Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 1

Tacitus and Bracciolini.

by John Wilson Ross.

PREFACE

The theory broached in this book involves a charge of the grossest fraud against a most distinguished man, who rose to high posts in public affairs and won imperishable fame in letters.

There being blots on his moral character, it would be censurable to fasten upon his memory this new imputation of dishonesty, were it not substantiated by irresistible evidence.

The t.i.tle of this book quite explains what its design is,--to contribute something towards settling the authors.h.i.+p of the Annals of Tacitus, which encomiastic admirers imagine to be the most extraordinary history ever penned, and the writer "but one degree removed from inspiration, if not inspired." This wondrous writer I a.s.sert to be the famous Florentine of the Renaissance, Poggio Bracciolini, in favour of which view I have tried to make out a case by bringing forward a variety of pa.s.sages from the "History"

and the "Annals" to show an extensive series of contradictions as to facts and characters, departures from truth about matters connected with ancient Roman life, laches in grammar and use of words that never could have proceeded from any patrician or plebian of the world-renowned old Commonwealth, with a number of other things that will readily strike the intelligent and sober mind as utterly inconsistent with the existing belief of the "Annals" being the production of Tacitus. All this is case in the shade for the fullest light to be thrown on the subject, when not wis.h.i.+ng to make my theory a matter of speculation but founded in common sense, I give a detailed history of the forgery, from its conception to its completion, the sum that was paid for it, the abbey where it was transcribed, and other such convincing minutiae taken from a correspondence that Poggio carried on with a familiar friend who resided in Florence.

A reader of ac.u.men and critical faculty following a writer in an inquiry of this nature places himself in the position of a lawyer who will not accept the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, or even a clause in it, as correct, except,--as his phrase goes,--it "runs upon all fours:" he knows that it is with a speculation in a literary matter as with a chapter of a statute: he struggles to raise only a single valid objection against what is advanced: if successful he at one destroys the whole of the theory, from thus exposing it to view as not "running upon all fours;" the fabric is, in fact, discovered to be reared on a false foundation; it must, therefore, fall as at the slightest breath a child's house built of cards; and the theory becomes one more added to the list of those that are apocryphal. If on examination it should be agreed that the theory in this book is without a flaw, I conceived that I shall have done not a small, but a considerable service to the cause of true history.

LONDON, _April_ 3, 1878.

BOOK THE FIRST.

TACITUS.

"Allusiones saepe subobscurae ... mihi conjectandi aliquando, et aliquando exploratae veritatis fundamento innitendi materiam praebuere."

DE TONELLIS. Praef. ad Poggii Epist.

TACITUS AND BRACCIOLINI.

CHAPTER I.

TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.

I. From the chronological point of view.--II. The silence preserved about that work by all writers till the fifteenth century.--III. The age of the MSS. containing the Annals.

I. The Annals and the History of Tacitus are like two houses in ruins: dismantled of their original proportions they perpetuate the splendour of Roman historiography, as the crumbling remnants of the Coliseum preserve from oblivion the magnificence of Roman architecture. Some of the subtlest intellects, keen in criticism and expert in scholars.h.i.+p, have, for centuries, endeavoured with considerable pains, though not with success in every instance, to free the imperfect pieces from difficulties, as the priesthood of the Quindecimvirs, generation after generation, a.s.siduously, yet vainly, strove to clear from perplexities the mutilated books of the Sibyls. I purpose to bring,--parodying a pa.s.sage of the good Sieur Chanvallon,--not freestone and marble for their restoration, but a critical hammer to knock down the loose bricks that, for more than four centuries, have shown large holes in several places.

Tacitus is raised by his genius to a height, which lifts him above the reach of the critic. He s.h.i.+nes in the firmament of letters like a sun before whose l.u.s.tre all, Pa.r.s.ee-like, bow down in wors.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.sionless inquiry into the nature and character of works presenting such difference in structure, and such contradictions in a variety of matters as the History and the Annals.

