A FEW REASONS FOR BELIEVING THE ANNALS TO BE A FORGERY.
I. The fifteenth century an age of imposture, shown in the
invention of printing.--II. The curious discovery of the first six
books of the Annals.--III. The blunders it has in common with all
forged documents.--IV. The Twelve Tables.--V. The Speech of
Claudius in the Eleventh Book of the Annals.--VI. Brutus creating
the second class of nobility.--VII. Camillus and his grandson.--
VIII. The Marching of Germanicus.--IX. Description of London in
the time of Nero.--X. Labeo Antistius and Capito Ateius; the
number of people executed for their attachment to Sejanus; and the
marriage of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, to the Elder Antonia.
I. I have now so far cleared the way as to be in a fair position
to enter with feasibleness into an investigation of the Annals,
with the view of proving that it was not written by Tacitus.
In beginning the investigation, I shall proceed on the assumption
that it is a modern forgery of the fifteenth century, having as
grounds for this assumption that it was the age when the original
MSS. containing the work were discovered; that the existence of
those MSS. cannot be traced farther than that century; that (which
is of vast consequence in an inquiry of this description) it was
an age of imposture; of credulity so immoderate that people were
easily imposed upon, believing, as they did, without sufficient
evidence, or on slight evidence, or no evidence at all, whatever
was foisted upon them; when, too, the love of lucre was such that
for money men willingly forewent the reputation that is the
accompaniment of the grandest achievements of the intellect. Take,
for example, the noble art of printing; for inventing it any man
of genius might reasonably be proud. His name, if known, would be
emblazoned on the scroll of imperishable fame; be displayed for
ever on the highest pyramid of mind; and his country would receive
an additional beam of splendor to its previous blaze of renown.
But who, for a certainty, knows the inventor of printing? or the
country of its origin? Was it Holland in the person of Coster of
Haarlem? Or Germany in the person of Mentel, the nobleman, of
Strasburg? Or Guttenberg, the goldsmith, of Mayence? Was it
neither of these countries? or none of these men? And why this
uncertainty? Because a few men possessing the secret, which they
kept cautiously to themselves, of printing by means of movable
blocks of wood, preferred accumulating enormous sums, equivalent
to fair fortunes, by receiving five, six and even between seven
and eight hundred gold sequins from a King of France or a Pope of
Rome, a Cardinal or an Archbishop, for a bible, which, printed,
was passed off as written. We all know how the whole imposture
exploded, by the King of France and the Archbishop of Paris
comparing the bibles which they had bought of Faust during his
stay at the Soleil d'Or in the Rue St. Jacques, Paris. Each
thought his bible so superb that the whole world could not produce
such another for beauty,--the books being fine vellum copies of
what are now known as the Mazarin Bible;--and what was their
amazement on discovering, after a very close comparison, that
everything was exactly alike in the two copies,--the flower-pieces
in gold, green and blue, with grouped and single birds amid
tendrils and leaves, the illuminated letters at the beginning of
books with variegated embellishments and brilliant hues of scarlet
and azure, the crimson initials to each chapter and sentence,
along with astonishing and incomprehensible conformity in letters,
words, pagination and lines on every page.
II. The temptation was great to palm off literary forgeries,
especially of the chief writers of antiquity, on account of the
Popes, in their efforts to revive learning, giving money rewards
and indulgences to those who should procure MS. copies of any of
the ancient Greek or Roman authors. Manuscripts turned up, as if
by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries,
obscure as well as famous; from the most out-of-the-way places,--
the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History
of Velleius Paterculus; or from garrets, where they had been
contending with cobwebs and dust, as the Poems of Catullus. So
long as the work had an appearance of high antiquity, it passed
muster as an old classic; and no doubt could be entertained of its
genuineness, if, in addition to its ancient look, it was brought
in a fragmentary form. We have no history of the last six
fragmentary books of the Annals--at least, up to this time; though
I shall give it towards the end of this inquiry; but we are told
all about the discovery of the fragmentary first six books by
Meibomius, the Westphalian historian, and Professor of Poetry and
History at Helmstädt at the close of the sixteenth century in his
Opuscula Historica Rerum Germianicarum, while telling the story of
the life of Witikind, the monk of the Abbey of Corvey; by Justus
Lipsius in note 34 to the second book of the Annals; by Brotier,
and other editors of Tacitus.
