Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 9

CHAPTER II.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

I. The intellect and depravity of the age.--II. Bracciolini as its exponent.--III. Hunter's accurate description of him.--IV.

Bracciolini gave way to the impulses of his age.--V. The Claudius, Nero and Tiberius of the Annals personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century.--VI. Schildius and his doubts.-- VII. Bracciolini not covetous of martyrdom: communicates his fears to Niccoli.--VIII. The princes and great men in the Annals the princes and great men of the XVth century, not of the opening period of the Christian aera.--IX. Bracciolini, and not Tacitus, a disparager of persons in high places.

I. The fifteenth century was the most curious of all ages: it has never been properly depicted, except on its darker side, indirectly, in the Annals. It is usually regarded as an age of barbarism; it was not that; it must ever be memorable for splendour of genius and the promotion of letters. A proof of the esteem in which literary excellence was held is afforded by the conduct of the Sultan of Turkey, Mahomet II., who deemed a mere ode by Filelfo a sufficient ransom for that scholar's mother-in-law, Manfredina Doria, and her two daughters. Astronomers were treading for the first time in the right track after two thousand years, since the days of Pythagoras, as may be seen by the hypothesis of Domenico Maria, about the variability of the axis of the globe, and by the labours of Mueller, better known by the Latin name derived from his native town of Koenigsberg, Regiomonta.n.u.s, who almost antic.i.p.ated Copernicus in discovering the true system of the universe. Few before or since have so excelled in mathematics and mechanics as Peurbach. Divinity had a profound and subtle exponent in the mild and gentle Thomas a Kempis. The age nursed the man who first philosophized in politics, Machiavelli. Italy was ablaze, like the galaxy, with a countless number of brilliant lights that shone in cla.s.sical lore and accomplishments. Alberti shewed by his Gothic church dedicated to St. Francis (now the Cathedral at Rimini), that the genius of architecture was again abroad as much inspired as when Hermogenes reared the temple of Bacchus at Teos. Chaucer, the morning star of poetry in England, briefly preceded one greater, and even more learned, Rowley, whose few fragments recovered, as a.s.serted by the sprightly boy-finder, Chatterton, in a chest in the muniment room of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, reveal to us what we have unfortunately lost; his Battle of Hastings, though far away from the power and grandeur of the poetry, recalls, if not the tramp and march of the verse, attempts at the subdued tone, ease of manner, effect and picturesqueness of thoughts and figures, along with frequent, rich similes drawn from nature, which meet us at every turn in the Iliad, then newly brought to Europe, and with which the delighted poet had evidently saturated his astonished soul, a few of his expressions being close copies and some of his language a literal translation from Homer. [Endnote 251] All over Europe princes and n.o.bles signalized themselves in martial achievements and the art of war: some revived memories of the mightiest: the great hero of antiquity, Cyrus, had not a history more obscured with fable than the great hero of the Tartars, Tamerlane; the tale of George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, for his acts of valour and feats of strength, is as mythical as the tale of Ninus: Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, could have stood by the side of Pausanias, having as signally defeated at Mont Olmo the great general Francis Piccinino as the King of Sparta crushed at Plataea the brilliant chief, Mardonius; the Hungarian sovereigns, John Corvinus Hunniades and his son Matthias occupied the ground that was held by the Theban princes, Pelopidas and Epaminondas; for the two Woiwodes of Transylvania kept their country free from the enslavement of the Turk, as the two Boeotarchs preserved Thebes in independence from the rule of the Lacedaemonians. Never did Athens produce a general superior to our own gallant and magnanimous Henry the Fifth:--

"quo justior alter Nec pictate fuit, nec bello major et armis."

Still the age, though distinguished for intellect and valour, was degraded by the most monstrous villainies that were ever perpetrated, and the most detestable characters who ever existed; and a becoming procreation of such an intellectual and depraved age was that revolting monster in letters,--the Annals.

The Muses were courted more than the Graces: talents were held in higher esteem than the virtues. Men were unremitting, indiscriminate wors.h.i.+ppers of money; they were not trained in the school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities, they become easily pervious to the promptings of all sorts of knavery.