The belief is general that Tacitus wrote Roman history in the retrograde order, in which Hume wrote the History of England. Why Hume pursued that method is obvious: eager to gain fame in letters,--seeing his opportunity by supplying a good History of England,--knowing how interest attaches to times near us while all but absence of sympathy accompanies those that are remote,--and meaning to exclude from his plan the incompleted dynasty under which he lived,--he commenced with the House of Stuart, continued with that of Tudor, and finished with the remaining portion from the Roman Invasion to the Accession of Henry VII. But why Tacitus should have decided in favour of the inverse of chronological order is by no means clear. He could not have been actuated by any of the motives which influenced Hume. Rome, with respect to her history, was not in the position that England was, with respect to hers, in the middle of the last century. All the remarkable occurrences during the 820 years from her Foundation to the office of Emperor ceasing as the inheritance of the Julian Family on the death of Nero, had been recorded by many writers that rendered needless the further labours of the historian. Tacitus states this at the commencement of his history, and as a reason why he began that work with the accession of Galba: "Initium mihi operis Servius Galba iterum, t.i.tus Vinius consules erunt; nam post conditam urbem, octingentos et viginti prioris aevi annos multi auctores retulerunt." (Hist. I. 1.) After this admission, it is absolutely unaccountable that he should revert to the year since the building of the City 769, and continue writing to the year 819, going over ground that, according to his own account, had been gone over before most admirably, every one of the numerous historians having written in his view, "with an equal amount of forcible expression and independent opinion"--"pari eloquentia ac libertate." Thus, by his own showing, he performed a work which he knew to be superfluous in recounting events that occurred in the time of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

What authority have we that he did this? Certainly, not the authority of those who knew best--the ancients. They do not mention, in their meagre accounts of him, the names of his writings, the number of which we, perhaps, glean from casual remarks dropped by Pliny the Younger in his Epistles. He says (vii. 20), "I have read your book, and with the utmost care have made remarks upon such pa.s.sages, as I think ought to be altered or expunged." "Librum tuum legi, et quam diligentissime potui, adnotavi, quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer." In a second letter (viii. 7) he alludes to another (or it might be the same) "book," which his friend had sent him "not as a master to a master, nor as a disciple to a disciple, but as a master to a disciple:" "neque ut magistro magister, neque ut discipulo discipulus ... sed ut discipulo magister ... librum misisti." That Tacitus was not the author of one work only is clear from Pliny in another of his letters (vi. 16) speaking in the plural of what his friend had written: "the immortality of your writings:"-- "scriptorum tuorum aeternitas;" also of "my uncle both by his own, and your works:"--"avunculus meus et suis libris et tuis." In the letter already referred to (vii. 20), Tacitus is further spoken of as having written, at least, two historical works, the immortality of which Pliny predicted without fear of proving a false prophet: "auguror, nec me fallit augurium, historias tuas immortales futuras." From these pa.s.sages 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. n.o.body but Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, Bishop of Carthage, supposes that he wrote a book of Facetiae or pleasant tales and anecdotes, as may be seen by reference to the episcopal writer's Treatise on Archaic or Obsolete Words, where explaining "Elogium" to mean "hereditary disease," he continues, "as Cornelius Tacitus says in his book of Facetiae; 'therefore pained in the cutting off of children who had hereditary disease left to them'": "Elogium est haereditas in malo; sicut Cornelius Tacitus ait in libro Facetiarum: 'caesis itaque motum elogio in filiis derelicto.'" (De Vocibus Antiquis. p. 151. Basle ed. 1549).

Justus Lipsius doubts whether the Discourse on the Causes of the Corruption of Latin Eloquence proceeded from Tacitus, or the other Roman to whom many impute it, Quintilian, for he says in his Preface to that Dialogue: "What will it matter whether we attribute it to Tacitus, or, as I once thought, to Marcus Fabius Quinctilia.n.u.s? ... Though the age of Quinctilia.n.u.s seems to have been a little too old for this Discourse to be by that young man.

Therefore, I have my doubts." "Incommodi quid erit, sive Tacito tribuamus; sive M. Fabio Quinctiliano, ut mihi olim visim? ...

