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BOOK THE FIRST.

TACITUS.

TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.

A FEW REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE ANNALS TO BE A FORGERY.

SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER OF THE ANNALS FROM THE POINT OF TREATMENT.

HOW THE ANNALS DIFFERS FROM THE HISTORY.

THE LATIN AND THE ALLITERATIONS IN THE ANNALS.

BOOK THE SECOND.

BRACCIOLINI IN ROME.

BRACCIOLINI IN LONDON.

BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS

BRACCIOLINI AS A BOOKFINDER

BOOK THE THIRD.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

FURTHER PROOFS OF FORGERY.

THE TERMINATION OF THE FORGERY.

THE FORGED MANUSCRIPT.

BOOK THE FOURTH.

REASONS FOR BELIEVING THAT BRACCIOLINI WROTE BOTH PARTS OF THE ANNALS.

LANGUAGE, ALLITERATION, ACCENT AND WORDS.

MISTAKES THAT PROVE FORGERY

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 COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.

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.

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 , "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 he alludes to another "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 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 , 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.'" . 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." 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"--: "cedere auctoritati tuae debeam" : "cupio praeceptis tuis parere" ; 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" ; nor of their being, "all but contemporaries in age": "duos homines, aetate propemodum aequales" . 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.

"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.

"Cornelius Tacitus ... post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." 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.

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 . St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Zechariah , 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. 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 , and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,--the Temple of Janus being open from the time of Augustus to Vespasian ;--the number of the Jews who perished at the siege of Jerusalem ; and the possibly large number of Romans who were killed in the wars with the Daci during the reign of Domitian :--all which passages must have been in the lost portions of the History.

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 , Bishop of Lisieux, who died in the middle of the ninth century , 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 , 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 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 ; 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 ? Loon in his "Eleutheria"; Schaeffer in his "De Re Vehiculari"; Johannes Jacobus Claudius in his "Diatrib? 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 , 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:--

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 Biblioth?que 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 "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 1527--it not being till 1533, that Beatus Rhenanus first gave those books the name "Annals" . 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.

Of the seven MSS. in the Vatican, that numbered 1,864, 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 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 Biblioth?que 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 Congr?gation 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 , 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 Trait? de Diplomatique 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 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 ;--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.

A FEW REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE ANNALS TO BE A FORGERY.

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 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.

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