Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 8

All went on for months,--for years in silence and secresy, as the case always is when mischief is brewing. Upwards of three years and a half thus elapsed; then the low and hidden rumblings of the volcano were again heard; once more vague and mysterious utterances with respect to Tacitus pa.s.sed in their correspondence between Bracciolini and Niccoli. Two years,--or nearly that time,-- again pa.s.sed: then followed the pangs of labour from the womb of forgery: through the hands of Bracciolini came a hitherto thoroughly unknown MS. of Tacitus, which he said had been brought to him by a monk from a far distant convent in the easternmost corner of Saxony, on the borders of Bohemia; (the reader will be pleased to observe not "Hungary" although the country adjacent to it;--so circ.u.mstances s.h.i.+ft and vary, in the lapse of years, and owing to the inconstancy of men's intentions). The new codex was an affair at once startling and gratifying: it was such a triumph over darkness in the progress of knowledge that it rivalled a conquest over the Dacians in the march of civilization: for the first time it brought to light as the opening portion of the History of Tacitus what are now known as "The Last Six Books of the Annals." These I shall now endeavour to point out were the handiwork of Bracciolini, to whose wondrous power of a.s.similating his literary abilities to those of another I must pay this just tribute;--that in those six books of the Annals he mastered the simplicity, though he came far short of the elegance of Tacitus.

END OF BOOK THE SECOND.

BOOK THE THIRD.

THE LAST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.

Quum itaque multa ex Taciti operibus deessent, ut Nicoli voluntati morem gereret Poggius, nil omisit intentatum, ut per Monachum nescio quem e Germania Tacitum erueret.

MEHUS, _Praefat. ad Lat. Epistol. Traversarii._

CHAPTER I.

THE CHARACTER OF BRACCIOLINI.

I. The audacity of the forgery accounted for by the mean opinion Bracciolini had of the intelligence of men.--II. The character and tone of the last Six Books of the Annals exemplified by what is said of Sabina Poppaea, Sagitta, Pontia and Messalina.--III. A few errors that must have proceeded from Bracciolini about the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius, the Household G.o.ds of the Germans, Gotarzes, Bardanes and, above all, Nineveh.--IV. The estimate taken of human nature by the writer of the Annals the same as that taken by Bracciolini.--V. The general depravity of mankind as shown in the Annals insisted upon in Bracciolini's Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum".

I. There is a great difference between the first six books of the Annals and the last six books; the latter portion is more historical, and less biographical than the first portion: there is an obvious attempt to a.s.similate it as closely as possible to the work of Tacitus; and any material difference in the character of the two productions is not to be detected at a superficial glance.

Hence many most intelligent readers are led astray in believing that the Annals and the History of Tacitus proceeded from the same hand, from not sufficiently bearing in mind that whatever a history may be, the general character must always be the same; plots and intrigues being alike, as well as stratagems and revolutions; also persons and pa.s.sions: the reason is clear: man ever remains the same, affording the same examples of virtues and vices, and carrying on wars in the same way, according to interest and ambition, while the most important events in which he plays a part resemble in having their origin from trivial causes, as rivers, even the mightiest, take their source from insignificant springs.

But while n.o.body discerns any such material difference in the character of the Annals and the History of Tacitus as to be struck with wonder, everybody is filled with amazement at there being in the two works two such very different conceptions of historical composition. In the History only full light is thrown on important events and leading characters: that this may s.h.i.+ne the brighter every common action is thrown into the shade, and every small individual pa.s.sed over unmentioned. But the pages in the last six books of the Annals are crowded with incidents, great and small, and figures, good, bad and indifferent. Contrary also to Tacitus, who disposes materials in a just order, arranging those together that refer to the same thing at different times, the writer of the Annals speaks of cognate things, that should be a.s.sociated, separately, as they occur from year to year, thus reducing his narrative from the height of a general history to the level of a mere diary.