John de Medici, that magnificent Pope, had been scarcely elected
to the Pontifical chair by the title of Leo X. in the spring of
1513, when he caused it to be publicly made known that he would
increase the price of rewards given by his predecessors to persons
who procured new MS. copies of ancient Greek and Roman works. More
than a year, nearly two years elapsed; then his own "Thesaurum
Quaestor Pontificius"--"steward," "receiver," or "collector",--
Angelo Arcomboldi, brought to him a new MS. of the works of
Tacitus, with a most startling novelty--THE FIRST SIX (or, as then
divided, FIVE) BOOKS OF THE ANNALS! Everybody was amazed; and
everybody was extremely anxious to know where and how it had been
obtained. The story of Arcomboldi was that he had found the
stranger among the treasures on the well-stored shelves in the
Library of the Benedictine monastery on the banks of the Weser, at
Corvey, in Westphalia, long famed for the high culture of its
learned inmates. The MS. was given out as being of great
antiquity, traceable to, at the very least, the commencement of
the ninth century; for it was said to have belonged to one of the
most distinguished and accomplished scholars of the abbey,
Anschaire, whom Gregory IV. in the year 835 appointed his Legate
Apostolic in Denmark and Sweden, and who Christianized the whole
northern parts of Europe. The MS. was conned with care: it was
musty, discoloured and antique-looking; furthermore, it was of the
usual orthodox nature of recovered ancient MSS.--it was
fragmentary: the genius of Tacitus was believed to be detected in
the newly found books: 500 gold sequins were counted out from the
Papal Treasury to the greedy discoverer: at the expense of Leo,
the scholastic Philippo Beroaldi the Younger, who was Professor of
the learned languages in the University of Rome, and who wrote
Latin lyric poetry (in the opinion of Paulus Jovius) with the
elegance and correctness of Horace, superintended the text; the
celebrated Stephen Guilleret came all the way from Lorraine to
print it; and the "Historiarum Libri quinque nuper in Germaniâ
inventi" were ushered forth to the world in Rome _literis
rotundis_ on the first day of March, 1515. From that day to
this the imposture has slumbered; the counterfeit coin has passed
current, nobody having noticed the absence of the true ring of the
genuine metal.
III. The books of the Annals must not merely be assumed to be
forgeries; they must be proved to be so; for, if forgeries, they
cannot be as invulnerable as walls of adamant. It is nothing that
nobody has suspected they were forged;--nothing that the editors
and commentators, who, for the most part possessed of remarkable
perspicacity and discernment, have applied their minds to minute
revision and close examination of these books, have, after such
diligent attention never considered them to be spurious, but
belonging to the domain of true history;--nothing that they have
stood for close on four hundred years unchallenged, deceiving the
wisest and the most learned as well as the best and the most
experienced in matters of this description. The cause is obvious:
the forger fabricated with the decided determination of defying
detection. He did not rely upon his own sagacity alone: he called
in the assistance of two of his cleverest friends: three of the
astutest men in the most enlightened portion then of Europe,--
Italy,--sat in conclave over the matter for nearly three years,
deliberating in every possible way how to avoid suspicious
management and faulty performance: consequently, the forgery is
anything but plain and palpable; nay, it is wonderfully obscure
and monstrously difficult: nevertheless, like all forged
documents, it is bungled--ay, in spite of the pains taken to keep
free from bad and blundering work, it is, occasionally (as will be
seen in the present book, from this point until the close),
clumsily, awkwardly, grossly, ridiculously bungled.
In the last generation there was a famous trial for forgery in
Edinburgh. A number of documents, thirty-three, were impounded as
forged to obtain for the forger the title of a Scotch Earl and
domains covering many millions of acres,--a larger area of square
miles than were included in the whole united territories of the
now dethroned Dukes of Tuscany, Parma and Modena, or all the
possessions put together of the German Electors, Margraves and
Landgraves. In such a number of legal documents executed by one
man, and that man, too, a civilian, it was almost next to an
impossibility that there should not be a good deal of bungling.
One of the blunders was the King of Scotland giving away lands and
provinces that never belonged to Scotland, for they were lands and
provinces in New England; another was the name of Archbishop
Spottiswoode as witness to a document executed by King James I. at
Whitehall on the 7th of December, 1639, whereas Archbishop
Spottiswoode had been dead eleven days, his monument in
Westminster Abbey bearing as the date of his death, the 26th of
November in that year. So the author of the Annals, who, as will
be hereafter shown, lived in the fifteenth century, could not
possibly write many books of ancient Roman History without, every
now and then doing or saying something that was attended with
dreadful fatality to his fraud; for he could not write them
without palpable blunders; and some are so clumsy as to surpass
conception what bungling can do.