Profligacy was so wide-spread that it extended to men usually supposed to be most pious and exemplary in their lives: Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, though celibats and holders of ecclesiastical dignities, did not arrive at Delphi without touching at Cythera: indirect evidence is afforded of this by the treatises which physicians, shortly after the commencement of the next century, wrote on the disease then called "Morbus Gallicus," when Gaspard Torella wrote his for the purpose of benefiting the manners of the Bishop of Avranches, Ulrich von Hutten his as a safeguard for the perils that attended the habits of the Cardinal Archbishop of Mayence, and Peter Pintor his to warn that gay pope, Alexander VI., of the danger of his ways, the Spanish physician even expressing the kind hope (which may not have been fulfilled) that the Holy Father would be preserved "morbo foedo et occulto his temporibus affligente": there is direct evidence of this state of abandonment to vice on the part of consecrated men from Bracciolini, who, during his excursion to the Baths of Baden in 1416, gave an account of that favourite watering place of the fifteenth century, where abbots, monks, friars and priests comported themselves with more licentiousness than the laity, laid aside all thoughts of religion, and sometimes bathed with women, whose hair they decked with ribbons and wreaths of flowers: "hic quoque virgines Vestales, vel, ut verius loquar, Florales: hic abbates, monachi, fratres, sacerdotes majori licentia quam caeteri vivunt, et simul quandoque c.u.m mulieribus lavantes, et sertis quoque comas ornantes, omni religione abjecta"

(Ep. I. 1). Joanna II., Queen of Naples, when a Doctor of Laws of Florence was sent to her court on an emba.s.sy from his fellow- citizens, and, seeking a private interview, made a coa.r.s.e declaration of love, could look with a pleasant smile upon him, and ask mildly "If that was also in his instructions?" At the wonderfully numerous a.s.sembly that attended at Constance on the 22nd of April, 1418, on the formal dismissal of the Ec.u.menical Council by the newly elected Pope, Otto Colonna, who took the name of Martin V., there were present no fewer (according to one account) than 1,500 courtezans, many of whom heaped up a great ma.s.s of money, one acc.u.mulating 800 gold sequins, equivalent now to a little fortune of 16,000, not so much, it appears, from among the 80,000 married laymen, who were Emperors, Kings, Princes, Dukes, Counts and Knights, bankers, shop-keepers, bakers, tailors, barbers and merry-andrews, as from among the 18,000 celibats, who were the Pope, the prelates, the priests, the presbyters, the monks and the friars, grey, white and black.

II. As a notable informer in the Annals of the exact spirit of his age, Bracciolini necessarily places before his reader not a few pictures of the deterioration of moral principles in the aphrodisiac direction; his book reflects in the most vivid light the strange and very wonderful depravities of his period, some so huge as to deviate greatly out of the common course of nature.

From time to time the historic and philosophic gravity of the last six books of the Annals suffers great eclipses by his leaving aside weighty affairs of State to descend into petty descriptions of the erratic conduct of Messalina, with her extravagant lewdness (XI. 26-8), Nero, with his abominable pollutions (XVI. 37), and that Emperor's mother, Agrippina, with her monstrous incest (XIV. 2).

These matters, even if true of the ancient Romans in the first century of our aera, Tacitus, we may be certain, would have avoided as not coming within the scope of the historian's province, and as being altogether uncongenial to his sublime tone of elevated sentiments and high-minded refinement. But anyone conversant with the writings and temper of Bracciolini will know well that such pa.s.sages, instead of being in any way distasteful, would be altogether agreeable. To be convinced, one has only to glance at the collection of anecdotes, styled "Facetiae," at the end of his works, which even a frequenter of the Judge and Jury Society would consider justly liable to objection, howbeit that a pious gentleman in holy orders who wrote a Life of Bracciolini, the Reverend William Shepherd, can find words of palliation for them as sprightly pleasantries. They show us Bracciolini in his merry mood; they give us a fresh glimpse into the fifteenth century; they may be considered the best jokes or Joe Millerisms of the fifteenth century, such as the one commencing "h.o.m.o e nostris rustica.n.u.s, et haud multum prudens" (Pog. Op. 423), the one that follows ent.i.tled "De Vidua accensa libidine c.u.m paupere"

(ibid); and that which begins "Adolescens n.o.bilis et forma insignis" (p. 433).

