Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 3

Tacitus gives one origin to this priesthood, the author of the Annals another; Tacitus, describing the gladiatorial shows by which the birthday of Vitellius was celebrated in the year 15, says, that the Emperor Tiberius consecrated those priests to the Julian House, in imitation of their first inst.i.tutor, Romulus, who consecrated them to King Tatius: (facem Augustales subdidere: quod sacerdotium, ut _Romulus Tatio regi_, ita Caesar Tiberius Juliae genti, _sacravit_.) (Hist. II. 95.) The author of the Annals, as if this pa.s.sage had entirely slipped his attention, or dropped from his memory, or forgetting that he was engaged in the forgery of a work by Tacitus, corrects that view by making quite a different statement, that it was King Tatius, and not Romulus, who first inst.i.tuted, and apparently consecrated that order of priesthood to himself, his exact words being: "that same year saw established a new religious ceremony, by the priesthood being added of the 'Augustales Sodales,' as of yore t.i.tus Tatius, to retain the holy rites of the Sabines, had inst.i.tuted the 'Sodales t.i.tii'":--Idem annus novas caermonias accepit, addito sodalium Augustalium sacerdotio, ut quodam _t.i.tus Tatius_ retinendis Sabinorum sacris _sodales t.i.tios inst.i.tuerat_. (An. I. 54.) As many writings bearing upon the remote time of Romulus and the Sabine kings may be lost, and the author of the Annals may have had, in the fifteenth century, authorities not extant now, to warrant him in writing history so very differently from Tacitus; and as that Roman in such matters must have taken what he said on trust from others, we cannot here decide who was right and who wrong; but what is most important in this investigation is that the disagreement is quite sufficient to convince us that Tacitus did not write the Annals.

We shall hereafter more particularly distinguish the two works by other differences in their matter and form, the manner of their authors, and the substance of the things treated of: for the present we may proceed to distinguish them by some differences in their style and language.

III. In these respects nothing is easier than to detect two writers, no matter how careful they may be in endeavouring to imitate the style and language of each other: there will always be some shade,--and indeed, a very strong shade,--whereby to distinguish their manner of thinking and their choice and arrangement of words; there will be more or less purity, simplicity, grace and propriety in their choice of language; more or less beauty, precision, cadence and harmony in their collocation of words: their cogitative faculty will vary in measure of thought--in force or tenuity; nor will they resemble in their train of ideas,--be that regular, methodical and uniform, or unsteady, scattered and disorderly. There must ever be these important differences; they spring out of individual idiosyncrasy; their exercise is involuntary, being dependent upon the native taste and turn of mind of the writer; from such influence he can no more escape, than he can avoid in his physical qualities a peculiar gait or tone of voice, look, laugh, or mode of bearing.

If any one question this, let him take up any of the dramas written conjointly by members of the School of Shakespeare in the reign of James the First. They all tried to shape themselves in the same mould; they served apprentices to one another in constructing and composing the drama; Cartwright strove to write like his instructor, Ben Jonson; Ma.s.singer like his master, Shakespeare; Shakespeare, too, like Marston and Robert Green (for Marston taught him how to write tragedy, and Green taught him how to write comedy): they believed that they eminently succeeded in catching each other's manner, and to such a nicety, that they could write together, without the handiwork of one being distinguishable from the handiwork of the other. In this spirit Shakespeare wrote with Fletcher; Dekker with William Rowley; Ford, too, with Dekker; numerous others similarly composed in companions.h.i.+p, Middleton, Marston, Day and Heywood; but any one acquainted with their separate productions, consequently, with their style and language can hardly fail to point out what this one wrote, and what was written by the other. Test this by Shakespeare, who, it would be supposed, is the most difficult to detect because it is generally stated and believed that he wrote in a variety of styles; it is only a seeming variety; his mode of versification certainly differs--he changed his measures with his subjects; still the same fancy is always at work, impressing images with strength on the mind; there is no change in the weightiness of the style, the quaintness of the language, the justness of the representations, the depth of the reflections, whether he be writing the two worst plays in which he took part (for portions only seem to have been supplied by him), Pericles and t.i.tus Andronicus, or his two best, conceived so ma.s.sively and executed in such a masterly manner, Macbeth and Oth.e.l.lo. In the Two n.o.ble Kinsmen, which he wrote with Fletcher, any body familiar with his acknowledged dramas, can trace him as easily as a traveller follows with his finger the course of the Rhone while that river is traversing the Lake of Geneva; for one can tell with as much certainty, as if a.s.sured of it, that he wrote the whole opening of that tragedy, or First Act, while his light, airy and more sprightly collaborator wrote all the closing part, or last Act.