The audacity of the forgery is here something absolutely marvellous;--and it never would have been attempted by any one who was not made of the stuff of Bracciolini: it was the stuff that makes a forger: anyone with proper appreciation of men's intelligence would not have dared to do this; but, instead of regarding the majority of his kind as sagacious, or even more so than they are, and knowing much, or more than they do,--as is the case with well-disposed people,--Bracciolini, who was far from being of a benevolent nature, fell into the very opposite extreme, of looking upon men as remarkably stupid and ignorant. Nothing is more common than meeting in his works with contemptuous disparagements of his kind; he scoffs at human nature for its deficiency of understanding; he does not hesitate decrying its want of thought, as in his Essay "De Miseria Humanae Conditionis": "we must at times recollect," says he, "that we are men, silly and shallow in our nature":--"aliquando nos esse homines meminerimus, hoc est, imbecillis fragilisque naturae" (p. 130); or, "I admit the silliness of mankind to be great": "fateor--magnam esse humani generis imbecillitatem" (p. 90); or, "Knowledge is cultivated by a few on account of the general stupidity": "quoniam communi stult.i.tia a paucis virtus colitur" (p. 9l): pretty well this for one work. Then opening his "Historia Disceptativa Convivalis,"

the reader lights on him sneering at the "shallowness and silliness of his age":--"haec fragilis atque imbecilla aetas" (p. 32). As in his elaborate and carefully conned works, so in his Epistles thrown off on the spur of the moment,--as when he is inviting his friend Bartolomeo Fazio to stay with him in Florence, he continues: "Though I have lived in this city now for a great many years, from my youth upwards, yet every day as if a fresh resident I am overcome with amazement at the number of the remarkable objects, and very often am roused to enthusiasm at the sight of those public buildings which fools, from the stupidity of their understandings, speak of as erected by supernatural beings":--"quamvis in ea jam pluribus annis ab ipsa juventute fuerim versatus, tamen quotidie tamquam novus incola tantarum rerum admiratione obstupesco, recreoque persaepe animum visu eorum aedificiorum, quae stulti propter ingenii imbecillitatem a daemonibus facta dic.u.n.t" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epist. p. 79, Flor.

Ed. 1745).

II. With such a low notion of men's intelligence and the stupidity of his age (though it was a clever one,--at least, so far as Italy was concerned, the country of which he had the closest knowledge and with which he had the most constant intercourse), it is to be expected,--quite natural, in fact, that he should have regarded lightly the difficulties he had to encounter in his endeavours to imitate Tacitus; and though he must have been thoroughly conscious that it was not in his power victoriously to surmount them, yet he cared not, for he did not fear detection, viewing, as he did, with such withering and lordly disdain the want of perspicacity which, in his fancy, characterized his species. He worked on, then, as best he could, with courage and confidence; every now and then doing things that never would have been done by Tacitus: the story, for example, of Sabina Poppaea in the 14th book; Tacitus would have surely pa.s.sed it over as, though having some relation to the public, coming within the province of biography.

Unquestionably, Tacitus would have rejected as strictly unhistorical the dark tale of murder and adultery of the tribune of the people, Sagitta, and the private woman, Pontia, which has no more to do with the historical affairs of the Romans, than a villainous case of adultery in the Divorce Court, or a monstrous murder tried at the Old Bailey is in any way connected with the public transactions of Great Britain. [Endnote 231]

What history, then, we have in the last six books of the Annals does not remind us in its character of the history taken note of by Tacitus.

The tone and treatment, too, are not his.

The Jesuit, Rene Rapin, in his Comparisons of the Great Men of Antiquity (Reflexions sur l'Histoire, p. 211), may, with a violent seizure of ecstacy, fall, like a genuine Frenchman, into a fit of enthusiasm over the description, as "exquisite in delicacy and elegance" ("tout y est decrit dans une delicatesse et dans une elegance exquise" says he), of the lascivious dancing of Messalina and her wanton crew of Terpsich.o.r.ean revellers when counterfeiting the pa.s.sions and actions of the phrenzied women-wors.h.i.+ppers of Bacchus celebrating a vintage in the youth of the world, when the age was considered to be as good as gold: the gay touches in the lively picture may be introduced with sufficient warmth to enrapture the chaste Jesuit priest, and judiciously enough to contrast boldly with the dreadful, tragic details of the shortly ensuing death of the Empress; but they are not circ.u.mstances that would have ever emanated with their emotional particularities from the solemn soul of Tacitus. The pa.s.sage is only another powerful proof how absolutely ineffectual was the attempt of Bracciolini to render history after the style of the stern, majestic Roman.

