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 Lemprière, taking them to be Secundus Promo_tus_, others, such as M. Weiss, in the "Biographie Universelle", Secundus Promo_tius_, 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 Traité 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 très grand nombre de mss. que nous avons vus, jamais nous n'ayons rémarqué 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.
Nor is this an end of the marks of imposture about this Second
Florence MS.
The reader will admit that a very great (and what looks like an insuperable) difficulty was to be got over by some amazingly clever trick not easily conceivable, when a number of books, as if written by Tacitus, were to precede a history which he had composed, commencing: "When I begin this work"—"Initium mihi operis;" those words which now in all the editions properly stand at the head of a separate and substantive work, "Historiarum Liber I." stand in the Second Florence MS. at the head of what is designated the "Seventeenth Book" of the whole production. The device had recourse to is ingenious in the extreme, yet as arrant a mark of imposture as anything that we have pointed out.
The last Six Books of what we now know as "The Annals" are headed "Cornelii Taciti Historiae Augustae LI. XI. Actionum Diurnalium:" that is, "The Books of the History of the Emperors by Cornelius Tacitus, the 11th of the Daily Transactions." The first book of what we now know as "The History" has this change in the heading: "Actorum Diurnalium XVII."; that is "the 17th book of the Daily Affairs." The implication is that Tacitus meant a vast difference between "Actiones Diurnales" and "Actus Diurnales"; so to leave the reader in doubt as to whether Tacitus had given any explanations as to why he meant to change the character of the narrative but not the numbering of the books, the Sixteenth Book breaks off abruptly; the kind of explanation that must have been given by Tacitus is thus left entirely to the imagination of the reader, for everybody must conjecture, if the affair was genuine, that some sort of explanation was given in the lost part. This is certain that, from the manner in which he wrote the Annals, Bracciolini gave a larger meaning to "actus" than to "actiones," the former meaning "public affairs," and the other "things that were done" of any note or interest; clearly showing that nobody was more conscious than Bracciolini himself how he had failed in attempting to write history in the exact manner in which it was written by Tacitus. I may now place before the reader the astonishment which Seemiller expresses in his "Incrementa Typographica" (pp. 10, 11), that the books about the Emperors of Rome in the first edition of the works of Tacitus printed at Venice in 1469 by the then unrivalled master of his art, Vindelinus of Spire, should not have the titles of "Annals" and "History." The reader now sees the reason why; and, moreover, the reader knows that Seemiller must have seen very few editions of the works of Tacitus.
VI. One or two things more ought to be taken notice of, because they connect Bracciolini with the forged manuscript.
It was usual for monastic transcribers to follow the text of the writer as closely as printers in these days follow the copy of an author. Everybody has his peculiarities: Bracciolini was no exception to this rule. He was in the habit of writing "incipit feliciter" at the commencement of a work: this maybe seen in an old MS. copy of his "Facetiae", preserved in the British Museum, and supposed to have been written at Nuremberg in 1470. This also runs through the headings to the books in the Second Florence MS. To either "feliciter" or "felix," he was so partial, that he shows it in the attestation of Salustius, who is made to write "Ego Salustius legi et emendavi Romae felix."