XIII. Whenever Tacitus ends a sentence with a polysyllabic word of five syllables he avoids its repetition at the close of the next sentence. The reverse is the case in the Annals, as, (take the first book of the last part (XI. 22), "rem militaremcomitarentur, —in the sentence after, "accedentibus provinciarumvectigalibus," —in the sentence after that, "sententia Dolabellae velutvenundaretur"; (or take the first book of the first part (I. 21-2), "eo immitior quiatoleraverat,"—the sentence after, "vagi circumspectapopulabantur,"—the sentence after that, "manipulariumparabantur," —where, to be sure, in the last instance a syllable is deficient, but it is made good by the sonorous sesquipedalian penultimate,—manipulariam. So in the works of Bracciolini: "aures tuaerecusabantur," in the following sentence, "domi forisqueobtemperares," in the next sentence, "factorum dictorumqueconscientiae" (Op. 313).
XIV. A peculiarity in composition, if not actually proving, at least raising the suspicion, that the same hand which wrote the last part of the Annals also wrote the first part is observable in the omission of the prepositionin, when rest at a place is denoted;—the omission, it is to be remarked, is not where there is a single word, but when two words are coupled together, as in the last six books,—in the description of the Romans bearing on their shoulders statues of Octavia, which they decorate with flowers and place both in the forum and in their temples: "Octaviae imagines gestant humeris, spargunt floribus,foroque ac templisstatuunt" (XIV. 61); and in the first six books in the description of servile Romans following Sejanus in crowds to Campania, and there without distinction of classes lying day and night in the fields and on the sea shore:—"ibicampo aut litorejacentes, nullo discrimine noctem ac diem" (IV. 74).
Tacitus, in common with all other Roman prose-writers, uses the names ofnations(when the verb implies motion) with a preposition, which is not required with the names ofcountries. The Roman poets are not so particular in this respect, Virgil, for instance, writes, after the Homeric fashion, by the omission of the preposition:
"At nos hinc alii sitientis ibimusAfros:Ecl. I. 65;
for "ad Afros." So after Virgil, whom he is always quoting and imitating, Bracciolini writes "ipse praeceptsIberos, ad patrium regnum pervadit" (An. XII. 51), for "adIberos,inpatrium."
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 Cornutus.—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 and the Romans.— XII. Wrong statement of the images borne at the funeral of Drusus.—XIII. Similar kind of error committed by Bracciolini in his "De Varietate Fortunae".—XIV. Errors about the Red Sea.— XV. About the Caspian Sea.—XVI. Accounted for.—XVII. A passage clearly written by Bracciolini.
It is now, however, time to pass on to other matters more interesting and important, and, it may be, more convincing.
I. Famianus Strada is very much surprised in his Prolusions (I. 2 Histor.) that it should be stated in the third book of the Annals (71), that when a gift for the recovery of Livia was to be presented to Fortune the Equestrian, it had to be made at Antium, where, it is stated, there was a temple which had that title, there being none in Rome that was so named. Here are the words of Bracciolini, in his own style, too, and his own history, neither of which is, nor could be that of Tacitus: "A debate then came on about a matter of religion, as to the temple in which the offering was to be placed, which the Knights of Rome had promised to present to Fortune the Equestrian for the health of the Imperial Princess" (a phrase which no Roman would have used); "for though there were many shrines of that Goddess in Rome, yet there was none with that name: it was resolved:—'that there be a temple at Antium which has such an appellation, and that all religious rites in towns in Italy, and temples and statues of Gods and Goddesses, be under Roman law and rule': consequently, the offering was set up at Antium": "Incessit dein religio, quonam in templo locandum erat donum, quod pro valetudine Augustae equites Romani voverant Equestri Fortunae: nam etsi delubra ejus deae multa in urbe, nullum tamen tali cognomento erat; repertum est, 'aedem esse apud Antium quae sic nuncuparetur, cunctasque caerimonias Italicis in oppidis, templaque et numinum effigies, juris atque imperii Romani esse': ita donum apud Antium statuitur" (An. III. 71). This, however, was not the case; for Famianus Strada says that there was a temple in Rome which had been dedicated to Fortune the Equestrian for more than 200 years by Quintus Fulvius after the war with the Celtiberians, when he was Praetor; and, afterwards when he was Censor, he erected a magnificent edifice in honour of the goddess: the gift and the temple are both mentioned by Livy (XL. 42), also by Vitruvius, Julius Obsequens, Valerius Maximus, Publius Victor, and other historians and antiquaries. One cannot then well understand how a fact like this could have been unknown to Tacitus, who must have been acquainted with all the public buildings in Rome, especially the Temples; though it is quite easy to conceive how the slip could have been made by a writer of the fifteenth century: indeed, it would be odd if Bracciolini had not, now and then, fallen into such errors, which, though trivial in themselves, become mistakes of mighty magnitude in an inquiry of this description.
II. A writer who could be so ignorant about the temples in Rome is just the sort of writer who would display ignorance about the public works in that city. Cognate then with this blunder in the first part of the Annals is the blunder in the last part about that ancient right, the enlargement of the pomoerium. We are told that those only who had extended the bounds of the Empire by the annexation of countries which they had brought under subjection were entitled to add also to the City, and that the only two of all the generals who had exercised this privilege before the time of Claudius, were Sylla and Augustus. "Pomoerium urbis auxit Caesar more prisco, quo iis qui protulere imperium, etiam terminos urbis propagare datur. Nec tamen duces Romani, quamquam magnis nationibus subactis, usurpaverant, nisi Lucius Sulla et divus Augustus" (An. XII. 23). Justus Lipsius, at this misstatement, is, strange to say, quite contented by merely remarking in a merry mood: "I am not going to defend you, Cornelius: you are wrong: an enlargement was also made by Julius Caesar, who was 'pitched in'" ("interjectus") "between these two." "Non defendo te, Corneli: erras: etiani C. Caesar auxit interjectus inter eos duos." Any critic ought not to be facetiously playful, but seriously startled and unaccountably puzzled, that Tacitus, or any Roman of his stamp, should have been ignorant of a fact which must have been known to all his well informed countrymen, from its having been borne testimony to by so many eminent writers;—by Cicero in his Letter to Atticus (I. 13), by Cassius Dio in the 43rd Book of his History, by Aulus Gellius in his "Noctes Atticae" (XIII. 14), and, omitting all the antiquaries such as Fulvius and Onuphrius, Mark Antony in his Funeral Oration over the remains of Caesar, where he bewails the fate of an Emperor, who had been slain in the City, the pomoerium of which he had enlarged: [Greek: en tae polei enedreutheis, ho kai to pomaerion autaes apeuxaesas] (Cas. Dio. XLIV. 49). This fact seems to have been unknown just as well to Shakespeare as to Bracciolini; or our great national poet would have taken cognizance of it somewhere, perhaps in that part of Mark Antony's speech, where reference is made to what Caesar did for the Romans:
"Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,His private arbours, and new-planted orchardsOn this side Tiber: he hath left them you,And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures,To walk abroad and recreate yourselves."(Jul. Caesar, Act III. sc. 2)
III. A writer who could entirely overlook such a memorable achievement of Julius Caesar distinctly shows himself in his incorrectness about the career of such a distinguished member of the Augustan family as Julia, the wife of Tiberius: she is spoken of as having died in the first year of the reign of Tiberius, after having been banished by her father for infamous adulteries to the island of Trimetus, where, deserted by her husband, she must have speedily perished, in lieu of languishing in exile for twenty years, had she not been supported by the bounty of "Augusta". "Per idem tempus Julia mortem obiit quam neptem Augustus convictam adulterii damnatus est, projeceratque haud procul Apulis littoribus. Illic viginti annis exilium toleravit, Augustae ope sustentata" (An. IV. 71).
