Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 15

VII. No one would have been more willing than Bracciolini himself to have acknowledged the ample sufficiency of this argument to prove in the cases of Julia and Cornutus the forgery of the Annals; for he was himself a great collector of the coins and medals of antiquity, from which he gained a great deal of his historical information: he must, for example, have had in his possession, or have seen somewhere one of those medals which antiquaries say were struck in the time of Nero with a table, a garland, a pot, and the inscription: "Certa: Quinq. Rom. Co. Se."

meaning "Certamen, Quinquennale Romae const.i.tuit"; for in the fourteenth book of the Annals (20) he makes mention of a set of games by the name "Quinquennale Ludric.u.m," and in the sixteenth (4) by the t.i.tle "l.u.s.trale Certamnen, though no one has been able to decide, or even divine, what games these were on account of their exceeding insignificance: his object, then, in mentioning them, when their chief const.i.tuents or princ.i.p.al prizes were a table, a garland, and a pot, was evidently to impress his reader with his most intimate knowledge of ancient Roman customs, and leave his reader to infer with certainty that the Annals must have proceeded from a native Roman; but here it strikes me that he altogether defeated his own purpose; for if the Annals had been written by Tacitus, that grave historian took such high ground that he would have deemed it beneath him to notice any such trivial amus.e.m.e.nts, just as Hume and Henry, in tracing the history of the people of England, did not descend to make any inquiry into or mention of the precise time when such popular games were inst.i.tuted, as the Maypole or country fairs, horse-racing or football.

VIII. Monuments as well as coins may be relied upon for correcting errors made by historians. There is a monument at Puteoli erected in the time of Tiberius A.D. 30, containing the names of fourteen cities in Asia Minor that were destroyed by a series of earthquakes that took place during seven years in the course of the reign of Tiberius, the first being Cilicia (Nipp. I. 233), which was destroyed A.D. 23, and the last, and greatest of all, being Ephesus, which was reduced to ruins A.D. 29. A pa.s.sage in the second book of the Annals (47) describes twelve famous cities of Asia owing their sudden destruction to an earthquake occurring at night. We are told that "the usual means of escape by rus.h.i.+ng into the open air was of no avail: the yawning earth swallowed up everybody: huge mountains sank down, level plains rose into hills, and lightning flashed throughout the catastrophe." Subst.i.tute "villages" for "famous cities," "hills" for "huge mountains," and we have, perhaps, as good an account as can be found in such few words of one of those dreadful calamities of nature,--though it happened not in the reign of Tiberius but three years before the death of Bracciolini,--the entire destruction of the city of Naples and its surrounding villages in 1456, when all the inhabitants perished, men, women and children, to the number of no fewer than 20,000 souls. "Eodem anno duodecim celebres Asiae urbes conlapsae nocturno motu terrae; quo improvisior graviorque pestis fuit. Neque solitum in tali casu effugium in aperta prorumpendi, quia diductis terris hauriebantur. Sedisse immensos montes, enisa in arduum quae plana fuerint, effulsisse inter ruinam ignis memorant." (II. 47).

IX. It will be here seen that the only thing mentioned as breaking out more suddenly and being more dreadful in its devastation than an earthquake is the "plague": "quo IMPROVISIOR GRAVIORque PESTIS fuit." Bracciolini spoke from personal observation. When he was here in England in 1422, he would not venture abroad nor leave London, on account of the plague which raged in the provinces and extended over almost the whole island (Ep. I. 7.). Details of this pestilence have not come down to us, but we see how terrible must have been its character, when this strong and lasting impression was left on the memory of Bracciolini, that he avails himself of it in this pa.s.sage of the Annals to serve as a symbol of the worst species of destructiveness, from which we needs must gather that nothing could have broken out so unexpectedly and without apparent cause as the plague in England in 1422, nor have been more frightful and more rapid in its fatality.

X. Another instance in the first part of the Annnals of how Bracciolini modified circ.u.mstances from his own period, and then, --knowing that human actions are ever repeating themselves, just as that the human pa.s.sions remain the same in all ages,--remitted them to the first century, is his account of the fawning of the Roman Senators, when he represents them imploring Tiberius and Seja.n.u.s to deign to vouchsafe to the citizens the honour of an audience: the Emperor and the Minister refuse the supplication; their condescension extends no further than to their not crossing over to the island of Caprea, but remaining on the coast of Campania: thither the Senators, the knights, and the vast ma.s.s of the commonalty of the City resort to exhibit a disgraceful spirit of sycophancy and servility; they hurry continually to and from Rome, crowd into Campania in such numbers that they are forced to lie in the open fields night and day, some on the bare sands of the seash.o.r.e, without distinction of rank; and they put up with the insolence of the porters of Seja.n.u.s, who deny them ingress to the Minister. "Aram Clementiae, aram Amicitiae effigiesquecirc.u.m Caesaris ac Sejani censuere; crebrisque precibus efflagitabant, visendi sui copiam facerent. Non illi tamen in urbem, aut propinqua urbi digressi sunt: satis visum, omittere insulam, et in proximo Campaniae adspici. eo venire patres, eques, magna pars plebis, anxii erga Sejanum; cujus durior congressus, atque eo per ambitum, et societate consiliorum parabatur. Satis constabat auctam, ei adrogantiam, foedum illud in propatulo servitium spectanti. quippe Romae, sueti discursus; et magnitudine urbis incertum, quod quisque ad negotium pergat: ibi campo aut litore jacentes, nullo discrimine noctem ac diem, juxta gratiam aut fastus janitorum perpetiebantur" (An. IV. 74).