Now, the author of the Annals seems to have displayed remarkable diligence in a careful study of the style and language of Tacitus with the view of reproducing them in the multiplicity and variety of expressions that would necessarily occur in the course of the very long work he meditated forging. To judge from his handiwork, he was specially struck by certain peculiarities:--such as dignified and powerful expression, with extraordinary conciseness joined to loftiness of diction;--hence, his brevity, being dissembled, and altogether foreign to his own natural diction, which was most copious, has a hardness and obscurity, of which the brevity of Tacitus is totally void. He seems to have furthermore observed how the language of Tacitus has a poetical complexion, is figurative, nor altogether free from oratorical tinsel with mixture of foreign, especially Greek construction, and the most peculiar, new and unusual turns of expression, alliterations and similar endings of words. Yet notwithstanding all this care and diligence he was utterly incapable of approaching in language and style so close to the great original he pretended to be as to be confounded with him; he was, indeed, not a bit more successful in approaching his prototype, than that emulous imitator of Tacitus, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus.

Much might be taken from the Excursus of Roth and the Prolegomena of Doderlein and Botticher greatly to strengthen this part of my argument; but, their treatises being well known, I abstain, merely observing that, from their remarks, it will be seen that only in the Annals are verbs constructed in a very uncommon and frequently archaic manner, as the ancient perfect, _conpesivere_ (IV. 32), of which there is no example in Tacitus, as there is in Catullus:

O Latonia, maximi Magna progenies Jovis, Quam mater prope Deliam _Deposivit_ olivam. x.x.xIV. 5-8.

It will be also seen in the above-mentioned most able production of Doderlein that the infinitive and the particles _ut, ne_ and _quod_ are joined with many verbs; that there is an interchange of _ad_ and _ut_ (An. II. 62); a joining of the present and the perfect, and a joining of the infinitive with those two tenses. In the midst of this damaging criticism Doderlein quotes Walther, who has also commented upon the Annals, but in terms of enthusiastic commendation, for he praises such writing as first-rate workmans.h.i.+p--"adjustments by design," says the ingenious German; not, of course, the unconscious errors, that a modern European might make in a case of forgery: the discovery reminds me of Mr. Ruskin's unqualified eulogies of everything done by the brush of Turner, which caused the great artist to observe: --"This gentleman has found out to be beauties what I have always considered to be blemishes."

Professor Hill, also, in his "Essay upon the Principles of Historical Composition" has noticed in the Annals some modes of construction not to be met with in any Roman writer, such as a wrong case after a verb,--a genitive after _apiscor_ which governs an accusative: "dum _dominationis_ apisceretur" (VI. 45); and an accusative after _praesideo_ which governs a dative: "_proximum_ que Galliae _litus_ rostratae naves praesidebant" (IV. 5).

