Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 11

Bracciolini thanked him for it, but complained that the Lombard characters, in which it was written, were half effaced; and that if he had only known what he was about to do, he would have spared him the trouble. He went on to say that he remembered having read a copy of Tacitus in antique characters which Niccoli had in his possession, and which he had purchased at the sale of the library of his old friend Coluccio Salutati, or some other large book collector. He was desirous of having that or some other that could be read; for it would be difficult to find a transcriber who, without making mistakes, could read the ma.n.u.script that he had sent him:--"Misisti mihi librum Senecae, et Cornelium Tacitum, quod est mihi gratum; et is est litteris longobardis, et majori ex parte caducis, quod si scissem, libera.s.sem te eo labore. Legi olim quemdam apud vos manens litteris antiquis; nescio Colucii ne esset, an alterius. Illum cupio habere, vel alium, qui legi possit; nam difficile erit reperire scriptorem qui hunc codicem recte legat" (Ep. III. 15).

It is clear from these words that the copy of Tacitus which Bracciolini received in October 1427 from his friend Niccoli so very badly written in Lombard letters as to be for the most part indistinguishable, could not have been for his own reading, nor for his making a copy of it as he was in the habit of doing with the ancient cla.s.sics, but from his saying that it could not be correctly read by a transcriber, it must have been for the purpose of placing it in the hands of such a person. But why should he put such a Tacitus in the hands of a transcriber? Let the reader ask himself that question; and his reply will be, that it could have been with no other object than that the History and the other works of Tacitus should be copied into the oldest characters that could be obtained by Bracciolini; with this further and more important motive in view, to add to the acknowledged works of Tacitus the new portion that had just been forged, all uniformly transcribed in the same equally old letters in order to deceive the world as to the very great antiquity, and, consequently, the implied authenticity of the fabrication. Bracciolini is, accordingly, most anxious to get a very old copy of Tacitus. "Take care, therefore," he continues in his letter to Niccoli, "that I have another, if it can be done; but you can do it, if you will strive your utmost":--"ideo cura ut alium habeam, si fieri potest; poteris autem, si volueris nervos intendere" (ibid). His anxiety also is very great for the transcriber to set to work at once by his adding: "You have, however, sent me the book without the parchment. I know not the state of mind you were in when you did this, except that you were as mad as a March hare. For what book can be transcribed, if there be not the parchment? Have a care to it, then, and, also, to a second ma.n.u.script, but, above all, keep in mind the vellum."--"Tu tamen misisti librum sine chartis, quod nescio qua mente effeceris, nisi ut poneres lunam in Ariete.

[Endnote 303] Qui enim potest liber transcribi desint Pergamenae?

Cura ergo de eis, et item de altero codice, sed primum de chartis confice" (ibid).

The parchment came in good time, as well as a second old copy of Tacitus that could be read by a transcriber.

V. This was the 2lst of October, 1427. Exactly eleven months and ten days elapsed, during the whole of which time nothing more is heard about old copies of Tacitus and transcriptions on calfskin; all again went on in profound silence and secresy till the llth of September, 1428, when the mountain again laboured; and a little bit of news that dropped from Bracciolini bore a close resemblance to the appearance of a small mouse: "Not a word," says he, "of Cornelius Tacitus from Germany; nor have I heard thence any further news of his works," showing that this must have been in reply to some remark in a letter of Niccoli's expressing surprise, it may be, at the very long time that was being taken in the transcription of the works of Tacitus with the additional new bit:--"Cornelius Tacitus silet inter Germanos, neque quicquam exinde novi percepi de ejus operibus" (Ep. III. 19).

Evidently the needy, ignorant, stupid monk of Hirschfeldt was not over busy in the Abbey of Fulda transcribing the forgery of Bracciolini and incorporating it with the works of Tacitus in closely copied Lombard characters of great antiquity. The monk was not only slow at his work; he was also negligent; for when he went to Rome in the winter following, and should have taken his transcript to Bracciolini, he had left it behind him at the abbey.

