Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

CHAPTER I.

REASONS FOR BELIEVING THAT BRACCIOLINI WROTE BOTH PARTS OF THE ANNALS.

I.—Improvement in Bracciolini's means after the completion of the forgery of the last part of the Annals.—II. Discovery of the first six books, and theory about their forgery.—III. Internal evidence the only proof of their being forged.—IV. Superiority of workmanship a strong proof.—V. Further departure than in the last six books from Tacitus's method another proof.—VI. The Symmetry of the framework a third proof.—VII. Fourth evidence, the close resemblance in the openings of the two parts.—VIII. The same tone and colouring prove the same authorship.—IX. False statements made about Sejanus and Antonius Natalis for the purpose of blackening Tiberius and Nero.—X. This spirit of detraction runs through Bracciolini's works.—XI. Other resemblances denoting the same author.—XII. Policy given to every subject another cause to believe both parts composed by a single writer.—And XIII. An absence of the power to depict differences in persons and things.

I. When Bracciolini completed the first instalment of his forgery he was in his fiftieth year. From that date, for the remainder of his life, in consequence of the large remuneration he received for his audacious imposition, he lived in comparatively affluent circumstances. He permanently fixed his residence in a villa which he purchased in the pleasant district of Valdarno in the Tuscan territory;—a villa made profitable by a vineyard, and beautiful by a garden adorned with tasteful ornaments, fountains and classic statues, the workmanship of ancient Greek and Roman sculptors. With the lucrative contingencies attached to his forgery, such as disposing of copies from the original, a privilege which he, doubtless, obtained from his friend Cosmo de' Medici, and for which he must have frequently got large sums of money, he may have gratified the inclination he expressed six years before to his friend, Niccoli, of spending 400 gold sequins a year;—"non sum pecuniosus … erat animus expendere usque ad CCCC. aureos, non quod tot habeam." (Ep. II. 3.) He now had the means, that sum being equivalent to from 8 to 10 thousand pounds a year in these days. That he made a splendid fortune there can be no question, were it only for the words used by Poliziano in his History of the Pazzi and Salviati Conspiracy against Lorenzo de' Medici, while speaking of his eldest son James "squandering in a few years the ample patrimony which he had inherited": "patrimonium quod ipse amplum ex haereditate paterna obvoverat totum paucis annis profuderat" (Polit. De Pact. Conj. Hist. p. 637), the language used showing that Jacopo Bracciolini was not sole inheritor but co-heir with his brothers. Certain it is that the circumstances of Bracciolini were so much improved after his forgery of the Annals that from that time he had the opportunity of indulging a cherished idea of his earlier manhood devoting himself to literary undertakings. He started off with his treatise on Avarice, (a subject of which he was a very good judge): composition after composition then issued rapidly from his pen; they were no longer anonymous; they were attended by fame; he thus made ample amends for the "inglorius labor", as he styles it himself (An. IV, 32), of the Annals.

These works have been extremely valuable in the course of this inquiry; they are more especially valuable just now in enabling me to trace home to him the authorship of the first six books of the Annals; these works were 15 in number, namely 1. Historia Disceptativa de Avaritia; 2. Two books of Historiae Convivales; 3. An essay De Nobilitate; 4. Ruinarum Urbis Romae Descriptio; 5. A treatise De Humanae Conditionis Miseria; 6. Controversial Writings; 7. Funeral Orations; 8. Epistles; 9. Fables; 10. Facetiae; 11. A Dialogue De Infelicitate Principum; 12. Another entitled "An Seni sit Uxor ducenda"? first published in Liverpool in 1807, and edited by the Rev. William Shepherd; 13. Four books De Varietate Fortunae first published in 1723 by the Abbé Oliva; 14. History of Florence in 8 books, published by Muratori in the 20th volume of his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores; and 15. A Dialogue on Hypocrisy printed in the Appendix to the Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et Fugiendarum first published at Cologne in 1535 by Orthuinus Gratius, and in 1689 by Edward Brown with considerable additions.

But these were not his only literary productions. Fazio tells us that he wrote a book upon the manners of the Indians: "scripsit … de Moribus Indorum" (Facius. De Viris Illustr. p. 17): this is the same as the fourth book of his "De Varietate Fortunae," which is a translation or version of the travels in India of Niccolo di Conti. The same authority also informs us that "he translated the Cyropaedeia of Xenophon, which he dedicated to Alphonso I, King of Naples, from whom he received a very large sum of money for his dedication, even as he dedicated to Pope Nicholas V. his translation of the six books of the historian Diodorus Siculus": —"Cyripaediam, quam Xenophon ille scripsit, latinam reddidit, atque Alphonso Regi dedicavit, pro qua a Rege magnam mercedem accepit. Ejusdem est traductio Diodori Siculi historiographi ad Nicolaum Quintum Pontificem Maximum libri sex" (L. c.) Another translation of his was "The Golden Ass" of Apuleius in ten books; and he edited, (but without notes), the "Astronomicon" of Manilius, —whom, by the way, he misstyles "Manlius."