IV. Here let me pause for a moment to glance at a prodigious thing that has been done to Tacitus: it really has no parallel in literature: a number of foreigners have impugned his knowledge of his native tongue. The learned German, Rheinach (Beatus Rhena.n.u.s), began, for he could not admit in his Basle edition in 1533 of the works of Tacitus that the language of that Roman was equal to the language of Livy, being florid, affected, stiff and unnatural; his observation being, that "though Tacitus was without elegance and purity in his language, from Latin in his time being deteriorated by foreign turns and figures of speech; yet there was one thing he retained in its entirety, and that was blood and marrow in his matter": "Quamvis Tacitus caruerit nitore et puritate linguae, abeunte jam Romano sermone in peregrinas formas atque figuras; succ.u.m tamen et sanguinem rerum incorruptum retinuit." Eight years after the famous Tuscan lawyer and scholar, Ferretti, followed by accusing Tacitus in the preface to the edition of his works published at Lyons in 1541, of writing with inelegance and impurity: "consequently," he says, "in the estimation of eminent literary men Tacitus is not to be ranked after, but rather before Livy; and yet his style, which was florid, though smacking of the thought and care that pleased in the days of Vespasian and his son, and which, from that time,--on account of the Latin language gradually declining in purity,--steadily degenerated into a kind of affected composition, ought not to be placed on a par with nor preferred to Livy's, whose language flows naturally and agreeably, for his was the age of the greatest purity": "Unde factum, ut praestantium in literis virorum judicio Livio non sit postponendus Tacitus, quin potius anteferendus: non quod hujus floridum, ac meditationem et curam olens dicendi genus, quale sub Vespasianis placuit, ac indies exin degeneravit in affectatam quandam compositionem, exolescente paulatim sermonis latini puritate, Livianae dictioni, illi naturaliter amabiliterque fluenti (nam id seculum purissimum fuit), aequari debeat, aut praeferri." Next came the Milanese schoolman, Alciati, who preferred the certainly sometimes elegant and polished phrases of Paulus Jovius (in his letter to Jovius himself prefixed to the edition of 1558 of the renowned Bishop of Nocera de' Pagani's princ.i.p.al production, the 45 books of Historia Sui Temporis):--"they will not ask of you the reason why you have not reached the soft exuberance of Livy, after you have thoroughly regretted imitating the calm solemnity of Sall.u.s.t, and been satisfied with only the few flowers you have plucked with a discriminative hand out of the gardens of Quintus Curtius more frequently than the th.o.r.n.y thickets of Cornelius Tacitus": "Non reposcent a te rationem, cur lacteam Livii ubertatem non sis a.s.secutus; postquam et te omnino piguerit Sall.u.s.tii sobrietatem imitari, et satis tibi fuerit pauculos tantum flores ex Quinti Curtii pratis, soepius quam ex Cornelii Taciti senticetis arguta manu decerpsisse." Then succeeded, as fast as flakes falling in a snow-storm, a long string of acute critics, each with his just objections, and each more pointed than his predecessors in his animadversions, down to the present day, when, I suppose it may be said that the eminent Dr. Nipperdey stands foremost amongst the exposers of the bad Latinity of Tacitus. The Tacitus, thus universally proclaimed, and for nearly a dozen generations, not to be a competent master of his own tongue, is not the Tacitus of the History, it is the "Tacitus" of the Annals; and when hereafter I point out who this "Tacitus" of the Annals was,--an Italian "Grammaticus," or "Latin writer" of the fifteenth century,--the reader will not be at all surprised that he every now and then slips and trips in Latin;--on the contrary, the reader would be amazed if it were not so; because he would regard it as a thing more than phenomenal,--as a matter partaking of the miraculous;--he must consider himself as coming in contact with a being altogether superhuman;--if the "Tacitus"

of the fifteenth century, who, as a Florentine, may have been a complete master of the choicest Tuscan, had written with the correctness of the Tacitus of the first century, who, as befitted a "civis Roma.n.u.s" of consular rank, was perfectly skilled in his native tongue;--aye, quite as much so as Livy, Sall.u.s.t, or any other accomplished man of letters of ancient Rome.

CHAPTER V.

THE LATIN AND ALLITERATIONS IN THE ANNALS.

I. Errors in Latin, (_a_) on the part of the transcriber; (_b_) on the part of the writer.--II. Diction and Alliterations: Wherein they differ from those of Tacitus.

I.--An anecdote is told of our present sovereign that, on one occasion, conversing with the celebrated scene painter and naval artist, Clarkson Stanfield, her Majesty, hearing that he had been an "able-bodied seaman," was desirous of knowing how he could have left the Navy at an age sufficiently early to achieve greatness by pursuing his difficult art. The reply of Stanfield was that he had received his discharge when quite young in consequence of a fall from the fore-top which had lamed him,--and for the remainder of his life,--whereupon the Queen is stated to have exclaimed: "What a lucky tumble!" In a similar strain the author of the Annals, after he had handed over his work, according to the custom of his time, for transcription, must have been induced to exclaim, when he marked how the monk who had put his thoughts on vellum, had made him write nonsense in almost every other sentence: "What a lucky transcriber!" The knowledge that he would have a transcriber, who was no adept in Latin, must have been one of the greatest factors in his calculations as a forger. Otherwise how could he entertain the shadow of a hope that his book could pa.s.s current, when, in order that it should take its place in the first rank of Roman cla.s.sics, it was imperative that he should write Latin to perfection. That was impossible; and his fabrication must have been detected immediately upon its publication, even though his age was dest.i.tute of philological criticism, unless everybody had known that the scribes in convents who copied the cla.s.sics were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions.

Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during the subsequent stages of it.

There was in his time a regular profession of transcribers, who may be looked upon as the precursors of printers. Numbered among them were some who had great fame for transcribing;--learned men, who knew Latin almost, if not quite, as well as they knew their mother-tongue, Cosimo of Cremona, Leonardo Giustiniani of Venice, Guarino of Verona, Biondo Flavio, Gasparino Barzizza, Sarzana, Niccoli, Vitturi, Lazarino Resta, Faccino Ventraria, and some others;--in fact, a host; for nearly all the literary men, in consideration of the enormous sums they obtained for copies of the ancient cla.s.sics carefully and correctly written, devoted themselves to the occupation of transcription, as, in these times, men of the highest attainments in letters, some, too, of the greatest, even European, celebrity, give their services, for the handsome remunerations they receive, to the newspaper and periodical press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of writers of ma.n.u.scripts,--those who were in general employment from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack"

transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us, suppliers of sc.r.a.ps of news to the papers,--were still to be found only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for literary acquirements standing on a par with professors of handwriting and dancing masters of the present day. These monkish transcribers wrote down words as daws or parrots articulate them; for just as these birds do not know the meaning of what they utter, so these scribes in monasteries did not understand the signification of the phrases which they copied. We can easily understand how to these manipulators of the pen an infinite number of pa.s.sages in the Annals, which are still "posers" to the most expert cla.s.sical professors in the leading Universities of Europe, must have been as dark as the Delphic Oracle,--or the Punic speech of the Carthaginian in Plautus's Comedy of Poenulus to everybody (except, of course, the great Oriental linguist, Pet.i.t, who knew all about it, for in the second book of his "Miscellaneorum Libri Novem" he explains the whole speech, without the slightest fear of anybody correcting the mistakes into which he fell).

The jumble occasioned by the interminable blunders of the monastic writers (for there were two of them, as will he hereafter seen) causes both the codices of the Annals to be phenomena for confusion. Unique as literary gems, and preserved in the Laurentian Medicean Library in Florence, they are the greatest attraction to literary sightseers visiting the lucky library in which they are carefully deposited; and, I believe, have a fancy value set upon them as a fancy value is set upon the Koh-i-noor.

Any member of the medical faculty, even the latest licentiate of the Apothecaries Hall, who knows the fatal effect of wear and tear upon the system caused by ceaseless worry, can explain why Philippo Beroaldi the Younger departed this life five years after undergoing the labour of preparing for the press at the order of Leo X. the MS. found in the Westphalian Convent, containing the first six books of the Annals. When we consider the chaos in which that dismal MS. presented itself to the eyes of the unfortunate Professor in the University of Rome, we can readily conceive how he must have consulted, as he told us he did, "the learned, the judicious and the subtle" about the correction of errors of the knottiest nature which came upon him so fast that, to express their abundance, he instinctively borrows his figure of speech, from water gus.h.i.+ng from a fountain or coming down in a cataract:-- "the old ma.n.u.script," says he, "from which I have undertaken to transcribe and publish this volume, _gushes forth_ with a multiplicity of blunders:"--"vetus codex, unde hunc ipsum describendum atque invulgandum curavi, pluribus mendis _scatet_." One example, out of a legion, will suffice:--In the pa.s.sage in the eleventh book where Narcissus is represented begging pardon of Claudius for not having told him of Messalina's intrigue, the MSS. at Florence and Rome run thus (according to the report of James Gronovius): "Is veniam in praeteritum petens quod ci CIS V&CTICIS PLAUCIO DIMU-lavisset." Half a century before, Vindelinus of Spire,-- who distributed books to all the inhabitants of the world as Triptolemus of old distributed corn,--broke the back-bone of this gibberish, when first publis.h.i.+ng the concluding books (from that Vatican MS. which is no longer to be found), by editing "quod _eicis Vecticis Plautio dissimu_ lavisset." Beroaldi altered this to "quod _ei cis Vectium Plaucium dissimu_ lavisset." This was retained in all editions, as the best that could be thought of, till Justus Lipsius, who collated the MSS. of Tacitus in the Vatican Library, as he collated the MSS. of other ancient authors in that and the Farnese and Sfortian Libraries, during his two years stay in Rome, changed it to "quod _ei cis Vectium cis Plautium dissimu_ lavisset." So for a century that remained as the latest improvement till again amended by John Frederic Gronovius, who, seeing the Vatican and Florentine MSS. while searching the treasures of literature in Italy during his tour in that country, edited _cis Vectios cis Plautios_. Most editors adopt, according to fancy, the rendering of Lipsius or Gronovius, on account of Vectius Valens and Plautius Latera.n.u.s being two distinguished Romans in the days of Claudius who intrigued with Messalina. For my own part, I prefer the conjectural emendation of the Bipontine editors who, giving up as hopeless the corrupted pa.s.sage, edit "quod _incestae uxoris flagitia dissimu_ lavisset,"

