Only one fault is to be found with this criticism, which is both excellent and curious,—excellent, because remarkable for its simple truthfulness,—curious, because it looks as if Hunter, who knew nothing about Bracciolini, had the eyes of a cat and could see in the dark;—the fault is that the writer applies the criticism to one eminently undeserving of its causticity;—because though we have quoted "If he is," Hunter wrote, "If Tacitus is"; now Tacitus never wrote any descriptions of the nature commented on by the Vicar of Wrexham; they are not to be found in any of the works that pass under his name except the Annals; there is this excuse to be found for Hunter, that, at the time when he wrote, he was compelled to take the majestic Roman Consul to be the author of the Annals; but though his criticism is not applicable in a single syllable to Tacitus, it is strictly applicable in every word to Bracciolini, whom he never dreamt of as the composer of the Annals.

IV. It matters not what a man may attempt in literature, what style he may adopt, or what old pattern imitate,—he cannot get away from the impulses of his own time, strive he ever so hard: the tone and colour of his work will be modified by actual history and current politics; his strongest impressions will be influenced by the deeds that are being transacted and the lives that are being passed around him; so that however wide, searching and vigorous may be his powers of observation, thought and intellect, he cannot liberate these from contemporary associations; any endeavour to do that must end in failure, ending, as it must, in artificial coldness and unemotional lifelessness. Bracciolini never made the attempt; he gave way to Nature, and never did his genius shine so brightly, and never was it more prolific, than when dealing with the diversity required of it by the history embraced in the Annals.

V. I am now about to make some remarks which I am glad to say, will get for this book a place in the "Index Expurgatorius" in Rome; and which will do a great deal more than that,—considerably amaze the shade of Bracciolini (supposing that he has a shade), perhaps as much as M. Jourdain was astonished when told that he had been talking prose all his life.

Every student of the Annals, in order rightly to understand its meaning and properly to appreciate its greatness, should bear in mind that the Emperors who play a part in it, Claudius and Nero in the last six books, and Tiberius in the first six, are intended to be the representatives or personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century. Hence it is that Claudius, Nero and Tiberius are depicted as superhuman in monstrosities,—colossal in crime,—perpetrators of enormities that never yet met, and never will meet, in combination in any single man. Each is, in fact, a fiend, and not a human being. It was thus only that Bracciolini could show us in its true light the Church of Rome as it acted in his day. In the language of Wickliffe it was the "Synagogue of Satan." A mere trifle was it that reprobates in the form of bishops and priests ordained, consecrated and sacrificed. See the Church at an Oecumenical Council; then it capped the climax of cruelty and crime; it resorted to demoniacal subterfuge to condemn good men as heretics and burn them alive, believing that death by fire would inflict the most exquisitely excruciating tortures; at the Council of Constance it sought to condemn Wickliffe, by making an inference from some of his principles that he propagated the doctrine,—"God is obliged to obey the Devil,"—nowhere to be found in the Trialogue, Dialogue, and all the other works, treatises, and opuscles or small pieces bearing the name of that honoured and most pious divine: it consigned to the flames those two intimate friends and associates, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, for holding just and virtuous views about the degradation of the priestly office, and for nobly and fearlessly inveighing against the corruptions of the pontifical court, the pomp and pride of prelates, and the dissipated habits and abuses of the clergy.

When we read in the Annals of men, who, in spite of their nobility, innocence and virtues, were put to death by the sword of the executioner or the poisoned bowl, we must not think that we are reading of real Romans who thus actually suffered: the whole is a fabrication placing before us fictitious pictures, meant to be life-like, of what the DOMINATING POWER CAN DO IN SOCIETY: they are not pictures intended to show with truthfulness monstrosities positively done by Emperors of Rome in the first century: they are pictures that reflect with fidelity the atrocities that stained the Church of Rome in the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Those were the closing days of the ancient period of the most abominable of all the Inquisitions, that of Spain, before the establishment by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1481 of the modern Inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula: that terrible jurisdiction extended to everybody, dead as well as living, absent as well as present, princes and subjects, rich and poor,—all were liable alike on the bare suspicion of such an insignificant matter as heresy, to corporal punishment, pecuniary fines, confiscation of property, and loss of life, by being burnt at the stake, or,—as occurred to Savonarola, towards the close of the century,—first strangled by the hangman, and then committed to the flames. Only the Nero of the last part of the Annals, or the Tiberius of the first six books of that work, can properly stand forth, in his persecuting spirit, as the counterpart of the Dominican, John de Torquemada, who, in the performance of his duty, as the Inquisitor General in Spain, proceeded against upwards of 100,000 persons, 6,000 of whom he condemned to the flames.

VI. So far, then, from being surprised with Professor Schildius (Professor of History and Greek, and afterwards of Hebrew in the University of Bremen at the commencement of the seventeenth century), and induced to doubt with him, the veraciousness of the Annals, I should have been very much astonished indeed, and, certainly, called in question its fidelity as representing the spirit of the fifteenth century, if it had not recorded (to borrow the language of Schildius) "a number of the most honourable and innocent men, the prides and ornaments of the State, coming to an ignominious end, and for no other crime, forsooth, than that which we call treason-felony": "Quod si non omnium judiciis superior esset Cornelius Tacitus, laboraret Annalium fides, tot nobilissimos et innocuos viros, tot decora et ornamenta Civitatis, indignissimo fine cecidisse crederemus, idque non aliud hercle ob crimen, quam illum, quem diximus, obtentuin laesae majestatis" (Schildi Exercitationes in C. Taciti Annal: XV. p. 29). Substitute for "treason felony" "heresy," and we have the strictest truth with regard to the unutterable ferocity of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century.

VII. Had any man then living been bold enough to tell the world of the Church of Rome's ferocity in primitive terms, he must have been particularly desirous of being roasted alive: had he even so represented it as to render himself comprehensible by the most quick-witted, he must still have had the martyr's liking for instruments of torture and the blazing faggot: Bracciolini, whom nature had not gifted with the taste of Huss and Jerome of Prague, was so conscious of the perilous position in which he placed himself by undertaking a composition of this description, that he communicated his alarm to Niccoli about the care he must take as to the expression of his views lest he should give offence to princes, in that memorable letter, from which I have already quoted, dated Rome, October 8, 1423, in which he indirectly informed his friend that he had commenced his forgery of the Annals, by confessing that he was engaged on a certain work (or, as he puts it, "certain tiny occupations" ("occupatiunculae quaedam") in the style of Lord Byron, who would speak meanly of any of his marvellous poems, Childe Harold or Manfred, as "a thing"). "Besides," said he, "there are certain tiny occupations in which I am engaged, which do not so much impede me in themselves, as the way in which I tarry over them; for it is necessary that I should be on my guard with respect to the inclinations of princes, that their susceptibilities be not offended, as they are much more ready to vent their rage than to extend their forgiveness if anything be done amiss";—he then ended by making an observation which we have already noticed to the effect that beginnings were always difficult, especially when an attempt was made to imitate the ancients: "Sunt praeterea occupatiuculae quaedam, in quibus versor, quae non tantum ipsae me impediunt, quantum earum expectatio. Oportet enim paratum esse etiam ad nutum, ne offiendatur religio principum, quorum indignatio promptior est, quam remissio, si quid omittatur. In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua ac difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum" (Ep. II. 5). Therefore, Bracciolini, in the most strained detortions from literal meaning,—in the darkest nimbus of far-fetched elaboration of mystical allegory, —placed before us the unparalleled cruelty of the Church of Rome in the tiger-like thirst for blood of the Tiberius and the Nero of the Annals.