The taste of Bracciolini which is shown by these "Facetiae," is still more forcibly exhibited in a letter to Becadelli of Bologna (Ep. II. 40), in which he gloats over a book of indecent epigrams which his friend had written; he describes it as a "work at once waggish and luxuriating in voluptuousness," "opus et jocosum et plenum voluptatis," and as "a most sweet book," "liber est suavissimus." With respect to his own feelings on reading it, he observes, "that he was delighted beyond measure at the variety of the subjects and the elegance of the poetry; at the same time he wondered how things so improper and so obscene could be represented by his friend so gracefully and so neatly, and" he was of opinion that "the many excessive obscenities were expressed in such a manner that they seemed not only to be depicted but to have been actually committed; for he could not help thinking that they must be considered as facts, and not as fictions merely for the sake of entertaining the reader":--"Delectatus sum, mehercule, varietate rerum et elegantia versuum: simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas tam venuste, tam composite a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula, ut non enarrari, sed agi videantur: neque ficta a te jocandi causa, ut existimo, sed acta aestimari possunt." Such was his extravagant commendation, and, consequently, his hearty approbation of a most unnatural production, "Hermaphroditus," which ultimately received the censure of the author himself, who was ashamed that he had written it, as shown in the following epigram preserved by Cardinal Quirini in his "Diatriba in Epistolas Francisci Barbari":--

"Hic faeces varias Veneris, moresque prophanos, _Quos natura fugit_, me docuisse _pudet_."

III. We shall now see how accurately a writer in the middle of the last century, the Reverend Thomas Hunter, in his "Observations on Tacitus" (p. 51), hit off the character of Bracciolini, all the while that he fancied he was venting objurgations on the staid old Roman: "If he is anywhere happy in his description, it is in the display of ... luxury refined and high-flavoured ... Never writer had a happier pen at describing wickedness ... Were we to give room to suspicions ... we should say that he might have been ... a party in every lewd scene he represents."

Mr. Hunter proceeds: "Messalina's guilty amours with Silius are described with a gay and festive air, with that pride of voluptuousness, and feeling taste of pleasure, as show the writer well versed in court intrigue. The description is too luscious, and may lead to a perpetration of the crime, rather than an abhorrence of the criminals."

Only one fault is to be found with this criticism, which is both excellent and curious,--excellent, because remarkable for its simple truthfulness,--curious, because it looks as if Hunter, who knew nothing about Bracciolini, had the eyes of a cat and could see in the dark;--the fault is that the writer applies the criticism to one eminently undeserving of its causticity;--because though we have quoted "If he is," Hunter wrote, "If Tacitus is"; now Tacitus never wrote any descriptions of the nature commented on by the Vicar of Wrexham; they are not to be found in any of the works that pa.s.s under his name except the Annals; there is this excuse to be found for Hunter, that, at the time when he wrote, he was compelled to take the majestic Roman Consul to be the author of the Annals; but though his criticism is not applicable in a single syllable to Tacitus, it is strictly applicable in every word to Bracciolini, whom he never dreamt of as the composer of the Annals.

IV. It matters not what a man may attempt in literature, what style he may adopt, or what old pattern imitate,--he cannot get away from the impulses of his own time, strive he ever so hard: the tone and colour of his work will be modified by actual history and current politics; his strongest impressions will be influenced by the deeds that are being transacted and the lives that are being pa.s.sed around him; so that however wide, searching and vigorous may be his powers of observation, thought and intellect, he cannot liberate these from contemporary a.s.sociations; any endeavour to do that must end in failure, ending, as it must, in artificial coldness and unemotional lifelessness. Bracciolini never made the attempt; he gave way to Nature, and never did his genius s.h.i.+ne so brightly, and never was it more prolific, than when dealing with the diversity required of it by the history embraced in the Annals.

V. I am now about to make some remarks which I am glad to say, will get for this book a place in the "Index Expurgatorius" in Rome; and which will do a great deal more than that,--considerably amaze the shade of Bracciolini (supposing that he has a shade), perhaps as much as M. Jourdain was astonished when told that he had been talking prose all his life.

Every student of the Annals, in order rightly to understand its meaning and properly to appreciate its greatness, should bear in mind that the Emperors who play a part in it, Claudius and Nero in the last six books, and Tiberius in the first six, are intended to be the representatives or personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century. Hence it is that Claudius, Nero and Tiberius are depicted as superhuman in monstrosities,--colossal in crime,--perpetrators of enormities that never yet met, and never will meet, in combination in any single man. Each is, in fact, a fiend, and not a human being. It was thus only that Bracciolini could show us in its true light the Church of Rome as it acted in his day. In the language of Wickliffe it was the "Synagogue of Satan." A mere trifle was it that reprobates in the form of bishops and priests ordained, consecrated and sacrificed. See the Church at an Oec.u.menical Council; then it capped the climax of cruelty and crime; it resorted to demoniacal subterfuge to condemn good men as heretics and burn them alive, believing that death by fire would inflict the most exquisitely excruciating tortures; at the Council of Constance it sought to condemn Wickliffe, by making an inference from some of his principles that he propagated the doctrine,--"G.o.d is obliged to obey the Devil,"--nowhere to be found in the Trialogue, Dialogue, and all the other works, treatises, and opuscles or small pieces bearing the name of that honoured and most pious divine: it consigned to the flames those two intimate friends and a.s.sociates, John Huss and Jerome of Prague, for holding just and virtuous views about the degradation of the priestly office, and for n.o.bly and fearlessly inveighing against the corruptions of the pontifical court, the pomp and pride of prelates, and the dissipated habits and abuses of the clergy.