IV. A very small brass coin preserved in the National Collection in Paris informs us that Julia was alive at least three years after that date. So far from having been doomed by her husband to perish through want, Tiberius held her in such uncommon esteem that he ordered a coin to be struck in her honour in the fourth year of his reign for the money bears the inscription, in Greek capitals, [Greek: IOULIA], with the initials, [Greek: LD], signifying in the fourth year of Tiberius after the death of Augustus.
V. Now let the reader bear in mind that when we find in the Annals a statement so contrary to what we gather from an old coin, we must set down that statement as a pure figment of history; for nothing can be so valuable for correct and exact information as coins, which were always struck among the ancient Romans by public authority, by the decrees of the Senate or the Comitia Curiata, or by the edicts of the Decuriones (Councils of the Municipal towns or Colonies), and of the Propraetors or Proconsuls of the Provinces.
VI. A coin of the latter description lays bare another very gross error committed in the first part of the Annals in making Caius Caecilius Cornutus governor of Paphlagonia in the time of Tiberius (An. IV. 28): Cornutus must have been a Proconsul of that province in the time of either Galba or Otho. The coin, which is a large brass one, exhibits, on its obverse side, Cornutus with a helmet on his head, and underneath [Greek: AMISOU], meaning that he was the Governor of Paphlagonia, of which "Amisus" was the capital, while on the reverse side are the words [Greek: EPI GAIOU KAIKILIOU KORNOUTOU]; Rome, sitting upon shields, holds the Roman world in her right hand Victory stretches forth hers to place a crown on the head of Cornutus, and beneath is [Greek: ROMAE], which, during the period of the Empire, was inscribed on coins, but only in the time of Galba and Otho, because Amisus, that is Paphlagonia, was then subject to Rome, that is, the Senate, under Caius Caecilius Cornutus, as Africa was under Caius Clodius Mucrinus.
VII. No one would have been more willing than Bracciolini himself to have acknowledged the ample sufficiency of this argument to prove in the cases of Julia and Cornutus the forgery of the Annals; for he was himself a great collector of the coins and medals of antiquity, from which he gained a great deal of his historical information: he must, for example, have had in his possession, or have seen somewhere one of those medals which antiquaries say were struck in the time of Nero with a table, a garland, a pot, and the inscription: "Certa: Quinq. Rom. Co. Se." meaning "Certamen, Quinquennale Romae constituit"; for in the fourteenth book of the Annals (20) he makes mention of a set of games by the name "Quinquennale Ludricum," and in the sixteenth (4) by the title "Lustrale Certamnen, though no one has been able to decide, or even divine, what games these were on account of their exceeding insignificance: his object, then, in mentioning them, when their chief constituents or principal prizes were a table, a garland, and a pot, was evidently to impress his reader with his most intimate knowledge of ancient Roman customs, and leave his reader to infer with certainty that the Annals must have proceeded from a native Roman; but here it strikes me that he altogether defeated his own purpose; for if the Annals had been written by Tacitus, that grave historian took such high ground that he would have deemed it beneath him to notice any such trivial amusements, just as Hume and Henry, in tracing the history of the people of England, did not descend to make any inquiry into or mention of the precise time when such popular games were instituted, as the Maypole or country fairs, horse-racing or football.
VIII. Monuments as well as coins may be relied upon for correcting errors made by historians. There is a monument at Puteoli erected in the time of Tiberius A.D. 30, containing the names of fourteen cities in Asia Minor that were destroyed by a series of earthquakes that took place during seven years in the course of the reign of Tiberius, the first being Cilicia (Nipp. I. 233), which was destroyed A.D. 23, and the last, and greatest of all, being Ephesus, which was reduced to ruins A.D. 29. A passage in the second book of the Annals (47) describes twelve famous cities of Asia owing their sudden destruction to an earthquake occurring at night. We are told that "the usual means of escape by rushing into the open air was of no avail: the yawning earth swallowed up everybody: huge mountains sank down, level plains rose into hills, and lightning flashed throughout the catastrophe." Substitute "villages" for "famous cities," "hills" for "huge mountains," and we have, perhaps, as good an account as can be found in such few words of one of those dreadful calamities of nature,—though it happened not in the reign of Tiberius but three years before the death of Bracciolini,—the entire destruction of the city of Naples and its surrounding villages in 1456, when all the inhabitants perished, men, women and children, to the number of no fewer than 20,000 souls. "Eodem anno duodecim celebres Asiae urbes conlapsae nocturno motu terrae; quo improvisior graviorque pestis fuit. Neque solitum in tali casu effugium in aperta prorumpendi, quia diductis terris hauriebantur. Sedisse immensos montes, enisa in arduum quae plana fuerint, effulsisse inter ruinam ignis memorant." (II. 47).
IX. It will be here seen that the only thing mentioned as breaking out more suddenly and being more dreadful in its devastation than an earthquake is the "plague": "quo IMPROVISIOR GRAVIORque PESTIS fuit." Bracciolini spoke from personal observation. When he was here in England in 1422, he would not venture abroad nor leave London, on account of the plague which raged in the provinces and extended over almost the whole island (Ep. I. 7.). Details of this pestilence have not come down to us, but we see how terrible must have been its character, when this strong and lasting impression was left on the memory of Bracciolini, that he avails himself of it in this passage of the Annals to serve as a symbol of the worst species of destructiveness, from which we needs must gather that nothing could have broken out so unexpectedly and without apparent cause as the plague in England in 1422, nor have been more frightful and more rapid in its fatality.
X. Another instance in the first part of the Annnals of how Bracciolini modified circumstances from his own period, and then, —knowing that human actions are ever repeating themselves, just as that the human passions remain the same in all ages,—remitted them to the first century, is his account of the fawning of the Roman Senators, when he represents them imploring Tiberius and Sejanus to deign to vouchsafe to the citizens the honour of an audience: the Emperor and the Minister refuse the supplication; their condescension extends no further than to their not crossing over to the island of Caprea, but remaining on the coast of Campania: thither the Senators, the knights, and the vast mass of the commonalty of the City resort to exhibit a disgraceful spirit of sycophancy and servility; they hurry continually to and from Rome, crowd into Campania in such numbers that they are forced to lie in the open fields night and day, some on the bare sands of the seashore, without distinction of rank; and they put up with the insolence of the porters of Sejanus, who deny them ingress to the Minister. "Aram Clementiae, aram Amicitiae effigiesquecircum Caesaris ac Sejani censuere; crebrisque precibus efflagitabant, visendi sui copiam facerent. Non illi tamen in urbem, aut propinqua urbi digressi sunt: satis visum, omittere insulam, et in proximo Campaniae adspici. eo venire patres, eques, magna pars plebis, anxii erga Sejanum; cujus durior congressus, atque eo per ambitum, et societate consiliorum parabatur. Satis constabat auctam, ei adrogantiam, foedum illud in propatulo servitium spectanti. quippe Romae, sueti discursus; et magnitudine urbis incertum, quod quisque ad negotium pergat: ibi campo aut litore jacentes, nullo discrimine noctem ac diem, juxta gratiam aut fastus janitorum perpetiebantur" (An. IV. 74).
A man must be credulous beyond measure who can believe that such degrading servility was ever manifested among all classes by the ancient Roman people; the picture, nevertheless, seems to have much truth in it, though tinged with exaggeration; but the painting must be transferred from the first to the fifteenth century: there was then a schism in the Church: every now and then the Pope would leave Rome, and stay at Florence, Reate, Ferrara, or some other city in Italy; thereupon crowds of sycophantic devotees, of whom the Roman Church has always had multitudes, would crouch into the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff, and put themselves to a wonderful amount of inconvenience, by thronging into towns beyond the power they possessed of affording accommodation: these flying visits of the Popes into small country towns always occurred during the heats of summer; hence the pilgrims lay in the open air; and all this suffering they submitted to with the patient spirit of martyrs, only to obtain an audience, to have a sight of and a blessing from the Holy Father. When we remember too what was the power of the Popes in those days, we can easily fancy how true is the remainder of the picture when those to whom an audience was denied returned home in alarm, and how ill-timed was the joy of those whose unfortunate friendship with some cruel Papal Minister portended their imminent death. "Donec idque vetitum. et revenere in urbeni trepidi, quos non sermone, non visu dignatus erat: quidam male alacres, quibus infaustae amicitiae gravis exitus imminebat" (l. c.)