VIII. In the same manner as we have in the Annals a true and life- like picture of the savage and ravenous fierceness of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century, so we have the likenesses, drawn, too, with the spirit and vigour of life about them, of the persons who flourished at that period as Princes, Ministers, and their agents and servants, though the likenesses may have been reproduced with some partial poetical exaggeration with regard to the peculiar characters, vices and singular debasement of individuals: this, however, is very certain; people, then, were altogether abnormal. We have already seen how historians tell us that Cardinal Beaufort by his intrigues and those of the Queen of Henry IV. hastened the ruin and untimely fate of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester. Kings so troubled their subjects by their tyranny and excesses, they were deposed, imprisoned, or put to death: in England Richard II. was stripped of his kingdom; in Bohemia Wenceslaus was twice thrown into prison; in Germany, Frederick, Duke of Brunswick, was murdered only two days after he had been elected Emperor; and in France, Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, had his life taken on the bridge of Montereau. In the East things fared even worse: sovereigns trampled on sovereigns: Tamerlane, the victor, treated with contumely the once proud conqueror, the vanquished Bayazid, Sultan of Turkey, used his body as a footstool or ladder by which to mount his horse; forced him to lie on the ground while he fed and to pick up the crumbs that fell from his table, and finally shut him up in an iron cage, where he died of a broken heart: if these things be false, as they may be, or exaggerated, as unquestionably they were, yet they point to the spirit of the age, in the simple fact of their having been recounted, and in the still more remarkable fact of their having been believed.

There were no such emperors and persons in high places during the opening period of the Christian aera; or Tacitus in his "History" gives us a very wrong account of them; his views of them are, if not favourable, lenient or apologetic: they do not seem to have had the vices and faults of most men; Tacitus has otherwise successfully thrown a veil over them. Were the whole truth known, it might be found that there is a shameful exaggeration of the vices of Roman Emperors: this looks most probable when we consider the significant reflections made about Princes in one of his miscellaneous productions, by the historian, David Hume,—not the David Hume, minor, who, living a long time among the English, and becoming fascinated with their ways, manners, customs and civilization, mooted the union of England and Scotland, more than a hundred years before the great event came off, in that famous historical essay printed in London in 1605 and entitled "De Unione Insulae Britanniae Tractatus;" nor David Hume minimus, who wrote the "History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus" but the David Hume, major, who wrote the "History of England"—that "there are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries nearly two hundred absolute princes, great and small in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand monarchs, or 'tyrants,' as the Greeks would have called them, yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors." When we find David Hume thus putting the matter, in his Essay on "Civil Liberty," it makes us at once see how highly unlikely it is that all the badness of human nature should have been concentrated in a few individuals who lived at a particular period and in a particular country, those individuals being Emperors, that particular period the commencement of the Christian aera and that particular country ancient Rome. Somewhere or other there must have been a great deal of maligning; nor is it difficult to discover who the maligner was as far as the characters in the Annals are concerned.

IX. No one will accuse Tacitus of disparaging Princes and persons in high places; but everybody will admit, who is acquainted with the productions of Bracciolini, that he speaks trumpet-tongued of their delinquencies. When in his Dialogue, "De Infelicitate Principum," an attempt is made by Cosmo de' Medici to uphold some of them as "worthy of all praise and commendation for their learning and estimable qualities," the passage follows, as the reply of Niccoli (already quoted), of the hypocrisy and rascality of all men, consequently, of the hypocrisy and rascality of kings, ministers and their agents and servants. Nay, more: Cosmo de' Medici is made to express his astonishment at the spirit of detraction in Niccoli, but is not surprised as he lashes private individuals, to find him bitterly inveighing against princes, being ever ready and fluent in his abuse of the latter, even when they do no harm, and cannot be reproached for their lives: Cosmo de' Medici is, therefore, of opinion that exceptions ought to be made in their favour, and wants to know why Niccoli should be so strongly given to vituperate them:—"Tum, Cosmus, graviter ut assolet, "Facillime," inquit, "Nicolae, (qui mos tuus est), laberis ad detrahendum. Equidem minime miror, si quando es in privatos dicatior, cum in ipsos principes tam facile inveharis, et tamen nullius injuria, aut vitae contumelia facit, ut tam sis promptus, aut copiosus in eorum objurgationem. Novi nonnullos qui abs te excipi deberent ab reliquorum caterva viri docti, egregii, omnique laude et commendatione dignissimi. Unde mecum saepius cogitans addubitare cogor quaenam sit potissimum causa, cur in vituperando sis quam, &c." (Pog. Op. p. 394)

We who live in these days and know how exemplary, as a rule, for piety and excellent conduct, are Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and, in fact, the clergy in the Church of Rome, as well as the dignitaries and pastors in all the other ecclesiastical establishments of Europe, and who, at the same time, honour and admire crowned heads and princes, ministers and great men for their position and virtues, cannot realize to ourselves how there ever could have been such hatefully contemptible personages in the sovereign and loftiest places as are depicted in the Annals, page after page, nor can we bring ourselves to believe that there ever existed such a bevy of brilliant malefactors, except in the judgment and fancy of one who did not shine among the most amiable of mankind as he, certainly, shone among the most able.



CHAPTER III.

FURTHER PROOFS OF FORGERY.

I. "Octavianus" as the name of Augustus Caesar.—II. Cumanus and Felix as joint governors of Judaea.—III. The blood relationship of Italians and Romans.—IV. Fatal error in the oratio obliqua.—V. Mistake made about "locus".—VI. Objections of some critics to the language of Tacitus examined.—VII. Some improprieties that occur in the Annals found also in Bracciolini's works.—VIII. Instanced in (a) "nec ... aut", (b) rhyming and the peculiar use of "pariter".—IX. The harmony of Tacitus and the ruggedness of Bracciolini illustrated.—X. Other peculiarities of Bracciolini's not shared by Tacitus: Two words terminating alike following two others with like terminations; prefixes that have no meaning; and playing on a single letter for alliterative purposes.