When we read in the Annals of men, who, in spite of their n.o.bility, innocence and virtues, were put to death by the sword of the executioner or the poisoned bowl, we must not think that we are reading of real Romans who thus actually suffered: the whole is a fabrication placing before us fict.i.tious pictures, meant to be life-like, of what the DOMINATING POWER CAN DO IN SOCIETY: they are not pictures intended to show with truthfulness monstrosities positively done by Emperors of Rome in the first century: they are pictures that reflect with fidelity the atrocities that stained the Church of Rome in the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Those were the closing days of the ancient period of the most abominable of all the Inquisitions, that of Spain, before the establishment by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1481 of the modern Inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula: that terrible jurisdiction extended to everybody, dead as well as living, absent as well as present, princes and subjects, rich and poor,--all were liable alike on the bare suspicion of such an insignificant matter as heresy, to corporal punishment, pecuniary fines, confiscation of property, and loss of life, by being burnt at the stake, or,--as occurred to Savonarola, towards the close of the century,--first strangled by the hangman, and then committed to the flames. Only the Nero of the last part of the Annals, or the Tiberius of the first six books of that work, can properly stand forth, in his persecuting spirit, as the counterpart of the Dominican, John de Torquemada, who, in the performance of his duty, as the Inquisitor General in Spain, proceeded against upwards of 100,000 persons, 6,000 of whom he condemned to the flames.

VI. So far, then, from being surprised with Professor Schildius (Professor of History and Greek, and afterwards of Hebrew in the University of Bremen at the commencement of the seventeenth century), and induced to doubt with him, the veraciousness of the Annals, I should have been very much astonished indeed, and, certainly, called in question its fidelity as representing the spirit of the fifteenth century, if it had not recorded (to borrow the language of Schildius) "a number of the most honourable and innocent men, the prides and ornaments of the State, coming to an ignominious end, and for no other crime, forsooth, than that which we call treason-felony": "Quod si non omnium judiciis superior esset Cornelius Tacitus, laboraret Annalium fides, tot n.o.bilissimos et innocuos viros, tot decora et ornamenta Civitatis, indignissimo fine cecidisse crederemus, idque non aliud hercle ob crimen, quam illum, quem diximus, obtentuin laesae majestatis"

(Schildi Exercitationes in C. Taciti Annal: XV. p. 29). Subst.i.tute for "treason felony" "heresy," and we have the strictest truth with regard to the unutterable ferocity of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century.

VII. Had any man then living been bold enough to tell the world of the Church of Rome's ferocity in primitive terms, he must have been particularly desirous of being roasted alive: had he even so represented it as to render himself comprehensible by the most quick-witted, he must still have had the martyr's liking for instruments of torture and the blazing f.a.ggot: Bracciolini, whom nature had not gifted with the taste of Huss and Jerome of Prague, was so conscious of the perilous position in which he placed himself by undertaking a composition of this description, that he communicated his alarm to Niccoli about the care he must take as to the expression of his views lest he should give offence to princes, in that memorable letter, from which I have already quoted, dated Rome, October 8, 1423, in which he indirectly informed his friend that he had commenced his forgery of the Annals, by confessing that he was engaged on a certain work (or, as he puts it, "certain tiny occupations" ("occupatiunculae quaedam") in the style of Lord Byron, who would speak meanly of any of his marvellous poems, Childe Harold or Manfred, as "a thing"). "Besides," said he, "there are certain tiny occupations in which I am engaged, which do not so much impede me in themselves, as the way in which I tarry over them; for it is necessary that I should be on my guard with respect to the inclinations of princes, that their susceptibilities be not offended, as they are much more ready to vent their rage than to extend their forgiveness if anything be done amiss";--he then ended by making an observation which we have already noticed to the effect that beginnings were always difficult, especially when an attempt was made to imitate the ancients: "Sunt praeterea occupatiuculae quaedam, in quibus versor, quae non tantum ipsae me impediunt, quantum earum expectatio. Oportet enim paratum esse etiam ad nutum, ne offiendatur religio principum, quorum indignatio promptior est, quam remissio, si quid omittatur. In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua ac difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum" (Ep. II. 5). Therefore, Bracciolini, in the most strained detortions from literal meaning,--in the darkest nimbus of far-fetched elaboration of mystical allegory, --placed before us the unparalleled cruelty of the Church of Rome in the tiger-like thirst for blood of the Tiberius and the Nero of the Annals.