A man must be credulous beyond measure who can believe that such degrading servility was ever manifested among all cla.s.ses by the ancient Roman people; the picture, nevertheless, seems to have much truth in it, though tinged with exaggeration; but the painting must be transferred from the first to the fifteenth century: there was then a schism in the Church: every now and then the Pope would leave Rome, and stay at Florence, Reate, Ferrara, or some other city in Italy; thereupon crowds of sycophantic devotees, of whom the Roman Church has always had mult.i.tudes, would crouch into the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff, and put themselves to a wonderful amount of inconvenience, by thronging into towns beyond the power they possessed of affording accommodation: these flying visits of the Popes into small country towns always occurred during the heats of summer; hence the pilgrims lay in the open air; and all this suffering they submitted to with the patient spirit of martyrs, only to obtain an audience, to have a sight of and a blessing from the Holy Father.

When we remember too what was the power of the Popes in those days, we can easily fancy how true is the remainder of the picture when those to whom an audience was denied returned home in alarm, and how ill-timed was the joy of those whose unfortunate friends.h.i.+p with some cruel Papal Minister portended their imminent death. "Donec idque vet.i.tum. et revenere in urbeni trepidi, quos non sermone, non visu dignatus erat: quidam male alacres, quibus infaustae amicitiae gravis exitus imminebat" (l. c.)

XI. The same love of extraordinary exaggeration is found in the last as in the first part of the Annals, showing thereby that the whole work came from the same source. In the thirteenth book Pomponia Graecina is described as changing not her weeds nor her lamenting spirit for "forty" years,--mourning, too, as she was, not for a husband, a son or a father, but Julia, the daughter of Drusus, who was murdered by Messalina. "Nam post Juliam, Drusi filiam, dolo Messalinae interfectam, per 'quadraginta' annos, non cultu nisi lugubri, non animo nisi moesto egit." (An. XIII. 32).

Lipsius saw something so extraordinary in this, that, in his usual way, without any authority of ma.n.u.script or edition, he cut short the term, subst.i.tuting "fourteen" for "forty,"--"quatuordecim" for "quadraginta."

XII. A mistake which no Roman could have made occurs in the first part of the Annals, where, we are told that, at the funeral of Drusus, the father of Germanicus, "the images of the Claudii and the _Julii_ were borne around his bier":--"circ.u.mfusas lecto Claudiorum _Juliorumque_ imagines" (III. 5). Should the reader turn for the venfication of this curious statement to some modern edition of the works of Tacitus, it is possible that he may find "Liviorum" instead of "Juliorum," for reasons which will be immediately given; but if he will consult any of the MSS. or editions prior to the time of Justus Lipsius, he will find the pa.s.sage as given. The error was so monstrous, that Lipsius corrected it; because the Romans, at the obsequies of their great, only carried around the bier the images of the ancestors of the deceased. Accordingly Lipsius asks the very pertinent question, how at the funeral procession of Drusus, who was no member of the Julian family, not even by adoption, the images of members of that house could be borne? He, therefore, subst.i.tuted a family to which Drusus belonged, the Livii. Freinshemius followed him, and some of the subsequent editors, among them Ernesti, who observes he could see no reason why the images of the Livii should have been omitted at the funeral of Drusus; nor anybody else, except for the very strong and simple reason that the author of the Annals, being Bracciolini, was not acquainted with the fact, which must have been familiar to Tacitus, that the Livii, and not the Julii, were the great ancestors of Drusus.

XIII. That Bracciolini was just the sort of man to fall into glaring mistakes, oftener than otherwise from perverseness, or some peculiar humour, such as a resolution to be in the wrong, would appear to be the case from the remarkable error which he commits in his "Historia de Varietate Fortunae," respecting the beginning of the French kingdom which he puts down at "a little beyond the year 900,"--"paulo ultra nongentesimum annum" (Hist. de Var. For. II. p. 45), thus entirely discarding the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, and ascribing the commencement of the French kingdom to the beginning of the Capetian house; and he gives his reason; for he says that until "a little beyond 900,"

France had been divided among a number of Princes; but so it was even when Hugh Capet, putting an end to the system of anarchy which had prevailed before his time, established real monarchy; yet monarchy, after all, was not so real then as it was in the time of Charlemagne: Capet was only the most powerful prince among a number of others, who, nominally acknowledging him as king, were absolute in their own rights, raised taxes, dispensed justice, framed laws, coined money and made war. It is true that it is not very easy to get at the proper history of France at the period in question, from there not being the requisite authority for a correct knowledge of those dark and distant times: a great deal of obscurity and conjecture, too, exist as to the actual character of the monarchy,--as to whether, for example, Clovis and his predecessors were real kings, or merely knights errant, and whether their successors were as absolute as the Emperors among the Romans, or more magistrates than sovereigns as among the Germans, all sorts of doubts having been raised and mistiness thrown over these and other important matters by the ingenuity of such writers as Adrien de Valois, Boulainvilliers, Daniel, Dubos, Mad'lle de Lezardiere, Mably, Montesquieu, Mad'lle Montlozier, Velly and others: still the historians of France are all unanimous in agreeing, that the French monarchy commenced hundreds of years before the date fixed by Bracciolini, namely, at the commencement of the fifth century, some preferring to begin with Marchomir, Duke of the Sicambrian Franks, and others with Pharamond, (though Marchomir, before Pharamond, was, certainly, king of Gallic France).