"The Hirschfeldt monk has come without the book," writes Bracciolini angrily to Niccoli on the 26th February, 1429; "and I gave him a sound rating for it; he has given me his a.s.surance that he will be back aoain soon for he is carrying on a suit about his abbey in the law-courts, and will bring the book. He made heavy demands upon me; but I told him I would do nothing for him until _I_ have the book; I am, therefore, in hopes that I shall have it, as he is in need of my good offices":--"Monachus Hersfeldensis venit absque libro; multumque est a me increpatus ob eam causam; a.s.severavit se cito rediturum, nam litigat nomine Monasterii, et portaturum librum. Rogavit me multa; dixi me nil facturum, nisi librum haberemus; ideo spero et illum nos haberemus, quia eget favore nostro " (Ep. III. 29).

VI. As he antic.i.p.ated, the book ultimately turned up; it might have been in a week or two, or it might not have been till two or three months after; for in a letter that bears the date of neither the year nor the day,--(which I think was sometime in March 1429, though the Chevalier de Tonelli, in his Collection of the Letters of Bracciolini, conjectures must have been in the first week in May,--some time before the 6th of that month,)--a pa.s.sage occurs in which Bracciolini informs his friend Niccoli that, as far as himself was concerned, everything was "now complete with respect to the 'Little Work,' concerning which he would on some future opportunity write to him, and at the same time send it to him to read in order to get his opinion of it": "Ego jam Opusculum absolvi, de quo alias ad te scribam, et simul legendum mittam, ut exquirendum judicium tuum" (Ep. III. 30). I take it that he is here alluding in his customary jesting manner (from his writing "opusculum" with a big O, to his "great" undertaking, the Annals.

If he is not joking, but serious, he must, then, of course, be referring to his treatise, "De Avaritia," which is, certainly, a "little affair," and which he wrote in 1429. However, the monk in the Abbey of Fulda, who had taken a very long time in his transcription of the forgery, had finished his work by the 26th of February, 1429, and must have placed it in Bracciolini's hands a little before or after the month of March in that year.

The deed was then now done. With the consummation of the forgery, all that correspondence suddenly came to an end which had been carried on for years by Bracciolini with Niccoli relative to Tacitus; that correspondence has given much additional colouring of truthfulness to the theory I have proposed to myself to uphold; if there had been nothing else convincing, it should, by itself, leave no shadow of a shade of doubt that Bracciolini forged the Annals of Tacitus. Though, too, we have no positive record of it, we may be as sure as if we had, that the last six books of that production first saw the light some time in the spring of the year 1429.

CHAPTER V.

THE FORGED Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.

I. Recapitulation, showing the certainty of forgery.--II. The Second Florence MS. the forged MS.--III. Cosmo de' Medici the man imposed upon.--IV. Digressions about Cosmo de' Medici's position, and fondness for books, especially Tacitus.--V. The many suspicious marks of forgery about the Second Florence MS.: the Lombard characters; the attestation of Sal.u.s.tius.--VI. The headings, and Tacitus being bound up with Apuleius, seem to connect Bracciolini with the forged MS.--VII. The first authentic mention of the Annals.--VIII. Nothing invalidates the theory in this book.--IX. Brief recapitulation of the whole argument.

I. We have, then, seen, how, from the inception to the commencement of the forgery;--how, from its first suggestion to Bracciolini by Lamberteschi and its approval by Niccoli in February, 1422, down to the finis.h.i.+ng of the transcription by the monk of the Abbey of Fulda in February, 1429, and its delivery into the hands of Bracciolini in probably the month following, seven years elapsed. The time was, certainly, long enough for the fabrication to have been elaborated into the remarkable completeness by which it is distinguished, and which secured the signal success with which, to all appearances, it was immediately, as it has all along, been attended. Nearly two years were pa.s.sed in considering how the last Six Books of the Annals could best be done: the composition of those few books was commenced about January, 1424, and completed by May, 1427: several months were then occupied in endeavouring to procure the oldest copy of Tacitus that could be got to serve as a guide for the copyist, nor was it until October, 1427, that the transcriber was supplied with a copy in small Lombard characters; the transcription was then begun, and, after a year and a few months, in February, 1429, the work was finally completed, and next month probably placed in the hands of the fabricator.

Throughout this we see the exercise of an exceeding caution from the beginning to the end which would have provided against all mistakes and mischances, if it were in the power of man to be on his guard against all mischances and mistakes in an achievement of such a description. We have pointed out a few of these mistakes; they may in some instances be considered trifling; looked at from one point of view, trifling they are; but looked at from another point of view, they are most important, nay, startling, because they are mistakes that could not, in any instance, have been made by Tacitus; in several instances they could not have been made by any ancient Roman whomsoever.