The advantage which he obtained from the publication of these works was as nothing compared to the large and repeated sums he must have got from his fabrication of the Annals; and the knowledge that he would always have a ready and munificent purchaser in Cosmo de' Medici, induced him to continue his wondrous and daring forgery.

II. We have seen how, at the very least, 500 gold sequins were given by Cosmo de' Medici, for the last six books of the Annals. After the lapse of nearly 90 years, exactly the same sum was awarded for the discovery of the first six books by another de' Medici, Leo X., to Arcimboldi, afterwards Archbishop of Milan, —the 122nd, according to the Abbot Ughelli, in his work that occupied him thirty years,—"Italia Sacra".

Now, it is a very remarkable circumstance that, at the time when Arcimboldi gave out that he had discovered the first six books of the Annals in the Abbey of Corvey, the fourth son of Bracciolini, Giovanni Francesco, then a man 68 years of years, was holding the same office that his father had held before him in the Pontifical Court as Papal Secretary. We have no record that Giovanni Francesco Bracciolini knew anything about the opening books of the Annals, nor where they were to be found: we are not told that he was in any communication on the matter with Arcimboldi: all we know is that he was a colleague in the court of Leo X. of the finder of those books.

On this fact, nevertheless, I build up the following theory:—That Bracciolini having found what a good thing he had made of it in forging the last six books of the Annals, along with the great success that had attended it, set about forging an addendum, with a view of disposing of it when completed to Cosmo de' Medici; —that while he was engaged in the composition, he was surprised by death on the 30th of October, 1459, leaving behind his friend and patron, Cosmo de' Medici, to survive him nearly five years, till the 1st of August, 1464;—that Bracciolini, when he saw that he was approaching the end of his days, must necessarily and naturally have made his sons acquainted with the existence of the work, on account of the great profit that could be made by the disposal of it whenever the favourable opportunity presented itself;—that Giovanni Francesco Bracciolini, in 1513 when John de' Medici was elected to the Pontifical throne, having outlived all his brothers, had then this MS. in his keeping; knowing that it was in an unfinished state, from his father being engaged upon it when he died,—also being aware that there was an ugly gap of three years between the imprisonment of Drusus and the fall of Sejanus,—believing in the necessity of this gap being supplied, —and regarding Arcimboldi as a greater Latinist and scholar generally than himself, therefore more capable of adding this fresh matter,—at any rate, of putting the manuscript in order for transcription,—he apprised the Pope's Receiver of the treasure; —and that the time which elapsed between the offering of the reward by Leo X. and the turning up of the first six books of the Annals, something more than a year, or even a year and a half, was occupied by Arcimboldi in the revision of the MS. and by a monk in the Abbey of Corvey in transcribing the forgery along with the works of Tacitus.

This theory, founded altogether on the imagination, may be right, or it may be quite wrong; but whether it be wrong or right, it is impossible to believe that Tacitus wrote those books: it is equally impossible to believe that they were forged by Arcimboldi, or that more than one man composed the first six and the last six books of the Annals, were it only on account of the close identity of the character, and the conspicuous splendour of the peculiar ability manifested in both parts.

III. We must, therefore, now endeavour by internal evidence, and by that alone, to convince the reader that Bracciolini, and nobody else but he, forged the first portion of the Annals: too many proofs stand prominently forward to prevent our doubting for a moment that this really was the case, however unaccountable it may seem that 86 years should have intervened between the appearance of the two parts, and 56 after the death of the author.

IV. One strong reason for believing that Bracciolini wrote the first six books is the far greater superiority of the workmanship to that in the last six books, showing that the author was then older, more matured in his mental powers, more experienced in the ways of the world and better acquainted with the workings of the human heart;—for if it be true what Goethe said that no young man can produce a masterpiece, it is, certainly, quite as true that a man's work in the way of intellect, information and wisdom, is better after he is fifty than before he reaches that age,— provided always that he retains the full vigour of his faculties. Now no one will for a moment say that such workmanship as the delineation of character, say, for example, of Nero and Seneca, in the last part of the Annals can stand by the side of the finished picturing of Tiberius and Sejanus in the first part.

V. Another reason for entertaining this belief is that there is a still further departure in the first six than in the last six books from the method pursued by Tacitus: greater attention is paid to acts of individuals than to events of State: the writer seems to have been emboldened by his first success to follow more closely the bent of his genius, and that was, to make of history a school of morals for imparting instruction by means of revealing the springs of human action and the workings of the human heart.