XIV. We are told in the first part of the Annals (II. 61) that the boundaries of the Roman Empire extended to the Red Sea. This is generally supposed to allude to the possession of Mesopotamia, a.s.syria and Armenia by the Romans, which they held only for two years, from 115 to 117. Now, none of these provinces, only Arabia, Susiana, Persis, Carmania and Gedrosia, bordered upon what the Romans called "The Red Sea," and we "The Indian Ocean"; for the ancients believed that from about twelve degrees south of the sources of the Nile, from a country named by them Agyzimba, there was a continuation of land stretching from Africa to Asia, an opinion entertained by all the old geographers, from Hipparchus to Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, and never abandoned, until long after the death of Bracciolini, when the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and hugging the sh.o.r.es of eastern Africa and of Asia, reached India by the sea towards the close of the fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean having then been known for many hundred years by the name of the Red Sea, and looked upon as a vast body of inland water, like the Mediterranean, we have, unquestionably, a gross error with respect to the geography of Asia, as it was known in the time of Tacitus, when it is written in the Annals: "Exin ventum Elephantinen ac Syenen, claustra olim Romani Imperii, quod nunc RUBRUM AD MARE patescit."(An. II. 61).

XV. The same confusion of ideas with respect to the Indian Ocean, and pointing to ident.i.ty of authors.h.i.+p, is found in the last, as well as in the first, part of the Annals, when the Hyrcanian amba.s.sadors returning home from Rome have a military escort as far as the sh.o.r.es (it is said) "of the Red Sea," which they are to pa.s.s over in order to avoid the territories of the enemy:--"eos regredientes Corbulo, ne Euphraten transgressi hostium custodiis circ.u.mvenirentur, dato praesidio ad littora 'Maris Rubri' deduxit, unde vitatis Parthorum finibus, patrias in sedes remeavere"

(An. XIV. 25). Here the "Red Sea" clearly means the Caspian Sea, because the Parthians lived to the south of the Hyrcanians, and there was no means of the amba.s.sadors by crossing the Euphrates or going southwards, getting into their country without pa.s.sing through the territory of their enemies, but by travelling northwards they would pa.s.s through Media across the Caspian Sea to their own sh.o.r.es. It is difficult to determine whether Bracciolini did not give the name of "Mare Rubrum" to any large body of water which he believed communicated with the Indian Ocean, which he may have thought was the case with the Caspian, in common with Strabo, and before Strabo Eratosthenes, and after Strabo Pomponius Mela: or Bracciolini may have thought that the Caspian had no communication with any other sea,--was perfectly mediterranean, and that being in the midst of land, it ought to have the same name given to it as the lndian Ocean, that neither mingled with nor joined any other sea. Let the error have originated as it might, it is of a character so cognate with that in the second book, as to induce one to believe that both parts of the Annals proceeded from the same hand, and that that could not have been the hand of Tacitus, as in his day the Romans spoke specifically of the Euxine and the Caspian Sea, so that if he had written the Annals, he would have written in the first instance, "ad Pontum Euxinum," and in the second,"Caspii Maris."

XVI. But if my theory be accepted that Bracciolini forged both parts of the Annals, these errors are not at all to be wondered at; for at the commencement of the fifteenth century, even his countrymen, the Italians, especially the rich merchants of his native city, Florence, as well as the other wealthy traders of Venice and Genoa, who dealt in spices and other Oriental productions, alone practised navigation and cultivated commerce in the countries of Asia, and though better informed of those parts of the world than the other nations of Europe, had yet but a confused and false conception of the Red Sea and the waters in the East.

There ought, further, to be no surprise that Bracciolini possessed this limited geographical knowledge of the lands and waters of Asia, considering that, up to his time, only a few travellers, such as Carpin and Asevlino, Rubrequis, Marco Polo and Conti, had penetrated into the central portions of that continent:--as to Africa, its very shape was unknown, for navigation scarcely extended beyond the Mediterranean: at the commencement of the fifteenth century, indeed, not only information about the different quarters of the globe, but letters, arts, the sciences, and the greater part of our present ideas, were all prostrate, --crushed beneath the weight of weapons and silent amid the din of arms, for everybody thought of nothing but wars.