IV. He makes Tacitus commit an error about the contents of the
Twelve Tables, which is really as monstrous as if we could fancy
ourselves reading in the pages of a native historian of mark,
Hume, Henry, or Lingard, some blunder, into which a schoolboy
could not fall, about the contents of Magna Charta, the Bill of
Rights, the Declaration of Rights, or any other well known English
law, on which the constitution of the country is primarily
founded. In a work given out as written by Tacitus we are told
that the Twelve Tables first fixed interest for usury at an
"uncia," or twelfth part of an as per hundred asses per month, or
one per cent per annum:--"Primo Duodecim Tabulis sanctum 'ne quis
unciario foenore amplius exerceret,' cum antea ex libidine
locupletium agitaretur" (An. VI. 16). Into this error the Author
of the Annals must surely have been seduced by some shocking
mediaeval writer of ancient Roman history or antiquities, under
whose guidance he again falls into another mistake when ascribing
to tribunitian regulations the reduction of the interest to one-half
per cent. per annum, or the sixth part of an as per hundred
asses a month:--"dein rogatione tribuncia ad semuncias redacta"
(L. c.). The truth is that, in the year of Rome 398, a hundred and
four years after the Twelve Tables were composed,--the Tribunes
Duillius and Moenius passed the original law of interest at one
per cent: twelve years after,--in the year 410,--the interest was
reduced to one half per cent. under the consulate of Lucius
Manlius Torquatus and Caius Plautius;--as may be seen by referring
to the seventh book (16, 27) of Livy,--or still better, the clear
exposition of this error by Montesquieu in the 22nd chapter of the
22nd book of his "Esprit des Loix." The author of the Annals is
then only right when stating that originally the interest was one
per cent. per annum, and afterwards reduced to half that amount.
In everything else he blunders to an extent that is inexplicable
in an ancient Roman. Were any staunch upholder of the authenticity
of the Annals to be here called upon compulsorily to give a
reason, unprepared or premeditated, plausible or probable, why,
after this exposure of such an error, he still believed it
possible that the blunder could have been made by Tacitus, who
achieved a brilliant reputation as an historian writing truthfully
of his countrymen, as a lawyer practising successfully among them,
as a statesman filling with ability exalted offices, and thus
possessed such pledges for being admirably informed and
exceedingly cautious, he would be reluctantly forced to take
refuge in the quibbling of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff:
--"I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on
compulsion! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would
give no man a reason on compulsion, I!"
The Twelve Tables are most fatal for the author of the Annals;
they bring out his imposture so clearly to the broad glare of
noonday. Tacitus is made to place on record for the enlightenment
of posterity that, after those Tables were composed, his
countrymen ceased making just and equal laws, only occasionally
penal enactments; but more frequently, on account of the
differences between the two orders, decrees for attaining
illegitimate honours and for banishing distinguished citizens,
along with other sinister legislation:--"Compositae Duodecim
Tabulae, finis aequi juris; nam secutae leges, etsi aliquando in
maleficos ex delicto, saepius tamen dissensione ordinum, et
apiscendi illicitos honores, aut pellendi claros viros, aliaque ob
prava, per vim latae sunt" (III. 27). The statement is about as
contrary to fact as if an English historian were to assert that
after Charles I. assented to the Petition of Rights, there was an
end to all further enlargement in this country of the rights,
liberties and privileges of the subject,--the only laws passed
since then being for the repression of crime, the mitigation of
the penal code, and the establishment of religious equality;
because if we set aside all the laws that were passed by the
Romans for the bettering of their State after the year 449 before
our aera,--which is the date of the composition of the Twelve
Tables,--and look only at those which extended social equality, we
find enactments "aequi juris," such as the Lex Canuleia which
allowed the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians, and the
Leges Liciniae, which put both orders on a par in holding public
offices. It is clear that these laws never came to the knowledge
of the author of the Annals; and it is for the reader to decide
for himself whether he thinks it likely that a lawyer and
statesman of the stamp of Tacitus could have been ignorant of the
removal of these weighty and vexatious class inconveniences.