Aetas tamen Quinctiliani paullo grandior fuisse videtur, quam ut hic sermo illo juvene. Itaque ambigo." (p. 470. Antwerp ed. 1607.) Enough will be said in the course of this discussion to carry conviction to the minds of those who can be convinced by facts and arguments that Tacitus did not write the Annals.

Chronology, in the first place, prevents our regarding him as the author. Though we know as little of his life as of his writings-- and though no ancient mentions the date or place of his birth, or the time of his death,--we can form a conjecture when he flourished by comparing his age with that of his friend, Pliny the Younger. Pliny died in the year 13 of the second century at the age of 52, so that Pliny was born A.D. 61. Tacitus was by several years his senior. Otherwise Pliny would not have spoken of himself as a disciple looking up to him with reverence as to "a master"; "the duty of submitting to his influence," and "a desire to obey his advice":--"tu magister, ego contra"--(Ep. viii. 7): "cedere auctoritati tuae debeam" (Ep. i. 20): "cupio praeceptis tuis parere" (Ep. ix. 10); nor would he describe himself as "a mere stripling when his friend was at the height of fame and in a proud position": "equidem adolescentulus, quum jam tu fama gloriaque floreres" (Ep. vii. 20); nor of their being, "all but contemporaries in age": "duos homines, aetate propemodum aequales"

(Ep. vii. 20). From these remarks chiefly and a few other circ.u.mstances, the modern biographers of Tacitus suppose there was a difference of ten or eleven years between that ancient historian and Pliny, and fix the date of his birth about A.D. 52.

This is reconcilable with the belief of Tacitus being the author of the Annals; for when the boundaries of Rome are spoken of in that work as being extended to the Red Sea in terms as if it were a recent extension--"claustra ... Romani imperii, quod _nunc_ Rubrum ad mare patescit" (ii. 61),--he would be 63, the extension having been effected as we learn from Xiphilinus, by Trajan A.D.

115. It is also reconcilable with Agricola when Consul offering to him his daughter in marriage, he being then "a young man": "Consul egregiae tum spei filiam juveni mihi despondit" (Agr. 9); for, according as Agricola was Consul A.D. 76 or 77, he would be 24 or 25. But it is by no means reconcilable with the time when he administered the several offices in the State. He tells us himself that he "began holding office under Vespasian, was promoted by t.i.tus, and still further advanced by Domitian": "dignitatem nostram a Vespasiano inchoatam, a t.i.to auctam, a Domitiano longius provectam" (Hist. i. 1). To have "held office" under Vespasian he must have been quaestor; to have been "promoted" by t.i.tus he must have been aedile; and as for his further advancement we know that he was praetor under Domitian. By the Lex Villia Annalis, pa.s.sed by the Tribune Lucius Villius during the time of the Republic in 573 after the Building of the City, the years were fixed wherein the different offices were to be entered on--in the language of Livy; "eo anno rogatio primum lata est ab Lucio Villio tribuno plebis, quot annos nati quemque magistratum peterent caperentque"

(xl. 44); and the custom was never departed from, in conformity with Ovid's statement in his Fasti with respect to the mature years of those who legislated for his countrymen, and the special enactment which strictly prescribed the age when Romans could be candidates for public offices:

"Jura dabat populo senior, finitaque certis Legibus est aetas, unde petatur honos."

Fast. v. 65-6.

After the promulgation of his famous plebiscitum by the old Tribune of the People in the year 179 A.C., a Roman could not fill the office of quaestor till he was 31, nor aedile till he was 37,--as, guided by the antiquaries, Sigonius and Pighius, Doujat, the Delphin editor of Livy, states: "quaestores ante annum aetatis trigesimum primum non crearentur, nec aediles curules ante septimum ac trigesimum";--and the ages for the two offices were usually 32 and 38.

From Vespasian's rule extending to ten years we cannot arrive at the date when Tacitus was quaestor; but we can guess when he was aedile, as t.i.tus was emperor only from the spring of 79 to the autumn of 81.