Still, the wonder is, not that Bracciolini made these mistakes, but that he did not make a great many more. As for the general merit of his achievement, it is actually marvellous;--the most phenomenal thing ever known to have been done in literature. It has not come within the scope of this inquiry that I should point out the successes of Bracciolini in imitating Tacitus: suffice it that they are sustained, continuous, close, felicitous, wonderful;--so much so that frequently in the pursuing of this investigation I have been induced to throw it aside as a mere barren paradox instead of a thoroughly sound hypothesis, aye, based on a foundation as firm as the Great Pyramid; but every now and then the occurrence of some mistake, which, though at the first glance, it looked very small, nay, insignificant,--of no importance whatever, yet considered more minutely, it bulked out into an egregious, colossal, monstrous blunder which made it impossible for me to believe that the Annals was a production by Tacitus.

If errors pointed out in language or style, in statements or grammar, have shaken the reader's faith in the authenticity of the Annals, that faith must have been still more shaken by the mysterious allusions made by Bracciolini in his letters to Niccoli about Tacitus; the conjectures I have hazarded on these must have gained additional force when references followed to an unknown monk of Hirschfeldt, with mention of copies of Tacitus in Lombard writing, parchment for transcription, and other matters denoting the completion of a literary work in those days.

II. Now, if there be any truth in my theory,--if Bracciolini really forged the Annals,--further, if a transcript of it was made by a monk of the Abbey of Fulda, and if the ma.n.u.script is still in existence, it must necessarily be the oldest containing the last six books of the Annals; I will add this more, that if there be one place more likely than another where it would be found, it is the city whence the offer emanated, namely, Florence, and if there be one library more likely than another where it would be deposited, it is the library founded by (for a reason that will be immediately seen) the Medici family. Well, it does so happen that the oldest MS. of Tacitus containing the last six books of the Annals is really preserved in Florence; and in that library, the foundation of which was laid by Cosmo de' Medici, and which is known by the name of the Mediceo-Laurentian Library.

III. There can be very little doubt that Cosmo de' Medici was the famous individual,--the very rich man, for whom the three Florentines, Lamberteschi, Niccoli, and Bracciolini, conspired to get up a forgery of Tacitus. It certainly never once comes out in the correspondence, in language that can be considered "totus, teres atque rotundus," that the man who was imposed upon by Bracciolini and his two accomplices, and who was shamefully deceived into paying the little fortune of five, six, or even more hundred gold sequins for a forgery, was their own most affectionate, intimate, and eminent friend, the merchant of a fortune that placed him on a level with the princes of Italy, Cosmo de' Medici;--but Cosmo de' Medici it was: any other man than he would have jumped at such an offer as having the whole history of Livy, instead of a small fragment of Tacitus, which Bracciolini was positive that he could get (because he was positive that he could forge it); but the ill.u.s.trious Florentine peremptorily refused the offer, there being no other historian whom he liked so much as Tacitus, nor whom he read with so much pleasure and profit, as borne testimony to by Vossius in his Treatise on the Roman Historians, when speaking of Tacitus in terms which lend additional strength to the truth of our theory of forgery. "The diction of Tacitus," he says, "is more florid and exuberant in the books of the History, terser and drier in the Annals: meanwhile he is staid and eloquent in both: no other historian was read with equal pleasure by Cosmo de' Medici, the Duke of Tuscany, a man, who, if there was one, possessed the greatest genius for statesmans.h.i.+p, and was clearly made to rule": --"Dictio Taciti floridior uberiorque in Historiarum est libris, pressior, sicciorque in Annalibus. Interim gravis utrobique et disertus. Non alium Historic.u.m aeque lect.i.taret Cosmus Medices, Hetruriae Dux, vir, si quis alius, civilis prudentiae intelligentis- simus, planeque ad imperandum factus" (Vossius. De Historicis Latinis.