III. Every now and then, too, the most extraordinary errors with respect to facts cannot be explained by the hypothesis that Tacitus wrote the Annals; for there could not have been such deviations from truth on the part of any Roman who lived in the time of the first Caesars: on the other hand, the errors are just of the character which makes it look uncommonly as if they were the unhappy blunders of a mediaeval or Renaissance writer such as Bracciolini. An instance or two will best ill.u.s.trate what is meant.

In the Twelfth Book Lollia Paulina is made to consult the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius respecting the nuptials of the Emperor Claudius: "interrogatumque _Apollinis Clarii simulacrum_ super nuptiis Imperatoris" (An. XII. 22). How could this be? when Strabo, who lived in the time of Augustus, tells us that in his day that oracle no longer existed, only the fame of it, for his words are: "the grove of Apollo Clarius, in which there used to be the ancient oracle":--[Greek: "alsos tou Klariou Apollonos, en ho kai manteion aen pote palaion"] (XIV. I. 27).

This is quite convincing that Tacitus could not have written those words.

There is another reason against Tacitus having made the statement: he must have been aware from personal knowledge that his countrymen obtained all their oracular responses from water.

Bracciolini might have known that this custom prevailed among the Romans during the time of the Caesars, had he consulted Lucian's Alexander or Pseudomantis, Melek (better known as Porphyry), and, above all, Jamblicus, who, in his book upon Egyyptian, Chaldaean and a.s.syrian Mysteries, speaks (III. 11) of the habit among the Romans of "interpreting the divine will by water": [Greek: di hudatos chraematizesthai], and explains the manner how, "for in a subterraneous temple" (by which, I presume, Jamblicus means a "sanctified cave or grotto") there was a fountain, from which the augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we believe that Tacitus was ignorant of such an ordinary native ceremony, and one, too, that must have come repeatedly within his ken?

Another error is, apparently, very trifling, but it becomes quite startling when we are to suppose that it was made by Tacitus, an accepted authority upon the people in question,--the ancient Germans of the first century of our aera:--that people who (according to Sanson's Maps and Geographical Tables) inhabited what was then known as "Germany," namely, the country between the Danube and the Rhine, with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the western portion of Poland and some part of the kingdom of Hungary,--are represented as having HOUSEHOLD G.o.dS, for we are told that if Italicus had had the spirit of his father (Flavius, brother of Armin), he would have done what his parent did, wage war more rancorously than any man, against his country and his "Household G.o.ds"; "Si paterna Italico mens esset, non alium infensius coutra patriam ac _Deos Penates_, quam parentes ejus exercuisse"

(An. XV. 16). Into this mistake Tacitus could not possibly have fallen, from being thoroughly acquainted with the manners of the Germans, as he has shown in his work on that subject: he knew that that people had only one set of G.o.ds whom they wors.h.i.+pped publicly in sacred groves and woods, but none corresponding to the Roman Dei Penetrales, privately wors.h.i.+pped at home.

We have read scarcely more than a page from the commencement of that portion of the Annals where the forgery began,--the Eleventh Book,--before we find that a mistake is made about Gotarzes being the brother of Artaba.n.u.s: for he is described as having "compounded poison for the particular purpose of killing his 'brother' Artaba.n.u.s and his wife and son": "necem fratri Artabano conjugique ac filio ejus praeparaverat" (An. XI. 8). Artaba.n.u.s was the father, as may be seen in Josephus: "not long after Artaba.n.u.s died, leaving his kingdom to his son Vardanes: [Greek: "Met' ou polun de chronon Artabanos telueta, taen Basileian to paidi Ouardanae katalipon"] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 3, 4 in init). Vardanes (according to Josephus), but (according to other writers) Bardanes was the brother of Gotarzes; as was known to Bracciolini who speaks of "Gotarzes revealing to his brother," meaning Bardanes, "a conspiracy of their countrymen which had been disclosed to him": "cognitis popularium insidiis, quas Gotarzes _fratri_ patefecerat" (An. XI. 9). It cannot be said that Bracciolini was unacquainted with Josephus; for he follows him closely in the last six books of the Annals; further he mentions him in his letters, for he says that he has been "a long while waiting for his works,"

(to make use of them in his forgery): "Jamdiu expectavi Josephi libros," &c. (Ep. III. 28): his memory, notwithstanding, entirely failed him with respect to the pa.s.sage in question, or else he paid no heed to it.

