Gruter’s collection of inscriptions. 25. The antiquities of Greece and Rome, though they did not occupy so great a relative space in the literature of this period as of the sixteenth century, were, from the general increase of erudition, not less frequently the subject of books than before. This field indeed is so vast, that its harvest had in many parts been scarcely touched, and in others very imperfectly gathered by those we have already commemorated, the Sigonii, the Manutii, the Lipsii, and their fellow-labourers in ancient learning. The present century opened with a great work, the Corpus Inscriptionum by Gruter. A few endeavours had long before been made[37] to collect the ancient inscriptions, of which the countries once Roman, and especially Italy, were full. The best work hitherto was by Martin Smetius of Bruges, after whose death his collection of inscriptions was published at Leyden in 1588, under the superintendence of Dousa and Lipsius.
[37] See p. 160.
Assisted by Scaliger. 26. Scaliger first excited his friend Gruter to undertake the task of giving an enlarged edition of Smetius.[38] He made the index for this himself, devoting the labour of the entire morning for ten months (a summo mane ad tempus cœnæ) to an occupation from which so little glory could accrue. “Who,” says Burman, “would not admire the liberal erudition and unpretending modesty of the learned of that age, who, worn as they were by those long and weary labours of which they freely complain in their correspondence with each other, though they knew that such occupations as these could gain for them no better name than that of common clerks or mere drudges, yet hesitated not to abandon for the advantage of the public those pursuits which a higher fame might be expected to reward? Who in these times would imitate the generosity of Scaliger, who, when he might have ascribed to himself this addition to the work of Smetius, gave away his own right to Gruter, and declined to let his name be prefixed either to the index which he had wholly compiled, or to the many observations by which he corrects and explains the inscriptions, and desired, in recompence for the industry of Gruter, that he alone should pass with posterity as the author of the work?”[39] Gruter, it is observed by Le Clerc, has committed many faults: he often repeats the same inscriptions, and still more frequently has printed them from erroneous copies; his quotations from authors, in whom inscriptions are found, sometimes want exactness; finally, for which he could not well be answerable, a vast many have since been brought to light.[40] In consequence of the publication of Gruter’s Inscriptions, the learned began with incredible zeal to examine old marbles for inscriptions, and to insert them in any work that had reference to antiquity. Reinesius collected as many as make a respectable supplement.[41] But a sort of æra in lapidary learning was made by Selden’s description, in 1629, of the marbles, brought by the Earl of Arundel from Greece, and which now belong to the university of Oxford. These contain a chronology of the early times of Greece, on which great reliance has often been placed, though their antiquity is not accounted very high in comparison with those times.
[38] Burman in Præfatione ad Gruteri Corpus Inscript. Several of Scaliger’s epistles prove this, especially the 405th addressed to Gruter.
[39] Id. p. 6.
[40] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xiv., p. 51. Burman, ubi supra, gives a strange reason for reprinting Gruter’s Inscriptions with all their blemishes, even the repetitions; namely, that it was convenient to preserve the number of pages which had been so continually referred to in all learned works, the simple contrivance of keeping the original numeration in the margin not having occurred to him.
[41] Burman, ubi supra.
Works on Roman antiquity. 27. The Jesuit Donati published, in 1633, Roma vetus et nova, which is not only much superior to anything previously written on the antiquities of the city, but is preferred by some competent judges, to the later and more known work of Nardini. Both these will be found, with others of an earlier date, in the third and fourth volumes of Grævius. The tenth volume of the same collection contains a translation from the history of the Great Roads of the Roman Empire, published in French by Nicolas Bergier in 1622; ill arranged, it has been said, and diffuse, according to the custom of his age, but inferior. Grævius declares, in variety of learning to no one work that he has inserted in his numerous volumes. Guther, whose treatise on the pontifical law of Rome appears in the fifth volume, was, says the editor, “a man of various and extended reading, who had made extracts from every class of writers, but had not always digested his learning or weighed what he wrote. Hence much has been found open to criticism in his writings, and there remains a sufficient harvest of the same kind for any one who should care to undertake it.” The best work on Roman dress is by Octavius Ferrarius, published partly in 1642, partly in 1654. This has been called superficial by Spanheim; but Grævius, and several other men of learning, bestow more praise.[42] The Isiac tablet, covered with emblems of Egyptian antiquity, was illustrated by Pignoria, in a work bearing different titles in the successive editions from 1605; and his explanations are still considered probable. Pignoria’s other writings were also in high esteem with the antiquaries.[43] It would be tedious to enumerate the less important productions of this kind. A minute and scrupulous criticism, it has been said, distinguished the antiquaries of the seventeenth century. Without, perhaps, the comprehensive views of Sigonius and Panvinius, they were more severely exact. Hence forgery and falsehood stood a much worse chance of success than before. Annius of Viterbo had deceived half the scholars of the preceding age. But when Inghirami, in 1637, published his Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, monuments of Etruscan antiquity, which he pretended to have discovered at Volterra, the imposture was speedily detected.[44]
[42] Niceron, v. 80. Tiraboschi, xi. 300.
[43] Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.