I. If there be one man more than another who might easily fall into the error of supposing that an ancient Roman could take in the most capricious and arbitrary way any name he pleased, Flavius, or Julius, or Pius, it would be a man like Bracciolini, who, as Secretary of the Popes for forty years, was in the habit of seeing every now and then, and that, too, at very brief intervals, a Cardinal, on being raised to the dignity of the Papacy, take any name from whim or fancy, and, sometimes a very queer name, too, as a Cossa taking the name of John, or a Colonna the name of Martin. This being admitted, it seems quite consistent that Bracciolini should speak of Augustus Caesar, before he was Emperor, as "Octavianus." When we read in the XIIIth book of the Annals (6), "imperatori" (Bracciolini's word for "General," Tacitus would have written "duci"), "quantum ad robur deesse, cum octavo decimo aetatis anno Cneius Pompeius, nono decimo Caesar OCTAVIANUS civilia bella sustinuerint, we may be assured that we are reading words which were not written by Tacitus, and, as for the matter of that, any Roman, because he would have known that Augustus Caesar, before he was called Augustus, did not bear and never could have borne, the name of Octavianus: the son of Octavius, he was himself Octavius, not Octavianus, as his sister was Octavia (so Pliny the Elder writes, "Marcellus Octavia" not Octaviana, "sorore Augusti genitus" N.H. XIX. 6, 1.) Shakespeare knew better than Bracciolini the name of Augustus, before he was Emperor, by making Antony say to him:

"And now, Octavius, Listen great things." Julius Caesar, Act IV. sc. 1.

Whenever we find a Roman's name ending in "ianus," we know one of three things: either that he had taken his name from his wife who was an heiress, as Domitianus; or that he was the eldest son of a man who had taken his mother's name, which he was himself allowed to assume by the marriage contract, as Titus Vespasianus; or, when we find a repetition of the same name ending in "ius" and "ianus," as "Aemilius Aemilianus," or in "ianus" and "ius" as "Licinianus Licinius," we know that the individual was of the Aemilian or Licinian family, and had married the heiress of another great Roman house. This was the rule among that ancient people, unless I have been misled by Father Hardouin (See Harduinus. Praef. ad Histor. August. ex Nummis Antiq. Opera Sel. p. 683). The termination, then, "ianus," always indicated marriage with an heiress, just as such a marriage among ourselves is heraldically marked by the husband and wife's coats of arms being placed alongside of each other; and just as we never depart from this custom in escutcheons, so the Romans never varied their rule with respect to such names; then as Augustus Caesar neither married an heiress, nor was the eldest son of a man who had formed such a marriage; and as this custom of changing the termination of the name was familiar to all the Romans,—if not to every ignorant or ill-bred man, at least, to every well-informed, well-bred man among them,—it follows as clearly, as that 2 and 2 make 4, that Tacitus, the high-born gentleman and consul, could never have written Caesar Octavianus.

I am exceedingly sorry to have made these remarks for the sake of the writers of classical biographies, whose reputation is at stake, for one and all, from Lempriere to Dr. William Smith, mislead those who consult their pages as to the names of Augustus, among which figures "Octavianus"; this is their own fault; they will persist in regarding the Annals as the best and most authentic history we have of the ancient Romans during the period embraced in its records; they reject all other testimony, when all other testimony is far more reliable.

I also grieve very much for the authorities of the British Museum on account of the inscription they have had graved in the Roman Gallery of Antiquities under the bust numbered 3 which represents Augustus in his youth,—"Octavianus Caesar Augustus"; I have been compelled to point out this error in examining a work given out as the production of the ancient Roman, Caius Cornelius Tacitus, when it is the glaring forgery of a bungling mediaeval European "grammaticus," that bungling mediaeval European "grammaticus" being (as I am showing, and the reader is, I trust, becoming more and more convinced as he proceeds) no other than Poggio Bracciolini.

II. I am also extremely sorry for Dr. Adam Clarke that his accuracy in research and his extensive and extraordinary learning, which have hitherto been indisputable, should be now called in question; but they are jeoparded: in his valuable Commentary on the Bible, he says in one of his notes to the Acts of the Apostles (Ch. XXIV. v. 10): "Cumanus and Felix were, for a time, joint governors of Judaea; but, after the condemnation of Cumanus, the government fell entirely into the hands of Felix";—this is not history. In the first place, Cumanus and Felix were never joint governors of Judaea; in the second place, when Cumanus was punished, his government did not "fall" to Felix; Felix succeeded, for Felix was appointed to it. Dr. Clarke could have made this statement on no other authority than that of Bracciolini, who in the 54th chapter of the XIIth book of the Annals, says that Judaea was under the government of Cumanus conjointly with Felix, the province being so divided that Cumanus was governor of Galilee and Felix of Samaria:—"Ventidio Cumano, cui pars provinciae habebatur: ita divisis, ut huic Galilaeorum natio; Felici Samaritae parerent" (An. XII. 54). Justus Lipsius was rather startled at the number of mistakes he found in those words: in addition to Felix and Cumanus never being joint governors, Judaea was not a divided province, and Cumanus was, certainly, governor over the Samaritans, as may be seen by reference to Josephus, who can always be relied upon, for what Julius Caesar Scaliger, one of the most learned and famous men of the sixteenth century, said of him everybody knows, from Whiston (quoting it from Bishop Porteus), placing it at the commencement of his admirable popular translation of the Hebrew historian, that "he deserved more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together." Well, Josephus, who "deserved more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together," says that a disturbance broke out between the Jews and the Samaritans, whereupon "the former burnt and plundered the villages of the latter, and when what had been done reached Cumanus, he armed the Samaritans and marched against the Jews," clearly showing that by "arming the Samaritans," he was governor of Samaria, and not Felix:—[Greek: Komas tinas ton Samareon empraesantes diarpazousi. Koumanos de, taes praxeos eis auton aphikomenaes ... tous Samareitas kathoplisas, exaelthen epi tous Ioudaious] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 6). Having said this in his "Antiquities of the Jews", Josephus more distinctly says in his "Wars of the Jews" that the Emperor Claudius banished Cumanus, "after which he sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to be the governor of Judaea, Galilee, Samaria and Peraea": [Greek: meta tauta Ioudaias men epitropon Phaelika ton Pallantos adelphon ekpempei, taes te Galilaias kai Samareias kai Peraias] (De Bello Jud. II. 12. 8).