which, if not precisely what was written, carries with it the recommendation of being intelligible, and doing away with the unmeaning _cis_.

On account of the corruption of the text in the two oldest MSS.

that supply the Annals,--the First and Second Florence,--I am aware what care must be taken, when touching upon the Latin in the Annals, not to ascribe to the author faults that were the errors of other people. One ought to be guarded when coming across "reditus," which ought to be "rediturus" (II. 63), and "datum,"

which ought to be "daturum" (II. 73).

I must pause to observe that, here as elsewhere, in examining the Latinity of the Annals, I cite from the original editions of the last six books by Vindelinus of Spire published in 1470, and the first six books by Beroaldus published in 1515, all editions now in use having "rediturus" and "daturum," but without the authority of a single MS.

These blunders we may fairly father on the monkish transcribers, the more so as their handiworks abound with faults, arising from one of these four causes,--inability of perceiving propriety of expression; which people call "stupidity"; disinclination to the requisite exertion; known as "laziness";--misunderstanding the meaning of the author, or dest.i.tution of knowledge.

The errors that spring from ignorance are the most striking; they show the purely negative state of the transcribers' minds; how uninformed they were of facts, and how uninstructed in arts, literature or science. Evidently the transcriber of the first Six Books had never heard of the "Sacerdotes t.i.tii," and seeing that the author had mentioned Tatius in the first portion of the clause in a pa.s.sage in the First Book (54), he writes "Sodales _Ta_tios,"

instead of "Sodales _Ti_tios";--"ut quondam t.i.tus _Tatius_ retinendis Sabinorum sacris sodales _Tatios_ inst.i.tuerat"; just as evidently, from ignorance of the language, having no notion what the author was saying in another pa.s.sage in the Second Book (2), but seeing that he had used the word "majorum" in the previous sentence, he writes nonsensically "ipsorum _majoribus_" for "ipsorum _moribus_"

(II. 2); nor knowing what the "propatulum" was in a Roman house, but misled by the author having almost immediately before (IV. 72) spoken of "soldiers being fastened to the patibulum"--or, as we should say, "hanged on the gallows,"--he writes (IV. 74), "in _propatibulo_ servitium" instead of "in _propatulo_ servitium,"

the "propatulum" being an open uncovered court-yard, differing from the "aedium," as being in the forepart of the dwelling.