VI. That, indeed, the two parts proceeded from the same hand is seen in the symmetry of the framework. Each book contains the actions of two, three, four or six years. The latter is the case in the last part,—in the 12th book,—and in the first part,—in the 4th and 6th books. The narrative extends to four years in the 13th book, and to about the same time in the 14th in the last part, and in the first part to the 2nd book; a little more than three years occupies the 15th book in the last part and the 3rd and 5th in the first part; two years the 11th and nearly two years the 1st; in both parts one book is left in a fragmentary state, it being the 16th in the last part, and in the first part the 5th.

These circumstances go a considerable way towards supporting the hypothesis that the first six books of the Annals were written by the same man who wrote the last six books.

VII. A further evidence of the same authorship is found in the close resemblance which the openings of both parts bear to one another: each refers to crime, the last part opening with the hideous accusations against Silius, and the adulteries of Messalina, while the first part opens with the murder of Agrippa Posthumus.

VIII. The same tone and colouring, too, are thrown over both parts: an unbroken moodiness pervades them; one unceasing series of repulsive pictures of the vices and immoralities of a country fallen into servility and hastening to destruction; men and women commit revolting crimes; the human race is a prey to calamity; individuals are feared and followed by oppression, and that, too, simply because they are distinguished by nobility of birth, or because they are excellent rhetoricians, or popular with the multitude, or endowed with faculties equal to all requirements in public emergencies and State difficulties: we have the same terrible deaths of ministers,—Seneca and Sejanus; the same blending of ferocity and lust in emperors,—Nero and Tiberius; the same accusations and sacrifices of men who are free of speech and honourable in their proceedings.

IX. Statements are made in both parts that appear to be the outcome only of inventive ingenuity and a malignant humour. Thus Sejanus, who is depicted as a peril to the State, both when he flourished and when he fell, has, after his execution, his body ignominiously drawn through the streets, (which looks, by the way, like a custom of the fifteenth century), and those who are accused of attachment to him, including his innocent little children, are all put to death. This seems to be said merely with the view of blackening the character of Tiberius, as the character of Nero is blackened by the statements made about Antonius Natalis. Antonius Natalis takes part in the Pisonian Conspiracy against Nero (An. XV. 54, 55); then he betrays Seneca and the companions of Seneca (ib. 56); after that he gets off with impunity (ib. 71). I may be wrong, but it strikes me that this statement is merely made with the view of attacking Nero as a bad administrator for not punishing a mean conspirator and cruel traitor: Tiberius is similarly assailed for cruelly killing harmless children.

There are no means of showing that what is said of the children of Sejanus is fiction; it can only be surmised: but it can be proved as a fact that what is stated about Antonius Natalis is nothing more nor less than pure romance. He was dead before the conspiracy of Piso: Bracciolini could have seen that had he read carefully the letters of Seneca himself; for the philosopher and statesman speaks of Natalis at the time when he wrote the letter numbered in his works 87, as being dead some time, and "having many heirs" as he had been "the heir of many":—"Nuper Natalis … et multorum haeres fuit, et multos habuit haeredes" (Ep. LXXXVII.)

X. This statement then about Nero having no foundation, seems to have been merely made out of that spirit of detraction which we have already noticed as characterizing both parts of the Annals: it is the same spirit which runs through the works of Bracciolini: first he praises an individual, and then mars the eulogy of him by introducing some little bit of defamation. To give examples:—We open his collected works, and begin to read his treatise on Avarice: turning over the first page we find him speaking of a great preaching friar, named Bernardino, whom he lauds as most extraordinary in the command he held over the feelings of his congregation, moving them, as he pleased, to tears or laughter; but he adds that Bernardino did not adapt his sermons to the good of those who heard him, but, like the rest of his class, to his own reputation as a preacher: "Una in re maxime excellit in persuadendo, ac excitandum affectibus flectit populum, et quo vult deducit, movens ad lachrymas, et cum res patitur ad risum…. Verum … ipse, et caeteri hujusmodi praedicatores, … non accommodant orationes suas ad nostram utilitatem sed ad suam loquacitatem" (De Avaritia. Pog. Op. p. 2). A few pages further on, we find him speaking of Robert, King of Sicily, as unsurpassed by any living prince in reputation and the glory of his deeds, but the meanness of his avarice, we are told, clouded the splendour of his virtues: "At quid illustrius est etiam hodie regis illius memoria, fama, nomine, gloria rerum gestarum … si avaritia in eo virtutis laudem extinxisset" (ib. p. 14).

