribus perseveraret"; "cum venisset ad locum mortis"; "cum lictor ignem post tergum," &c.
But this is not all as to the resemblance which the passage from Bracciolini bears to the writing in the Annals. The expression "quam iste oppetiise," i.e. mortem, "videtur," has its exact counterpart in the Second Book of the Annals in the phrase: "vix cohibuere amici, quo minus eodem mari oppeteret," i.e. mortem (II. 24). When, too, Bracciolini says of Jerome of Prague, "se ipsum exuit vestimentis," "strips himself of his clothes," instead of simply, "takes off his clothes,"—"exuit vestimenta,"— we have an expression precisely like that in the Annals, "neutrum datis a se praemiis exuit," that is, "strips neither of the rewards which he had given him" (XIV. 55), instead of "takes away the rewards,"—"praemia exuit."
But I will go by-and-bye more fully into matters of this kind. At present it is necessary that I should still pursue the career of Bracciolini,—or rather so much of it as is absolutely needed, in order that the reader may see how curiously it prepared and formed him to be the author of such a peculiar work as the Annals, which in its characteristic singularity, could have proceeded from him only, and by no manner of means from Tacitus.
CHAPTER II.
BRACCIOLINI IN LONDON.
Gaining insight into the darkest passions from associating with
Cardinal Beaufort.—II. His passage about London in the Fourteenth
Book of the Annals examined.—And III. About the Parliament of
England in the Fourth Book.
I. In the autumn of 1418, after the breaking up of the Council of Constance, Bracciolini left Italy and accompanied to England a member of the Plantagenet family, the second son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Henry Beaufort, whose placid and beardless face the great Florentine seems to have first seen at the Ecumenical Council which that princely prelate had turned aside to visit in the course of a pilgrimage he was making to Jerusalem. Henry Beaufort was then Bishop of Winchester, but afterwards a Cardinal, and though there was another Prince of the Roman Church, Kemp, Archbishop of York and subsequently of Canterbury, Beaufort was always styled by the popular voice and in public acts "The Cardinal of England," on account, perhaps, of his Royal parentage and large wealth, more enormous than had been known since the days of the De Spencers: he had lands in manors, farms, chaces, parks and warrens in seven counties, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, Hampshire and Surrey, besides having the Customs of England mortgaged to him, and the cocket of the Port of Southampton with its dependencies,—an indebtedness of the State which is so far interesting as being the foundation of our National Debt.
Bracciolini had now an opportunity of watching and unravelling the wiles of this august prelate and patron of his; he thus gained still more insight into the ways of the worldly and the feelings of the ambitious; acquired a masterly knowledge of the dark passions and became versed in the crooked policy of court intrigue. He had quitted provinces at home laid waste by hostile invasions and cities agitated by the discord of contending parties; Genoa sending warships to ravage in the Mediterranean, Venice reducing to subjection the smaller States along the Adriatic, and Florence warring with Pisa, still to fix his eyes on darkness and the degradation of humanity; for he was visiting a country,—as England was in the fifteenth century,—buried in the gloom of barbarism, and forlorn in its literary condition, with writers, unworthy the name of scholars, Walsingham and Whethamstede, Otterbourne and Elmham, inditing bald chronicles; students applying their minds to scholastic philosophy; divines confounding their wits with theological mysteries; and men with inclinations to science, as Thomas Northfield, losing themselves in witchcraft, divination and the barbarous jargon of astrology, while rendering themselves, at any moment, liable to be apprehended by order of the doctors and notaries who formed the Board of Commissioners for the discovery of magicians, enchanters and sorcerers; for it was the age when invention framed the lie of the day, the marvellous military leadership of Joan of Arc, and credulity stood as ready to receive it as little boys in nurseries the wondrous tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Through this mist the figure of Cardinal Beaufort loomed largest, unsociable, disdainful, avaricious, immeasurably high-stomached (for he deemed himself on an equality with the king); and, in spite of immoderate riches, inordinately mean: along with these unamiable qualities, he upheld the policy of Martin V., which was to destroy the independence of the National Church of England: he was treacherous to his associates, and murderous thoughts were not strangers to his bosom.