V. Had Tacitus written the Annals, he would have known more of the
speech which Claudius spake in the Senate (XI. 24), when the
inhabitants of Transalpine Gaul petitioned to be rendered eligible
to the highest offices of the State, than to direct the eloquence
of the Emperor in favour of all the extra-provincial Gauls in
general, and the Aedui in particular. From the way in which he
wrote harangues--that of Galgacus in his Agricola, for instance,
--he would have caught in his alembic the essence of the original,
and sublimated it; but he would not have placed before us an
offspring that does not reflect one feature of its parent. Yet
that is what the author of the Annals did with the speech of
Claudius: he fabricated that which bears not the faintest
resemblance to the original. If the assumption be considered as
true that he forged the Annals, he could not have done otherwise;
for when he was engaged in the business of forgery, the speech was
not in existence, it not being until 1528, more than a hundred
years after the Eleventh Book of the Annals was written by him,
and considerably over half a century after it was first printed in
Venice, that a copy of the speech of the Emperor Claudius, which
had long been lost, was found again buried within the earth at
Lyons, and as so discovered is still preserved, engraved on two
brass plates in the vestibule of the Town Hall of Lyons, a lasting
memento of the modern fabrication of the Annals.
VI. The author of the Annals ascribes to Brutus the creation of
the second class of nobility, which Brutus no more created than
(as Famianus Strada observes,) "Pythagoras originated the idea of
the transmigration of souls." The statement that "few were left of
the families to which Romulus gave the title, the 'gentes
majores,' or 'old clans,' and Lucius Brutus the 'gentes minores,'
or 'young clans'":--"paucis jam reliquis familiarum, quas Romulus
'majorum,' et Lucius Brutus 'minorum gentium' adpellaverant"
(XI.25):--could never have been written by a Roman; because, in the
first place, it was not Romulus who created the whole patrician
body known as the "majores gentes"; the only senators whom he
created were the "decuriones," or heads of the various "gentes" of
the united Romans and Sabines; to these Tullus Hostilius added the
most distinguished citizens of the Albans, when they were removed
to Rome in his reign;--and it was the united descendants of these
two sets of patricians who were called by subsequent generations
"patricii majorum gentium": in the second place, it was Tarquinius
Priscus who enlarged the patrician body by creating the 100
representatives of the Luceres, or Etruscans, senators, and it was
the descendants of these who were "called," by way of distinction
from the others, "patricii minorum gentium." The new sort of
nobility which originated with Brutus was a very different kind of
thing: the new eminence or dignity conferred on the senators
elected by Brutus was confined to themselves only, being strictly
personal and purely titular: until then Roman senators had been
styled simply "Patres," but from that time downwards they were
denominated "Patres CONSCRIPTI." No Roman could have been ignorant
of this; and if the author of the Annals did not know it, we ought
not to be too severe upon him, when we shall see afterwards that
he was a Florentine of the fifteenth century: then on account of
his having lived so many centuries after the events of which he
writes, it is quite excusable that he should fall into a state of
confusion with respect to this rather out of the way matter,
though into such a state of confusion no Roman could have fallen
on account of his intimate acquaintance with the outlines of his
constitution, the customs of his country, and the distinctions of
rank in native society.
VII. The author of the Annals takes the grandson of the great
dictator Camillus to have been his son, when he observes: "after
the illustrious recoverer of the city" (meaning Rome) "and his son
Camillus": "post illum reciperatorem urbis, filiumque ejus
Camillum," (II. 52). In that case what becomes of the exclamation
of Spartian in his Life of the Emperor Severus, when speaking of
great Romans who had no illustrious children: "What of Camillus?
For had he children like himself?" "Quid Camillus? Nam sui similes
liberos habuit?" Why, certainly, "he had children like himself,"
if Marcus Furius had been his son, and not his grandson; for he
was Consul and Dictator like the renowned and noble-minded Lucius
Furius. The mistake is easily accounted for in a modern European
writing Roman history from the famous Marcus Furius Camillus being
Consul only eleven years after his grandfather, which makes it
look as if it was the son who succeeded, and not the grandson. But
it cannot be explained in a Roman, who must have taken so much
pride in the second Romulus of his country as to have known all
about his family relations. The error is only comparable to the
extreme case of an Englishman being supposed to take such very
little interest in Queen Victoria as to mistake her for a daughter
of William IV.
