"Sunt quoque mutatae per quinque volumina formae;"
as the Metamorphoses were divided into fifteen books, three then formed a "volumen."—I cannot avoid calling attention to the curiously incorrect phrase, "voluminibus exaravit." An ancient, speaking of the "volumen," or scroll, would have used "scribere," —"exarare," possibly, when speaking of the "codicillus," or little wooden table made of wax, which he sent as a note or billet-doux to a friend or sweetheart, the figurative verb being applicable to the stylus "ploughing" letters "out" of the wax. The passage, from this blunder alone, seems to be an interpolation, where the forger ridiculously overshoots his mark: he out-Jeromes Jerome; for he makes the saint write bad Latin from a motive that never led St. Jerome astray,—a desire to be poetic. It is strange, too, for the passage to have come from the most learned of the Latin fathers with the loose expression, "post Augustum," to denote a history that began with Galba; and when Tacitus, who confined his attention to affairs of state (to the utter disregard of biographical details of the emperors), is spoken of as writing "Vitas Caesarum." However, the man who made the interpolation knew all that he wanted to accomplish, and would have been eminently successful in his crafty and knavish design, had he only known Latin well enough to have made St. Jerome write it as a bishop would have written it in the fourth century.
[Endnote 019] Nevertheless, Tacitus is uncommonly provoking to believers,—in his version, for example, of what is solemnly recorded in the xviith chapter of Exodus and the xxth of Numbers about the Israelites, when, in their wanderings, they murmured for want of water, and the Lord instructed Moses to "take the rod with which he smote" the waters of the Red Sea: the sacred penman proceeds: "And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him: And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, 'Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?' And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank and their beasts also." (Numbers xx. 9-11). This incident, opposed to the laws of nature, Tacitus shews happened according to the constituted course of things, and makes the miracle ridiculous by introducing asses as the principal performers: he has been speaking of the Jews, ignorant of all the parts through which they were to pass, setting forth on a journey for which they had made no provision; "but nothing distressed them so much," he continues, "as want of water; and they were lying all over the plains, not far from the point of death, when a herd of wild asses quitted the pasture for a rock overgrown with copse and brushwood: Moses followed, and found, as he had conjectured from the spot being covered with verdure, abundant springs of water." "Omnium ignari, fortuitum iter incipiunt: sed nihil aeque quam inopia aquae fatigabat: jamque haud procul exitio, totis campis procubuerant, cum grex asinorum agrestium e pastu in rupem nemore opacam concessit: secutus Moses, conjectura herbidi soli, largas aquarum venas aperit." (Hist. v. 3). Tacitus is infinitely more offensive, and, certainly, most untruthful, when he says that the Jews "kept for worship in their holy of holies the image of an ass, as the animal by whose guidance they had slaked their thirst and brought their wanderings to a happy sequel": "effigiem animalis, quo monstrante errorem sitimque depulerant, penetrali sacravere." (Hist. v. 4)
[Endnote 074] This, I take it, is what the author of the Annals means. "Tibicen" was, of course, not a violin, but species of pipe among the ancients; the Egyptians were not famous for their performances upon this instrument, if they were acquainted with the "tibicen" at all. The question then arises,—Was the author of the Annals cognizant of the existence of such people as "Gipsies"? The last part of the Annals (where, it will be seen, this passage occurs,) was forged after the first quarter of the fifteenth century; was this nomad horde in Europe at that time? If there be one established fact it is that the "Gipsies" (then called "Aegyptiani") came into Europe at the commencement of the fifteenth century in the reign of the Emperor Sigismund. Martin Zeiller in his "Topographia Hassiae" says they were first caught sight of in Hesse in 1414, which is four years earlier than all historians fix the date of their advent into Germany, from following Jacob Thomasius, who makes that statement in the 16th and 17th sections of his "Disputatio de Cingaris." Two years after their arrival in Germany, (that is 1416, according to Zeiller, but 1420, according to Thomasius and the historians,) this curious people, separating into several bands, found their way into Italy. Here they may have attracted the attention of the author of the Annals, as well as in his frequent visits to Germany and the principality of Hesse. In fact, they attracted universal attention by their sporadic habitations, their nomadic lives, their wandering and dwelling, like the Thespians of old, in waggons, their shabby and ragged clothes, yet the heaps of gold and silver they had with them, their trains of horses, mules and asses, their love of music (to this day they are great experts with the violin), their favourite practice of fortune-telling, magic, palmistry, and those arts of sorcery, of which we hear so much in the Annals, the author of which must have been further impressed with their giving out that, though heathens coming from Lower Egypt, they wanted to embrace the Christian faith. This vagabond people had at their head a "king," whom the chroniclers style a "noble Count,"—as Martin Cursius in his Annals of Swabia (sub A.D. 1453): "obiit nobilis Comes Petrus de Minori Egypto, in die Philippi et Jacobi Apostolorum." "Peter" was preceded on the gipsy throne by "Panuel," who, styled also "nobilis Comes" by the chroniclers, died in 1445, his immediate predecessor being "Michael," under whom the immigration into Europe was effected of these "Egyptian" wanderers numbering 14,000 men, women and children.