Bishop Milner, in his History of Winchester under the Plantagenets (Vol. I. p. 301), denies that there is solid ground in history for representing Beaufort as depraved, and condemns Shakespeare for having endowed Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, with merit of which he deprived the memory of Cardinal Beaufort. The late Dean Hook, too, in his elegantly written life of Archbishop Chicheley (p. 97) is of opinion that Beaufort "has appeared in history with his character drawn in darker colours than it deserves." Those two distinguished dignitaries, one of the Roman Catholic and the other of the English Church, do not then seem to have heard of the anecdote related by Agnes Strickland, in her Life of Katherine of Valois (p. 114), that Henry V., when Prince of Wales, was narrowly saved from murder by the fidelity of his little spaniel, whose restlessness caused the discovery of a man who was concealed behind the arras near the bed where the Prince was sleeping in the Green Chamber in the Palace at Westminster, and a dagger being found on the person of the intruder, he confessed that he was there by the order of Beaufort to kill the Prince in the night, showing that the Cardinal was guilty of a double treachery, for he was setting on the heir-apparent at the time to seize his father's crown; nor do Milner and Hook seem to have known that the death of the Duke of Gloucester was principally contrived by Wykeham's successor in the See of Winchester, and that, whether poisoned or not, the Duke was hurried out of the world in a very suspicious manner, one of the first acts of Margaret of Anjou after her coronation being, in conjunction with the Wintonian diocesan to bring about the death of that Prince after arresting him in a Parliament called for the purpose at St. Edmund's Bury; Shakespeare, accordingly, had historic truth with him, when he represented the Cardinal suffering on his death-bed the tortures of a murderer's guilty conscience, from being implicated in taking away by violence the life of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester:—
"Alive again! Then show me where he is,
I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him.
He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.
Comb down his hair. Look, look! it stands upright
Like lime twigs set to catch my winged soul.
Give me some drink; and bid the apothecary
Bring the strong poison that I bought of him":—
to which a looker-on observes:—
"O! thou Eternal Mover of the Heavens,
Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch."
It could have been with no gentle eye that Bracciolini looked on
Cardinal Beaufort, whose "bad death," as Shakespeare makes the
Earl of Warwick observe, "argued a monstrous life."
Repeatedly in letters to his friend Niccoli, during two years and more of anxiety and discontent passed by him from 1420 to 1422 in the Palace of the Prince Prelate, Bracciolini complained bitterly of the magnificent promises not being fulfilled that the Cardinal had held forth to him on condition of his accompanying him to England. In vain he looked forward to considerable emolument; day after day he found himself doomed to the common lot of those who depend on the patronage of the great;—"in suing long to bide":—
"To lose good days that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope; to pine on fear and sorrow;
To fret the soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat the heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
And, really, Bracciolini may be said to have been "undone"; for when he got what he had bargained to purchase, the frivolous goodwill of his master, it was, as he expressed it, "the birth of the mouse after the labour of the mountain": he obtained a benefice of 120 florins a year, with what he did not anticipate would be attached to it,—hard work.
In order to have a precise and not a vague and confused idea of the galling effect produced on his feelings by this offer, it is necessary to turn to two paragraphs (37, 38), in the Second Book of the Annals;—for I cannot divest myself of the suspicion that this incident in his life is there indirectly referred to, where an account is given that has no historical basis of the "nobilis juvenis, in paupertate manifesta," Marcus Hortalus, whose noble parentage and straightened circumstances closely corresponded to the birth and means of Bracciolini. When seeking recompense from Tiberius for his four sons, he calls on the Emperor to behold in them "the scions and offspring of what a multitude of consuls! what a multitude of dictators! which he says not to mortify, but to excite commiseration."—"En! stirps et progenies tot consulum! tot dictatorum! nec ad invidiam ista, sed conciliandae misericordiae refero;" commenting on which Justus Lipsius bursts into the angry exclamation: "What a braggart, lying speech on this man's part! For where was this multitude of consuls, this multitude of dictators? Why, I can find only one dictator and one consul in the Hortensian family; the dictator in the year of Rome, 467, when the Commons revolted; and the Consul, Quintus Hortensius, the grandfather of the speaker,—who, perhaps, however, reckoned in the ancestors also in his mother's line": —"Vaniloqua hominis oratio et falsa! Ubi enim isti tot consules, tot dictatores? Certe ego in Hortensia gente unum, dictatorem reperio, et Consulem unum; dictatorem anno urbis 467 secessione plebis; consulem, Q. Hortensium hujus avum. Sed intellegit fortasse majores suos etiam ex gente materna."
