Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

After the promulgation of his famous plebiscitum by the old Tribune of the People in the year 179 A.C., a Roman could not fill the office of quaestor till he was 31, nor aedile till he was 37,—as, guided by the antiquaries, Sigonius and Pighius, Doujat, the Delphin editor of Livy, states: "quaestores ante annum aetatis trigesimum primum non crearentur, nec aediles curules ante septimum ac trigesimum";—and the ages for the two offices were usually 32 and 38.

From Vespasian's rule extending to ten years we cannot arrive at the date when Tacitus was quaestor; but we can guess when he was aedile, as Titus was emperor only from the spring of 79 to the autumn of 81.

Had his appointment to the aedileship taken place on the last day of the reign of Titus, he would then be but 29 years old; and though in the time of the Emperors, after the year 9 of our aera, there might be a remission of one or more years by the Lex Julia or the Lex Pappia Poppaea, those laws enacted rewards and privileges to encourage marriage and the begetting of children; the remission could, therefore, be in favour only of married men, especially those who had children; so that any such indulgence in the competition for the place of honours could not have been granted to Tacitus, he not being, as will be immediately seen, yet married. In order, then, that he should have been aedile under Titus,—even admitting that he could boast, like Cicero, of having obtained all his honours in the prescribed years—"omnes honores anno suo"—and been aedile the moment he was qualified by age for the office,—he must have been born, at least, as far back as the year 44.

This will be reconcilable with all that Pliny says, as well as with his being married when "young"; for he would then be 32 or 33, and his bride 22 or 23; for the daughter of Agricola was born when her father was quaestor in Asia—"sors quaesturae provinciam Asiam dedit … auctus est ibi filiâ." (Agr. 9). Nor let it be supposed that a Roman would not have used the epithet "young" to a man of 32 or 33, seeing that the Romans applied the term to men in their best years, from 20 to 40, or a little under or over. Hence Livy terms Alexander the Great at the time of his death, when he was 31, "a young man," "egregium ducem fuisse Alexandrum … adolescens … decessit" (ix. 17): so Cicero styles Lucius Crassus at the age of 34;—"talem vero exsistere eloquentiam qualis fuerit in Crasso et Antonio … alter non multum (quod quidem exstaret), et id ipsum adolescens, alter nihil admodum scripti reliquisset". (De Orat. ii. 2): so also does Cornelius Nepos speak of Marcus Brutus, when the latter was praetor, Brutus being then 43 years of age:—"sic Marco Bruto usus est, ut nullo ille adolescens aequali familiarius" (Att. 8); to this passage of Nepos's, Nicholas Courtin, his Delphin editor, adds that the ancients called men "young" from the age of 17 to the age of 46; notwithstanding that Varro limited youth to 30 years:—"a 17 ad 46 annum, adolescentia antiquitus pertingebat, ut ab antiquis observatum est. Nihilominus Varro ad 30 tantum pertingere ait." But Tacitus being born in 44 is not reconcilable with his being the Author of the Annals, as thus:—

Some time in the nineteen years that Trajan was Emperor,—from 98 to ll7,—Tacitus, being then between the ages of 54 and 73, composed his History. He paused when he had carried it on to the reign of Domitian; the narrative had then extended to twenty-three years, and was comprised in "thirty books," if we are to believe St. Jerome in his Commentary on the Fourteenth Chapter of Zechariah:

"Cornelius Tacitus … post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." [Endnote 013] It was scarcely possible for Tacitus to have executed his History in a shorter compass;—indeed, it is surprising that the compass was so short, looking at the probability of his having observed the symmetry attended to by the ancients in their writings, and having continued his work on the plan he pursued at the commencement, the important fragment which we have of four books, and a part of the fifth, embracing but little more than one year. Whether he ever carried into execution the design he had reserved for his old age,—writing of Nerva and Trajan,—we have no record. But two things seem tolerably certain; that he would have gone on with that continuation to his History in preference to writing the Annals; and that he would not have written that continuation until after the death of the Emperor Trajan. He would then have been 73. Now, how long would he have been on that separate history? Then at what age could he have commenced the Annals? And how long would he have been engaged in its composition? We see that he must have been bordering on 80, if not 90: consequently with impaired faculties, and thus altogether disqualified for producing such a vigorous historical masterpiece; for though we have instances of poets writing successfully at a very advanced age, as Pindar composing one of his grandest lyrics at 84, and Sophocles his Oedipus Coloneus at 90, we have no instance of any great historian, except Livy, attempting to write at a very old age, and then Livy rambled into inordinate diffuseness.