Cardinal Baronius, in one of the forty folio volumes of his "Annales Ecclesiastici" (A.C. 50. Tom I. p. 355), has fallen exactly into the same mistake as Dr. Adam Clarke, and, from the very same cause, placing implicit confidence in what is stated in the Annals. He says that "the same Josephus is, nevertheless, guilty of an evident mistake when he asserts that Cumanus was convicted in Rome, and that Claudius thence sent to Judaea the brother of his freedman Pallas,—Felix; for Felix was sent along with Cumanus to that province, which was so divided between them, that Felix ruled Samaria, but Cumanus the remainder of the province":—"Sed patentis erroris nihilominus idem Josephus arguitur, dum ait esse damnatum Romae Cumanum ac inde Claudium Felicem Pallantis liberti Claudii Augusti germanum missum esse in Judaeam. Nam Felix simul cum Cumano in eam provinciam missus est, sic ea inter eos divisa, ut Felix Samariam administraret, Cumanus vero reliquam provinciae partem."

Another Cardinal, Noris, who has the credit of being one of the most accurate and learned antiquaries, chronologists and historians of his age (the close of the seventeenth century), for Zedler says of him (sub vocibus, "Heinrich Noris"), that he was "einer der gelehrtesten Leute seiner Zeit, ein vollkommener Antiquarius, Chronologus und Historicus," maintains, in his Commentary on the Two Monumental Stones erected at Pisa in honour of the two grandsons of the Emperor Augustus, ("Cenotaphia Pisana",) that Cardinal Baronius was wrong when he made that statement on the authority of the Jewish historian, because "Josephus has nowhere said that Felix was sent from Rome as the successor of Cumanus, but on the contrary, as may be clearly gathered from the 11th," (it should be the 12th) "chapter of his second book of the war, for that immediately after he has spoken of the condemnation of Cumanus by the Emperor Claudius, he says that that Emperor 'sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to the Jews, to administer their country along with Samaria and Galilee, while he transferred Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government, giving him the province also which had been Felix's': now that was Trachonitis, Bethanea and Gaulanitis: therefore Felix, before the condemnation of Cumanus, was placed over Judaea, having been the governor, according to Josephus, of that part of Galilee which lay between the river Jordan and the hills of Coelesyria and Philadelphia; and, consequently, he did not go to Judaea from Rome, as that learned man wrongly ascribes to Josephus, but from Galilee beyond the Jordan":—"Verum Josephus nusquam dixit Felicem Roma missum Cumano successorem, immo aperte ex lib. 2. belli cap. 11 oppositum colligitur; siquidem cum dixisset Cumanum Romae damnatum a Claudio Imperatore, statim ait:—'Post haec Felicem Pallantis fratrem misit ad Judaeos, qui eorum provinciam cum Samaria et Galilaea curaret. Agrippam vero de Chalcide in regnum majus transtulit, tradens ei illam quoque provinciam, quae Felicis fuisset.' Erat autem ista Trachonitis, Bethanea, Gaulanitis. Igitur Felix, antequam damnato Cumano, Judaeae imponeretur, Galilaeam transamnanam quae Jordane ac montibus Coelesyriae, ac Philadelphiae includitur, auctore Josepho, regebat; ac proinde in Judaeam non ex Urbe, ut minus recte vir eruditus Josepho imponit, sed ex Galilaea transamnana advenit." (Cenotaphia Pisana. Diss. sec. p. 333 ed. Ven. 1681.)

Of course, if Josephus wrote thus, the whole matter is settled; Felix was governor with Cumanus, for the province over which he had ruled, Peraea, or Galilee to the eastward of the Jordan, was transferred to Agrippa: but "litera scripta manet:" on turning to Josephus it is found that it was Philip, and not Felix, who held the country that was given to Agrippa:—"And he" (the Emperor Claudius) "transfers Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government, by giving him the tetrachy that had been PHILIP'S":—[Greek: ek de taes Chalkidos Agrippan ein meizona Basileian metatithaesi, dous auto taen te PHILIPPOI genomenaen tetrarchian.] (De Bello Jud. II. 12). For such dishonesty in attempting to carry his point against another Eminence Cardinal Noris ought to have blushed as scarlet as his stockings.

Ernesti, quite puzzled at the singular statement that a Roman province had two governors, is of opinion that the error was occasioned by statements to be found in the New Testament: "There is," he says, "the additional testimony of St. Luke, or rather St. Paul, who says that Felix was many years set over the Jews, in the third or fourth year after Cumanus had been condemned": "Accedit Lucae auctoritas, vel potius Pauli, qui Felicem multos annos Judaeis praefuisse dicit, anno, postquam Cumanus damnatus est, tertio aut quarto." It is just possible that the passage about Felix being "many years a judge unto that nation," which occurs in the Acts of the Apostles (c. XXIV. v. 10), was what actually misled Bracciolini; the more so, as when he was in this country, he discharged what Dean Hook called "the heavenly occupations of a parish priest" (Life of Becket, p. 359), and for the very reason that he was a consecrated man he must have taken a much greater interest and placed far more trust in St. Paul, than Tacitus or any other heathen among the ancient Romans was likely to have done; but an error so extraordinary about the contemporary government of his country could barely have been committed by such an eminent public man and politician as Tacitus: this is the reason why Cardinal Baronius convicted Josephus of "an evident mistake," for as he properly observed parenthetically in the passage we have quoted, that "we ought to attach faith to Tacitus, whom, certainly, any learned man would clearly prefer to Josephus in matters especially which appertain to Roman magistracies": "si Tacito fidem praebemus, quem certe, in his praesertim quae ad Romanos pertinent magistratus, quivis eruditus Josepho facile anteferat" (l.c.). But as Tacitus did not write the Annals, Josephus is to be preferred to Bracciolini; when, too, it is just the kind of mistake which a writer of the XVth century, as Bracciolini, however learned and careful he might be, would be likely to fall into, from the testimony of St. Paul conflicting with that of Josephus.

III. Another blunder is made by Bracciolini with regard to the Italians and Romans, whom he looks upon as blood relations, fellow countrymen, and possessors of a common capital in the City of Rome. The Italians were not of the same descent as the Romans; and when they were all brought under subjection to Rome in the first half of the third century before the Christian aera, they beheld themselves inhabitants of towns, some of which were "municipia", (having their own laws and magistracy, enjoying the privilege of voting in the comitia and soliciting for public offices in Rome), others "coloni," (conquered places ruled over by poor Romans sent to keep the inhabitants in subjection, having the jus Romanum, Latinum or Italicum, and ceasing to be citizens of Rome); but in either set of towns the freedom and the sacred rites, the laws of race and of government, the oaths and the guardianship of the Romans did not prevail; in fact, the Italians had not the private rights of the Romans, and, therefore, in the language of Livy, "they were not Roman citizens":—"non eos esse cives Romanos" (XXXIV. 42). Even the privileges they enjoyed, such as immunity from the tribute raised in the Roman provinces, they participated with other people, to whom the privilege had been accorded at various periods;—for example,—the inhabitants of Laodicaea in Syria and of Beyroot in Phoenicia in the time of Augustus;—of Tyre in the time of Severus;—of Antioch and the colony of Emissa in Upper Syria in the time of Antonine, and of the colonies in Mauritania in the time of Titus. Tacitus, therefore, as a Roman citizen, could not, by any possibility, have spoken of Rome being the "capital" of Italy, and the Italians and Romans being people of the "same blood," as the author of the Annals does when he writes: "non adeo aegram Italiam ut senatum suppeditare urbi suae nequiret; suffecisse olim indigenas consanguineis populis" (XI. 23).