How illiterate he and the transcriber of the last Six Books were will be seen in examples and remarks by Kritz in his Prolegomena to Velleius Paterculus; by Doderlein in his Preface to his edition of Tacitus; by Ernesti in his Notes to the Annals; by Sauppe, the able editor of the Oratores Attici, in his Epistolae Criticae, addressed to his learned relation, G.o.dfrey Hermann, and, above all, by Hera, in his "Studia Critica," or elaborate treatise on the Florentine Ma.n.u.scripts of Tacitus. Both transcribers seem to have had a taste for rhyming and to have thought that the beauty of writing Latin consisted in obtaining jingles, to get which they mix up two words into one, as "san_us_ repert_us_," for "san_e_ is repertus" (VI. 14); or coining, as "_templores flores_," for "_templorum fores_" (II. 82); or changing the termination of a word, in order that it may resemble in sound, the word that follows, as "don_aria_ mili_taria_" for "_dona militaria_" (I. 44); or the word that precedes, as "potu_isset_ tradi_disset_" for "potuisset tradi" (XII. 61).

The same bungling is shown with respect to adjectives, the number, gender and case of which are changed, as "tris_tios_ primordio,"

for "tris_tiores_ primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incert_as_"

for "amore an odio incert_um_" (XIII. 9), and "conqueren_tium_ irritum laborem," for "conqueren_te_ irritum laborem" (XV. 17).

The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens concordes agunt sper_nun_tur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords agunt, sper_ni_tur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habe_re_"

for "nationes promptum habar_et_," and "neque dubium habe_retur_"

for "neque dubium ha_betur_." (XII. 61).

They sometimes succeed, from their stupidity or laziness, in completely puzzling the reader by omitting syllables, and transposing and subst.i.tuting consonants and vowels, thus producing the most confounding gibberish, as "_pars nipulique_" for "Pharasmani Polemonique" (XIV. 26); or adding a letter, as "m_orte_m" for "m_ore_m" (III. 26), or omitting a syllable, as "eff_unt_" for "eff_und_unt" (VI. 33). From the same fault they every now and then double a letter, as "Ami_ss_iam" for "Ami_s_iam", or omit one of the double letters, as "antefe_r_entur" for "antefe_rr_entur"

(1. 8); or, when two words occur, one ending, and the other beginning with the same letter, they either omit the last letter of the preceding word, as "event_u_ Suetonius" for "event_us_ Suetonius"

(XIV. 36), or the first letter of the following word as "quipped _l_apsum" for "quippe _e_lapsum" (V. 10). But it is in single syllables or words or letters that they most abound in errors, frequently omitting them without the mark of a _lacuna_, or any defect; now they omit single letters, when the second word begins with the same letter as that with which the first ends; at times in the first word, as "victori_a_ sacrari," for "victoria_s_ sacrari"

(III. 18); at times in the second word, as "ad _e_os" for "ad _d_eos"

(I. 11) now they add single letters as "vitae ejus" for "vit_a_ ejus"

(I. 9), or "a_u_diturus" for "aditurus" (XV. 36); or voluntarily add a syllable, that the termination of one word may correspond to the commencement of another, as "Stratonicidi_ve_ _ve_neri" for "Stratonicidi Veneri" (III. 63), or repeat syllables or words (what is called "dittography"), as "Cujus adversa pravitati _ipsius_, prospera ad fortunam _ipsius_ referebat" (XIV. 38). Puteola.n.u.s was the first to throw out the second _ipsius_, and subst.i.tute for it "reipublicae," which most of the editors of Tacitus have retained, though Brotier edits, I cannot help thinking properly, on account of the ant.i.thesis in which the Author of the Annals delighted:--"whose adversity he ascribed to his depravity, and whose prosperity to his good fortune":--"cujus adversa, pravitati ipsius; prospera, ad fortunam referebat" (XIV. 38); so that the second _ipsius_ in the MS. is not wrong, only inelegant and unnecessary.