Lib. I. c. 30. p. 146). Muretus says the same in the second volume of his Orations (Orat. XVIII.): "Cosmo de' Medici, who was the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, a man made to rule, who laid down the doctrine, that that which is commonly called good fortune consists in wise and prudent conduct, delighted in the works of Tacitus; and from the reading of them he derived the most excessive enjoyment":--"Cosmus Medices, qui primus Magnus Etruriae Dux fuit, h.o.m.o factus ad imperandum, qui eam, quae vulgo fortuna dicitur, in consilio et prudentia consistere docuit, Taciti libros in deliciis habebat; eorumque lectione avidissime fruebatur."--

IV. We may here observe parenthetically that both Vossius and Muretus err in speaking of Cosmo de' Medici, the former as "the Duke," the second as the "First Grand Duke" of Tuscany: it was not till the sixteenth century that the members of that family obtained the absolute sovereignty: in the fifteenth century there was, as Roscoe says in his Life of Lorenzo de' Medici (p. 6), no "prescribed or definite compact" between them and the people; the authority which Cosmo de' Medici exercised consisted, according to that correct and elegant writer, "rather in a tacit influence on his part, and a voluntary acquiescence on that of the people."

That Roscoe was quite right can be seen by consulting a contemporary writer, Bartolommeo Fazio; in the biographical sketches that he has given of the most ill.u.s.trious men of his time, who distinguished themselves as poets, orators, lawyers, physicians, painters, sculptors, private citizens, generals, and kings and princes, he has placed Cosmo de' Medici under the heading, "Of Some Private Citizens," ("De Quibusdam Civibus Privatis"); furthermore, he speaks of him in the following terms: --"As a civilian he was exceedingly rich, being not only the wealthiest of all the private men of our age, but in that respect to be compared, moreover, with princes of no mean standing": --"Divitiis civilem modum longe excessit omnium non tantum privatorum hominum nostrae tempestatis locupletissimus, sed etiam c.u.m non mediocribus principibus ea re conferendus" (Bartol.

Facius. De Viris Ill.u.s.tribus, p. 57. Flor. Ed. 1745).

After he has spoken of the active part that Cosmo de' Medici took in the administration of public affairs, and the valuable advice that he gave in matters pertaining to war;--of the churches and other public buildings that he erected at his own expense;--the numbers of men whom he raised to public posts;--his beneficence to the poor;--his liberality to foreigners;--his hospitality to his countrymen; and the wonderful way in which he had adorned and embellished his private mansion with Tuscan marble;--Fazio ends by saying that, "in authority and estimation he was unquestionably the PRINCE of his native city":--"Auctoritate et existimatione haud dubie civitatis suae PRINCEPS" (ibid. p. 58). Here we see the cause of the error committed by Vossius, Muretus, and a number of historians; not only this phrase of Fazio's, but the manner in which contemporary Florentines thought of and demeaned themselves towards Cosmo de' Medici.

We may further state, while thus digressing, that, from what Fazio says, we know that Cosmo de' Medici was a great lover of books; for Fazio informs us in his notice of Niccolo Niccoli that Cosmo de' Medici had his library in the magnificent church which at his own cost he had erected in Florence, namely, St. Mark's, ("bibliothecae, quae erat in Marci Evangelistae Templo, quam Cosmus Medices effecerat" (Facius. De Viris Ill.u.s.t. p. 12); "this library he had built on a very extensive scale," and "adorned" it "with an infinite number of volumes of both Greek and Latin authors, of all kinds, and every degree of merit, some of which he had got at heavy expense from various quarters, others being copies contracted for with transcribers":--"bibliothecam, quam amplissimam aedificavit, infinitis librorum voluminibus tum Greacorum, tum Latinorum, cujusque ordinis, ac facultatis exornavit partim undique magno impendio quaesitis, partim conductis librariis exscriptis" (ibid. p. 57).