VIII. In the same manner as we have in the Annals a true and life- like picture of the savage and ravenous fierceness of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century, so we have the likenesses, drawn, too, with the spirit and vigour of life about them, of the persons who flourished at that period as Princes, Ministers, and their agents and servants, though the likenesses may have been reproduced with some partial poetical exaggeration with regard to the peculiar characters, vices and singular debas.e.m.e.nt of individuals: this, however, is very certain; people, then, were altogether abnormal. We have already seen how historians tell us that Cardinal Beaufort by his intrigues and those of the Queen of Henry IV. hastened the ruin and untimely fate of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester. Kings so troubled their subjects by their tyranny and excesses, they were deposed, imprisoned, or put to death: in England Richard II. was stripped of his kingdom; in Bohemia Wenceslaus was twice thrown into prison; in Germany, Frederick, Duke of Brunswick, was murdered only two days after he had been elected Emperor; and in France, Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, had his life taken on the bridge of Montereau. In the East things fared even worse: sovereigns trampled on sovereigns: Tamerlane, the victor, treated with contumely the once proud conqueror, the vanquished Bayazid, Sultan of Turkey, used his body as a footstool or ladder by which to mount his horse; forced him to lie on the ground while he fed and to pick up the crumbs that fell from his table, and finally shut him up in an iron cage, where he died of a broken heart: if these things be false, as they may be, or exaggerated, as unquestionably they were, yet they point to the spirit of the age, in the simple fact of their having been recounted, and in the still more remarkable fact of their having been believed.

There were no such emperors and persons in high places during the opening period of the Christian aera; or Tacitus in his "History"

gives us a very wrong account of them; his views of them are, if not favourable, lenient or apologetic: they do not seem to have had the vices and faults of most men; Tacitus has otherwise successfully thrown a veil over them. Were the whole truth known, it might be found that there is a shameful exaggeration of the vices of Roman Emperors: this looks most probable when we consider the significant reflections made about Princes in one of his miscellaneous productions, by the historian, David Hume,--not the David Hume, _minor_, who, living a long time among the English, and becoming fascinated with their ways, manners, customs and civilization, mooted the union of England and Scotland, more than a hundred years before the great event came off, in that famous historical essay printed in London in 1605 and ent.i.tled "De Unione Insulae Britanniae Tractatus;" nor David Hume _minimus_, who wrote the "History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus" but the David Hume, _major_, who wrote the "History of England"--that "there are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries nearly two hundred absolute princes, great and small in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand monarchs, or 'tyrants,' as the Greeks would have called them, yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors." When we find David Hume thus putting the matter, in his Essay on "Civil Liberty,"

it makes us at once see how highly unlikely it is that all the badness of human nature should have been concentrated in a few individuals who lived at a particular period and in a particular country, those individuals being Emperors, that particular period the commencement of the Christian aera and that particular country ancient Rome. Somewhere or other there must have been a great deal of maligning; nor is it difficult to discover who the maligner was as far as the characters in the Annals are concerned.

IX. No one will accuse Tacitus of disparaging Princes and persons in high places; but everybody will admit, who is acquainted with the productions of Bracciolini, that he speaks trumpet-tongued of their delinquencies. When in his Dialogue, "De Infelicitate Principum," an attempt is made by Cosmo de' Medici to uphold some of them as "worthy of all praise and commendation for their learning and estimable qualities," the pa.s.sage follows, as the reply of Niccoli (already quoted), of the hypocrisy and rascality of all men, consequently, of the hypocrisy and rascality of kings, ministers and their agents and servants. Nay, more: Cosmo de'