Had his appointment to the aediles.h.i.+p taken place on the last day of the reign of t.i.tus, 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 compet.i.tion 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 t.i.tus,--even admitting that he could boast, like Cicero, of having obtained all his honours in the prescribed years--"omnes honores anno suo"--and been aedile the moment he was qualified by age for the office,--he must have been born, at least, as far back as the year 44.

This will be reconcilable with all that Pliny says, as well as with his being married when "young"; for he would then be 32 or 33, and his bride 22 or 23; for the daughter of Agricola was born when her father was quaestor in Asia--"sors quaesturae provinciam Asiam dedit ... auctus est ibi filia." (Agr. 9). Nor let it be supposed that a Roman would not have used the epithet "young" to a man of 32 or 33, seeing that the Romans applied the term to men in their best years, from 20 to 40, or a little under or over. Hence Livy terms Alexander the Great at the time of his death, when he was 31, "a young man," "egregium ducem fuisse Alexandrum ...

adolescens ... decessit" (ix. 17): so Cicero styles Lucius Cra.s.sus at the age of 34;--"talem vero exsistere eloquentiam qualis fuerit in Cra.s.so et Antonio ... alter non multum (quod quidem exstaret), et id ipsum adolescens, alter nihil admodum scripti reliquisset".

(De Orat. ii. 2): so also does Cornelius Nepos speak of Marcus Brutus, when the latter was praetor, Brutus being then 43 years of age:--"sic Marco Bruto usus est, ut nullo ille adolescens aequali familiarius" (Att. 8); to this pa.s.sage of Nepos's, Nicholas Courtin, his Delphin editor, adds that the ancients called men "young" from the age of 17 to the age of 46; notwithstanding that Varro limited youth to 30 years:--"a 17 ad 46 annum, adolescentia antiquitus pertingebat, ut ab antiquis observatum est. Nihilominus Varro ad 30 tantum pertingere ait." But Tacitus being born in 44 is not reconcilable with his being the Author of the Annals, as thus:--

Some time in the nineteen years that Trajan was Emperor,--from 98 to ll7,--Tacitus, being then between the ages of 54 and 73, composed his History. He paused when he had carried it on to the reign of Domitian; the narrative had then extended to twenty-three years, and was comprised in "thirty books," if we are to believe St. Jerome in his Commentary on the Fourteenth Chapter of Zechariah:

"Cornelius Tacitus ... post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." [Endnote 013] It was scarcely possible for Tacitus to have executed his History in a shorter compa.s.s;--indeed, it is surprising that the compa.s.s was so short, looking at the probability of his having observed the symmetry attended to by the ancients in their writings, and having continued his work on the plan he pursued at the commencement, the important fragment which we have of four books, and a part of the fifth, embracing but little more than one year. Whether he ever carried into execution the design he had reserved for his old age,--writing of Nerva and Trajan,--we have no record. But two things seem tolerably certain; that he would have gone on with that continuation to his History in preference to writing the Annals; and that he would not have written that continuation until after the death of the Emperor Trajan. He would then have been 73.

Now, how long would he have been on that separate history? Then at what age could he have commenced the Annals? And how long would he have been engaged in its composition? We see that he must have been bordering on 80, if not 90: consequently with impaired faculties, and thus altogether disqualified for producing such a vigorous historical masterpiece; for though we have instances of poets writing successfully at a very advanced age, as Pindar composing one of his grandest lyrics at 84, and Sophocles his Oedipus Coloneus at 90, we have no instance of any great historian, except Livy, attempting to write at a very old age, and then Livy rambled into inordinate diffuseness.

II. The silence maintained with respect to the Annals by all writers till the first half of the fifteenth century is much more striking than chronology in raising the very strongest suspicion that Tacitus did not write that book. This is the more remarkable as after the first publication of the last portion of that work by Vindelinus of Spire at Venice in 1469 or 1470, all sorts and degrees of writers began referring to or quoting the Annals, and have continued doing so to the present day with a frequency which has given to its supposed writer as great a celebrity as any name in antiquity. Kings, princes, ministers and politicians have studied it with diligence and curiosity, while scholars, professors, authors and historians in Italy, Spain, France, England, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have applied their minds to it with an enthusiasm, which has been like a kind of wors.h.i.+p. Yet, after the most minute investigation, it cannot be discovered that a single reference was made to the Annals by any person from the time when Tacitus lived until shortly before the day when Vindelinus of Spire first ushered the last six books to the admiring world from the mediaeval Athens. When it appeared it was at once p.r.o.nounced to be the brightest gem among histories; its author was greeted as a most wonderful man,--the "unique historian", for so went the phrase--"inter historicos unicus."