But to return.--

We see, then, from two such reliable authorities as Vossius and Muretus, that Cosmo de' Medici took a special delight in Tacitus, and ardently enjoyed reading him. We can thus clearly perceive, why it was when a forgery was to be undertaken, it was of an ancient cla.s.sic, and the selection made was a continuance to the History of Tacitus: we, also, know how natural it was when Bracciolini found, after deliberation and a trial, that there was little or no sympathy between him and Tacitus, and, certainly, no ident.i.ty of genius, that he should strive his utmost to cast off such a heavy burden and endeavour to carry a lighter load by fabricating a continuation of Livy; but no guinea is required to be spent for a visit to the seance of a medium, to call up the spirit of Cosmo de' Medici by the rapping of a table: in the first place, the spirit would be sure not to come, however hard the table might be rapped, from fear of being addressed in Latin or Italian, as spirits are always sulky when they speak languages that are unknown to the medium: in the second place, after what we hear from Vossius and Muretus about the historical studies of the enlightened Princely Florentine, we want no ghost of his to come from the grave, and tell us that he would not have taken one entire book of Livy for one little page of Tacitus. Hence Bracciolini was forced to go on with a forgery that went against his grain; but, uncongenial as it was, he executed it with the skill and power that showed the master mind.

V. The ma.n.u.script in the Mediceo-Laurentian library is known as the Second Florence MS.; all the other MSS. of the last six books of the Annals are copies of it: as James Gronovius puts it, "emanated" from it: "ex hoc codice omnia alia scripta Taciti exemplaria _fluxisse_"; just as the other Florentine MS. is the only one containing all the books of the Annals, or as Ernesti says: "it is unique: we have no other ma.n.u.script of those books: --"ille unus est, nec alium scriptum illorum librorum codicem habemus;" there was no necessity making many transcripts of the latter codex, for printing had come into use a good half century before it was found,--or, more properly, said to have been found, --in the Abbey of Corvey.

Both these ma.n.u.scripts are spurious; though it concerns us for the present only to deal with the Second or earlier one:--Of the First or later one I will speak at the proper time.

The second Florence MS., if a forgery, ought to have many suspicious marks about it to denote that it is a fabrication; and, perhaps, there does not exist in the world a more suspicious ma.n.u.script, not in one, but sundry, respects.

In the first place, it is written in Lombard characters; of which the Benedictines in their "Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique," give both a description and a specimen; and from the specimen given, the characters are small and elegant, some being high and ending in volutes or curves, while there is a "mingling of capitals and cursives."

But why should the ma.n.u.script have been written in Lombard characters at all? It would seem simply in order to give it an air of excessively great antiquity;--but a more fatal mistake could not possibly have been made.

We know from the letters that Bracciolini wrote to Niccoli that he wanted a very old copy of Tacitus to serve as a guide to the transcriber at Hirschfeldt: Niccoli sent him a Tacitus in Lombard characters; his objection to it was not that the characters were Lombard, but that they were "half-effaced" ("caduca"). We may, therefore, conclude that the copy finally sent to him as a guide for the transcriber, was, also, in Lombard characters; those not "half-effaced," but clear and legible; it is a pity for them, but a good job for me, that he or Niccoli, or both, did not know that Lombard characters were not in use in the century when they wanted it to appear that their forgery was in existence; for they indulged in a trick to make the reader believe that the MS. was in existence at the close of the fourth century at the very latest; and, perhaps, a hundred or two hundred years before, for they put a note at the end, by which the reader is given to understand, to his mighty surprise, that the ma.n.u.script was in the hands of that ill.u.s.trious Heathen Philosopher, Sal.u.s.tius, not the Syrian and Cynic, of whom an account is given by Suidas, Photius, Fabricitis and others, for he lived in the fifth century, but the Gaul and Platonist, who flourished in the preceding century, of whom Fabricius said that he would "rather ascribe to him who was the friend of the Emperor Julian and the Platonist, than to the other Sal.u.s.tius, who was the Cynic, the elegant treatise that was extant, "On the G.o.ds and the World";--"huic potius Juliani, Platonico, quam alteri Cynico Sal.u.s.tio tribuerim libellum elegantem, qui exstat [Greek: peri Theon kai kosmou]" (Biblioth.

Graec. Lib. III. c. 9); Theodoretus also speaks of him in his [Greek: Historia Ekklaesiastikae] (Lib. I. 3), as well as the Emperor Julian in one of his Orations (VIII.) and Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus in the 21st and 23rd books of his History. Now, the very fact that Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus speaks of this Sal.u.s.tius is the very reason why he should have been selected to be the corrector of the forged MS.; we have already said more than once, --and it cannot be too often impressed upon the reader,--that Bracciolini found the historical books of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus; to all appearances, he had most carefully studied them: it was therefore, from his being quite familiar with the pages of Marcellinus, that he had Sal.u.s.tius suggested to him as the best individual to write the note.