While he makes this misstatement about Gotarzes and Artaba.n.u.s he falls into another blunder with respect to Bardanes: he circ.u.mscribes the limit of his reign to less than one twelvemonth,--the year when the Secular Games were celebrated which, according to his own account, was the year 800 from the Foundation of Rome, or the year 47 of the Christian Aera ("Ludi Saeculares octingesimo post Romam conditam ...

spectati sunt." An. XI. 11).

Soon after his accession Bardanes, (according to the narrative we have of him in the Annals), found a rebel in his brother Gotarzes, who waged war against him, defeated him, and, gaining his kingdom, had him a.s.sa.s.sinated by a body of Parthians, who "killed him in his very earliest youth while he was engaged in hunting and not antic.i.p.ating any harm:" "incautum venationique intentum interfecere primam intra juventam" (An. XI. 10). All these circ.u.mstances are made to occur in such rapid succession to each other that they occupied only one year, if so much; for they are all shown as taking place during the consuls.h.i.+p of Valerius Asiaticus and Valerius Messalla.

Now let the reader turn to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus. He will there see that the Magician of Cappadocia on his arrival in Babylon was told that Bardanes had been reigning two years and as many months; Apollonius stopped in the palace of the king twenty months; then he started on a tour to India; he travelled about the Asiatic Peninsula for a considerable time; next he went on a visit to the Brahmins with whom he staid four months; after that he returned to Babylon, where he found Bardanes as he had left him, still king and in the enjoyment of excellent health. It is necessary that I should substantiate this by extracts from Philostratus. In a conversation with one of the king's courtiers Apollonius asks the question: "What year that was since Bardanes had recovered his kingdom?" and received the reply that it was "the third, two months of which they had already reached": [Greek: "poston de dae touto etos tae anaktaetheisae archae; pritou, ephae, haptometha duo aedae pou maenes"] (I. 28): in another conversation with Damis Apollonius says that he "is off to India"; that he has been staying at the court "already a year and four months"; though "the king will not let him take his departure until the completion of the eighth month": [Greek: age, o Dami, es Indous iomen ... eniautos gar haemin aedae, kai tettares ... oude anaesei haemas ... ho Basilaeus proteron, ae ton ogdoon telesai maena]: the biographer then speaking of the visit to the Brahmins, says that Apollonius spent four months with them": [Greek: maenon tettaron ekei diatripsanti]: and "on his return to Babylon he found Bardanes as he had left him," that is, on the throne and in the enjoyment of health: [Greek: es Babylona ... anapleusai para ton Ouardanon, kai tuchontes auton oion egignoskon] (III. 58).

We have proof positive here that Bardanes sat on the throne of Babylon for at least four years and a half; quite contrary to the account in the Annals. Philostratus is generally regarded as a most reliable writer of antiquity; we may be, therefore, tolerably certain, from the look out given us in the pages of the historian of Lemnos, that Bardanes did not die, as we are told in the Annals, in his earliest youth by a.s.sa.s.sination after a short reign of less than one year, but that he reigned long, lived to a good old age, and died a natural death.

One more example of this kind, which almost seems to bring home the forgery to Bracciolini; and then we will pa.s.s on to other matters (for the present).