II. The silence maintained with respect to the Annals by all writers till the first half of the fifteenth century is much more striking than chronology in raising the very strongest suspicion that Tacitus did not write that book. This is the more remarkable as after the first publication of the last portion of that work by Vindelinus of Spire at Venice in 1469 or 1470, all sorts and degrees of writers began referring to or quoting the Annals, and have continued doing so to the present day with a frequency which has given to its supposed writer as great a celebrity as any name in antiquity. Kings, princes, ministers and politicians have studied it with diligence and curiosity, while scholars, professors, authors and historians in Italy, Spain, France, England, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have applied their minds to it with an enthusiasm, which has been like a kind of worship. Yet, after the most minute investigation, it cannot be discovered that a single reference was made to the Annals by any person from the time when Tacitus lived until shortly before the day when Vindelinus of Spire first ushered the last six books to the admiring world from the mediaeval Athens. When it appeared it was at once pronounced to be the brightest gem among histories; its author was greeted as a most wonderful man,—the "unique historian", for so went the phrase—"inter historicos unicus."

Now, are we to be asked quietly to believe that there never lived from the first quarter of the second century till after the second quarter of the fifteenth, a single individual possessed of sufficient capacity to discern such eminent and obvious excellence as is contained in the Annals? Are we to believe that that could have been so? in a slowly revolving cycle of 1,000 years and more? ay, upwards of 1,300! If that really was the case, it is enough to strike us dumb with stupor in contemplating such a miraculous instance of perpetuated inanity,—among the lettered, too!—the learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case, what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It indicates one of two things,—duncelike stupidity or studious contempt. Both these surmises must be dismissed,—the first as too absurd, the second as too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture—Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence of forty generations of mankind. Again, this supposed probability is too preposterously extravagant to be for an instant credited because it cannot for a moment be comprehended. In short, how marvellous it is! how utterly unaccountable! how inexpressibly mysterious!

Pliny does not say a word about the Annals. The earliest Latin father, Tertullian, quotes only the History (Apol. c. 16). St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Zechariah (iii. 14), cites the passage in the fifth book of the History about the origin of the Jews; he also notices what Tacitus says of another important event, the Fall of Jerusalem, which, having occurred in the reign of Vespasian, must have been narrated in the History. The "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib. V., cc. 5 and 10), and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,—the Temple of Janus being open from the time of Augustus to Vespasian (vii. 3);—the number of the Jews who perished at the siege of Jerusalem (vii. 9); and the possibly large number of Romans who were killed in the wars with the Daci during the reign of Domitian (vii. 10):—all which passages must have been in the lost portions of the History.

In his Epistles and Poems, that man of wit and fancy, with an intellect and learning above the fifth century in which he lived, —Sidonius Apollinaris,—has one quotation from Tacitus and three references to him. The quotation, which occurs in the fourteenth chapter of the fourth book of his Epistles, is from the last section of the History, (that part of the speech of Civilis where the seditious Batavian touches on the friendship which existed between himself and Vespasian); and his three references are, first, to the "ancient mode of narrative," combined with the greatest "literary excellence" (iv. 22); secondly, to "genius for eloquence" (Carm. xxiii. 153-4); and thirdly, to "pomp of manner" (Carm. ii. 192); the not inelegant Christian writer enumerating qualities that specially commend themselves in the History. When Spartian praises Tacitus for "good faith," the eulogy is more appropriate to the writer of the History than the Annals, howbeit that so many moderns, including the famous philologist and polygrapher, Justus Lipsius; the Pomeranian scholar of the last century, Meierotto; Boetticher and Prutz all question the veracity of Tacitus; while for what he says of the Jews Tertullian vituperates him in language so outrageous as to be altogether unbecoming the capacious mind of the Patristic worthy, who calls him, "the most loquacious of liars,"—"mendaciorum loquacissimus;" —in which strain of calumny he was, from the same cause of religious fervour, followed centuries after,—in the seventeenth,—by two of the most renowned preachers and orators of their day, the famous Jesuit, Famianus Strada, and his less known contemporary, but most able Chamberlain of Urban VIII., Augustino Mascardi,—as if all these pious Christians found it quite impossible to pardon a heathen, blinded by the prejudices of paganism, for believing what he did of the Hebrews; and for recording which belief he ought to receive immediate forgiveness, seeing that Justin, Plutarch, Strabo and Democritus said as bad, if not worse things of that ancient people and their sacred books. [Endnote 019]