Medici is made to express his astonishment at the spirit of detraction in Niccoli, but is not surprised as he lashes private individuals, to find him bitterly inveighing against princes, being ever ready and fluent in his abuse of the latter, even when they do no harm, and cannot be reproached for their lives: Cosmo de' Medici is, therefore, of opinion that exceptions ought to be made in their favour, and wants to know why Niccoli should be so strongly given to vituperate them:--"Tum, Cosmus, graviter ut a.s.solet, "Facillime," inquit, "Nicolae, (qui mos tuus est), laberis ad detrahendum. Equidem minime miror, si quando es in privatos dicatior, c.u.m in ipsos principes tam facile inveharis, et tamen nullius injuria, aut vitae contumelia facit, ut tam sis promptus, aut copiosus in eorum objurgationem. Novi nonnullos qui abs te excipi deberent ab reliquorum caterva viri docti, egregii, omnique laude et commendatione dignissimi. Unde mec.u.m saepius cogitans addubitare cogor quaenam sit potissimum causa, cur in vituperando sis quam, &c." (Pog. Op. p. 394)

We who live in these days and know how exemplary, as a rule, for piety and excellent conduct, are Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and, in fact, the clergy in the Church of Rome, as well as the dignitaries and pastors in all the other ecclesiastical establishments of Europe, and who, at the same time, honour and admire crowned heads and princes, ministers and great men for their position and virtues, cannot realize to ourselves how there ever could have been such hatefully contemptible personages in the sovereign and loftiest places as are depicted in the Annals, page after page, nor can we bring ourselves to believe that there ever existed such a bevy of brilliant malefactors, except in the judgment and fancy of one who did not s.h.i.+ne among the most amiable of mankind as he, certainly, shone among the most able.

CHAPTER III.

FURTHER PROOFS OF FORGERY.

I. "Octavia.n.u.s" as the name of Augustus Caesar.--II. c.u.ma.n.u.s and Felix as joint governors of Judaea.--III. The blood relations.h.i.+p of Italians and Romans.--IV. Fatal error in the _oratio obliqua_.--V. Mistake made about "locus".--VI. Objections of some critics to the language of Tacitus examined.--VII. Some improprieties that occur in the Annals found also in Bracciolini's works.--VIII. Instanced in (_a_) "nec ... aut", (_b_) rhyming and the peculiar use of "pariter".--IX. The harmony of Tacitus and the ruggedness of Bracciolini ill.u.s.trated.--X. Other peculiarities of Bracciolini's not shared by Tacitus: Two words terminating alike following two others with like terminations; prefixes that have no meaning; and playing on a single letter for alliterative purposes.

I. If there be one man more than another who might easily fall into the error of supposing that an ancient Roman could take in the most capricious and arbitrary way any name he pleased, Flavius, or Julius, or Pius, it would be a man like Bracciolini, who, as Secretary of the Popes for forty years, was in the habit of seeing every now and then, and that, too, at very brief intervals, a Cardinal, on being raised to the dignity of the Papacy, take any name from whim or fancy, and, sometimes a very queer name, too, as a Cossa taking the name of John, or a Colonna the name of Martin. This being admitted, it seems quite consistent that Bracciolini should speak of Augustus Caesar, before he was Emperor, as "Octavia.n.u.s." When we read in the XIIIth book of the Annals (6), "imperatori" (Bracciolini's word for "General,"

Tacitus would have written "duci"), "quantum ad robur deesse, c.u.m octavo decimo aetatis anno Cneius Pompeius, nono decimo Caesar OCTAVIa.n.u.s civilia bella sustinuerint, we may be a.s.sured that we are reading words which were not written by Tacitus, and, as for the matter of that, any Roman, because he would have known that Augustus Caesar, before he was called Augustus, did not bear and never could have borne, the name of Octavia.n.u.s: the son of Octavius, he was himself Octavius, not Octavia.n.u.s, as his sister was Octavia (so Pliny the Elder writes, "Marcellus _Octavia_"

not Octaviana, "sorore Augusti genitus" N.H. XIX. 6, 1.) Shakespeare knew better than Bracciolini the name of Augustus, before he was Emperor, by making Antony say to him:

"And now, _Octavius_, Listen great things."

_Julius Caesar_, Act IV. sc. 1.