XI. The same love of extraordinary exaggeration is found in the last as in the first part of the Annals, showing thereby that the whole work came from the same source. In the thirteenth book Pomponia Graecina is described as changing not her weeds nor her lamenting spirit for "forty" years,—mourning, too, as she was, not for a husband, a son or a father, but Julia, the daughter of Drusus, who was murdered by Messalina. "Nam post Juliam, Drusi filiam, dolo Messalinae interfectam, per 'quadraginta' annos, non cultu nisi lugubri, non animo nisi moesto egit." (An. XIII. 32). Lipsius saw something so extraordinary in this, that, in his usual way, without any authority of manuscript or edition, he cut short the term, substituting "fourteen" for "forty,"—"quatuordecim" for "quadraginta."
XII. A mistake which no Roman could have made occurs in the first part of the Annals, where, we are told that, at the funeral of Drusus, the father of Germanicus, "the images of the Claudii and theJuliiwere borne around his bier":—"circumfusas lecto ClaudiorumJuliorumqueimagines" (III. 5). Should the reader turn for the venfication of this curious statement to some modern edition of the works of Tacitus, it is possible that he may find "Liviorum" instead of "Juliorum," for reasons which will be immediately given; but if he will consult any of the MSS. or editions prior to the time of Justus Lipsius, he will find the passage as given. The error was so monstrous, that Lipsius corrected it; because the Romans, at the obsequies of their great, only carried around the bier the images of the ancestors of the deceased. Accordingly Lipsius asks the very pertinent question, how at the funeral procession of Drusus, who was no member of the Julian family, not even by adoption, the images of members of that house could be borne? He, therefore, substituted a family to which Drusus belonged, the Livii. Freinshemius followed him, and some of the subsequent editors, among them Ernesti, who observes he could see no reason why the images of the Livii should have been omitted at the funeral of Drusus; nor anybody else, except for the very strong and simple reason that the author of the Annals, being Bracciolini, was not acquainted with the fact, which must have been familiar to Tacitus, that the Livii, and not the Julii, were the great ancestors of Drusus.
XIII. That Bracciolini was just the sort of man to fall into glaring mistakes, oftener than otherwise from perverseness, or some peculiar humour, such as a resolution to be in the wrong, would appear to be the case from the remarkable error which he commits in his "Historia de Varietate Fortunae," respecting the beginning of the French kingdom which he puts down at "a little beyond the year 900,"—"paulo ultra nongentesimum annum" (Hist. de Var. For. II. p. 45), thus entirely discarding the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, and ascribing the commencement of the French kingdom to the beginning of the Capetian house; and he gives his reason; for he says that until "a little beyond 900," France had been divided among a number of Princes; but so it was even when Hugh Capet, putting an end to the system of anarchy which had prevailed before his time, established real monarchy; yet monarchy, after all, was not so real then as it was in the time of Charlemagne: Capet was only the most powerful prince among a number of others, who, nominally acknowledging him as king, were absolute in their own rights, raised taxes, dispensed justice, framed laws, coined money and made war. It is true that it is not very easy to get at the proper history of France at the period in question, from there not being the requisite authority for a correct knowledge of those dark and distant times: a great deal of obscurity and conjecture, too, exist as to the actual character of the monarchy,—as to whether, for example, Clovis and his predecessors were real kings, or merely knights errant, and whether their successors were as absolute as the Emperors among the Romans, or more magistrates than sovereigns as among the Germans, all sorts of doubts having been raised and mistiness thrown over these and other important matters by the ingenuity of such writers as Adrien de Valois, Boulainvilliers, Daniel, Dubos, Mad'lle de Lézardière, Mably, Montesquieu, Mad'lle Montlozier, Velly and others: still the historians of France are all unanimous in agreeing, that the French monarchy commenced hundreds of years before the date fixed by Bracciolini, namely, at the commencement of the fifth century, some preferring to begin with Marchomir, Duke of the Sicambrian Franks, and others with Pharamond, (though Marchomir, before Pharamond, was, certainly, king of Gallic France).
XIV. We are told in the first part of the Annals (II. 61) that the boundaries of the Roman Empire extended to the Red Sea. This is generally supposed to allude to the possession of Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia by the Romans, which they held only for two years, from 115 to 117. Now, none of these provinces, only Arabia, Susiana, Persis, Carmania and Gedrosia, bordered upon what the Romans called "The Red Sea," and we "The Indian Ocean"; for the ancients believed that from about twelve degrees south of the sources of the Nile, from a country named by them Agyzimba, there was a continuation of land stretching from Africa to Asia, an opinion entertained by all the old geographers, from Hipparchus to Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, and never abandoned, until long after the death of Bracciolini, when the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and hugging the shores of eastern Africa and of Asia, reached India by the sea towards the close of the fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean having then been known for many hundred years by the name of the Red Sea, and looked upon as a vast body of inland water, like the Mediterranean, we have, unquestionably, a gross error with respect to the geography of Asia, as it was known in the time of Tacitus, when it is written in the Annals: "Exin ventum Elephantinen ac Syenen, claustra olim Romani Imperii, quod nunc RUBRUM AD MARE patescit."(An. II. 61).
XV. The same confusion of ideas with respect to the Indian Ocean, and pointing to identity of authorship, is found in the last, as well as in the first, part of the Annals, when the Hyrcanian ambassadors returning home from Rome have a military escort as far as the shores (it is said) "of the Red Sea," which they are to pass over in order to avoid the territories of the enemy:—"eos regredientes Corbulo, ne Euphraten transgressi hostium custodiis circumvenirentur, dato praesidio ad littora 'Maris Rubri' deduxit, unde vitatis Parthorum finibus, patrias in sedes remeavere" (An. XIV. 25). Here the "Red Sea" clearly means the Caspian Sea, because the Parthians lived to the south of the Hyrcanians, and there was no means of the ambassadors by crossing the Euphrates or going southwards, getting into their country without passing through the territory of their enemies, but by travelling northwards they would pass through Media across the Caspian Sea to their own shores. It is difficult to determine whether Bracciolini did not give the name of "Mare Rubrum" to any large body of water which he believed communicated with the Indian Ocean, which he may have thought was the case with the Caspian, in common with Strabo, and before Strabo Eratosthenes, and after Strabo Pomponius Mela: or Bracciolini may have thought that the Caspian had no communication with any other sea,—was perfectly mediterranean, and that being in the midst of land, it ought to have the same name given to it as the lndian Ocean, that neither mingled with nor joined any other sea. Let the error have originated as it might, it is of a character so cognate with that in the second book, as to induce one to believe that both parts of the Annals proceeded from the same hand, and that that could not have been the hand of Tacitus, as in his day the Romans spoke specifically of the Euxine and the Caspian Sea, so that if he had written the Annals, he would have written in the first instance, "ad Pontum Euxinum," and in the second,"Caspii Maris."
XVI. But if my theory be accepted that Bracciolini forged both parts of the Annals, these errors are not at all to be wondered at; for at the commencement of the fifteenth century, even his countrymen, the Italians, especially the rich merchants of his native city, Florence, as well as the other wealthy traders of Venice and Genoa, who dealt in spices and other Oriental productions, alone practised navigation and cultivated commerce in the countries of Asia, and though better informed of those parts of the world than the other nations of Europe, had yet but a confused and false conception of the Red Sea and the waters in the East.
There ought, further, to be no surprise that Bracciolini possessed this limited geographical knowledge of the lands and waters of Asia, considering that, up to his time, only a few travellers, such as Carpin and Asevlino, Rubrequis, Marco Polo and Conti, had penetrated into the central portions of that continent:—as to Africa, its very shape was unknown, for navigation scarcely extended beyond the Mediterranean: at the commencement of the fifteenth century, indeed, not only information about the different quarters of the globe, but letters, arts, the sciences, and the greater part of our present ideas, were all prostrate, —crushed beneath the weight of weapons and silent amid the din of arms, for everybody thought of nothing but wars.