Nobody can understand those last five words; they have not been understood by the editors, from Justus Lipsius and John Frederic Gronovius to Ernesti and Heinsius: they are capable of more than one interpretation on account of the brevity and obscurity of the expression: I take it that Bracciolini meant to imply that "in the ancient days the natives of Italy were quite on a par with their 'brethren' in Rome," referring to the time when Romans, Latins, Etruscans and Sabines stood on the same level; and in order to make out that Italians are still in the same position, he adds: "there is no regretting what was anciently done in the State," "nec poenitere veteris reipublicae."

An Italian of the fifteenth century, and a Florentine like Bracciolini, was glad to think, and proud to say, nay, ready to believe, and to perpetuate the belief, that Italy and Rome were identical, and the people consanguineous. We see how that pleasing delusion is still cherished fondly by the living countrymen of Bracciolini: General Garibaldi, to wit, as well as the late Joseph Mazzini, always looked upon the City of Rome as the "natural" capital of the Kingdom of Italy; and we can easily believe, with what joy, pride, and confidence in its veracity the gallant general or the devoted patriot, or any other Italian warrior or politician, would have written, as Bracciolini wrote, the passage that we have quoted from the eleventh book of the Annals.

IV. Nor is this the only time when Bracciolini does not maintain the character he assumes of an ancient Roman. Narcissus, addressing Claudius in the eleventh book of the Annals says: "he did not now mean to charge him"—that is, Silius, "with adulteries": "nec nunc adulteria objecturum" (XI. 30). The language used seems to be very good language. A Roman historian, though, would have written, "nec tunc": he could not have fallen into the error of failing to define time in reference to himself when ascribing words to persons, any more than he could have failed to vary the grammar to the accusative and infinitive. This elementary principle in Latin composition is known, (as Lord Macaulay would have said,) "to every schoolboy." It was, certainly, well known to such an accomplished "grammaticus" as Bracciolini; and for the very simple reason that he adheres to it on all other occasions. His neglect of it in this instance is as strong a proof as any that can be advanced, of his forgery: it makes that forgery the more obvious, his slip not being accidental, but intentional: it is a deliberate violation of a rule that must never be infringed; but as a countryman will sometimes run after a jack-a-lantern, till running after it he finds himself in a burying-ground, so Bracciolini suffered himself to be misled by his literary will-o'-the wisp,—alliteration: therefore he preferred writing "nec nunc," instead of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of a Roman, because a Roman would not have done this, because he could not have done it. Definition of time in reference to himself was a necessity of expression; he could not have sacrificed it for alliteration or any other trick of composition, because he would not have dreamt of changing the time in ascribing words to persons. A modern, on the other hand, would think that a mere trifle; left to himself, he would prefer it; he would also know that his readers, being moderns like himself, would very much admire his composition for the alliteration, whilst finding definition of time in reference to the position of the speaker, much more agreeable to their ears, from their being accustomed to native historians who wrote in the vernacular so defining time in all passages of the kind spontaneously, without art or affectation, and not, as the ancient Romans, stiffly adopting the harsh, unnatural fashion of defining it in reference to the position of the writer.

V. Our word "box" (apart from three technical meanings, one in botany, and two in mechanics), has six different significations for things that have nothing in common with each other;—"a slap on the chaps"; "a coffer or case for holding any materials"; "seats in a theatre"; "a Christmas present"; "the case for the mariner's compass," and "the seat on a coach for the driver." The Roman word, too, "locus," has just the same half-dozen meanings for things as unconnected;—"a passage"; "a country"; "an argument"; "a place"; "a sentence," and "a seat." In five instances "box" is a primitive noun; when it means "a blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand," it is a verbal substantive. Exactly the same number of curiosities distinguished "locus." In five instances it was masculine; when it signified "a seat in a theatre" it was neuter; this was familiar to every Roman with a lettered education: unfortunately it slipped the memory of Bracciolini when he wrote: An. XV. 32: "equitum Romanorum locos sedilibus plebis anteposuit apud Circum." Tacitus would have written "loca."

VI. This brings me again to consider the Latin of Tacitus; no reasonable objection can be found with it; severely captious critics who carp at trifles, and look at language microscopically, point out errors; but they are not so great as the mistakes sometimes made by Cicero and Caesar, Sallust and Livy. As a specimen of the objections we may give the following: a critic has been bold enough to say that in the phrase "refractis palatiis foribus, ruere intus" (Hist. I. 35), Tacitus uses the adverb for in a place instead of the adverb for to a place. "Intus" means "into" or "within," just as well as "in," as may be seen from numerous instances in Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Plautus, and other writers of inferior reputation in prose and poetry. The phrase then is: "having broken open the palace doors, to rush within." Where is the mistake?

Another objection raised is that Tacitus wrongly writes "quantum" as the corresponding adverb to "tanto," "quantumque hebes ad sustinendum laborem miles, tanto ad discordias promptior" (Hist. II. 99). It was a common custom among the Romans to use "quantum," if they preferred it, to "quanto," and to follow it with "tanto": at any rate it occurs in Livy twice, if not oftener: quantum augebatur, tanto majore (V. 10);—quantum laxaverat, tanto magis (XXXII. 5). The objections to the grammar of Tacitus are, as a rule, all on a par with these two; it is not, however, without some pleasurable feeling that one comes across charges made against him of using incorrect forms of speech, were it only from perceiving how extremely happy the fault-finders seem to be in having such an opportunity of gratifying their natural malice.