Whenever we find a Roman's name ending in "_ia.n.u.s_," we know one of three things: either that he had taken his name from his wife who was an heiress, as Domitia.n.u.s; or that he was the eldest son of a man who had taken his mother's name, which he was himself allowed to a.s.sume by the marriage contract, as t.i.tus Vespasia.n.u.s; or, when we find a repet.i.tion of the same name ending in "ius" and "ia.n.u.s," as "Aemilius Aemilia.n.u.s," or in "ia.n.u.s" and "ius" as "Licinia.n.u.s Licinius," we know that the individual was of the Aemilian or Licinian family, and had married the heiress of another great Roman house. This was the rule among that ancient people, unless I have been misled by Father Hardouin (See Harduinus. Praef. ad Histor. August. ex Nummis Antiq. Opera Sel.

p. 683). The termination, then, "ia.n.u.s," always indicated marriage with an heiress, just as such a marriage among ourselves is heraldically marked by the husband and wife's coats of arms being placed alongside of each other; and just as we never depart from this custom in escutcheons, so the Romans never varied their rule with respect to such names; then as Augustus Caesar neither married an heiress, nor was the eldest son of a man who had formed such a marriage; and as this custom of changing the termination of the name was familiar to all the Romans,--if not to every ignorant or ill-bred man, at least, to every well-informed, well-bred man among them,--it follows as clearly, as that 2 and 2 make 4, that Tacitus, the high-born gentleman and consul, could never have written Caesar _Octavia.n.u.s_.

I am exceedingly sorry to have made these remarks for the sake of the writers of cla.s.sical biographies, whose reputation is at stake, for one and all, from Lempriere to Dr. William Smith, mislead those who consult their pages as to the names of Augustus, among which figures "Octavia.n.u.s"; this is their own fault; they will persist in regarding the Annals as the best and most authentic history we have of the ancient Romans during the period embraced in its records; they reject all other testimony, when all other testimony is far more reliable.

I also grieve very much for the authorities of the British Museum on account of the inscription they have had graved in the Roman Gallery of Antiquities under the bust numbered 3 which represents Augustus in his youth,--"_Octavia.n.u.s_ Caesar Augustus"; I have been compelled to point out this error in examining a work given out as the production of the ancient Roman, Caius Cornelius Tacitus, when it is the glaring forgery of a bungling mediaeval European "grammaticus," that bungling mediaeval European "grammaticus" being (as I am showing, and the reader is, I trust, becoming more and more convinced as he proceeds) no other than Poggio Bracciolini.

II. I am also extremely sorry for Dr. Adam Clarke that his accuracy in research and his extensive and extraordinary learning, which have hitherto been indisputable, should be now called in question; but they are jeoparded: in his valuable Commentary on the Bible, he says in one of his notes to the Acts of the Apostles (Ch. XXIV. v. 10): "c.u.ma.n.u.s and Felix were, for a time, joint governors of Judaea; but, after the condemnation of c.u.ma.n.u.s, the government fell entirely into the hands of Felix";--this is not history. In the first place, c.u.ma.n.u.s and Felix were never joint governors of Judaea; in the second place, when c.u.ma.n.u.s was punished, his government did not "fall" to Felix; Felix succeeded, for Felix was appointed to it. Dr. Clarke could have made this statement on no other authority than that of Bracciolini, who in the 54th chapter of the XIIth book of the Annals, says that Judaea was under the government of c.u.ma.n.u.s conjointly with Felix, the province being so divided that c.u.ma.n.u.s was governor of Galilee and Felix of Samaria:--"Ventidio c.u.mano, _cui pars provinciae habebatur_: ita divisis, ut huic Galilaeorum natio; Felici Samaritae parerent" (An. XII. 54). Justus Lipsius was rather startled at the number of mistakes he found in those words: in addition to Felix and c.u.ma.n.u.s never being joint governors, Judaea was not a divided province, and c.u.ma.n.u.s was, certainly, governor over the Samaritans, as may be seen by reference to Josephus, who can always be relied upon, for what Julius Caesar Scaliger, one of the most learned and famous men of the sixteenth century, said of him everybody knows, from Whiston (quoting it from Bishop Porteus), placing it at the commencement of his admirable popular translation of the Hebrew historian, that "he deserved more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together." Well, Josephus, who "deserved more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together," says that a disturbance broke out between the Jews and the Samaritans, whereupon "the former burnt and plundered the villages of the latter, and when what had been done reached c.u.ma.n.u.s, he _armed the Samaritans_ and marched against the Jews,"

clearly showing that by "arming the Samaritans," he was governor of Samaria, and not Felix:--[Greek: Komas tinas ton Samareon empraesantes diarpazousi. Koumanos de, taes praxeos eis auton aphikomenaes ... tous Samareitas kathoplisas, exaelthen epi tous Ioudaious] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 6). Having said this in his "Antiquities of the Jews", Josephus more distinctly says in his "Wars of the Jews"

that the Emperor Claudius banished c.u.ma.n.u.s, "after which he sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to be the governor of Judaea, Galilee, Samaria and Peraea": [Greek: meta tauta Ioudaias men epitropon Phaelika ton Pallantos adelphon ekpempei, taes te Galilaias kai Samareias kai Peraias] (De Bello Jud. II. 12. 8).