VIII. To be called upon to believe that these blunders could have
been committed by Tacitus, is to ask one to believe that he, who
made no such mistakes in his History, ceased to write like a Roman
when composing the Annals. It is truly writing, not like an
ancient Roman, but a modern European, when in the first book of
the Annals Germanicus is represented consulting whether he will
take a short and well known road, or one untried and difficult,
though the reason is, that by going the longer, he would go the
unguarded way, and really do things quicker: "consultatque, ex
duobus itineribus breve et solitum sequatur, an impeditius et
intentatum, eoque hostibus incautum. Delecta longiore via, cetera
adcelerantur" (I. 50). Were it not for this passage, one would
have thought that, in the days of Tiberius, Germany was almost as
bare of roads as the present interior of Arabia and Chinese
Tartary; and that each tribe in that enormous wilderness of wood
and morass was approached, as the present people of Dahomey,
Ashantee and Timbucto, by a single path; and that it was only,
after the lapse of centuries, when, in the due course of things,
Germany had assumed a more civilised character, that there were
two, three, or more roads; so that we can quite understand it
being said of the Bavarian general, John de Werth, in the
seventeenth century, that he did this,--march out of the direct
way, which was watched, by another road, which was longer because
it was unguarded: thus pouncing on the enemy by night, and taking
them so by surprise that they fled in alarm, he gained a bloodless
victory, without the drawing of a sword from its scabbard. Any
advantage that a modern general would gain in this way was not
open to an ancient general, particularly when invading the country
of a people like the Germans, mere savages, who knew no more of
such arts of warfare, as guarding roads and sending out scouts,
than Red Indians, Maoris and Hottentots of the present time. Sir
Garnet Wolseley, making his way to Coomassie, as a crow would fly,
is just about the manner in which we may be sure that Germanicus
made his way into Germany--as straight as he could go. But
military history is not the forte of the author of the Annals. He
knew it and avoided it as much as he could,--very unlike Tacitus,
who, practically acquainted with military as well as civil
affairs, writes with an obvious liking, of combats and civil wars,
and, according to military authorities competent to pass an
opinion, shows everywhere familiarity with battles, marches,
management of armies and conduct of generals.
One cannot understand how Tacitus, whose youth was passed in a
camp, should not have known the whole minutiae about the Roman
army; and that he should, with respect to its ensigns, exhibit
extraordinary ignorance. The fact stood thus:--the legions had
"signa," or standards; the "socii," or allies, that is, the
Latins, had "vexilla," or flags; so, perhaps, had the Romans when
marching under arms to a new settlement, or "colony"; but,
certainly, soldiers raised in the provinces had no ensigns at all,
neither standards nor flags; yet in the first book of the Annals
we hear of some "maniples," or "infantry companies" of the legions
that had been raised in Pannonia, when the news reached them of
the breaking out of a mutiny in the camp, tearing to pieces their
_flags_: "manipuli ... postquam turbatum in castris accepere,
_vexilla_ convellunt" (I. 20). The mistake is similar to that
which would be made if any one among ourselves were to give
colours to our volunteers or standards to our yeomanry.
Here it may be noticed that the figures of speech of Tacitus are,
like those of most ancient Romans, chiefly military. To be of the
highest rank is, with him, "to lead the van,"--"primum pilum
ducere" (Hist. IV. 3), or to set about a thing, "to be girt" (as
with a sword),--"accingi" (Hist. IV. 79). The author of the
Annals, though borrowing the latter phrase, goes anywhere but to
the field of battle for his figures; he takes them mostly from the
ways of ordinary civil life, selecting his metaphors, now from the
trader's shop or the merchant's counting-house, as "ratio constat"
(An. I. 6), used when the debtor and creditor sides of an account
balance one another; now from seamen steering and tacking vessels,
or coachmen driving horses, as "verbis moderans" (An. VI. 2),
which Nipperdey says ought to be rendered, "touching-up and
reining-in his words, and driving only at this."
