LANGUAGE, ALLITERATION, ACCENT AND WORDS.
I. The poetic diction of Tacitus, and its fabrication in the Annals.—II. Florid passages in the Annals.—III. Metrical composition of Bracciolini.—IV. Figurative words: (a) "pessum dare"; (b) "voluntas".—The verb foedare and the Ciceronian use of foedus.—VI. The language of other Roman writers,—Livy, Quintus Curtius and Sallust.—VII. The phrase "non modo … sed", and other anomalous expressions, not Tacitus's.—VIII. Words not used by Tacitus, distinctus and codicillus.—IX. Peculiar alliterations in the Annals and works of Bracciolini.—X. Monotonous repetition of accent on penultimate syllables.—XI. Peculiar use of words: (a) properus; (b) annales and scriptura; (c) totiens. —XII. Words not used by Tacitus: (a) addubitare; (b) exitere.—XIII. Polysyllabic words ending consecutive sentences. —XIV. Omission of prepositions: (a) in; (b) with names of nations.
I. Any student of Thucydides and Tacitus must have observed that, though both support their opinions by sober, rational remarks, Thucydides expresses himself with logical accuracy in the calm and cold phraseology of passionless prose, whereas Tacitus ever and anon indulges in figures of rhetoric and poetic diction.
He changes things which can be considered only with reference to thought into solid, visible forms, as when he speaks of "wounds," instead of "the wounded," being taken to mothers and wives: "ad matres, ad conjuges vulnera ferunt" (Germ. 7). He ascribes to the lifeless what can be properly attributed only to the living, as when he makes "day and the plain reveal," "detexit dies et campus" (Hist. II. 62). He speaks of things done in a place as if they were done by the place itself, as Judaea elevating Libanon into its principal mountain": "praecipuum montium Libanon erigit" i.e., Judaea (Hist. V. 6). He applies epithets to objects that are local, as if they were mental or moral, as we hear of "a chaste grove" ("nemus castum") in the Germany (40).
Any one who had carefully analyzed his writings with the view of imitating him by forgery could not have failed to notice this; the consequence is that if we were to have a forgery, we should have a very close reproduction of this style of expression, and it would show itself to be forgery, by being without the boldness, spontaneity and novelty of the original; it would be timid, forced, and elaborately close and cramped. Now just this copying of a fabricator is what we find in the Annals. Exactly corresponding, to Tacitus's "wounds" instead of "the wounded," is seeing blood streaming in families," meaning "suicides," and "the hands of executioners," meaning "the executed": "aspiciens undantem per domos sanguinem aut manus carnificum (An. VI. 39). Precisely akin to Tacitus's "day and the plain revealing" is "night bursting into wickedness": "noctem in scelus erupturam" (An. I. 28). For "a country lifting up a mountain into its highest altitude," is the analogous substitute, "the upper part of a town on fire burning everything": "incensa super villa omnes cremavit" (An. III. 37): Here, too, is a further extension of poetical phraseology, more clearly proving forgery by denoting the hand of nobody so much as Bracciolini, who was remarkably fond of borrowing the language of Virgil, (never resorted to by Tacitus), "super" for "desuper":
"Haec super e vallo prospectant Troies"
(Aen. IX. 168).
For Tacitus's "chaste grove" we have the expression, like the note of a mockbird, "just places",—when places do not favour either combatant: ("fundi Germanos acie et justis locis" An. II. 5).
This imitation is found not only in the first but also in the last part of the Annals.
By tropes of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and in other ways, Tacitus produces effects that we look for in poets, but not in historians, as he uses "bosom" or "lap" ("sinus"), in the metaphorical sense of a "hiding place", ("latebrae"), in the History (II. 92), and of "a retreat", ("recessus"), in the Agricola (30). So, instead of his "bosom," or "lap", for "hiding place," or "retreat," we find "tears" for "weeping persons," where Seneca endeavours to recall his distracted friends to composure by words of suasion or authority: "Simul lacrymas eorum modo sermone, modo intentior in modum coercentis, ad firmitudinem revocat" (An. XV. 62).
The close crampness of the whole of these instances raises a very strong suspicion that it cannot be the writing of Tacitus, but merely a servile imitation of his manner. It shows, too, that both parts of the Annals proceeded from the same hand.