[Endnote 081] I am indebted for nearly the whole of this to Niebuhr's Essay in the "Rheinisches Museum" on "The Difference between Annals and History." But in saying that Aulus Gellius attempting to solve the same problem showed "more learning than thought," Niebuhr did not know how easy it was to retaliate upon him by saying that in his own investigation he exhibited "more thought than learning" from supposing that a writer in the time of Marcus Antoninus might have had his inquiry suggested to him by Tacitus's "History" and "Annals," when, down to the fifteenth century, as we have shown, one common title, "Imperial History" ("Augusta Historia,") covered the historical productions of Tacitus, now known as "Annales" and "Historiae."
[Endnote 083] No overstatement but a fact. There are only 14 paragraphs in the Life and 8 letters, namely:—1. A letter from the Emperor Verus to Marcus Aurelius (§ 1); 2. Marcus Aurelius's Reply (§ 2); 3. A letter from Marcus Aurelius to his prefect (§ 5); 4. The prefect's reply (ibid); 5. A letter from Marcus Aurelius to Faustina (§ 9); 6. From Faustina to Marcus Aurelius (§ 10); 7. Marcus Aurelius's Answer (§ 11); and 8. A letter from Avidius Cassius to his son-in-law (§ 14); which ends the Life and enables the biographer to observe that "that letter showed what a stern and cruel emperor Avidius Cassius must have been": "haec epistola ejus indicat, quam severus et quam tristis futurus fuerit imperator."
[Endnote 136] The name of Emmanuel Chrysolaras must ever be associated with the revival of the Greek language in Western Europe after the study of it had been discontinued since the close of the eighth century, or for six hundred years. One of the earliest pupils of Chrysolaras, Leonardi Bruni, speaks of him in terms of warm admiration in his interesting "Memoirs of Occurrences in Italy during his Time" ("Rerum suo Tempore in Italia Gestarum Commentarius"). Bruni says that Chrysolaras was "the only and sole Professor of Greek, and that if he had been lost sight of, there was no one afterwards who could have taught that tongue": "hic autem unus solusque Literarum Graecarum Doctor, si e conspectu se auferet, a quo postmodum ediscas, nemo reperietur" (Muratori XIX. 920). Chrysolaras was a native of Constantinople, and member of a noble family; the way in which his country was assailed by Bayazid, Sultan of the Turks, and threatened by Tamerlane, Sultan of Samarcand, caused him to leave home, assured, as he was, of the certain downfall of the Byzantine Empire; first he went to Venice, which he reached by sea; while he was there teaching the Greek language his reputation spread to Florence, the inhabitants of which, making him the offer of a public salary, pressed him to come to their city, to teach their young men, numbers of whom were desirous of making themselves masters of his native tongue. It was in the year 1399 when Chrysolaras, thus settling in Florence, revived the study of the Greek language, and thereby gave a new and wonderful impulse to literature, first throughout Italy, and then Spain, Portugal, France, and the other countries of Europe.