Lipsius would have spared himself the trouble of inditing this indignant note and throwing out this useless suggestion had he known that Bracciolini forged the Annals, and playfully interspersed his fabrication occasionally with fanciful characters and fictitious events. The picture of Marcus Hortalus, who had received from Augustus the munificent gift of a million sesterces, being in the days of Tiberius once more poor, married, with children, and seeking aid from the State for his four sons, seems to be all purely imaginary, introduced merely as a photograph from life, the feelings and conduct of Hortalus, after the treatment of his sons by Tiberius, being such a faithful reflex, as far as can be judged from his own confessions, of the feelings and conduct of Bracciolini himself after the way in which his hopes of preferment were blasted by Cardinal Beaufort. Just as Hortalus, if he had been left to himself, would have remained a bachelor, and only from pressure on the part of Augustus, became a husband, and, while incapable of supporting children, a father, so Bracciolini would have remained in Italy and never visited this country, had it not been for the importunities of the Cardinal, and never turned his thoughts to preferment in the Church, which he is invariably telling us he disliked, had not Beaufort given assurance that he would put him in the way of holding some high and lucrative post in England; and then when he received a paltry benefice, instead of expressing thanks like the other dependents on the Prince Prelate, he was silent, from fear of the power possessed by Beaufort, or from retaining even in his contracted fortunes the politeness which he had inherited from his noble forefathers:—"egere alii grates; siluit Hortalus, pavore, an avitae nobilitatis, etiam inter angustias fortunae, retinens" (An. II. 38).
II. We are indebted to Bracciolini's stay among us for one or two matters that are interesting about our country. His two years' residence here filled him with a marked admiration of London as well as with the most confused ideas of the antiquity and greatness of its commerce; and though comments have already been made on his description of it as eminently absurd, the passage is too curious not to be examined again; the more so as it has misled good historians of London, who believing that the account actually proceeded from Tacitus, have taken it to be incontrovertibly true, whereas it is only true, if it be applied, as it is applicable only to the advanced state of society and the large commercial town of which Bracciolini was the eye witness towards the close of the reign of Henry V., and the commencement of that of his infant son and successor. The slightest investigation will carry conviction of this.
A hundred years before the birth of Tacitus, Britain was so monstrously barbarous and obscure, that Julius Caesar, when wanting to invade it and wishing for information of its state and circumstances, could not gain that knowledge, because, as he tells us, "scarcely anybody but merchants visited Britain in those times, and no part of it, except the seacoast and the provinces opposite Gaul": ("neque enim temere praeter mercatores illo adiit quisquam, neque iis ipsis quidquam, praeter oram maritimam, atque eas regiones, quae sunt contra Gallias." (Caesar De Bell. Gall. IV. 20). From this we see that, in the middle of the century before the Christian era, the only trade with Britain was then confined to the shores, and the southern parts, from Kent to Cornwall: it is then, against every probability that, in a period extending over no more than about a hundred years, this trade should have extended up the navigable rivers and have reached London enough for it to have risen up, by the year 60 of our era, into an immense emporium and be known all over the world for its enormous commerce. That this was not the case we know from Strabo, who lived in the time of Augustus, and who, though saying a great deal about our island and its trade, has not a word about London, howbeit that the author of the Annals does record in his work that it was exceedingly famous for the number of the merchants who frequented it and the extent of its commerce; but it is not likely that it was so, if the whole island did no more trade than Strabo informs us, the articles exported from all Britain being insignificant and few;—corn and cattle; such metals as gold, silver, tin, lead and iron; slaves and hunting dogs (Strabo III. 2. 9.—ib. 5. 11.—IV. 5. 2), which Oppian says were beagles. Musgrave, in his Belgicum Britannicum adds "cheese," from some wretched authority, for Strabo says that the natives at that time were as ignorant of the art of making cheese, as of gardening and every kind of husbandry:—[Greek: "Mae turopoiein dia taen apeirian, apeirous d'einai kai kaepeias kai allon georgikon.">[ (IV. 5. 2).