The note is to the effect that Sal.u.s.tius had read and corrected the ma.n.u.script when he was residing in Rome during the Consulate of Olibrius and Probinus, and that he had again revised it at Constantinople in the Consulate of Caesarius and Atticus.--"Ego Sal.u.s.tius legi et emendavi Romae felix, Olibio et Probino vc.

Coss. in foro Martis controversias declamans oratori Endelechio.

Rursus Constantinopoli recognovi Caesario et Attico Consulibus".

Olibrius (not Olibius) and Probinus were the two last consuls in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius; that, therefore, gives the date 395; and Caesarius and Atticus were the consuls in the second year of the Emperor Arcadius, so that that gives the date 397.

All the editors of Tacitus cast no doubt on the authenticity of these words; they believe they were actually written by Sal.u.s.tius; the fact is, they have not the slightest suspicion of forgery; under which circ.u.mstance, they had no other alternative but to regard the ma.n.u.script as a palimpsest, with everything erased except these words, which they believed ought also to have been expunged, as appertaining to the previous, and not the existing MS., and which remained through the negligence of the transcriber.

Pichena, accepting everything as genuine, was of opinion that the ma.n.u.script was as old as 395; this is an opinion that everybody considers ridiculous, on account of the characters being Lombard, it not being until the sixth century that the Lombards came into Italy, until which date all Latin ma.n.u.scripts were written in Roman characters.

On account of this, there has arisen, among, the cognoscente of codices, an interminable controversy attended by a startling divergence of opinion with respect to the length of the existence of this ma.n.u.script.

Unable to agree with Pichena, Jarnes Gronovius, nevertheless, places it at such an "immense distance in antiquity from all the others," that one must suppose he considered it coeval with the immediate arrival of the Lombards into Italy, and, therefore, about the sixth century. Exterus and Panckoucke, entertaining pretty much the same opinion as James Gronovius, date its origin from the seventh or eighth century.

A man who took an enormous interest in all literary matters of this description, Cardinal Pa.s.sionei, deputed, in the middle of the last century, one of the most skilful experts in ma.n.u.scripts in Italy, Signor Botari, to ascertain the age of this puzzling codex. Botari naturally applied to the princ.i.p.al keeper of the Mediceo-Laurentian Library, Signor Biccioni, who, after consulting with his colleague, Signor Martini, came to the conclusion that it did not date further back than the eighth century.

The Benedictine Brothers, who tell this anecdote, are themselves of opinion that the ma.n.u.script is not older than the tenth century; and for these reasons, "the characters, the distance between the words, the punctuation, and some other signs" which are indicative, they say, of that century: "les caracteres, la distance des mots, la ponctuation et plusieurs autres signes marquent tout au plus le Xe siecle" (t. III. p. 279).

Other men have given other opinions of the age of this ma.n.u.script; Ernesti, for example, believes that it is as old as the 11th century; others say the 13th; others again give some other time; whereas the exact date is known to the reader, who is aware that it first saw the light in February or March, 1429.

But about this writing of Sal.u.s.tius. Further imposture is shown by what the Philosopher is made to say about his "declaiming controversies" in the Forum of Mars before the Orator Endelechius.

There is nothing to show that Sal.u.s.tius, (though he was in Gaul, the prefect in the praetorium, while Julian, the Apostate, was proconsul), was ever in Rome. It is doubtful whether Sal.u.s.tius and Endelechius ever were together; for though both flourished in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, one lived in Rome and the other in Constantinople.

Looking at all the circ.u.mstances in this investigation it must be admitted as being uncommonly remarkable, and, therefore, uncommonly suspicious, that the note should have been made by one of whom such very little is known as Sal.u.s.tius; consequently, the very little that would be known of what he did, or what might be affirmed of him that he did:--we have seen from what is said of him by Fabricius that it is not positively known, but only shrewdly conjectured, that he wrote the treatise "De Diis et Mundo";--it is not ascertained whether he was the Sal.u.s.tius who was Consul with the Emperor Julian IV. in the year 363;--it is not settled what were his other names, some, such as Lempriere, taking them to be Secundus Promo_tus_, others, such as M. Weiss, in the "Biographie Universelle", Secundus Promo_tius_, a third set questioning whether he had any such names as "Secundus" and "Promotus" or "Promotius":--finally, it is not determined how his name, Sal.u.s.tius, ought to be spelt, whether with one or with two l's, when in Suidas it is spelt "Sal.u.s.tius" [Greek: Saloustios], and in Theodoretus "Sall.u.s.tius" [Greek letters: Salloustios].