Now, are we to be asked quietly to believe that there never lived from the first quarter of the second century till after the second quarter of the fifteenth, a single individual possessed of sufficient capacity to discern such eminent and obvious excellence as is contained in the Annals? Are we to believe that that could have been so? in a slowly revolving cycle of 1,000 years and more?

ay, upwards of 1,300! If that really was the case, it is enough to strike us dumb with stupor in contemplating such a miraculous instance of perpetuated inanity,--among the lettered, too!--the learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case, what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It indicates one of two things,--duncelike stupidity or studious contempt. Both these surmises must be dismissed,--the first as too absurd, the second as too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture--Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence of forty generations of mankind. Again, this supposed probability is too preposterously extravagant to be for an instant credited because it cannot for a moment be comprehended. In short, how marvellous it is! how utterly unaccountable! how inexpressibly mysterious!

Pliny does not say a word about the Annals. The earliest Latin father, Tertullian, quotes only the History (Apol. c. 16).

St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Zechariah (iii. 14), cites the pa.s.sage in the fifth book of the History about the origin of the Jews; he also notices what Tacitus says of another important event, the Fall of Jerusalem, which, having occurred in the reign of Vespasian, must have been narrated in the History. The "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib. V., cc. 5 and 10), and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,--the Temple of Ja.n.u.s being open from the time of Augustus to Vespasian (vii. 3);--the number of the Jews who perished at the siege of Jerusalem (vii. 9); and the possibly large number of Romans who were killed in the wars with the Daci during the reign of Domitian (vii. 10):--all which pa.s.sages must have been in the lost portions of the History.

In his Epistles and Poems, that man of wit and fancy, with an intellect and learning above the fifth century in which he lived, --Sidonius Apollinaris,--has one quotation from Tacitus and three references to him. The quotation, which occurs in the fourteenth chapter of the fourth book of his Epistles, is from the last section of the History, (that part of the speech of Civilis where the seditious Batavian touches on the friends.h.i.+p which existed between himself and Vespasian); and his three references are, first, to the "ancient mode of narrative," combined with the greatest "literary excellence" (iv. 22); secondly, to "genius for eloquence" (Carm. xxiii. 153-4); and thirdly, to "pomp of manner"

(Carm. ii. 192); the not inelegant Christian writer enumerating qualities that specially commend themselves in the History. When Spartian praises Tacitus for "good faith," the eulogy is more appropriate to the writer of the History than the Annals, howbeit that so many moderns, including the famous philologist and polygrapher, Justus Lipsius; the Pomeranian scholar of the last century, Meierotto; Boetticher and Prutz all question the veracity of Tacitus; while for what he says of the Jews Tertullian vituperates him in language so outrageous as to be altogether unbecoming the capacious mind of the Patristic worthy, who calls him, "the most loquacious of liars,"--"mendaciorum loquacissimus;"

--in which strain of calumny he was, from the same cause of religious fervour, followed centuries after,--in the seventeenth,--by two of the most renowned preachers and orators of their day, the famous Jesuit, Famia.n.u.s Strada, and his less known contemporary, but most able Chamberlain of Urban VIII., Augustino Mascardi,--as if all these pious Christians found it quite impossible to pardon a heathen, blinded by the prejudices of paganism, for believing what he did of the Hebrews; and for recording which belief he ought to receive immediate forgiveness, seeing that Justin, Plutarch, Strabo and Democritus said as bad, if not worse things of that ancient people and their sacred books. [Endnote 019]