XVII. While treating of maritime matters, I may refer to a pa.s.sage in the second book of the Annals, which forcibly impresses me as being penned by Bracciolini, in whose declining years Prince Henry of Portugal, with a pa.s.sion for voyages and discoveries, gave a new direction to the genius of his age by laying the foundation for a revolution which must be for ever memorable in modern history. On Prince Henry giving the signal, navigation spread its sails; discovery followed discovery with amazing, speed; successes attended every expedition; each started after the other rapidly, and soon in all directions; the navigators returning home brought news so strange,--so animating all minds,--so inspiring all imaginations,--of the fresh lands they had seen that we can easily imagine a writer living in the midst of all these stirring accounts, who was desirous of producing as much effect as possible in a history that he was forging, writing thus of mariners on their "return from a long distance": "they talk about wonders, the power of whirlwinds and unheard of birds, monsters of the deep having the forms of half men and half beasts,--things either actually seen or else believed under the influence of excitement": --Lipsius adds in a note, "rather based on pure fancy,"--"vanitate efficta";--had the great Dutch critic for a moment dreamt that Bracciolini had forged the "Annals of Tacitus," he would have known that the observation, as far as concerned the author's own period, was founded on fact, the English having then had the good fortune to discover,--(or, as it was known to the Romans, more properly, re-discover) Madeira; for the first time, in modern days, the French n.o.bleman in the service of Spain, Jean de Bethencourt, reached the Canaries; the Flemings, too, for the first time got as far as the Azores; above all, Gilianez, in 1433, doubling Cape Boyador, or Nun, arrived on the West Coast of Africa to a few degrees above the equator: every one of them returned with wonderful news of his voyage which was looked upon as something marvellous:--accordingly their great contemp- orary, Bracciolini, wrote thus, thinking of the miraculous narrative that was told by each adventurous navigator of his time:--"Ut quis ex longinquo venerat, miracula narrabant, vim turbinum, et inauditas volucres, monstra maris, ambiguas hominum et belluarum formas, --visa, sive ex motu credita" (An. II. 24). Nothing was going on in the days of Tacitus, which could have put such a notion in his head; nor is the pa.s.sage from which it is taken at all in his style, as will be admitted when I immediately proceed to compare and contrast certain pa.s.sages in Bracciolini and himself with the view of examining the graphic powers which they both possessed.

CHAPTER THE LAST.

FURTHER PROOFS OF BRACCIOLINI BEING THE AUTHOR OF THE FIRST SIX

BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.

I. The descriptive powers of Bracciolini and Tacitus.--II. The different mode of writing of both.--III. Their different manners of digressing.--IV. Two Statements in the Fourth Book of the Annals that could not have been made by Tacitus.--V. The spirit of the Renaissance shown in both parts of the Annals.--VI. That both parts proceeded from the same hand shown in the writer pretending to know the feelings of the characters in the narrative.--VII. The contradictions in the two parts of the Annals and in the works of Bracciolini.--VIII. The Second Florence MS. a forgery.--IX. Conclusion.

I. The graphic powers possessed by Tacitus and Bracciolini were considerably influenced by their respective characters, which were widely different: no one can read the works of Tacitus, and not come to the conclusion that he was una.s.suming; whereas no one can read the works of Bracciolini, without being struck by his inordinate vanity, no matter what he maybe doing, describing the Ruins of Rome, discoursing on the Unhappiness of Princes, moralizing on Avarice or wailing in rhetorical magniloquence over the remains of friends: still he displays himself for admiration.

The same thing occurs throughout the Annals. From the first to the last the author stands before his reader on account of the extraordinary manner of his narrative which is ever filling one with surprize from Emperors and Generals, like Tiberius and Germanicus, weeping like Homer's heroes, and Queens and captive women, like Boadicea and the wife of Armin, exhibiting none of the frailties of their s.e.x, being above the timorous pa.s.sions, and not shedding a tear even when they are made prisoners, but conducting themselves with all the insolence of conquerors. Roman knights and senators, of the stamp of Luca.n.u.s, Senecio and Quinctia.n.u.s (XV. 49-57) betray the dearest pledges they have in blood and friends.h.i.+p, while slaves, and wantons such as Epicharis, undergo the fury of stripes and tortures to protect those not bound to them by ties of kindred and not even personally known to them. Not only do we find the heroic in malefactors and the criminal in heroes;--the spirited where we expect to come across the sordid, and the mean where we look for the grand, but the supernatural and magical mingle with the real and practical;--the sound of trumpets comes from hills where it is known there are no musical instruments; shrieks of departed ghosts issue from the tombs of mothers; incidents by sea and land are accompanied by wonderfully sublime circ.u.mstances; s.h.i.+pwrecks have whatever make up such scenes in their worst appearances.

The whole of this proceeds from Bracciolini indulging his fancy in a lat.i.tude which is denied the historian, and allowed only to the poet; hence he sometimes carries circ.u.mstances to bounds that border upon extravagance. Tacitus, on the other hand, always maintains his dignity; holding command over his fancy he carries circ.u.mstances to their due length, and only to their due extent.

This will be seen in the pa.s.sages which I shall now select to ill.u.s.trate the correctness of this remark; and beginning with Bracciolini, I will take his account of a marine disaster in the second book of the Annals.