The statement, then, that London had the very greatest reputation for the number of its merchants and commodities of trade in Nero's time is utterly unfounded—nothing more nor less than outrageously absurd; the picture, however, is quite true if London be considered at the time when Bracciolini was here. Its merchants then carried on a considerable trade with a number of foreign countries, to an extent far greater, and protected by commercial treaties much more numerous than previous to investigation I could have been led to suppose. The foreign merchants who principally came to the Port of London were those of Majorca, Sicily, and the other islands in the Mediterranean; the western parts of Morocco; Venice, Genoa, Florence and the other cities of Italy; Spain and Portugal; the subjects of the Duke of Brabant, Lorraine and Luxemburgh; of the Duke of Brittany, and of the Duke of Holland, Zealand, Hanneau and Friesland; the traders of the great manufacturing towns of Flanders; of the Hanse Towns of Germany, 64 in number, situated on the shores of the Baltic, the banks of the Rhine, and the other navigable rivers of Germany; the people of the great seaport towns of Prussia and Livonia, then subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, along with the traders of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
In addition to these bringing their goods here in their own bottoms, a great number of other foreign merchants were established in London for managing the trade of their respective States and Cities, performing, in fact, the duties now attached to the office of Consul, first instituted by the maligned but enlightened Richard III. These foreign merchants being as powerful as they were numerous, formed themselves into Companies: independently of the German merchants of the Steel Yard, there were the Companies of the Lombards; the Caursini of Rome; the Peruchi, Scaldi, Friscobaldi and Bardi of Florence, and the Ballardi and Reisardi of Lucca. The Government protected them, and, as they were viewed with intense jealousy by the native traders, they were judged, in all disputes, not by the common law, but the merchant law, which was administered by the Mayor and Constables; and of the mediators in these disputes, two only were native, four being foreigners, two Germans and two Italians.
The Londoners had made prodigious advances upon their forefathers in the commodities of merchandize in which they dealt. Their most valuable articles of exportation were wool and woollen clothes in great varieties and great quantity; corn; metals, particularly lead and tin; herrings from Yarmouth and Norfolk; salmon, salt, cheese, honey, wax, tallow, and several articles of smaller value. But their great trade was in foreign imports and that was entirely in the hands of foreign merchants who came here in shoals, bringing with them their gold and silver, in coin and bullion; different kinds of wines from the finest provinces in the south of France, and from Spain and Portugal; also from the two last countries (to enter into a nomenclature that's like the catalogue of an auctioneer for monotony of names and unconnectedness of things), figs, raisins, dates, oils, soap, wax, wool, liquorice, iron, wadmote, goat-fell, red-fell, saffron and quicksilver; wine, salt, linen and canvas from Brittany; corn, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, wax, osmond, iron, steel, copper, pelfry, thread, fustian, buckram, canvas, boards, bow-staves and wool-cards from Germany and Prussia; coffee, silk, oil, woad, black pepper, rock alum, gold and cloth of gold from Genoa; spices of all kinds, sweet wines and grocery wares, sugar and drugs, from Venice, Florence and the other Italian States; gold and other precious stones from Egypt and Arabia; oil of palm from the countries about Babylon; frankincense from Arabia; spiceries, drugs, aromatics of various kinds, silks and other fine fabrics from Turkey, India and other Oriental lands; silks from the manufactories established in Sicily, Spain, Majorca and Ivica; linen and woollen cloths of the finest texture and the most delicate colours from the looms of Flanders for the use of persons of high rank; the tapestries of Arras; and furs of various kinds and in great quantities from Russia, Norway and other northern countries. The native merchants of London, the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans, carried on an enormous inland trade. They supplied all parts of the kingdom with corn from the many granaries which filled the City of London. There was a constant buying and selling of live horned cattle and sheep. Trade was great among goldsmiths, jewellers, gilders, embroiderers, illuminators and painters; and makers of all kinds of commodities sent their goods from every part of the provinces, knowing that they were wanted and would meet with immediate purchasers.