[977] All these writers err, in common, I believe, with every other before General Roy, in his Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain (1793), in placing the prætorium, or tent of the general, near the front gate of the camp, called Porta Prætoria, instead of the opposite, Porta Decumana. Lipsius is so perplexed by the assumption of this hypothesis, that he struggles to alter the text of Polybius.
[978] Scalig. Secunda. In one of Casaubon’s epistles to Scaliger, he says: Franciscus Patritius solus mihi videtur digitum ad fontes intendisse, quem ad verbum alii, qui hoc studium tractarunt, cum sequuntur tamen ejus nomen ne semel quidem memorarunt. Quod equidem magis miratus sum in illis de quorum candore dubitare piaculum esse putassem.
Lipsius and other antiquaries. 59. The works of Lipsius are full of accessions to our knowledge of Roman antiquity, and he may be said to have stood as conspicuous on this side of the Alps as Sigonius in Italy. His treatise on the amphitheatre, 1584, completed what Panvinius, De Ludis Circensibus, had begun. A later work, by Peter Fabre, president in the parliament of Toulouse, entitled “Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletica,” 1592, relates to the games of Greece as well as Rome, and has been highly praised by Gronovius. It will be found in the eighth volume of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum. Several antiquaries traced the history of Roman families and names; such as Fulvius Ursinus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Pighius, Castalio, Golzius.[979] A Spaniard of immense erudition, Petrus Ciaconius (Chacon), besides many illustrations of ancient monuments of antiquities, especially the rostral column of Duilius, has left a valuable treatise, De Triclinio Romano, 1588.[980] He is not to be confounded with Alfonsus Ciaconius, a native also of Spain, but not of the same family, who wrote an account of the column of Trajan. Pancirollus, in his Notitia Dignitatum, or rather his commentary on a public document of the age of Constantine so entitled, threw light on that later period of imperial Rome.
[979] Grævius, vol. vii.
[980] Blount, Niceron, vol. xxxvi.
Saville on Roman militia. 60. The first contribution that England made to ancient literature in this line was the “View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries concerning Roman Warfare,” by Sir Henry Saville, in 1598. This was translated into Latin, and printed at Heidelberg, as early as 1601. It contains much information in small compass, extending only to about 130 duodecimo pages. Nor is it borrowed, as far as I could perceive, from Patrizzi or Lipsius, but displays an independent and extensive erudition.
61. It would encumber the reader’s memory were these pages to become a register of books. Both in this and the succeeding periods we can only select such as appear, by the permanence, or, at least, the immediate lustre of their reputation, to have deserved of the great republic of letters better than the rest. And in such a selection it is to be expected that the grounds of preference or of exclusion will occasionally not be obvious to all readers, and possibly would not be deemed, on reconsideration, conclusive to the author. In names of the second or third class there is often but a shadow of distinction.
Numismatics. 62. The foundations were laid, soon after the middle of the century, of an extensive and interesting science—that of ancient medals. Collections of these had been made from the time of Cosmo de Medici, and perhaps still earlier; but the rules of arranging, comparing, and explaining them were as yet unknown, and could be derived only from close observation, directed by a profound erudition. Eneas Vico of Venice, in 1555, published “Discorsi sopra le Medaglie degl’Antichi;” “in which he justly boasts,” says Tiraboschi, “that he was the first to write in Italian on such a subject; but he might have added that no one had yet written upon it in any language.”[981] The learning of Vico was the more remarkable that he was by profession an engraver. He afterwards published a series of imperial medals, and another of the empresses; adding to each a life of the person and explanation of the reverse. But in the latter he was excelled by Sebastian Erizzo, a noble Venetian, who four years after Vico published a work with nearly the same title. This is more fully comprehensive than that of Vico: medallic science was reduced in it to fixed principles, and it is particularly esteemed for the erudition shown by the author in explaining the reverses.[982] Both Vico and Erizzo have been sometimes mistaken; but what science is perfect in its commencement? It has been observed that the latter, living at the same time in the same city, and engaged in the same pursuit, makes no mention of his precursor; a consequence, no doubt, of the jealous humour so apt to prevail with the professors of science, especially when they do not agree in their opinions. This was the case here; Vico having thought ancient coins and medals identical, while Erizzo made a distinction between them, in which modern critics in numismatic learning have generally thought him in the wrong. The medallic collections, published by Hubert Golzius, a Flemish engraver, who had examined most of the private cabinets in Europe, from 1557 to 1579, acquired great reputation, and were long reckoned the principal repertory of that science. But it seems that suspicions entertained by many of the learned have been confirmed, and that Golzius has published a great number of spurious and even of imaginary medals; his own good faith being also much implicated in these forgeries.[983]
[981] Tiraboschi, ix. 266. Ginguéné, vii. 292. Biogr. Univ.
[982] Idem.