VII. Vossius, the Canon of Canterbury in the seventeenth century, adopts an entirely different tone in his agreeable treatise on the Roman historians—"De Historicis Latinis." Commenting on the statement made by Alciati and Emilio Ferretti that Tacitus wrote bad Latin, he bursts into an exclamation that may be considered rather uncourteous when applied to His Eminence a Cardinal and to an eminent Jurisconsult, that they were both silly and absurd: "they say," exclaims Gerardus Johannes, "that he did not write Latin properly: how silly is this! how absurd!"—"aiunt, eum non Latine satis scribere: quam, hoc insubidum! quam insulsum!" (I. 30). Perhaps Vossius was of opinion that if Tacitus wrote incorrectly, it must be upon the principle alleged by Quintilian that "one kind of expression is grammatical, another kind Latin," "aliud esse grammatice, aliud Latine loqui" (I. 16) after the accommodating fashion of that kind gentleman of etymology and syntax, Valerius Probus, who in Aulus Gellius (XIII. 20. 1), said "has urbes" or "has urbis" was the more correct according to metrical convenience when writing verses, or sonorous utterance when delivering a set oration, which (without being Romans), we can easily understand, when some of our poets rhyme "clear" to "idea," and a Clerkenwell Green orator prefers "obstropalous" to "obstreperous." On some such grounds alone can excuse be found for some anomalous expressions in the Annals; they are irreconcilable to the common rules of grammar; and what may seem strange to the reader, though to me it is quite natural, the very same improprieties that occur in the Annals of words and phrases not according with the established principles of writing occur also in the acknowledged works of Bracciolini.

VIII. (a). When the Romans used the disjunctive particle, "nec," in the first branch of a negative sentence, the same word (or its equivalent "neque,") was used in the subsequent branch of the proposition. To couple "aut" with "nec" was a wrong correlative. The rule was so absolute that I know but of one Roman writer who infringed it; and that was because he was a poet,—Ovid:

"Nec piget, aut unquam stulte elegisse videbor." Her. XVI. 167.

"Nec plus Atrides animi Menelaus habebit Quam Paris; aut armis anteferendus erit." Ib. 355-6.

It will be seen that the error, which is committed twice, occurs in the same poem, the XVIth Heroic, or The Epistle of Helen to Paris, and under the same circumstance of pressure,—the want of a word that began with a vowel,—because a word beginning with a consonant could not, of course, follow the last foot of a dactyle ending with a consonant;—therefore Ovid took refuge in what is called "poetical license," which is a gentle term for expressing departure from syntax. Ovid never again committed the offence, quite sufficient to convince us that it went against his grain to have so written in his XVIth Heroic; he knew that it was not elegant; it was not, in fact, correct, nor in his style; and he would not have done it but that he was cramped by verse. But why, uncramped by verse, the author of the Annals should have written: "hortatur miles, ut hostem vagum, neque paci aut proelio paratum," instead of "neque proelia," is difficult to determine, except that he was desirous of imitating Bracciolini, who writes in the letter to his friend Niccoli from which we have already quoted (Ep. II. 7): "muta igitur propositum, et huc veni, neque te terreat longitudo itineris, aut hiemis asperitas." The imitation is, besides, so very close that we find in both cases "neque" is preferred in the first clause to the more usual form of "nec."

VIII. (b.) In order to show how closely the expressions peculiar to Bracciolini and his artifices of composition resemble, (as he did not mean them to do, though they did), the style of writing and the language in the Annals, I need, without wandering over the whole work, simply confine myself to the remainder of the sentence from which this fragment is taken; and beg the reader to mark carefully the italicized syllables and words "hortatur miles, ut hostem vagum, neque paci aut proelio paratum, sed perfidiam et ignaviam fuga confitentem exuerent sedibus, gloriaeque pariter et praedae consulerent" (An. XIII. 39).

First, there is the correspondence of the two last syllables of the words at the end of two almost equally balanced clauses, with more syllables in the first than the second clause: "sed perfidiam, et ignaviam fuga confitentem exuerent // sedibus, gloriaeque pariter et praedae consulerent //. It will be seen, (without multiplying examples), that the very same thing occurs in the passage quoted in the preceding chapter from Bracciolini's letter about the Baths of Baden: "et simul quandoque cum mulieribus lavantes, // et sertis quoque comas ornantes" // (Ep. I. 1).

There is the altogether peculiar use of "pariter" in the sense of equality of association or time—"gloriaeque pariter et praedae consulerent," just as in Bracciolini's Treatise "De Miseria Humanae Conditionis" (Pog. Op. p. 121): "Victis postmodum pariter victoribus imperarunt." Three things ought to be noticed: first, "pariter" is the equivalent of "simul"; secondly, it is placed between the connected words; and, thirdly, the phrase ends with a four-syllabled verb—"imperarunt,"—"consulerent." That this is not only Bracciolini's individual phraseology, but his stereotyped cast of expression, is at once seen in the extraordinary sameness of the three things occurring when he again uses it in the Annals: "vox pariter et spiritus raperentur" (An. XIII. 16).

IX. The composition of any writer can be easily detected from examining his affinities of language as displayed not only in his use of words, but in his construction of sentences and combination of words.

Nobody can read Tacitus, and not come to the conclusion that if any man ever wrote harmoniously, it is he; but any one reading the Annals must come to the very opposite conclusion, that Bracciolini is the very prince of rugged writers. By varying the accents, Tacitus manages to please the ear even when ending sentences with ugly polysyllabic words, as (taking the instances from the opening of his work): "suspectis sollicitis, adoptanti placebat" (I. 14); "deterius interpretantibus tristior, habebatur" (ib.); "Lusitaniam, specie legationis, seposuit" (I. 13). This is the unmusical way in which Bracciolini ends sentences with long words (taking the instances, also, from the commencement of the forgery): "victores longinquam militiam aspernabantur" (An. XI. 10):—"potissimum exaequaebantur officia ceremoniarum" (An. XI. 11):—"Claudio dolore, injuriae credebatur" (An. XII. 11). Almost the same ring and ruggedness are to be found in:—"marmorea tabula epigramma referente" (Ruin. Urb. Rom. Descript. Op. Pog. p. 136); —"magistratus, officia, imperia deferuntur" (Mis. Hum. Cond. I. Op. Pog. p. 102); "homines amplissimam materiam suppeditarunt" (De Nobil. Op. Pogg. p. 77).

X. Tacitus avoids, as much as the genius of his native tongue will permit, two words following each other with the same terminations; Bracciolini is not only much given to this, but very partial to a reduplication of sounds, as if the jingle, instead of being most disagreeable, was excessively pleasant to the ear, as in his Letter describing the trial and death of Jerome of Prague (Ep. I. 2): —"rerum plurimarum scientiam, eloquentiam"; and in the Annals (XI. 38) "odii, gaudii, irae, tristitiae."

Bracciolini is fond of using prefixes that have no meaning, as in his Funeral Oration on the death of his friend Niccoli: "moneta obsignari est coepta concipiebant" (Op. Pog. p. 278), where he uses "obsignari" for "signari," "ob" being without meaning: so in the Annals: "testamentum Acerroniae requiri, bonaque obsignari jubet" (XIV. 6).