XVII. While treating of maritime matters, I may refer to a passage in the second book of the Annals, which forcibly impresses me as being penned by Bracciolini, in whose declining years Prince Henry of Portugal, with a passion for voyages and discoveries, gave a new direction to the genius of his age by laying the foundation for a revolution which must be for ever memorable in modern history. On Prince Henry giving the signal, navigation spread its sails; discovery followed discovery with amazing, speed; successes attended every expedition; each started after the other rapidly, and soon in all directions; the navigators returning home brought news so strange,—so animating all minds,—so inspiring all imaginations,—of the fresh lands they had seen that we can easily imagine a writer living in the midst of all these stirring accounts, who was desirous of producing as much effect as possible in a history that he was forging, writing thus of mariners on their "return from a long distance": "they talk about wonders, the power of whirlwinds and unheard of birds, monsters of the deep having the forms of half men and half beasts,—things either actually seen or else believed under the influence of excitement": —Lipsius adds in a note, "rather based on pure fancy,"—"vanitate efficta";—had the great Dutch critic for a moment dreamt that Bracciolini had forged the "Annals of Tacitus," he would have known that the observation, as far as concerned the author's own period, was founded on fact, the English having then had the good fortune to discover,—(or, as it was known to the Romans, more properly, re-discover) Madeira; for the first time, in modern days, the French nobleman in the service of Spain, Jean de Bethencourt, reached the Canaries; the Flemings, too, for the first time got as far as the Azores; above all, Gilianez, in 1433, doubling Cape Boyador, or Nun, arrived on the West Coast of Africa to a few degrees above the equator: every one of them returned with wonderful news of his voyage which was looked upon as something marvellous:—accordingly their great contemp- orary, Bracciolini, wrote thus, thinking of the miraculous narrative that was told by each adventurous navigator of his time:—"Ut quis ex longinquo venerat, miracula narrabant, vim turbinum, et inauditas volucres, monstra maris, ambiguas hominum et belluarum formas, —visa, sive ex motu credita" (An. II. 24). Nothing was going on in the days of Tacitus, which could have put such a notion in his head; nor is the passage from which it is taken at all in his style, as will be admitted when I immediately proceed to compare and contrast certain passages in Bracciolini and himself with the view of examining the graphic powers which they both possessed.
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.
I. The graphic powers possessed by Tacitus and Bracciolini were considerably influenced by their respective characters, which were widely different: no one can read the works of Tacitus, and not come to the conclusion that he was unassuming; whereas no one can read the works of Bracciolini, without being struck by his inordinate vanity, no matter what he maybe doing, describing the Ruins of Rome, discoursing on the Unhappiness of Princes, moralizing on Avarice or wailing in rhetorical magniloquence over the remains of friends: still he displays himself for admiration. The same thing occurs throughout the Annals. From the first to the last the author stands before his reader on account of the extraordinary manner of his narrative which is ever filling one with surprize from Emperors and Generals, like Tiberius and Germanicus, weeping like Homer's heroes, and Queens and captive women, like Boadicea and the wife of Armin, exhibiting none of the frailties of their sex, being above the timorous passions, and not shedding a tear even when they are made prisoners, but conducting themselves with all the insolence of conquerors. Roman knights and senators, of the stamp of Lucanus, Senecio and Quinctianus (XV. 49-57) betray the dearest pledges they have in blood and friendship, while slaves, and wantons such as Epicharis, undergo the fury of stripes and tortures to protect those not bound to them by ties of kindred and not even personally known to them. Not only do we find the heroic in malefactors and the criminal in heroes;—the spirited where we expect to come across the sordid, and the mean where we look for the grand, but the supernatural and magical mingle with the real and practical;—the sound of trumpets comes from hills where it is known there are no musical instruments; shrieks of departed ghosts issue from the tombs of mothers; incidents by sea and land are accompanied by wonderfully sublime circumstances; shipwrecks have whatever make up such scenes in their worst appearances.
The whole of this proceeds from Bracciolini indulging his fancy in a latitude which is denied the historian, and allowed only to the poet; hence he sometimes carries circumstances to bounds that border upon extravagance. Tacitus, on the other hand, always maintains his dignity; holding command over his fancy he carries circumstances to their due length, and only to their due extent.
This will be seen in the passages which I shall now select to illustrate the correctness of this remark; and beginning with Bracciolini, I will take his account of a marine disaster in the second book of the Annals.
The picture opens with a scene of beauty: "a thousand ships propelled by creaking oars or flapping sails float over a calm sea: all of a sudden a hailstorm bursts from a circular rack of clouds: simultaneously billows rolling to uncertain heights before shifting squalls that blow from every quarter shut out the view and impede navigation: the soldiers, in their alarm and knowing nothing of the dangers of the deep, get in the way of the sailors, or rendering services not required, undo the work of the skilful seaman: from this point the whole welkin and the whole sea are given up to a hurricane that rages from an enormous mass of clouds sweeping down from the swelling hilltops and deep rivers of Germany: the hurricane made more dreadful by freezing blasts from the neighbouring North, lays hold of the ships which it scatters into the open ocean or among islands perilous with precipitous cliffs or hidden shoals; the fleet, narrowly escaping shipwreck among them, is borne onwards, after the change of tide, in the direction whither the wind is blowing."
The reader is now left to the resources of his imagination; he has to supply a missing link in the chain of the description,—the mooring of the ships; though how or where that could be done it is impossible to conceive; we are, nevertheless, told that the vessels "cannot hold by their anchors"—("non adhaerere anchoris … poterant"), "nor draw off the water that rushes into them. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage and even arms are thrown overboard to lighten the hulls with their leaking sides and seas breaking over them."
Here the terrible character of the calamity is poetically heightened by the writer observing that, "though there might be greater tempests in other parts of the Ocean, and Germany was unsurpassed for its convulsions of the elements, yet this disaster was worse than those for the novelty and magnitude of its dangers —the surrounding shores being inhabited by enemies, and the sea so boundless and unfathomable that it was taken to be without a shore, and the last in the world": whence we way infer that the ships had got well out into the Atlantic, which must have presented to the eyes of the Romans pretty much the same appearance that it presented to Bracciolini's contemporaries, the English, Flemings and Spaniards, when, sailing for days together out of sight of land, they were making their way for the first time to (in the language in the Annals) "islands situated a very long way off":—"insulas longius sitas",—Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries.
On such far-away islands described as deserted, "the majority of the ships are cast ashore, the remainder having foundered in the deep; there the soldiers, deprived of the means of existence, perish from starvation, except those who survive by eating the dead horses that are thrown up on the sands"; though it is beyond the reach of the mind to conjecture whence the dead horses could have come after such a description.