The picture opens with a scene of beauty: "a thousand s.h.i.+ps propelled by creaking oars or flapping sails float over a calm sea: all of a sudden a hailstorm bursts from a circular rack of clouds: simultaneously billows rolling to uncertain heights before s.h.i.+fting squalls that blow from every quarter shut out the view and impede navigation: the soldiers, in their alarm and knowing nothing of the dangers of the deep, get in the way of the sailors, or rendering services not required, undo the work of the skilful seaman: from this point the whole welkin and the whole sea are given up to a hurricane that rages from an enormous ma.s.s of clouds sweeping down from the swelling hilltops and deep rivers of Germany: the hurricane made more dreadful by freezing blasts from the neighbouring North, lays hold of the s.h.i.+ps which it scatters into the open ocean or among islands perilous with precipitous cliffs or hidden shoals; the fleet, narrowly escaping s.h.i.+pwreck among them, is borne onwards, after the change of tide, in the direction whither the wind is blowing."

The reader is now left to the resources of his imagination; he has to supply a missing link in the chain of the description,--the mooring of the s.h.i.+ps; though how or where that could be done it is impossible to conceive; we are, nevertheless, told that the vessels "cannot hold by their anchors"--("non adhaerere anchoris ... poterant"), "nor draw off the water that rushes into them.

Horses, beasts of burden, baggage and even arms are thrown overboard to lighten the hulls with their leaking sides and seas breaking over them."

Here the terrible character of the calamity is poetically heightened by the writer observing that, "though there might be greater tempests in other parts of the Ocean, and Germany was unsurpa.s.sed for its convulsions of the elements, yet this disaster was worse than those for the novelty and magnitude of its dangers --the surrounding sh.o.r.es being inhabited by enemies, and the sea so boundless and unfathomable that it was taken to be without a sh.o.r.e, and the last in the world": whence we way infer that the s.h.i.+ps had got well out into the Atlantic, which must have presented to the eyes of the Romans pretty much the same appearance that it presented to Bracciolini's contemporaries, the English, Flemings and Spaniards, when, sailing for days together out of sight of land, they were making their way for the first time to (in the language in the Annals) "islands situated a very long way off":--"insulas longius sitas",--Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries.

On such far-away islands described as deserted, "the majority of the s.h.i.+ps are cast ash.o.r.e, the remainder having foundered in the deep; there the soldiers, deprived of the means of existence, perish from starvation, except those who survive by eating the dead horses that are thrown up on the sands"; though it is beyond the reach of the mind to conjecture whence the dead horses could have come after such a description.

"Germanicus, whose galley alone is saved by being thrown on the country of the Chauci, roams about the rocky coast and promontories all those days and nights, bitterly blaming himself as the guilty cause of the mighty catastrophe, and is with difficulty prevented by his friends from casting himself into the sea, and thus putting an end to a life made miserable by such self-accusation. At length the swell subsides; a favourable breeze springs up; the shattered s.h.i.+ps return, with few oars and garments spread for sails; some are towed by others more efficient; these being hastily repaired are sent to search the distant islands; by these means several" of the surviving soldiers "are with great pains recovered; the Angrivarii, newly received into alliance with the Romans, return others, who had found their way into the interior of their country; and the petty British princes send back the remainder who had been cast upon their sh.o.r.es." Thus all ends as happily as a comedy; everybody and everything are saved; men and s.h.i.+ps return: meanwhile Bracciolini has entertained his reader with a pretty, exciting episode, (what British sailors call "a yarn"), without making himself absolutely ridiculous by placing on record that the Romans in the days of Tiberius lost "a thousand s.h.i.+ps"; though he certainly gives credit to his reader for considerable credulity by inviting him to believe that the Romans at any time ever had a fleet amounting to such an enormous number of vessels. [Endnote 401]

"Ac primo placidum aequor mille navium remis strepere, aut velis impelli: mox atro nubium globo effusa grando, simul variis undique procellis incerti fluctus prospectum adimere, regimen impedire: milesque pavidus, et casuum maris ignarus, dum turbat nautas, vel intempestive juvat, officia prudentium corrumpebat. omne dehine coelum, et mare omne in austrum cessit, qui tumidis Germaniae terris, profundis amnibus, immenso nubium tractu validus, et rigore vicini septemtrionis horridior, rapuit disjecitque naves in aperta Oceani, aut insulas saxis abruptis vel per occulta vada infestas. quibus paulum aegreque vitatis, postquam mutabat aestus, eodemque quo ventus ferebat; non adhaerere anchoris, non exhaurire inrumpentis undas poterant: equi, jumenta, sarcinae, etiam arma praecipitantur, quo levarentur alvei manantes per latera, et fluctu superurgente.

"Quanto violentior cetero mari Ocea.n.u.s, et truculentia coeli praestat Germania, tantum illa clades novitate et magnitudine excessit, hostilibus circ.u.m litoribus, aut ita vasto et profundo, ut credatur novissimum ac sine terris, mari. pars navium haustae sunt; plures, apud insulas longius sitas ejectae: milesque, nullo illic hominum cultu, fame absumptus, nisi quos corpora equorum eodem elisa toleraverant. sola Germanici triremis Chaucorum terram adpulit, quem per omnes illos dies noctesque apud scopulos et prominentis oras, c.u.m se tanti exitii reum clamitaret, vix cohibuere amici, quo minus eodem mari oppeteret. Tandem relabente aestu, et secundante vento, claudae naves raro remigio, aut intentis vestibus, et quaedam a validioribus tractae, revertere: quas raptim refectas misit, ut scrutarentur insulas. collecti ea cura plerique: multos Angrivarii nuper in fidem accepti, redemptos ab interioribus reddidere: quidam in Britanniam rapti, et remissi a regulis" (An. II. 24, 25).