Cardinal Baronius, in one of the forty folio volumes of his "Annales Ecclesiastici" (A.C. 50. Tom I. p. 355), has fallen exactly into the same mistake as Dr. Adam Clarke, and, from the very same cause, placing implicit confidence in what is stated in the Annals. He says that "the same Josephus is, nevertheless, guilty of an evident mistake when he a.s.serts that c.u.ma.n.u.s was convicted in Rome, and that Claudius thence sent to Judaea the brother of his freedman Pallas,--Felix; for Felix was sent along with c.u.ma.n.u.s to that province, which was so divided between them, that Felix ruled Samaria, but c.u.ma.n.u.s the remainder of the province":--"Sed patentis erroris nihilominus idem Josephus arguitur, dum ait esse d.a.m.natum Romae c.u.manum ac inde Claudium Felicem Pallantis liberti Claudii Augusti germanum missum esse in Judaeam. Nam Felix simul c.u.m c.u.mano in eam provinciam missus est, sic ea inter eos divisa, ut Felix Samariam administraret, c.u.ma.n.u.s vero reliquam provinciae partem."

Another Cardinal, Noris, who has the credit of being one of the most accurate and learned antiquaries, chronologists and historians of his age (the close of the seventeenth century), for Zedler says of him (_sub vocibus_, "Heinrich Noris"), that he was "einer der gelehrtesten Leute seiner Zeit, ein vollkommener Antiquarius, Chronologus und Historicus," maintains, in his Commentary on the Two Monumental Stones erected at Pisa in honour of the two grandsons of the Emperor Augustus, ("Cenotaphia Pisana",) that Cardinal Baronius was wrong when he made that statement on the authority of the Jewish historian, because "Josephus has nowhere said that Felix was sent from Rome as the successor of c.u.ma.n.u.s, but on the contrary, as may be clearly gathered from the 11th," (it should be the 12th) "chapter of his second book of the war, for that immediately after he has spoken of the condemnation of c.u.ma.n.u.s by the Emperor Claudius, he says that that Emperor 'sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to the Jews, to administer their country along with Samaria and Galilee, while he transferred Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government, giving him the province also which had been Felix's': now that was Trachonitis, Bethanea and Gaulanitis: therefore Felix, before the condemnation of c.u.ma.n.u.s, was placed over Judaea, having been the governor, according to Josephus, of that part of Galilee which lay between the river Jordan and the hills of Coelesyria and Philadelphia; and, consequently, he did not go to Judaea from Rome, as that learned man wrongly ascribes to Josephus, but from Galilee beyond the Jordan":--"Verum Josephus nusquam dixit Felicem Roma missum c.u.mano successorem, immo aperte ex lib. 2. belli cap.

11 oppositum colligitur; siquidem c.u.m dixisset c.u.manum Romae d.a.m.natum a Claudio Imperatore, statim ait:--'Post haec Felicem Pallantis fratrem misit ad Judaeos, qui eorum provinciam c.u.m Samaria et Galilaea curaret. Agrippam vero de Chalcide in regnum majus transtulit, tradens ei illam quoque provinciam, quae Felicis fuisset.' Erat autem ista Trachonitis, Bethanea, Gaulanitis.

Igitur Felix, antequam d.a.m.nato c.u.mano, Judaeae imponeretur, Galilaeam transamnanam quae Jordane ac montibus Coelesyriae, ac Philadelphiae includitur, auctore Josepho, regebat; ac proinde in Judaeam non ex Urbe, ut minus recte vir eruditus Josepho imponit, sed ex Galilaea transamnana advenit." (Cenotaphia Pisana. Diss.

sec. p. 333 ed. Ven. 1681.)

Of course, if Josephus wrote thus, the whole matter is settled; Felix was governor with c.u.ma.n.u.s, for the province over which he had ruled, Peraea, or Galilee to the eastward of the Jordan, was transferred to Agrippa: but "litera scripta manet:" on turning to Josephus it is found that it was Philip, and not Felix, who held the country that was given to Agrippa:--"And he" (the Emperor Claudius) "transfers Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government, by giving him the tetrachy that had been PHILIP'S":--[Greek: ek de taes Chalkidos Agrippan ein meizona Basileian metat.i.thaesi, dous auto taen te PHILIPPOI genomenaen tetrarchian.] (De Bello Jud. II. 12).