XI. Other resemblances in both parts denote identity of authorship. Mean individuals are magnified and inconsiderable nations exalted; their wars and deeds are related with pompous particularity; battles are fought not worth recording, and enterprizes undertaken not worth reading; Tacitus would have deemed such incidents unworthy of mention; for he takes no more notice of the Hermundurians, than to speak of them as a German tribe faithful to the Romans, and living in friendly relations with them: but in the Annals they are put forward for the admiration of posterity as waging a war with the Callians, and fighting a severe battle with those little creatures. In the last part of the Annals (XII. 55) the Clitae tribes of Cilician boors rush down from their rugged mountains upon maritime regions and cities under the conduct of their leader, Throsobor; so in the first part (III. 74) Tacfarinas makes depredations upon the Leptuanians, and then retreats among the Garamantes. The same Numidian savage in the same part leads his disorderly gang of vagabonds and robbers against the Musulanians, an uncivilized people without towns (II. 52); in the last part Eunones, prince of the Adorsians, fights with Zorsines, king of the Siracians, besieges his mud-huts, and, the historian gravely informs us, had not night interrupted the assault, would have carried his moats in a single day. "These are

"the battles, sieges, fortunes,— The most disastrous chances Of moving accidents by flood and field,"

that enlist our sympathies in both parts of the Annals; and of these people, with their

"hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent deadly breach,"

"you have little else," says that severe critic of the Annals, the Vicar of Wrexham (p. 89), "but tumults, advances, retreats, kings recalled, kings banished, kings slain, and all in such confusion and hurry," as to be devoid of "satisfaction and pleasure"; and the Rev. Thomas Hunter likens these mean tribes so signalized by immortality to the ill-conditioned natives of India whom the Great Mogul styled "Mountain Rats."

XII. Another great resemblance which induces the reader to believe that both parts of the Annals were composed by a single author is a monotony so very peculiar as to be characteristic of the same individual: it is a monotony quite equal to that of an ancient mansion in an English county, where one passes from apartment to apartment to be reminded of Gray's "Long Story," for the rooms are still spacious, the ceilings still fretted, the panels still gilded, the portraits still those of beauties rustling in silks and tissues, and still those of grave Lord Keepers in high crowned hats and green stockings;—or the monotony is like that which meets one when walking about a town, where at the corners of all the streets and squares and the beginning and end of every bridge and viaduct; the entrance to a palace or a public office; the gateway to a market or a subway, a park or a garden; the foot of a lamp-post or a statue; a curbstone running round an open space, or a wall abutting on a roadway, the same thing is always found for the purpose of keeping off the wheels of vehicles as they roll by,—a round stone: so one finds in the Annals always the same form given to every subject: that form is policy; through policy everything is done; by policy every person is actuated; policy is the motive of every action; policy is the solution of every difficulty.

Augustus on his deathbed chooses a worse master than himself to be his successor in order that his loss may be the more regretted by the State. Tiberius makes Piso governor of Syria only that he may have a spy for Germanicus as governor of Egypt, for he was envious of the fame and virtues of the successful, popular young general. Nero sends Sylla into exile from mistaking his dullness for dissimulation. Arruntius kills himself because he is intolerant of iniquity. The stupidity of Claudius is discovered to be astuteness, the bestialities of Nero elegance. Nothing is easy, nothing natural; everything is forced, everything artificial.

XIII. Nor does Bracciolini shine as a depicter of character. What a contrast between him and Livy in that respect! And as a describer of imperial occurrences, what a contrast between him and Tacitus! He does not touch the Paduese in his grand form of painting all people and all things in their proper colours: Livy places before us the Kings of old Rome in their pride and the Consuls in their variety; the former with their fierce virtue, the latter with their degraded love of luxury;—Decemvirs in the austerity of their rule and Tribunes with their popular impulses. Tacitus makes us see the movements of mighty events, as clearly as we behold objects shining in the broad light of day,—their vicissitudes, relations, causes and issues;—armies with their temper and feelings; provinces with their disposition and sentiments;—the Empire in the elements of its strength and weakness; the Capital in its distracted and fluctuating state; —all political phaenomena that marked the dreary reality of dominion in the declining days of the Roman Commonwealth. But Bracciolini puts before us nothing like this;—only incongruous, unimaginable and un-Romanlike personages,—people who gibber at us, as idiots in their asylums, as that unfortunate simpleton, the Emperor Claudius;—murderous criminals who glower and scowl upon us, as those two monsters of iniquity, Tiberius and Nero;—pimps and parasites beyond number, who so plague us with their perpetual presence, that the revolted soul at length wonders how so many such beings can be acting together, and be so degenerate, when Nature might have designed most, if not all, of them, for greater and more salutary purposes. While Bracciolini does not, in the least, resemble either of the two great historians of Rome, he is the very reverse of the historical classic of Spain, Mariana, who, in the thirty volumes of his Historia de Rebus Hispaniae, places before us the different characters of different people, distinguishing Mussulmans from Christians, Moors from Arabs, and Carthaginians from Romans; whereas, in the Annals, we perceive no difference between the Parthians and the Suevians, the Romans and the Germans, the Dandarides and the Adiabenians, the Medes and the Iberians.