We have no means of testing by minute and accurate comparison the descriptive powers which Tacitus possessed in dealing with such a subject, because he has no account of a marine disaster in any of his works. We must then do the next best we can, see how he deals with a military calamity,--for, though in the account we are about to give, the Romans had been victorious, we must remember the sentiment of the Duke of Wellington, that next to a defeat there is nothing so miserable as a victory. The pa.s.sage we shall give is that of the visit of Vitellius to the plains of Bedriac.u.m forty days after a battle had been fought and a victory had been won by the Romans.

"Thence Vitellius turned aside to Cremona, and, after he had seen Caecina's contest of gladiators, longed to visit the plains of Bedriac.u.m, and view the field where a victory had been lately won.

Horrible and ghastly spectacle! Forty days after the battle,--and the mangled bodies, lacerated limbs and putrefying corpses of men and horses,--the ground stained with gore,--the trees and the corn levelled;--what a dismal devastation!--nor less painful the part of the road which the people of Cremona,--as if they were the subjects of a king,--had strewn with roses and laurels, altars they had raised and victims they had slain,--signs of gratulation for the moment, which very soon afterwards occasioned their destruction. Valens and Caecina were there, and told the points of the battle:--'Here the columns of the legions rushed to the fray: here the cavalry charged: there the bands of the auxiliaries routed the foe.' The tribunes and prefects then began each to praise his own deeds, and utter a medley of truths and falsehoods,--or exaggerations. The rank and file, too, of the troops with shouts that showed their joy turned from the line of march to behold again the field of battle, and wonder as they looked at the piles of arms and the heaps of bodies. And some, when the various turns of chance occurred to their minds, melted into tears and were heavy at heart from sorrow, but Vitellius did not turn aside his eyes nor shudder at so many thousands of his unburied countrymen: he was even glad, and ignorant of his all but impending fate made an offering to the G.o.ds of the place."

"Inde Vitellius Cremonam flexit, et spectato munere Caecinae, insistere Bedriacensibus campis, ac vestigia recentis victoriae l.u.s.trare oculis concupivit. Foedum atque atrox spectaculum! Intra quadragesimum pugnae diem lacera corpora, trunci artus, putres virorum equorumque formae, infecta tabo humus, protritis arboribus ac frugibus--dira vast.i.tas: nec minus inhumana pars viae, quam Cremonenses lauro rosisque constraverant, exstructis altaribus caesisque victimis, regium in morem: quae, laeta in praesens, mox perniciem ipsis fecere. Aderant Valens et Caecina, monstrabantque pugnae locos: 'Hinc irrup.i.s.se legionum agmen: hinc equites coortos: inde circ.u.mfusas auxiliorum ma.n.u.s.' Jam tribuni praefectique, sua quisque facta extollentes; falsa, vera, aut majora vero miscebant. Vulgus quoque militum, clamore et gaudio deflectere via, spatia certaminum recognoscere, aggerem armorum, strues corporum intueri, mirari. Et erant, quos varia fors rerum, lacrimaeque et misericordia subiret; at non Vitellius deflexit oculos, nec tot millia insepultorum civium exhorruit: laetus ultro, et tam propinquae sortis ignarus, instaurabat sacrum diis loci" (Hist. II. 70).

It must be obvious even to the most careless and least perspicacious what a striking contrast there is in the descriptive powers of the two; the objects that Tacitus depicts are not only few in number and telling in character, but seem to be presented to us on the principle of truth, as of actual occurrences; the method he adopts reminds one of that pursued by Sir Walter Scott, no matter whether the descriptive pa.s.sage occur in one of his poems, as The Lady of the Lake, or in one of his romances, as The Heart of Mid-Lothian: Bracciolini, on the other hand, appears to be inventing,--or, at least, heaping together a number of real circ.u.mstances, one or two of which might have happened together, but scarcely all of them at the same time, while he so arranges them as to produce a highly poetic effect: he writes as Lord Byron made up his s.h.i.+pwreck in Don Juan,--as Moore shows us in his Life of the eminent poet,--by selecting here and there a telling incident from the narrative of this or that s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner.

II. Not only in description did Bracciolini fail to imitate the writing of Tacitus; he failed to imitate it also in sequence of ideas. There is unquestionably resemblance in the absence of circ.u.mlocution; in such considerable conciseness that words are as sentences; in there being no hyperbole, and in judicious language at all times consonant with the solidity of the instructions conducive to wisdom in political and civil life. But in order to effect this Bracciolini clipped his sentences as a gardener clips hedges: a sentence is now and then like an amputated limb; a word is wanting, like a hand or a foot cut off from an arm or a leg: sometimes the reader sees, what was evidently made with mischievous intent, a great gap in thought, at which he is stopped and disturbed,--as a farmer, when walking in his fields, is brought to a stand-still and overcome with annoyance to see an opening which his cattle have made in his fences, and which he must be at the pains of repairing: so these vacuities in thought require to be botched by the fancy of the reader; the patching may not be the requisite thing to be done: accordingly the gaps cause difficulties in rightly apprehending the meaning of the writer, who, in some pa.s.sages may, possibly, never be properly understood.