Ca.s.siodorus, the Senator, is the only writer of the sixth century, who makes any allusion to Tacitus, and that but once, in the fifth book of his Epistles, to what the Roman says in his Germany of the origin of amber, about which naturalists are still divided, that it is a distillation from certain trees. Freculphus (otherwise written Radulphus), Bishop of Lisieux, who died in the middle of the ninth century (856), in the second volume of his Chronicles, --the sixth chapter of the second book,--quotes Tacitus as the author of the History, the pa.s.sage being in reference to the Romans who fell in the Dacian war. We have no proof that the Annals was in existence in the twelfth century from what John of Salisbury says in his Polycraticon (viii. 18), that Tacitus is among the number of those historians, "qui tyrannorum atrocitates et exitus miseros plenius scribunt;" for in his completed History Tacitus must have expatiated pretty freely on the "atrocious tyranny" of Domitian, and the "unfortunate termination of the lives of tyrants."

From the time of John of Salisbury till shortly before the publication of the Annals, no further reference is made to Tacitus by any writer or historian, monkish or otherwise, not even of erudite Germany, beginning with Abbot Hermannus, who wrote in the twelfth century the history of his own monastery of St. Martin's at Dornick, and ending with Caspar Bruschius, who, in the sixteenth century, wrote an Epitome of the Archbishoprics and Bishoprics of Germany, and the Centuria Prima (as Daniel Nessel in the next century wrote the Centuria Secunda) of the German monasteries. And yet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all kinds of writers quote the Annals about as freely and frequently as they quote the History, and that not once or twice, but five or six, and even seven and eight times, in the same work.

It would be impossible to mention them all, the writers being "as numerous as the leaves in Vallambrosa's vale";--a figure that can hardly be considered hyperbolic when the enormous number of these writers can be partially guessed from the following catalogue of those who delighted in antiquarian researches, whose productions cited are archaeological, and who made all their references to the Annals for the purpose of merely ill.u.s.trating 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, ent.i.tled "Utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatum Romanarum Graecarumque Nova Supplementa";--the Friesland scholar, t.i.tus Popma in his "De Operis Servorum"; the Italian antiquary, Lorenzo Pignorio, Canon of Trevigo, in his treatise "De Servis"; the renowned critic, Salmasius, in his explanation of two ancient inscriptions found on a Temple in the island of Crete ("Notae ad Consecrationem Templi in Agro Herodis Attici Triopio"); Peter Burmann in his "De Vectigalibus"; Albertinus Barrisonus in his "De Archivis"; Merula, the jurist, historian and polygrapher, in his "De Legibus Romanorum"; Carolus Patinus in his Commentary "In Antiquum Monumentum Marcellinae"; Polletus in his "Historia Fori Romani"; Aegyptius in his "De Baccha.n.a.libus Explicatio"; Gisbert Cuper in his "Monumenta Antiqua Inedita"; Octavius Ferrarius in his "Dissertatio de Gladiatoribus"; William a Loon in his "Eleutheria"; Schaeffer in his "De Re Vehiculari"; Johannes Jacobus Claudius in his "Diatribe 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 Tiberia.n.u.s." In fact, the Annals of Tacitus is noticed, or quoted, or referred to, or commented upon at length (as at the commencement of the sixteenth century by Scipione Ammirato), in an endless list of works, with or without the names of the authors, which by itself is all but conclusive that the Annals was not in existence till the fifteenth century, and not generally known till the sixteenth and seventeenth.

But to return for a moment to what was done by two writers, who lived before the fifteenth century,--Sulpicius Severus, who died A.D. 420; and Jornandez, who, in the time of Justinian, was Secretary to the Gothic kings in Italy. Now, it must not be withheld,--for it would be too uncandid,--that identical pa.s.sages are found in the Annals ascribed to Tacitus and the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus.

In order that the reader may see the ident.i.ty of the pa.s.sages, we place them in juxtaposition, italicising the words that are found in both works:--

Sulpicius (ii. 28). "_Inditum imperatori flammeum, dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales; cuncta denique, quae_ vel _in feminis_ non sine verecundia conspiciuntur, _spectata_."