"Germanicus, whose galley alone is saved by being thrown on the country of the Chauci, roams about the rocky coast and promontories all those days and nights, bitterly blaming himself as the guilty cause of the mighty catastrophe, and is with difficulty prevented by his friends from casting himself into the sea, and thus putting an end to a life made miserable by such self-accusation. At length the swell subsides; a favourable breeze springs up; the shattered ships return, with few oars and garments spread for sails; some are towed by others more efficient; these being hastily repaired are sent to search the distant islands; by these means several" of the surviving soldiers "are with great pains recovered; the Angrivarii, newly received into alliance with the Romans, return others, who had found their way into the interior of their country; and the petty British princes send back the remainder who had been cast upon their shores." Thus all ends as happily as a comedy; everybody and everything are saved; men and ships return: meanwhile Bracciolini has entertained his reader with a pretty, exciting episode, (what British sailors call "a yarn"), without making himself absolutely ridiculous by placing on record that the Romans in the days of Tiberius lost "a thousand ships"; though he certainly gives credit to his reader for considerable credulity by inviting him to believe that the Romans at any time ever had a fleet amounting to such an enormous number of vessels. [Endnote 401]
"Ac primo placidum aequor mille navium remis strepere, aut velis impelli: mox atro nubium globo effusa grando, simul variis undique procellis incerti fluctus prospectum adimere, regimen impedire: milesque pavidus, et casuum maris ignarus, dum turbat nautas, vel intempestive juvat, officia prudentium corrumpebat. omne dehine coelum, et mare omne in austrum cessit, qui tumidis Germaniae terris, profundis amnibus, immenso nubium tractu validus, et rigore vicini septemtrionis horridior, rapuit disjecitque naves in aperta Oceani, aut insulas saxis abruptis vel per occulta vada infestas. quibus paulum aegreque vitatis, postquam mutabat aestus, eodemque quo ventus ferebat; non adhaerere anchoris, non exhaurire inrumpentis undas poterant: equi, jumenta, sarcinae, etiam arma praecipitantur, quo levarentur alvei manantes per latera, et fluctu superurgente.
"Quanto violentior cetero mari Oceanus, et truculentia coeli praestat Germania, tantum illa clades novitate et magnitudine excessit, hostilibus circum litoribus, aut ita vasto et profundo, ut credatur novissimum ac sine terris, mari. pars navium haustae sunt; plures, apud insulas longius sitas ejectae: milesque, nullo illic hominum cultu, fame absumptus, nisi quos corpora equorum eodem elisa toleraverant. sola Germanici triremis Chaucorum terram adpulit, quem per omnes illos dies noctesque apud scopulos et prominentis oras, cum se tanti exitii reum clamitaret, vix cohibuere amici, quo minus eodem mari oppeteret. Tandem relabente aestu, et secundante vento, claudae naves raro remigio, aut intentis vestibus, et quaedam a validioribus tractae, revertere: quas raptim refectas misit, ut scrutarentur insulas. collecti ea cura plerique: multos Angrivarii nuper in fidem accepti, redemptos ab interioribus reddidere: quidam in Britanniam rapti, et remissi a regulis" (An. II. 24, 25).
We have no means of testing by minute and accurate comparison the descriptive powers which Tacitus possessed in dealing with such a subject, because he has no account of a marine disaster in any of his works. We must then do the next best we can, see how he deals with a military calamity,—for, though in the account we are about to give, the Romans had been victorious, we must remember the sentiment of the Duke of Wellington, that next to a defeat there is nothing so miserable as a victory. The passage we shall give is that of the visit of Vitellius to the plains of Bedriacum forty days after a battle had been fought and a victory had been won by the Romans.
"Thence Vitellius turned aside to Cremona, and, after he had seen Caecina's contest of gladiators, longed to visit the plains of Bedriacum, and view the field where a victory had been lately won. Horrible and ghastly spectacle! Forty days after the battle,—and the mangled bodies, lacerated limbs and putrefying corpses of men and horses,—the ground stained with gore,—the trees and the corn levelled;—what a dismal devastation!—nor less painful the part of the road which the people of Cremona,—as if they were the subjects of a king,—had strewn with roses and laurels, altars they had raised and victims they had slain,—signs of gratulation for the moment, which very soon afterwards occasioned their destruction. Valens and Caecina were there, and told the points of the battle:—'Here the columns of the legions rushed to the fray: here the cavalry charged: there the bands of the auxiliaries routed the foe.' The tribunes and prefects then began each to praise his own deeds, and utter a medley of truths and falsehoods,—or exaggerations. The rank and file, too, of the troops with shouts that showed their joy turned from the line of march to behold again the field of battle, and wonder as they looked at the piles of arms and the heaps of bodies. And some, when the various turns of chance occurred to their minds, melted into tears and were heavy at heart from sorrow, but Vitellius did not turn aside his eyes nor shudder at so many thousands of his unburied countrymen: he was even glad, and ignorant of his all but impending fate made an offering to the gods of the place."
"Inde Vitellius Cremonam flexit, et spectato munere Caecinae, insistere Bedriacensibus campis, ac vestigia recentis victoriae lustrare oculis concupivit. Foedum atque atrox spectaculum! Intra quadragesimum pugnae diem lacera corpora, trunci artus, putres virorum equorumque formae, infecta tabo humus, protritis arboribus ac frugibus—dira vastitas: nec minus inhumana pars viae, quam Cremonenses lauro rosisque constraverant, exstructis altaribus caesisque victimis, regium in morem: quae, laeta in praesens, mox perniciem ipsis fecere. Aderant Valens et Caecina, monstrabantque pugnae locos: 'Hinc irrupisse legionum agmen: hinc equites coortos: inde circumfusas auxiliorum manus.' Jam tribuni praefectique, sua quisque facta extollentes; falsa, vera, aut majora vero miscebant. Vulgus quoque militum, clamore et gaudio deflectere via, spatia certaminum recognoscere, aggerem armorum, strues corporum intueri, mirari. Et erant, quos varia fors rerum, lacrimaeque et misericordia subiret; at non Vitellius deflexit oculos, nec tot millia insepultorum civium exhorruit: laetus ultro, et tam propinquae sortis ignarus, instaurabat sacrum diis loci" (Hist. II. 70).
It must be obvious even to the most careless and least perspicacious what a striking contrast there is in the descriptive powers of the two; the objects that Tacitus depicts are not only few in number and telling in character, but seem to be presented to us on the principle of truth, as of actual occurrences; the method he adopts reminds one of that pursued by Sir Walter Scott, no matter whether the descriptive passage occur in one of his poems, as The Lady of the Lake, or in one of his romances, as The Heart of Mid-Lothian: Bracciolini, on the other hand, appears to be inventing,—or, at least, heaping together a number of real circumstances, one or two of which might have happened together, but scarcely all of them at the same time, while he so arranges them as to produce a highly poetic effect: he writes as Lord Byron made up his shipwreck in Don Juan,—as Moore shows us in his Life of the eminent poet,—by selecting here and there a telling incident from the narrative of this or that shipwrecked mariner.
II. Not only in description did Bracciolini fail to imitate the writing of Tacitus; he failed to imitate it also in sequence of ideas. There is unquestionably resemblance in the absence of circumlocution; in such considerable conciseness that words are as sentences; in there being no hyperbole, and in judicious language at all times consonant with the solidity of the instructions conducive to wisdom in political and civil life. But in order to effect this Bracciolini clipped his sentences as a gardener clips hedges: a sentence is now and then like an amputated limb; a word is wanting, like a hand or a foot cut off from an arm or a leg: sometimes the reader sees, what was evidently made with mischievous intent, a great gap in thought, at which he is stopped and disturbed,—as a farmer, when walking in his fields, is brought to a stand-still and overcome with annoyance to see an opening which his cattle have made in his fences, and which he must be at the pains of repairing: so these vacuities in thought require to be botched by the fancy of the reader; the patching may not be the requisite thing to be done: accordingly the gaps cause difficulties in rightly apprehending the meaning of the writer, who, in some passages may, possibly, never be properly understood.
The consequence of this is that no remark is so common as to hear people, especially young persons, say of Tacitus, "How difficult his Latin is!" Even Messrs. Church and Brodripp say so in the Preface to their translation of the "History." Certainly, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reproduce in another language the smooth style and polished phrases of Tacitus; but his Latin is easy to follow, whatever he maybe doing,—describing a battle, a riot or a flight;—recording the success of a party, the death of an Emperor, or a disturbance in the Forum. Notwithstanding his fiery, rapid style, he is regular in his connection of thought,— logical in his sequence of ideas, thereby he is always alluring and attractive, while crisp, clear and comprehensible, he dazzles and delights with his picturesque images and glittering beauties. It is otherwise with the author of the Annals, whose style is occasionally enveloped in such Cimmerian obscurities from deficiencies of expression as to beset his work with a formidable opaqueness—anything but Milton's "darkness visible". [Endnote 408]
Many specimens of this might be given, but as the mist is impenetrable, we will turn to one where the light can be seen—the story of the peasant of Termes, who assassinates a praetor, while that officer is passing along a road unattended. The assassin, being on the back of a fleet horse, gallops off to a wood, entering which, after turning his horse loose, he baffles pursuit by clambering over steep and stony parts into the pathless wilderness, "where," continues the writer, "he didnot remain long concealed; FOR" (mark the sequence), "his horse having been caught and shown through all the towns round, the people knew whose it was,andthat led to his apprehension":—"pernicitate equi profugus, postquam saltuosos locos adtigerat, dimisso equo, per derupta et avia sequentis frustratus est,neque diu fefellit; NAM prehenso ductoque per proximos pagos equo, eujus foret cognitum,etrepertus" (An. IV. 45).