Another peculiarity of Bracciolini's is (for alliterative purposes) the playing upon a single letter that is repeated again and again at the beginning, in the middle, and, if the letter will allow it, at the end of words. "P" will not permit of being used in Latin at the end of words; but we find Bracciolini thus playing with it in the very first of his letters:—"projicit eam personam sibi acceptiorem, cum illam multi petant porrectis manibus, atque ipse," &c. (Ep. I. 1). But "m" does admit of being used at the end of words, and thus we find him, with a friskiness that the staid Tacitus would have in vain essayed to imitate, frolicking with it as a juggler with balls; for the rapidity of the repetition can be compared only to the rapidity of conveyance displayed by a conjuror when he receives into and passes out of his hands a number of balls with which he is playing: "mox, ut omitteret maritum, emercatur, suum matrimonium promittens" (An. XIII. 44).



CHAPTER IV.

THE TERMINATION OF THE FORGERY.

I.—The literary merit and avaricious humour of Bracciolini. —II. He is aided in his scheme by a monk of the Abbey of Fulda. —III. Expressions indicating forgery.—IV. Efforts to obtain a very old copy of Tacitus.—V. The forgery transcribed in the Abbey of Fulda.—VI. First saw the light in the spring of 1429.

I. We have pointed out in the preceding chapter some of the more glaring errors committed by Bracciolini in style and syntax, customs and history, not with the view of showing that Niccoli made any mistake when he recommended him to take the task in hand of forging the Annals; for in no way did Niccoli overrate the merit of his friend. The Latin of Bracciolini, though not equal in its elegance to that of his splendid successor, Poliziano, was, nevertheless, superior to the Latin of any of his great contemporaries, none of whom, besides, had his versatility and varied attainments nor his wisdom and philosophy. The world now knows, as his Florentine friend then knew, that he had the requisite splendour of genius to undertake the daring task of writing history as eminently as Tacitus, that is, with as powerful a conception, and as superior an expression: he had already written nobly, sensibly, purely and simply; he had acquired in the Court of Rome, and, what we may call, the Court of the Royal Prelate, Beaufort, the necessary experience of public affairs and leading individuals, which fitted him to pass sovereign judgment on great men and public events, and he was gifted with the acuteness, the understanding and the prudence to lay down lessons of instruction for mankind.

We have seen with what modesty he approached the immortal production that was fated to lift the name of Tacitus, where it was not before, above even those of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, Caesar, Sallust and Livy: yet he hesitated, questioning much whether he could clothe himself in the garb of an authoritative ancient speaking in lofty tones to the whole world and to all mankind. He had, too, to take as his model a writer who had not his fluency, and who is never great but when concise. This is the case with himself in the Annals, from his striving to do what his prototype did; with this exception, that when he is great he is never natural. In imitating this conciseness, he is the happiest instance of a writer illustrating the Horatian adage of "striving to be brief, and becoming obscure":

"Brevis esse laboro, Obscurus fio." De Arte Poet. 25-6:

ever and anon he falls into a graceless obscurity from compressing into a few words what he ought to have said in a more expanded form: his great fault is that he outdoes Tacitus in conciseness: hence he keeps his reader in ignorance of things which would have been known if he had only more fully disclosed them.

His avarice swayed his will stronger than his compunctions. The five hundred gold sequins, which were to be counted out to him on the completion of the work, which it was calculated would occupy three years, was too tempting an offer; and yet the offer was not sufficiently liberal in his opinion: as we have seen, he suggested that it should be increased one-fifth; he was right; for in those days as much, and even twice as much, was sometimes given for a mere translation: Lorenzo Valla got five hundred gold sequins for his Latin translation of Thucydides; Filelfo would have received twice as much, and, in addition to the thousand gold pieces, a handsome town house in Rome and a good landed estate if he would have translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into Latin verse. Bracciolini may, therefore, have succeeded in obtaining the increased price of six hundred sequins. Still he was not the kind of man to have been satisfied with this only: when he translated Diodorus Siculus, he required to be supported while engaged in its execution; and supported he was by the liberality of the Popes. The proposal of Lamberteschi included board and lodging, and in the house of the Florentine; Bracciolini expressed his willingness to accept that; but on the condition that Lamberteschi did not move about, for he wanted, as a prime necessity, to remain quite quiet, as the great literary undertaking in which he was about to be engaged would call for a more than usual amount of patient attention and labour: "libenter vivam cum Piero, nisi Scythae simus, libenter enim quiesco" (Ep. I. 17). We have seen that Bracciolini did not avail himself of what was proffered to him in this matter on account of his re-appointment to the Papal Secretariate: had it not been so he would have unquestionably called upon his friend Lamberteschi to fulfil this part of the contract; as before his appointment to an ecclesiastical living in England, he had been boarded and lodged by Cardinal Beaufort, and that too, on a scale of regal magnificence. He tells us himself in one of his Letters (Ep. I. 6), that, while the Cardinal, as vagrant as a Scythian, was continually absent from home, (it must have been on his episcopal visitations or in the discharge of his State duties), he staid behind in the Palace in London, passing his time peacefully and pleasantly in a splendid library, and vying at the expense of his princely patron with the magnificence of the king himself in the sumptuousness of his fare and the costliness of his apparel: "Dominus meus, quasi continuo abest, vagus ut Scytha, ego autem hic dego, in quiete libris involvor. Providetur mihi pro victu et vestitu, idque est satis, neque enim amplius vel Rex ex hoc tanto apparatu rerum capit." [Endnote 297]

When we bear in mind his strong desire for gain, we may consider it not unlikely that, adhering to his bargain, he exacted from Lamberteschi some equivalent in lieu of the board and lodging: be that as it may, after the lapse of three years, (as may be seen from letters that passed between himself and Niccoli), he had then completed, as had been rightly calculated, the first instalment of his forgery.