Nowhere in his works do I find that Bracciolini makes any reference to Lucian or Strabo, or even mentions their names. I think if he had read them, he would have known better than to have spoken of Nineveh being in existence in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, because this is the reverse of what we are told by Lucian and Strabo. For all that, we hear in the Annals of troops "along their march capturing the City of Nineveh, that most ancient capital of a.s.syria": "Capta in transitu urbis Ninos vetustissima sedes a.s.syriae" (An. XII. 13). In Lucian's amusing Dialogue, ent.i.tled "Charon," when Mercury points out the tomb of Achilles on Cape Sigaeum and that of Ajax on the Rhoetaean promontory, Charon wants to see Nineveh, with Troy, Babylon, Mycenae, and Cleone, the following being the conversation; "I want to point out to you," says Mercury, "the tomb of Achilles: you see it on the sea? That's Cape Sigaeum in the Troad: and on the Rhoetaean promontory opposite Ajax is buried. CHAR. Those tombs, O Hermes, are no great sights. Rather point out to me those renowned cities, of which I have heard below,--Nineveh, the capital of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleone and that famous Troy, on account of which I remember ferrying across there such numbers that for ten whole years my skiff was never high and dry and never caught cold," (that being Charon's fun, according to Lucian's conception, in conveying that all that long time his boat was _in the water_ (hence "catching cold") from being perpetually used: [Greek: "Thelo soi deixai ton tou Achilleos taphon, horas ton epi tae thalattae; Sigeion men ekeino to Troikon, antikru de ho Aias tethattai en to Rhoiteio. CHAR. Ou megaloi, o Hermae, oi taphoi tas poleis de tas episaemous deixon moi aedae, has kato akouomen taen Ninon taen Sardanapalou, kai Babulona, kai Mukaenas, kai Kleonas, kai taen Ilion autaen, pollous goun memnaemai diaporthmensas ekeithen, hos deka oloneon maede neolkaesai, maede diapsuxai to skaphidion."] The reply that then follows of Mercury shows that not a remnant was left of Nineveh in the very ancient time of Croesus, and that n.o.body even then knew of its site: "Nineveh, O Ferryman, is quite destroyed, and not a trace of it is left now, nor can you tell where it used to be": [Greek: "Hae Minos men, o porthmen, apololen aedae, kai ouden ichnos eti loipon autaes oud an eipois hopou pot' ae"] (Charon 23). Strabo says the same with respect to the destruction of Nineveh: "The city of Nineveh was thereupon demolished simultaneously with the overthrowal of the Syrians: [Greek: Hae men oun Ninos polis aephanisthae parachraema meta taen ton Suron katalusin"] (XVI. I.3), --though to speak of the inhabitants as "Syrians," at such a juncture is hardly correct language on the part of Strabo; it should have been "_a.s.syrians_," if Justin is right in saying that that people only took the name of _Syrians_ after their empire was at an end: "for thirteen hundred years," says he, "did the a.s.syrians, who were _afterwards called the Syrians_, retain their empire": "Imperium a.s.syrii, qui _postea Syri dicti sunt_, mille trecentis annis tenuere" (Justin I. 2).

Had Bracciolini been acquainted with these things, they would have made such an impression upon his mind that he could never have forgotten them. But as he wrote ancient history in the fifteenth century, and did not know what Lucian and Strabo had said of Nineveh, he took as an authority for his statement a most indifferent historian who flourished towards the close of the fourth century of our aera, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus; for I know of n.o.body but Marcellinus, who makes this statement; nor is there likely to be anybody else, because the statement is ridiculous. It will be remembered that Bracciolini recovered the work of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus: it is then reasonable to presume that he had read, if not studied his history. Indeed, there can be very little doubt that it was Marcellinus who misled him: for when he was setting about the forgery and importunately soliciting Niccoli to supply him with books for that purpose in the autumn of 1423, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus was one of these authorities: in the letter dated the 6th of November that year, he says he was "glad that his friend had done with Marcellinus, and would be still more glad if he would send him the book": "Gratum est mihi te absolvisse Marcellinum, idque gratius si me librum miseris" (Ep. II. 7). We may be certain the book, being "done with" by Niccoli, was sent to him on account of the importance of his having it, for the carrying out of his undertaking; thus he makes Tacitus commit the same mistake as Marcellinus committed,--that Nineveh was in existence in the time of the Roman Emperors: "In Adiabena is the city of Nineveh, which in olden time had possessed an extensive portion of Persia"; "In Adiabena Ninus EST civitas quae olim Persidis magna possederat" (XXIII. 6). Tacitus lived a good three hundred years before that historical epitomist of not much note or weight; and could not, on his authority, have been dragged, like his "discoverer" and student, Bracciolini, into this monstrous error.