The context is not seen. A man who has committed a murder unseen by anybody effects his escape from pursuit by getting into a wood. Of what consequence was it whether his horse was known or not? for how could that help his pursuer to catch him, if, like a maroon negro, having run away safely into the impenetrable thicket, he staid in the bush for the remainder of his days,—or as long as he was not wanted for a breakfast by a hungry wild beast? The author means us to understand, after the fugitive had baffled pursuit by getting into the depth of the forest, that he lay hidden there for a certain number of days, after which, deeming that all was safe, he returned into the towns to his home: then should come the words: "where he did not remain long concealed, for his horse having been caught," &c.
This obscurity increases when the author of the Annals is in the palace of Tiberius, or in the Senate amid the deliberations of the Patres Conscripti. From his inadequate mode of speech he then outstrips the comprehension of the reader; certainly he quite baffles the intelligence of the very young, his meaning being penetrable only by the keen sagacity of ripe age, for he enters into the recesses of the heart, and reveals the secret workings of the bad passions,—envy, hatred, malice and ambition.
As before, we cannot give one of his best gems, because those are hidden in clouds of darkness, through which nobody can see, only one of them that is shrouded in a light mist through which the eye can dimly peer. So take the passage where Tiberius leaves it to the Senate to choose whether Lepidus or Blaesus shall have the government of Africa. Lepidus refuses in very unmistakable terms, alleging as his reasons the bad state of his health, the tender age of his children, and the marriageable condition of his daughter: the writer then goes on: "another reason that Lepidus had, he kept to himself, though it was understood, Blaesus being the uncle of Sejanus, and that was a very powerful reason with him." "Tum audita amborum verba, intentius excusante se Lepido, cum valetudinem corporis, aetatem liberum, nubilem filiam obtenderet: intelligereturque etiam, (quod silebat), avunculum esse Sejani Blaesum, atque eo praevalidum." (An. III. 35). Of course, that was the most powerful reason for Lepidus refusing the honour, because he knew that if he stood in the way of the promotion of the uncle, the nephew, in those corrupt times, would seek a way of wreaking his vengeance upon him. That is easily enough understood, and certainly did not require any further explanation from the historian. But how about the next sentence? "Blaesus in his reply to the Senate made, (but not in the same resolute tone as Lepidus), a show of refusal, and by the assent of the sycophants he was not supported"; and, without another syllable, the author leaves the subject and passes on to another matter. "Respondit Blaesus specie recusantis, sed neque eadem adseveratione; et consensu adulantium haud jutus est." (ibid.) In what was he not supported? And whom were the "sycophants," that is the Senators, flattering? Blaesus? They had no cause to care whether they pleased or displeased him. Tiberius? The Emperor was perfectly indifferent as to which of the two men the Senate selected. The author of the Annals, in order that his full meaning may be brought out, wants the reader to supply, after the words "a show of refusal," some such as the following:—"the Senators could see from the sham of Blaesus that the promotion to the office would be highly acceptable to him, and, as they knew it would please Sejanus, they were desirous of doing what would gratify the minister": then should come the words: "and by the assent of the sycophants he was not supported," that is, in his refusal: accordingly the writer leaves his reader to infer that the Senators gave their universal approval to the appointment of Blaesus as the Proconsul of Africa.
There is no such writing as this in any of the works of Tacitus, who, though curt and concise, is always remarkable for concinnity and clearness of expression as well as for perspicuity and consecutiveness of idea. This can be instanced by any passage in the "History": take this where Galba admonishes Piso whom he has adopted to be careful of himself as the successor to the empire, and beware of the perils to which he was exposed by his new position:—
"You are at the age which shuns the passions of youth: your past life has been such you have nothing to regret. You have endured hardship up to this point: prosperity tries our dispositions with sharper probes; because misfortune is borne, we are spoilt by a brilliant position. With your determined character you will preserve those most precious boons of the human soul, honourable principles, an independent spirit and friendly feelings; but others will undermine these by obsequiousness. Flattery, —fawning,—that worst bane of virtuous inclinations,—will assail you:—everybody seeks his own advancement. To-day you and I converse together quite disinterestedly; others all selfishly pay their court to our fortunes in preference to ourselves. Now to counsel an Emperor what he ought to do is a task of much difficulty: humouring the whims of this or that Emperor does not cost the slightest trouble." "Ea aetas tua, quae cupiditates adolescentiae jam effugerit: ea vita, in qua nihil praeteritum excusandum habeas. Fortunam adhuc adversam tulisti: secundae res acrioribus stimulis animos explorant, quia miseriae tolerantur, felicitate corrumpimur. Fidem, libertatem, amicitiam, praecipua humani animi bona, tu quidem eadem constantia retinebis: sed alii per obsequium imminuent. Irrumpet adulatio,—blanditiae, pessimum veri adfectus venenum,—sua cuique utilitas. Ego ac tu simplicissime inter nos hodie loquimur; ceteri libentius cum fortuna nostra, quam nobiscum. Nam suadere principi quod oporteat multi laboris: adsentatio erga principem quemeunque sine adfectu peragitur." (Hist. I. 15).
It will be seen from this literal version of his text, that, notwithstanding his epigrammatic brevity, Tacitus writes with a precision of thought that leaves nothing to be supplied. It may be that the author of the Annals found it impossible to write thus: at any rate he resorts to quite another kind of composition in order to be on a level with his prototype by making his book hard reading, for he gives his reader as much difficulty in following him by leaving gaps in thought, as Tacitus gives his reader by uncommon terseness. The difference of exertion to which the mind is subjected in understanding the two is pretty much like the difference of exerting the legs which a traveller experiences when moving about a most mountainous region, between toiling painfully up steep but smooth acclivities and taking violent leaps over a succession of ravines.
III. The Rev. Thomas Hunter, in the opening portion of his work entitled "Observations on Tacitus," (to which I have so often referred, and to which I am so much indebted),—misled by giving his assent, as a matter of necessity, to the universal belief that Tacitus and Bracciolini were one,—errs in ascribing to them both a perfect similarity in ambition of pomp and ornament to display learning; Bracciolini bears little or no resemblance in this respect to Tacitus, as may be seen by comparing, or rather contrasting them in any one thing,—say in their digressions. Whenever Tacitus digresses, it is always appropriately,—with taste and judgment. What, for instance, can be more fitting than that he should fall into a little digression about the Temple of Venus in Cyprus, when Titus visits that island (Hist. II. 2 & 3), because Titus had an amorous disposition? or, when he is about to relate such an important event and turning point in the history of the Jews as the destruction of Jerusalem, that he should recount the whole origin of that most mysterious and romantic people (Hist. V. 2)? or, when the Capitol was burnt, give a history of it (ib. III. 71)? On these and other occasions, his digressions are seemly, and afford satisfaction as appertaining closely to the subject.
