Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

by John Wilson Ross

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.)