IV. But it is in the estimate of human nature, and the invariable disparagement pervading the delineation of the character of every individual, in the last six books of the Annals, that the Italian hand of Bracciolini is unmistakably detected, and the Roman hand of Tacitus not at all traceable. Shakespeare makes Iago say of himself: "I am nothing if not critical,"--meaning censorious.

Bracciolini might have said the same of himself. He was never so much "at home," (by which I mean that he never seemed to have been so completely "happy"), as when las.h.i.+ng the anti-pope Felix, Filelfo, Valla, George of Trebizond, Guarino of Verona, or some other great literary rival of whose fame he was jealous; carping at others, whose intellectual attainments were at all commensurate to his own, and accusing of foul enormities persons who were possessors of rhetorical merit, as he accused the "Fratres Observantiae," for no other reason that one can see except that those interlopers in the monastic order (the "Brothers of Observance" being a new branch of the Franciscans) preached capital sermons.

There is no getting at any insight as to his nature from the biographies of him; they are all such faint and imperfect sketches: we learn nothing of him from that curiosity of literature, L'Enfant's astonis.h.i.+ng performance, "Poggiana"--in which the pages and the blunders contend for supremacy in number, and the blunders get it,--nor from that bald, cold business, ent.i.tled "Vita Poggii," which Recanati, flinging aside brilliancy and clinging fast to fidelity in facts and plainness of speech, prefixed to his edition of Bracciolini's "Historia Florentina,"

published at Venice in 1715, and which Muratori, sixteen years after, reprinted at Milan along with the said "History of Florence, in the 20th volume of his "Rerum Italicarum Scriptores;"--nor from the Rev. William Shepherd's innocent affair, "The Life of Poggio Bracciolini"; but the deficiencies of the biographers have been supplied by a true man of genius, Poliziano, who has. .h.i.t off his character in a noun substantive and an adjective in the superlative. In his History of the Pazzi and Salviati Conspiracy against Lorenzo de' Medici,--which plot to overthrow the government Bracciolini's third son, Jacopo, joined, and was hanged for his pains in front of the first floor windows of that Prince's palace,--Poliziano says that Jacopo Bracciolini was "specially remarkable for calumny," in which respect," adds the historian, "he was exactly like his father, who was a MOST CALUMNIOUS MAN:"--"Ejus praecipua in maledicendo virtus, in qua vel patrem HOMINEM MALEDICENTISSIMUM referebat" (Politiani Opera, p. 637).

Such being the character of Bracciolini, I may glance aside for a moment to observe that nothing can be more incongruous than that his statue, which his countrymen originally placed in the portico of the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (because he had praised them in his history of their city and abused all foreigners), should have been transferred in 1560 by the reigning Duke of Tuscany into the interior of the sacred building and placed among the figures of the Twelve Apostles, where it still remains, the unG.o.dly "Poggio" forming a grotesque portion of the saintly group.

If the son was such an exact counterpart of the father in evil- speaking, as borne testimony to by that admirable and accurate historian, Poliziano, it follows that Bracciolini confirmed by his tongue and pen the words put by Shakespeare into the mouth of the Duke in "Measure for Measure":

"Back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong Can tie the gall up in a slanderous tongue?"

Indeed, if faith is to be placed in what Poliziano says, then Bracciolini was, like Thersites in the Iliad, a "systematic calumniator of kings and princes, while at the same time he must have indiscriminately inveighed against the characters of private individuals, run down the productions of all learned men, and, in fact, vilified everybody"; for that is exactly the estimate formed of him by Poliziano:--"Semper ille aut principes insectari pa.s.sim, aut in mores hominum sine ullo discrimine invehi, aut eujusque docti scripta lacessere: nemini parcere" (Polit. Op. 1. c.).

If this was, really, the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of Bracciolini, we have then another very strong point in evidence that he forged the Annals, for the spirit of detraction stands forth in the boldest relief on every page of that production. From the beginning to the end of the last six books (with which we are at present dealing, as we shall hereafter deal separately with the first six books), there is scarcely such a thing as a good man.