[Endnote 145] The letter, from which this extract is made, will be found in Bracciolini's works (Pog. Op. pp. 301-5), as well as in the collection of his Epistles, (of which we have the first volume only,) by the Chevalier de' Tonelli (pp. 11-20);—should the reader be fond of literary curiosities he will also find it reproduced, as if it were his own composition, by Reduxis de Quero in his "Chronicle of Trevigo,"—"Chronicon Tarvisinum,"— preserved in Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (tom. XIX. 829-33). As Bracciolini wrote to his friend Leonardo Bruni, Reduxis de Quero, not venturing to alter a word of what he pilfered, for fear of spoiling his pillage, takes his reader into his confidence and affectionately addresses him in the second person, while pretending, to have the exclusive information and personal recollections of Bracciolini, who, present at the Council of Constance, as a member of the court of John XXIII., witnessed the whole of the trial, defence and death of Jerome of Prague. Muratori, in exposing the plagiarism, is surprised at the impudence of Reduxis stating that, at the time he wrote the account, he was enjoying some leisure moments as Castellan of the "great Castle of Brescia":—"nihil enim agens, dum custodiae vacarem Castri magni Brixiae, aliquid agere," &c. The narrative of Bracciolini, light and airy, yet withal touching and graphic, has a wonderful effect in the "Chronicon Tarvisinum": it's not unlike sunlight breaking in and brightly shining between banks of fog. It was, therefore, necessary that a cause should be given for this supreme gleaming amid the general mists of the dull and heavy Chronicle of de Quero; Muratori, accordingly, very properly dispels the wonder of the reader by informing him that he is "here listening to Poggio writing, and in a style," he adds, "which Reduxis was about the last man to imitate":—"itaque heic audis Poggium scribentem, et quidem stylo, quem aequare Redusius minime gentium poterat."
[Endnote 208] Father Hardouin, however, is outrageously extravagant. He will admit that only two Greek authors and four Latin ones —Cicero, Pliny the Elder, (a big part of) Horace (the Satires and Epistles), and (a little bit of) Virgil (the Georgics), have come down to us, along with the sacred writings of the Old and New Testaments. Nothing else is genuine that we have from antiquity,—not even the coins,—certainly, not the productions of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church, nor the Ecumenical Councils down to that held at Trent, and to cap the climax of these appalling paradoxes, the parables and prophecies of the Saviour and the Apostles first appeared in Latin. More wondrous still! This wholesale fabrication all occurred in the 13th century, and the forgers were exclusively Benedictine monks. Had the great Jesuit confined his playful erudition to profane people all would have been well with him; but as he trenched upon holy ground in the skittishness of his scepticism the ecclesiastical authorities set over him were bound to interfere: his superiors severely reprimanded him, his promotion in the Church was for ever after stopped, and the supreme French law court,—the Parlement de Paris,—suppressed the book containing the novel raciness:—"Chronologiae ex Nummis Antiquis Restitutae Prolusio de Nummis Herodiadum":—but wedded to his opinions, and stubborn in the maintenance of them, Hardouin reproduced the least reprehensible in his "Ad Censuram Scriptorum Veterum Prologomena." From the manner in which he has been replied to by scholars all over Europe, especially in Holland, France and Germany, conspicuous among whom for pith of argument stand Basnage, Leclerc, Lacroze, Ittig and Bierling, nobody at the present day considers that what he said about the monuments of antiquity is worthy of the slightest attention, though everybody acknowledges his wonderful memory, sagacity, ingenuity, and mastery of all kinds of literature, especially history and chronology, and, above all, theology, of which he was a professor.
[Endnote 231] This I borrow from the Rev. Thomas Hunter, Vicar of Wrexham in the middle of the last century, and author of a book on Tacitus, from which I take the idea in the text. Hunter meant his work to be at once a philological and historical disquisition and a psychological and ethical analysis: he wrote it evidently from being thoroughly disgusted by what he had read in the Annals—(as well he might be);—and he laboured hard but in vain to show that the same faults which he found in that work he detected also in the History. His dissertation ends with a parallel between Livy and Tacitus, drawn expressly to disparage the latter, when every judicious, unbiassed reader who will form his opinion of Tacitus solely from the narrative, maxims, and sentiments met with in his History, must freely admit that he stands on a par with (to the thinking of many, above) Livy as an historian, a moralist and a man, all of which is denied by the ingenious Denbighshire clergyman. By a sort of intuitive knowledge,—or that mental process, known as the evolution of inner consciousness,—the world has long arrived at the conclusion that the Vicar of Wrexham's production is not valuable as a literary venture that aims at imparting truth: accordingly, his small 8vo. of 1752 labelled "Observations on Tacitus" shares the fate of the vast majority of modern volumes—it rests in peace buried in dust upon bookshelves.