The consequence of this is that no remark is so common as to hear people, especially young persons, say of Tacitus, "How difficult his Latin is!" Even Messrs. Church and Brodripp say so in the Preface to their translation of the "History." Certainly, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reproduce in another language the smooth style and polished phrases of Tacitus; but his Latin is easy to follow, whatever he maybe doing,--describing a battle, a riot or a flight;--recording the success of a party, the death of an Emperor, or a disturbance in the Forum. Notwithstanding his fiery, rapid style, he is regular in his connection of thought,-- logical in his sequence of ideas, thereby he is always alluring and attractive, while crisp, clear and comprehensible, he dazzles and delights with his picturesque images and glittering beauties.

It is otherwise with the author of the Annals, whose style is occasionally enveloped in such Cimmerian obscurities from deficiencies of expression as to beset his work with a formidable opaqueness--anything but Milton's "darkness visible". [Endnote 408]

Many specimens of this might be given, but as the mist is impenetrable, we will turn to one where the light can be seen--the story of the peasant of Termes, who a.s.sa.s.sinates a praetor, while that officer is pa.s.sing along a road unattended. The a.s.sa.s.sin, being on the back of a fleet horse, gallops off to a wood, entering which, after turning his horse loose, he baffles pursuit by clambering over steep and stony parts into the pathless wilderness, "where," continues the writer, "he did _not remain long concealed_; FOR" (mark the sequence), "his horse having been caught and shown through all the towns round, the people knew whose it was, _and_ that led to his apprehension":--"pernicitate equi profugus, postquam saltuosos locos adtigerat, dimisso equo, per derupta et avia sequentis frustratus est, _neque diu fefellit_; NAM prehenso ductoque per proximos pagos equo, eujus foret cognitum, _et_ repertus" (An. IV. 45).

The context is not seen. A man who has committed a murder unseen by anybody effects his escape from pursuit by getting into a wood.

Of what consequence was it whether his horse was known or not? for how could that help his pursuer to catch him, if, like a maroon negro, having run away safely into the impenetrable thicket, he staid in the bush for the remainder of his days,--or as long as he was not wanted for a breakfast by a hungry wild beast? The author means us to understand, after the fugitive had baffled pursuit by getting into the depth of the forest, that he lay hidden there for a certain number of days, after which, deeming that all was safe, he returned into the towns to his home: then should come the words: "where he did not remain long concealed, for his horse having been caught," &c.

This obscurity increases when the author of the Annals is in the palace of Tiberius, or in the Senate amid the deliberations of the Patres Conscripti. From his inadequate mode of speech he then outstrips the comprehension of the reader; certainly he quite baffles the intelligence of the very young, his meaning being penetrable only by the keen sagacity of ripe age, for he enters into the recesses of the heart, and reveals the secret workings of the bad pa.s.sions,--envy, hatred, malice and ambition.

As before, we cannot give one of his best gems, because those are hidden in clouds of darkness, through which n.o.body can see, only one of them that is shrouded in a light mist through which the eye can dimly peer. So take the pa.s.sage where Tiberius leaves it to the Senate to choose whether Lepidus or Blaesus shall have the government of Africa. Lepidus refuses in very unmistakable terms, alleging as his reasons the bad state of his health, the tender age of his children, and the marriageable condition of his daughter: the writer then goes on: "another reason that Lepidus had, he kept to himself, though it was understood, Blaesus being the uncle of Seja.n.u.s, and that was a very powerful reason with him." "Tum audita amborum verba, intentius excusante se Lepido, c.u.m valetudinem corporis, aetatem liberum, nubilem filiam obtenderet: intelligereturque etiam, (quod silebat), avunculum esse Sejani Blaesum, atque eo praevalidum." (An. III. 35). Of course, that was the most powerful reason for Lepidus refusing the honour, because he knew that if he stood in the way of the promotion of the uncle, the nephew, in those corrupt times, would seek a way of wreaking his vengeance upon him. That is easily enough understood, and certainly did not require any further explanation from the historian. But how about the next sentence?

"Blaesus in his reply to the Senate made, (but not in the same resolute tone as Lepidus), a show of refusal, and by the a.s.sent of the sycophants he was not supported"; and, without another syllable, the author leaves the subject and pa.s.ses on to another matter. "Respondit Blaesus specie recusantis, sed neque eadem adseveratione; et consensu adulantium haud jutus est." (ibid.) In what was he not supported? And whom were the "sycophants," that is the Senators, flattering? Blaesus? They had no cause to care whether they pleased or displeased him. Tiberius? The Emperor was perfectly indifferent as to which of the two men the Senate selected. The author of the Annals, in order that his full meaning may be brought out, wants the reader to supply, after the words "a show of refusal," some such as the following:--"the Senators could see from the sham of Blaesus that the promotion to the office would be highly acceptable to him, and, as they knew it would please Seja.n.u.s, they were desirous of doing what would gratify the minister": then should come the words: "and by the a.s.sent of the sycophants he was not supported," that is, in his refusal: accordingly the writer leaves his reader to infer that the Senators gave their universal approval to the appointment of Blaesus as the Proconsul of Africa.