Now though we are all perfectly conscious of our shortcomings and those of our kind, so that we spontaneously acknowledge the truthfulness of the smart, though not altogether decorous remark of Ovid's, that "if Jupiter were to strike men with lightning as often as they committed sins, he would in a short time be without his thunderbolts":--

"Si quoties peccant homines, sua fulmina mittat Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit;"

there is, nevertheless, no necessity for exaggerating those faults with the persistency met with in the Annals. Scandal without contradiction is admitted of all persons who are either thought good or who act properly. Every infamous slander is accepted that is cast on the eminent statesman and philosopher, Seneca (XIII. 20 and 42.--XIV. 52-3). Piso, who has the reputation of being a good man, is described as a hypocrite, pretending to have virtues (XV.

48). Fenius Rufus draws no gain nor advantage from his office of superintendent of the stores (XIV. 51), and is held in general esteem for his course of life (XIV. 51.--XV. 50); but he is described as immeasurably severe (XV. 58), harsh towards his a.s.sociates (ib.), and wanting in spirit (XV. 61). Sylla's innocence is ascribed to despicable pusillanimity and cowardice (XIII. 47). Corbulo, though he took "the shortest route," and "sped his march day and night without intermission" (XV. 12), to relieve Poetus when distressed from the approach of Vologeses and the Parthian army, is said, contrary to these statements, to "have made no great haste in order that he might gain more praise from bringing relief when the danger had increased" (XV. 10). Because Flavius, the brother of the German hero, Armin, takes up his abode in Rome, he is accused of being a "spy." (XI. 16). This is, certainly, the writing of a malicious, altogether spiteful man,--a man, too, irrational in his calumny,--revelling, in short, in the spirit of detraction.

V. It is, of course, (if there be any truth in the present theory), a thing by no means strange, but, on the contrary, to be thoroughly expected, when this temper and turn of mind are strongly enforced by Bracciolini in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum"; his friend, Niccoli, one of the interlocutors, when asked "why he was more p.r.o.ne to blame than praise," replies that "there was no difficulty at all in giving an explanation, because he had been taught it by the experience of advanced age and the antecedents of a long life: he had too often been wrong in praising men, because he had found them worse than he had thought them; yet he had never been wrong when he had abused them, for there was such a mult.i.tude of rogues amongst men, such an amount of vices and crimes, such a superabundance of hypocrites, from people preferring to seem rather than be good, so many who threw such a veil of honesty over their rascalities, that it was perilous, and akin to falsehood, to bestow laudation on anybody."

"'Cur in vituperando sis quam in laudando proclivior.' 'Hoc facile est ad explicandum,' Nicolaus inquit, 'quod longa aetas et ante acta vita me docuit. Nam in laudandis hominibus saepius deceptus sum, c.u.m hi deteriores essent quam existimarem, in vituperandis vero nunquam me fefellit opinio. Tanta enim inter homines versatur improborum copia,--ita sceleribus omnia inficiuntur, ita hypocritae superabundant, qui videri quam esse boni malunt,--ita quilibet sua vitia aliquo honesti velamento tegit, ut periculosum sit et mendacio proximum quempiam laudare'" (Pog. Op. 394). Though these words are ascribed to his friend Niccoli, they exactly expressed his own sentiments, as may be seen in the letter to his friend, Bartolommeo Fazio, from which we have already quoted, where he speaks of himself as being "always excessively averse to the language of praise," and further reproves it as "a species of vice":--"non adulandi causa loquor, nam abfuit a me longissime semper id vitii genus" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epistol).

In that strongly expressed sentiment of the world being filled with so many knaves that it was dangerous, and all but destructive of truth, to believe in honesty, we have the keynote to the whole of the Annals; and the last six books are marked by a universal cynical disbelief in human honesty; for from the first character, Asiaticus, who is accused of every kind of corruption and abomination (XI. 2), down to Egnatius, with his perfidy, treachery, avarice, l.u.s.t, and superficial virtues (XVI. 32), all are patterns of the vices, few, except the aged Thrasea, being bright examples of virtue. I have no doubt this description of the general depravity of Adam's descendants, the dwelling on which was so delectable to the disposition of Bracciolini, was a very correct portraiture of the human race in the fifteenth century, when, in Italy especially, and, above all, in Rome, the light from the lamp of Diogenes was, I suspect, very much wanted to find an honest man.