It is not so with the author of the Annals; he cannot speak about a law, but straightway must tell his reader about laws in general, as he does when speaking of the Lex Poppaea, of which had Tacitus spoken, he would have merely mentioned its qualification, then passed on; or, if digressing, confined his statement to the other laws of a similar kind which had been enacted by his countrymen; but the author of the Annals starts off to talk about laws of all kinds that the whole world had witnessed from the Flood of Deucalion to the time of which he is writing,—consequently he talks about the legislation of Minos, Lycurgus and Solon, the law-making of Numa and Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius and Servius Tullius, down to what was done in that way by the Emperor Augustus Caesar (III. 26); and when the cities of Asia contend for the honour of building a temple, away he rambles into a discourse about things in general, the wars of Perseus and Aristonicus; the great antiquity of Troy, proclaimed to be the mother of Rome; the love of home of the Lydians; the first names and settlements of the Tyrrhenians; the Sardinians and Etrurians being of the same descent; the divine origin of Tantalus and Theseus; and the Amazons being the founders of some of the cities in Asia (IV. 55 and 56).
This, it must be admitted, is not in the style of Tacitus; it is, however, exactly in the style of Bracciolini—in proof of which I need only point to the historic details which abound in the Dialogue on the Unhappiness of Princes;—the introduction of the particulars into which he enters when drawing up a comparison for a young friend of Ferrara between Julius Caesar and Scipio Africanus, on the question submitted to him, "which was the greater man" (Op. 357 seq.); and when in the Discourse on Nobility he refers to the statues that adorned the garden of a villa, he enters into remarks on the passion possessed by the ancient Romans of ornamenting their homes with the images of their ancestors (Op. 64-83).
IV. Bodinus, in his "Method to an Easy Knowledge of History," first published in 1566, seems to be very much struck at two statements in the Fourth Book of the Annals; in the 33rd chapter the words occur: "we link together cruel orders, continual prosecutions, treacherous alliances, the destruction of the innocent, and trials terminating in similar issues": in the chapter preceding the writer says that he does not narrate "wars, sieges of cities, routings of armies and struggles of politicians and plebeians": Bodinus observes, Tacitus "carefully describes all the wars that occurred in his time; they were conflicts in which he was usually engaged or acted as commander, nor was there after the battle of Actium a single historian who treated so copiously of military and civil affairs":—"Libro quarto profitetur se 'nec bella, nec urbium expugnationes, nec fusos exercitus, nec certamina plebis et optimatium' narrare … et paulo post: 'nos saeva jussa, continuas accusationes, fallaces amicitias, perniciem innocentium, et easdem exitu causas conjungimus', quanquam omnia bella, quae illis temporibus contigerunt, et quibus fere interfuit aut praefuit, studiose describit: nec post Actiacam victoriam ullus est historicus qui militarem aut forensem rationem copiosius tractavit" (Jo. Bodinus. Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem. p. 66. Geneva Ed. 1610).
Can anything be stronger than these simple words of the French Doctor of Civil Law of the sixteenth century towards drawing further the attention of the reader to the truth of the theory maintained in this book? It is not possible that, though Bracciolini thus, as we see, forgot himself for a moment as the imitator of another, Tacitus could have made a slip of this kind. He is always describing battles; he takes a special delight in doing so; it is a species of description in which he particularly excelled, even as it is a species of description in which Bracciolini just as particularly showed weakness; Tacitus could do nothing better, because, as Bodinus says, he was actually engaged in the battles, or else acted in them as a commander. Nor is it true of his History, as it is of the Annals, that it is one perpetual tissue of prosecutions and trials that end in the conviction of innocent persons, treacherous alliances and tyrannical decrees; nor that it avoids all narration of the contentions between the people and the nobles.
V. We seem to be looking at a picture of the middle ages or the Renaissance and not of the first or second century of the Christian aera, when we read the story of Caius Silanus, the Proconsul of Asia, who, accused of malversation and peculation, is first banished to the island of Gyarus, but when the Prince pleads for him, and he is backed by the intercession of a Vestal Virgin of sanctity,—corresponding to a Christian nun or abbess of exemplary piety,—Silanus is removed to the more bearable place of exile, the island of Cythaera (III. 66-9).
Just as we find in the first part of the Annals this picture marking the mediaeval period, we find in the last part a sentiment that strongly denotes the time of the Renaissance, because it is morally wrong: with the greatest coolness Bracciolini states in the eleventh book of the Annals that "employment of stratagem against a deserter and violator of his oath reflects no dishonour on the Roman character": "nec irritae aut degeneres insidiae fuere adversus transfugam et violatorem fidei" (XI. 19): the sentiment would never have proceeded from Tacitus nor any other high-minded Roman of antiquity; but it is strictly in accord with the views and feelings of the Renaissance, or fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century: in reading the best writers of that period we every now and then come across maxims which a strict morality condemns: Machiavelli, who better reflects the spirit of his age and Italy than anybody else, except the author of the Annals, occasionally shocks us by such utterances in his Treatise on Livy, as, "it is permissible to deceive for the good of the State, provided that advantage be gained by it"; it is a proper thing "to violate one's word for the good of one's country"; "cruelty which tends to a beneficial end is not blamable and that which profits is praiseworthy"; or in his work entitled "The Prince",—"it is quite enough for a Prince to be virtuous in show, and not in fact"; he should "dissemble to reign well," and "the justice of war is in its utility."
VI. Bracciolini, who was inventing history as well as forging a production, did not deem it necessary to be actuated at all times in his representations by the love of truth: in putting forth supposititious matters as matters of fact, he advanced his own opinions and conjectures as the conjectures and opinions of the persons who figured in his narrative: to give an example: —"Tiberius and Augusta abstained from appearing in public" on the day when the remains of Germanicus were borne to the tomb of Augustus: that may be history; but we are certain that it is not history when we are told what their supposition was about going abroad: "I do not know," says the writer, "whether they supposed that a public expression of sorrow on their part would be derogatory to their imperial dignity, but I rather suspect it was fear that their hypocrisy would be detected when their looks were scrutinised by the eyes of all": "Tiberius atque Augusta publico abstinuere; inferius majestate sua rati, si palam lamentarentur, an ne, omnium oculis vultum eorum scrutantibus, falsi intelligerentur" (Ann. III. 4).
We have another proof here that the whole Annals proceeded from the same hand; this sort of thing goes on as well in the last, as in the first part of that work; in the fourteenth chapter (10), the writer undertakes to describe the state of Nero's punishment after (what may or may not be history) the murder of his mother: we are told, as if Bracciolini possessed the magic of peering into the inmost recesses of the soul, that it was only "at length after Nero had completed the monstrous deed that he became conscious of its enormity": "perfecto demum scelere magnitudo ejus intellecta est". We then follow the Emperor into the privacy of his locked chamber; in the dead of night, we see what he does, when he is hidden from the eyes of all: everybody can pretty well guess (but only guess not positively know) how it fared with him; an evil conscience like a hidden torture wracks the criminal as the vulture fed on the liver of the rock-tied Titan;—the Furies come, causing the guilty to pass sleepless nights, for the Furies are the Demons sent to torture the impious: accordingly Bracciolini thus continues the description:—"during the remainder of the night, he would at one time remain in silence with his eyes fixed immovably, very often springing up out of terror, and with a distracted soul watch for the dawn of day, as if it were to bring death to him":—"reliquo noctis, modo, per silentium defixus soepius pavore exurgens et mentis inops lucem opperiebatur, tanquam exitium allaturam" (L. c.).
Though we all know that investigations of this kind must necessarily be attended with uncertainty, yet in watching Bracciolini's bold proceedings in unfolding the mazes of the human heart by the passions of famous men, we assent readily to his delineations, because the feelings he represents, if not true, seem to be true on account of their being natural and obvious.
This kind of guesswork, nowhere to be found in the pages of Tacitus, has been considered in these days a great improvement in historical composition,—by none more so than by Lord Macaulay, who made Bracciolini, (supposing him to be Tacitus), the object of his adoration. Modern historians reject what Thucydides, Xenophon, Herodotus, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, and other ancient writers of history, Greek and Roman, did,—ascribing probable words and phrases to eminent persons on grand occasions, as violations of truth and daring assumptions;—nevertheless, they imitate the practice set by Bracciolini of knowing the motives that influenced illustrious characters.