II. In those days when so many valuable works ascribed to the ancients were being constantly recovered, there was a very general (though as I have shown, very silly) belief abroad, that any ancient work, consequently, the lost History of Tacitus, might yet be found in some dark corner of Europe,—some barbarous country such as Germany, Hungary, or Bohemia. Accident decided that Bracciolini chose a place for the asserted recovery of what he had forged different from what had been arranged between himself and his friends in 1422, while they were devising the fabrication, namely, Hungary: when Bracciolini said that, "if he did go to Hungary he would pretend that he had come from England," the object must have been that no one should know the country where the MS. had been recovered; any busybody would be thus effectively foiled in visiting the right spot, and there prying about, making inquiries and ascertaining all the particulars with respect to the alleged discovery of some recent rare manuscript. The place thus decided on by accident was a town in Saxony at the farthest eastern extremity of that country on the borders of Bohemia, named Hirschfeldt, formerly the capital of Hesse Cassel, but which, after the peace of Westphalia, when it was secularized, became only a part of that principality. In the far-away times, it was famous for an Abbey of the Benedictine monks, which had been founded on the banks of the Fulda in the first half of the eighth century, in the year 737, in the reign of King Pepin, by a disciple of St. Boniface, St. Lul, who became Boniface's successor in the Bishopric of Mayence. The accident which caused Bracciolini to choose this convent, the most famous in Germany, as the place whence his forgery was to emanate, was his forming the acquaintance of a member of the abbey, who attended in the name of his brother Benedictines to watch a case that was being litigated for the monastery in the ecclesiastical courts of Rome. From some reason unexplained this monk was under obligation to Bracciolini, who determined that this holy man should be the medium of his forgery being placed before the world. The monk had the necessary qualifications for the tool that was wanted; he was needy and ignorant; above all things, he was stupid. "The good fellow," says Bracciolini in his scornful way to Niccoli, "who has not our attainments, thought that we were equally ignorant of what he found he did not know himself"—"Vir ille bonus, expers studiorum nostrorum, quicquid reperit ignotum sibi, id et apud nos incognitum putavit" (Ep. III 12).

He gave this booby monk a long list of books that he was to hunt out for him on the library shelves of the Abbey of Fulda, including in the catalogue the works of Tacitus; and as he wanted a copy of the latter in the very oldest writing that could be procured, he enjoined the monk to give him a full description of certain books that were carefully put down in a list; these being very numerous, the monk could not possibly divine that the book particularly wanted was a Tacitus in the oldest characters that could be found.

III. These instructions were given in May, 1427; and, notwithstanding the care and wisdom shown in the matter, something before the close of the summer that year oozed out which seemed to menace a disclosure of the imposture: rumours had got abroad evidently about what was transpiring between Niccoli and Bracciolini, which greatly alarmed the former; but he was quieted by his bolder friend assuring him that "when Tacitus came, he would keep it a secresy; that he knew all the tittle- tattle that was going on,—whence it came,—through whom, and how it was got up; but that he need have no fear, for that not a syllable should escape him."—"Cornelium Tacitum, cum venerit, observabo penes me occulte. Scio enim omnem illam cantilenam, et unde exierit, et per quem, et quis eum vendicet. Sed nil dubites, non exibit a me ne verbo quidem."

These words occur in a letter that bears date Rome, the 25th of September, 1427; and whatever interpretation the reader may feel disposed to put upon them, he must admit, after considering all that has been said, that they seem to confirm wonderfully the truth of our theory, pointing, as they unquestionably do, to some mysterious and deep secret about Tacitus that existed only between Niccoli and Bracciolini; and what could that secret be? It could not be about the recovery of a rare and valuable copy of the works of Tacitus. There would be no necessity of keeping that by one secretly; on the contrary, the proper thing to do was to noise it abroad immediately, and as publicly as could be, so that it might be known to a wide circle of book-collectors, and as large a sum got for it as could be obtained; but if it were a Tacitus in the oldest characters that were to be found in order that it should be made use of as a copy for the letters in a figment, one can then easily understand the cause for all this secresy. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." In fact, forgery, and nothing else than forgery, seems to be the easiest as well as the most feasible explanation of these remarks, which, were it not for this theory, would, instead of being very clear, be quite nebulous.

IV. The Tacitus that was to have come from Germany did not, however, arrive. "I hear nothing of the Tacitus that is in Germany," he observes towards the close of the letter. "I am expecting an answer from the monk."—"De Cornelio Tacito qui est in Germania nil sentio; expecto responsum ab illo monacho." (Ep. III. 14.)

Towards the close of September, then, 1427, what Bracciolini had written had not yet been given to the transcriber: time was passing; and Niccoli sent him in the following month what must have been the oldest copy of Tacitus he had in his collection. 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 manuscript 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, liberassem 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 classics, 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 manuscript, 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 assurance 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; asseveravit 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 anticipated, 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 passage 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 MANUSCRIPT.

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 Salustius.—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 finishing 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 passed 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 manuscript 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 illustrious 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 statesmanship, 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 Historicum aeque lectitaret 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, homo 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 illustrious 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 cum non mediocribus principibus ea re conferendus" (Bartol. Facius. De Viris Illustribus, 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 Illust. 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 classic, 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 identity 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 manuscript 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 manuscript 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 manuscripts 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 manuscript, 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 manuscript 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 manuscript was in the hands of that illustrious Heathen Philosopher, Salustius, 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 Salustius, who was the Cynic, the elegant treatise that was extant, "On the Gods and the World";—"huic potius Juliani, Platonico, quam alteri Cynico Salustio 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 Ammianus Marcellinus in the 21st and 23rd books of his History. Now, the very fact that Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of this Salustius 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 Ammianus 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 Salustius suggested to him as the best individual to write the note.

The note is to the effect that Salustius had read and corrected the manuscript 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 Salustius 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 Salustius; the fact is, they have not the slightest suspicion of forgery; under which circumstance, they had no other alternative but to regard the manuscript 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 manuscript 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 manuscripts 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 manuscript.

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 Passionei, deputed, in the middle of the last century, one of the most skilful experts in manuscripts in Italy, Signor Botari, to ascertain the age of this puzzling codex. Botari naturally applied to the principal 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 manuscript 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 manuscript; 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 Salustius. 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 Salustius, (though he was in Gaul, the prefect in the praetorium, while Julian, the Apostate, was proconsul), was ever in Rome. It is doubtful whether Salustius 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 circumstances 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 Salustius; 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 Salustius 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 Promotus, others, such as M. Weiss, in the "Biographie Universelle", Secundus Promotius, a third set questioning whether he had any such names as "Secundus" and "Promotus" or "Promotius":—finally, it is not determined how his name, Salustius, ought to be spelt, whether with one or with two l's, when in Suidas it is spelt "Salustius" [Greek: Saloustios], and in Theodoretus "Sallustius" [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 Salustius "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 Salustius, when Ammianus Marcellinus informs us in his History that the Emperor Julian "promoted him to be Prefect and sent him into Gaul:"—"Salustium 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 Sallustius 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 Salustius, 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 substituting "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 Sallustius"—"Endelechius ... Sallustio 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 Salustius, 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 relationship that is said to have existed between them? The time when Salustius 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 Salustius, 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 Manuscript 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 manuscript an attestation of corrections"; more so, when the manuscript is a copy, and not an original, and does not bear any corrections on its margin;—"sur un tres grand nombre de mss. que nous avons vus, jamais nous n'ayons remarque d'attestations de corrections, transcrites dans les copies." I will be bound to say that they never saw in any other manuscript than this, (the vellum of which is, I suspect, of the 15th century), the letters formed and the words placed at the distance between each other as obtained in the tenth century, along with the abbreviations and the punctuations of that period.