IX. When Julius Caesar came to this country, he found the Britons,
without an exception, thorough barbarians, the best of them living
in places that were fortified woods. The author of the Annals,
only a century after this wild state of things in the barbarism of
the inhabitants and the rudeness of their abodes, speaks of
London, in the reign of Nero, in the year 60, as if it were the
chief residence of merchants and their principal mart of trade in
the civilized world. If there be one thing certain, it is that
centuries after,--in the middle of the fourth,--the people of
London were only exporters of corn;--no certainty that they
carried on any other kind of commerce, except it might be doing a
little business in dogs, and slaves whom they captured from
neighbouring barbarians,--their imports being polished bits of
bone, toys and horse-collars. Progressing, rapidly under the
Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, and in the time of the
Plantagenets, they were in the fifteenth century a great and
wealthy people, illustrious for their commercial transactions,
dealing in every species of commodity, visited by merchants from
every part of Europe, and envied by the most flourishing
communities, such as the trading oligarchies of Italy. Any one
living at that time,--especially in Italy (where many
circumstances induce me to believe that the author or forger of
the "Annals of Tacitus" lived),--and hearing a great deal of the
wealth, greatness and immense antiquity of London, might easily
fall into this mistake, grievous in its enormity as it is. But any
one living about the time of Nero, as Tacitus did, could never
have described London in this flourishing state of commercial
greatness and prosperity. The chances are he never would have
heard of London; for that would be supposing in a Roman at the
close of the first or the commencement of the second century of
our aera a geographical knowledge more minute than that of the
President of the Royal Geographical Society, unless at the
haphazard mention of any particular village in the newly annexed
Fiji Islands, Sir Henry Rawlinson could enter into a correct
account of its chief characteristic. But if we are to go to the
extreme length of supposing that Tacitus had heard of London, he
would know that it was a place of no repute, utterly insignificant,
far inferior in importance to two now almost forgotten places in
Essex and Hertfordshire,--Maldon and St. Alban's,--called then
respectively Camelodunum and Verulamium,--the former being a
"colonia," and the latter a "municipium,"--London being a mere
"praefectura." It is then the height of absurdity to believe that
if Tacitus wrote the Annals we should have heard in that work London
spoken of as "remarkably celebrated for the multiplicity of its
merchants and its commodities": "copia negotiatorum et commeatuum
maxime celebre" (XIV. 33).
X. The author of the Annals pretends to know more about prominent
individuals in Rome than was known to their distinguished
contemporaneous countrymen. He writes of Labeo Antistius, as if
that jurisconsult were an example to the age in which he lived of
all the virtues and all goodness, and possessed, to a masterly
extent, accomplishments and acquirements; for thus he speaks of
him in conjunction with Capito Ateius: "Capito Ateius ...
principem in civitate locum studiis adsecutus--Labeonem Antistium,
iisdem artibus praecellentem ... namque illa aetas duo pacis
decora simul tulit; sed Labeo incorrupta libertate ...
celebratior" (An. III. 75). Horace, who was a contemporary of
Labeo's, says that he was a maniac, or, at any rate--"considered
very crazy in the company of the sane":--
"Labeone insanior inter
Sanos dicatur." (Sat. I. III. 82.)
Hitherto Horace by the side of "Tacitus" has been no better than a
clay pitcher by a porcelain vase; thus his disparaging, but,
doubtless, quite correct estimate of Labeo has been till now
altogether disregarded, in consequence of this passage in the
Annals, from its author being credited with having exceeded what
the ancient Romans had left us in the way of history.
So great is the repute of the Author of the Annals for supremacy
in the historian's art that Justus Lipsius places no faith
whatever in Suetonius when that, possibly, most veracious
historian records in his Life of Tiberius (61) the number of the
people who were executed for their attachment to Sejanus as
amounting to twenty; the universally applauded, and, generally
considered, most judicious Batavian critic of the sixteenth
century, without a manuscript or edition for his authority, alters
this number for One Thousand, because the author of the Annals
speaks of a "countless" mass of slain of all ranks, ages, and both
(he says "all") sexes, and further describes corpses as lying
about singly or piled up in heaps: "jacuit _immensa_ strages,
omnis sexus, omnis aetas, illustres, ignobiles, dispersi aut
aggerati" (VI. 19).
Hence, too, Dr. Nipperdey, in drawing up a table of the Augustan
family, in order to guard the reader against being perplexed by
the relationships of that house, treats the same Suetonius as of
no account when he says,--and Suetonius twice says it (Cal. I.,
Ner. 5),--that Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, married "the
younger Antonia." "In default of other evidence on the question of
fact," says the learned professor, "we must follow the better
author, Tacitus,"--the better author being the writer of the
Annals, who, on two occasions (I. 42; XII. 64), makes the "elder
Antonia" the wife of Drusus.
Examples of this description could be multiplied. But it is not
necessary to pursue this line of argument farther,--at least, at
present. What is required just now is not so much proof that the
author of the Annals did not write like the Romans, but that he
did not write like Tacitus, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts
he made to imitate him, and be mistaken for him by contemporaries
and posterity. To do this I must bring forward from the History
and the Annals an accumulation of coincidences, seeing that the
fabricator, being a most acute person, must have proceeded upon
the same principle as a man who forges a cheque upon a banker, and
who, in the prosecution of his design, endeavours to imitate, as
closely as he can, the handwriting of his victim, and do
everything carefully enough to escape immediate detection,
whatever may afterwards ensue.