There is no such writing as this in any of the works of Tacitus, who, though curt and concise, is always remarkable for concinnity and clearness of expression as well as for perspicuity and consecutiveness of idea. This can be instanced by any pa.s.sage in the "History": take this where Galba admonishes Piso whom he has adopted to be careful of himself as the successor to the empire, and beware of the perils to which he was exposed by his new position:--

"You are at the age which shuns the pa.s.sions of youth: your past life has been such you have nothing to regret. You have endured hards.h.i.+p up to this point: prosperity tries our dispositions with sharper probes; because misfortune is borne, we are spoilt by a brilliant position. With your determined character you will preserve those most precious boons of the human soul, honourable principles, an independent spirit and friendly feelings; but others will undermine these by obsequiousness. Flattery, --fawning,--that worst bane of virtuous inclinations,--will a.s.sail you:--everybody seeks his own advancement. To-day you and I converse together quite disinterestedly; others all selfishly pay their court to our fortunes in preference to ourselves. Now to counsel an Emperor what he ought to do is a task of much difficulty: humouring the whims of this or that Emperor does not cost the slightest trouble." "Ea aetas tua, quae cupiditates adolescentiae jam effugerit: ea vita, in qua nihil praeteritum excusandum habeas. Fortunam adhuc adversam tulisti: secundae res acrioribus stimulis animos explorant, quia miseriae tolerantur, felicitate corrumpimur. Fidem, libertatem, amicitiam, praecipua humani animi bona, tu quidem eadem constantia retinebis: sed alii per obsequium imminuent. Irrumpet adulatio,--blanditiae, pessimum veri adfectus venenum,--sua cuique utilitas. Ego ac tu simplicissime inter nos hodie loquimur; ceteri libentius c.u.m fortuna nostra, quam n.o.bisc.u.m. Nam suadere principi quod oporteat multi laboris: adsentatio erga principem quemeunque sine adfectu peragitur." (Hist. I. 15).

It will be seen from this literal version of his text, that, notwithstanding his epigrammatic brevity, Tacitus writes with a precision of thought that leaves nothing to be supplied. It may be that the author of the Annals found it impossible to write thus: at any rate he resorts to quite another kind of composition in order to be on a level with his prototype by making his book hard reading, for he gives his reader as much difficulty in following him by leaving gaps in thought, as Tacitus gives his reader by uncommon terseness. The difference of exertion to which the mind is subjected in understanding the two is pretty much like the difference of exerting the legs which a traveller experiences when moving about a most mountainous region, between toiling painfully up steep but smooth acclivities and taking violent leaps over a succession of ravines.

III. The Rev. Thomas Hunter, in the opening portion of his work ent.i.tled "Observations on Tacitus," (to which I have so often referred, and to which I am so much indebted),--misled by giving his a.s.sent, as a matter of necessity, to the universal belief that Tacitus and Bracciolini were one,--errs in ascribing to them both a perfect similarity in ambition of pomp and ornament to display learning; Bracciolini bears little or no resemblance in this respect to Tacitus, as may be seen by comparing, or rather contrasting them in any one thing,--say in their digressions.

Whenever Tacitus digresses, it is always appropriately,--with taste and judgment. What, for instance, can be more fitting than that he should fall into a little digression about the Temple of Venus in Cyprus, when t.i.tus visits that island (Hist. II. 2 & 3), because t.i.tus had an amorous disposition? or, when he is about to relate such an important event and turning point in the history of the Jews as the destruction of Jerusalem, that he should recount the whole origin of that most mysterious and romantic people (Hist. V. 2)? or, when the Capitol was burnt, give a history of it (ib. III. 71)? On these and other occasions, his digressions are seemly, and afford satisfaction as appertaining closely to the subject.

It is not so with the author of the Annals; he cannot speak about a law, but straightway must tell his reader about laws in general, as he does when speaking of the Lex Poppaea, of which had Tacitus spoken, he would have merely mentioned its qualification, then pa.s.sed on; or, if digressing, confined his statement to the other laws of a similar kind which had been enacted by his countrymen; but the author of the Annals starts off to talk about laws of all kinds that the whole world had witnessed from the Flood of Deucalion to the time of which he is writing,--consequently he talks about the legislation of Minos, Lycurgus and Solon, the law-making of Numa and Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius and Servius Tullius, down to what was done in that way by the Emperor Augustus Caesar (III. 26); and when the cities of Asia contend for the honour of building a temple, away he rambles into a discourse about things in general, the wars of Perseus and Aristonicus; the great antiquity of Troy, proclaimed to be the mother of Rome; the love of home of the Lydians; the first names and settlements of the Tyrrhenians; the Sardinians and Etrurians being of the same descent; the divine origin of Tantalus and Theseus; and the Amazons being the founders of some of the cities in Asia (IV. 55 and 56).