The cause of a memorable matter of fact,—Luther casting off his allegiance to the Pope,—remains hidden in impenetrable mystery: notwithstanding that, Protestant historians as confidently maintain it was the love of truth, as Catholic biographers boldly assert it was the passion of resentment.
We have the same rash conjectures as to James the Second: after he abdicated the throne of England, he lived to the end of his days in quietness and seclusion, never making an attempt to regain the goodwill of his people, nor breathing a wish for a reconciliation: though that monarch kept his feelings to himself, Lord Macaulay in his History of England (IV. 380), with a comprehensiveness of discernment that is amazing, writes thus: "in his view," that is, King James's, "there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocity of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit before him than before God. When they had done all they were still unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the Royalist who shed his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor." When such intimate acquaintance is shown with the senti- ments of the fallen king, one wonders who knew better his intentions and inclinations, Lord Macaulay, his historian, or Peters, his father confessor. In writing thus Lord Macaulay merely imitated the example set by Bracciolini, who, on almost every occasion, pretends to know motives, detect inclinations, explore the causes of events as well as look into the soul, reveal the passions and determine the judgments of powerful men. It is very pretty, but it is not history; and any one who considers how beyond his power it is to ascertain the principles which regulate his own conduct or the behaviour of those with whom he is in familiar and daily intercourse,—whose peculiar habit, too, he knows well,—must see that the task is not only difficult, but superhuman,—comprised in one plain and simple word —impossible.
VII. A thousand authors may be read, and in vain contradictions looked for in any of them. When, therefore, a writer is found contradicting himself, it is a peculiarity to be noted as uncommonly striking; one contradiction being found, several may be looked for. Bracciolini is one of these writers; his contradictions, too, are most remarkable: they are to be found just as well in his acknowledged productions as in both parts of the Annals. Many instances might be given; the following may suffice:—
In the fourth book of the Annals, Tiberius is represented so full of hatred that a man who had been for a long time in exile does not escape his memory, as occurs with Serenus—"non occultante Tiberio vetus odium adversus exulem Serenum" (IV. 29). In the sixth book, however, Tiberius, though still actuated by hatred, is so forgetful that Rubrius Fabatus remains unharmed through oblivion:—"mansit tamen incolumis oblivione magis quam elementia" (VI. 14). What then is the characteristic of Tiberius? Forgetfulness or remembrance in his hatreds?
So in his acknowledged works, Bracciolini speaks in one of his letters, as we have seen, of not having such a very high opinion of the Papacy as the world believed: "Ego minus existimo Pontificatum quam credunt" (Ep. I. 17). But in another of his works, "De Infelicitate Principum," (Op. p. 392), he expresses his belief that "all Princes were in the enjoyment of a large amount of happiness, more particularly the Pope, who was considered the greatest of men, and yet gained his position without any anxiety or any labour, any pains or any peril." "Nam cum omnes principes magna existimem felicitate frui, tum vero maxime Pontifices, cum nulla cura, nullo labore, nulla opera, nullo periculo eum statum adipiscuntur, qui habetur maximus apud mortales." What are we then to suppose? that Bracciolini had formed a very lofty, or a very indifferent estimate of the Papacy?
In both parts of the Annals, he displays the same spirit of contradiction; first he praises, then condemns the same things; in the last part he defends Popular Revels (XIV. 20) and objects to them immediately afterwards (ibid); so in the first part he lauds luxury in the second book (33) and censures it in the third (53).
We find the same contradiction with respect to Augustus and deification; in the first book of the Annals we are told that if a man has temples reared to him and is worshipped in the likeness of a god, he commits a grievous wrong, because he deprives divine beings of all their honours: this it is stated was done by Augustus:—"Nihil Deorum honoribus relictum cum se templis et effigie numinum coli vellet" (An. I. 10). After this we should be mightily surprised, did we not know of the humour of the writer with whom we are dealing, to find it asserted in the fourth book, when the people of Lusitania and Boetica (now Portugal, Andalusia and Granada), offer to erect a temple to Tiberius, and he refuses (IV. 37, 38), that that Emperor "showed degeneracy of spirit, because men of the highest virtue have ever sought the greatest honours: thus Hercules and Bacchus were added to the number of the Gods among the Greeks, and Romulus among the Romans: accordingly that Augustus who hoped for deification chose the nobler part, for when we scorn fame we scorn the virtues:—"quidam, ut degeneris animi, interpretabantur: optumos quippe mortalium altissima cupere. Sic Herculem et Liberum apud Graecos; Quirinum apud nos, deum numero, additos. Melius Augustum, qui speraverit … contemtu famae, contemni virtutes" (IV. 38).
VIII. A few words, in conclusion, may be said about the oldest manuscript containing the first six, and, consequently, all the books of the Annals. This, which, it has been stated, is the First Florence MS., I take to be the identical one that came out of the Abbey of Corvey through the hands of Arcimboldi, because, like its mendacious brother, the Second Florence, it bears upon it the unmistakable stamp of an impudent forgery. Just as the Second Florence pretends to be of the fourth century, if not earlier, from having the attestation of Salustius the Philosopher, so the First Florence professes to be as old as, at the very least, the twelfth century, from being written in characters, which, Taurellus says (Praef. ad Pand. Floren.), are the same as those in the Florentine MS. of the Pandects of Justinian. Now, the Florentine Pandects, which were found at Amalfi, were plundered from that town and taken to Pisa in 1137 by Lotharius Saxe after his successful war with Pope Innocent II., though the two costly volumes were not first deposited in the Grand Duke's Library at Florence until 1406.
Danesius, Bishop of Lavaur (in Languedoc), also bears testimony to the great antiquity of the First Florence MS. But this was nineteen years after the first publication of all the Annals in Rome, it being in 1534 that Danesius, examining it with other ancient works, pronounced upon its very old age.
Ernesti, in his preface to the works of Tacitus, quotes a passage from a letter of Graevius to his friend Heinsius where the great Hellenist is of opinion that the MS. bore the marks of being copied from a supposititious and half learned original; "exemplar, unde illud fluxit, mendosum et ab semidocto interpolatum" (Tom. IV. Coll. Burm. p. 496). But suppose that the manuscript is no copy, but, as I maintain, an original, then the opinion of Graevius becomes extremely valuable in this inquiry, because it actually corroborates what I have said about the manuscript,—that it was transcribed by an ignorant monk, and that it is an audacious forgery.
We have, then, no evidence whatsoever that can be relied upon of the great antiquity of this manuscript: on the contrary what we do know about it as a fact is utterly subversive of such an assumption: this copy in the Mediceo-Laurentian Library in Florence of all the Annals of Tacitus cannot be traced further back than to the possession of a man who flourished in the days of Leo X. and the Emperor Maximilian I.,—Johannes Jocundus of Verona; so that it turns out, on careful investigation that all positive knowledge of this MS. stops at the commencement of the sixteenth century, exactly as all positive knowledge of the other Florentine MS. stops at the commencement of the fifteenth century.
IX. I have now done; and think that I have said quite enough for the spuriousness of the Annals never to be hereafter argued as a moot point, but accepted as an established fact. I need not go into further consideration; because further consideration cannot give more weight to what has been put forward. I, therefore, pause, assured that with only these few facts and observations placed before him, the reader has come to the same conclusion as myself, that, strange as it may be, yet, nevertheless, there is truth in the theory now started for the first time, I dare say, to the amazement of the reader, as to the amazement of everybody, that Tacitus is, and has been, for century after century, wrongly accredited with the authorship of the Annals. It is to dispel all cavil about this, that I have examined the History and the Annals from every imaginable point of view, so as to enable the reader to see the two works as clearly as they can be seen—not that the reader has seen them as clearly as objects are seen under the open sky by the blaze of the noontide sun; still I hope that he has seen them, as objects in broad day are seen,—where there must he some shadows in corners,—in a room, when all the blinds are drawn up and all the windows are thrown open.