And "who shall decide" when a lexicographer and a bishop "disagree?"

There is not yet an end to all the mystery and confusion hanging around this Praefectus Praetorio. Was he ever a Praefectus Praetorio? One cannot then understand why Theodoretus, when speaking of his being [Greek: huparchos] (Hist. Eccl. I. 6 post init.), should express his surprise at it, from Sal.u.s.tius "being a slave to impiety." The general of the Imperial Guard could have discharged his duties just as well whether he was pious or impious: So could the Praefectus Urbi; but this would not have been the case with the officer who was the superintendent of the public morals,--the Praefectus Morum: It would therefore seem that this was the post held by Sal.u.s.tius, when Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus informs us in his History that the Emperor Julian "promoted him to be Prefect and sent him into Gaul:"--"Sal.u.s.tium Praefectum promotum in Galliam missus est" (Lib. XXI. c. 8): Otherwise it is not clear why Theodoretus should write thus in his Ecelesiastical History:--"At this time Sall.u.s.tius who was Prefect, ALTHOUGH he was a _slave to impiety_:--[Greek: Salloustios de hyparchos on taenikauta, KAITOI tae dussebeia douleuon"] (L. c.)

With all this mystery and confusion attaching to Sal.u.s.tius, there is almost as much confusion and mystery attaching to Sanctus Severus Endelechius,--or Severus, as he is mostly known to the writers of ecclesiastical history. Possevino, the Elder, in the second volume (p. 398) of his "Apparatus Sacer" speaks of him as a teacher of oratory and a poet in the Christian world:--"Severi Rectoris et Poetae Christiani, Carmen Bucolicon". Rheinesius, in one of his Letters (VIII.) to Daumius, misquotes this, by subst.i.tuting "Rhetoris "for "Rectoris"; in the course of the same letter he makes a remark which causes one to understand what is meant by "declaiming controversies in the Forum of Mars to the Orator Endelechius": Rheinesius says that, the custom of rhetoricians was to bring forward into the forum set matters, or themes" [Greek: Theseis] "for the sake of intellectual exercitation":--"solebant enim oratores etiam fictas materias, seu [Greek: Theseis], in forum producere exercendi ingenii gratia"; --from this being done, we learn towards the close of the letter, when he is speaking of this very note to the Second Florentine MS., that "Endelechius was a master to Sall.u.s.tius"--"Endelechius ... Sall.u.s.tio magister fuit."

It is clear that Rheinesius believes everything about the note to the Second Florence MS. But how came a Heathen philosopher,--a very impious one, too, (according to Theodoretus), like Sal.u.s.tius, to be so cordially connected in the fourth century with a devout Christian teacher, like Sanctus Severus Endelechius? Even admitting that there was this freedom of intercourse between the two, do dates agree for the kind of relations.h.i.+p that is said to have existed between them? The time when Sal.u.s.tius was learning oratory from Endelechius was, as the note tells us, the year 395.

But Endelechius was the contemporary of Paulinus, the date of whose death was 431, and Endelechius died a little before or after him, (See Rheinesius Epist. ad Daumium VIII. p. 25.) Endelechius must have then been a remarkably juvenile instructor in rhetoric.

Shall we say at ten years of age? or eight? or six? or when he was in his cradle? for he died before he was 50.

Why, also, should there have been any written declaration on the part of Sal.u.s.tius, that he had revised the copy? Does it not look as if his certificate of revision was meant to establish this as a fact not to be contravened,--that the Ma.n.u.script is as old as the fourth century? The trick is clearly the artifice of an impostor, who wants an attestation, when no attestation is required to substantiate a thing except when the thing to be substantiated is, as in this instance, a falsification. The Benedictine monks say in their "Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique" (III. 279), "they never saw in any ma.n.u.script an attestation of corrections"; more so, when the ma.n.u.script is a copy, and not an original, and does not bear any corrections on its margin;--"sur un tres grand nombre de mss.