Having thus seen the nature of the errors committed by the transcribers, we may now pa.s.s on to what we must consider as the errors of the writer. There is very little doubt that he alone is responsible for the following: using the poetic form "celebris" for the prose form "celeber"--Romanis haud perinde _celebris_ (II. 88, in fin.), which so startled Ernesti that he is almost sure the author must have written "celebratus;" still he would not dare to alter it on account of its being repeated on two other occasions--Pons Mulvius in eo tempore _celebris_ (XIII. 47): Servilius, diu foro, mox tradendis rebus Romanis _celebris_ (XIV. 19);--so merely contents himself with the observation that "those who are desirous of writing elegant Latin will not imitate it:" "studiosi elegantiae in scribendo non imitabuntur." Those desirous of attaining an elegant style would not write as in the Annals, "exauctorare," with the meaning of "putting out of the ranks and into the reserve," as when we find it stated that "a discharge should be given to those who had served twenty years, and that those should be _put out of the ranks and into the reserve_, who had gone through sixteen years' service, there to be kept as auxiliary troops, free from the other duties which it was customary to render to the State, except that of repelling the invasion of an enemy":--"missionem dari vicena stipendia meritis; _exauctorari_, qui senadena fecissent, ac retineri sub vexillo, ceterorum immunes nisi propulsandi hostis" (An. I. 36);-- here we have a meaning of the word "exauctorare" very different from its sense of "a final discharge," in which it is understood by Tacitus towards the opening of his History, when he is describing the distracted state of Rome, and continues: "during such a crisis tribunes were _finally discharged_, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso, from the body guard; Aemilius Pacensis from the troops garrisoned at Rome, and Julius Fronto from the watch": "_exauctorati_ per cos dies tribuni, e praetorio Antonius Taurus et Antonius Naso; ex urbanis cohortibus Aemilius Pacensis; e vigiliis Julius Fronto" (Hist. I. 20);--nor would a person desirous of writing graceful Latin use "destinari" for being "elected" to an office, as "_destinari_ consules" (An. I. 3) where Tacitus uses "designari,"--"consule _designato_"

(Hist I. 6).

Grammatical mistakes of the most extraordinary character are sometimes made. There is neglect of indispensable attraction; "non medicinam _illud_" (I. 49) for "_illam_," and "non enim, preces sunt _istud_" (II. 38) for "_istae_;"--proper Latinity requires that, in "nihil reliqui faciunt quominus invidi_am_, misericordi_am_, met_um_ et ir_as_ _per_mov_erent_ (I. 21), the four nouns should be in either the ablative or genitive, and the verb in the present, with (as Dr. Nipperdey says) _moveant_ in preference to _permoveant_.

"An" is used as an equivalent to "vel;"--"metu invidiae, _an_ (vel) ratus" (II. 22,) and as if synonymous with "sive," "sive fatali vecordia, _an_" (seu, or sive) "imminentium periculorum remedium"

(XI. 26.) In the sentence where Tiberius is described as, according to rumour, being pained with grief at his own and the Roman people's contemptible position for no other "reason" more than that Tacfarinas, a robber and deserter, would treat with them like a regular enemy:-- we have the only instance in a cla.s.sical composition reputed to be written by an ancient Roman, of "alias" conveying the idea of _cause_, instead of being an adverb of _time_:--"Nec _alias_ magis sua populique Romani contumelia indoluisse Caesarem ferunt, quam quod desertor et praedo hostium more agerat" (III. 73).

These errors we must believe to be the author's; considering their gravity, we are compelled to ask ourselves the question: "Could this writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or p.r.o.noun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a monosyllabic preposition thus standing frequently between a substantive and an adjective or p.r.o.noun (judice _ab_ uno: III. 10--urbe _ex_ ipsa: XII. 56--senatuque _in_ ipso and urbe _in_ ipsa: XIV. 42 & 53.--portu _in_ ipso XV. 18); there are other occasional abnormal collocations of the preposition, such as, after two words combined by a copulative particle, or two of them: diisque et patria _coram_ (IV. 8), Poppaea et Tigellino _coram_ (XV. 61) and between two words connected by apposition: montem _apud_ Eryc.u.m (IV. 43), uxore _ab_ Octavia (IV. 43--XIII. 12). These usages are not found in the other works ascribed to Tacitus, nor any of the ancient Latin prose-writers; though common enough in the poets, the three instances being found in Virgil;--the first in the Aeneid:--

"c.u.m litora fervere late Prospiceres arce _ex_ summa:"

Aen. IV. 409-10;

"Vespere _ab_ atro Consurgunt venti:" Aen. V. 19-20

And--

"Graditur bellum _ad_ crudele Camilla:"

Ib. XI. 535;

The second in the Georgics:

"Si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque _Inter_:"

Georg. II. 344;

And shortly after,

"Pagos et compita _circ.u.m_:"

Ib. 382;

And the third in the Aeneid: