SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER OF THE ANNALS FROM THE POINT OF TREATMENT.
I. Nature of the history.--II. Arrangement of the narrative.--
III. Completeness in form.--IV. Incongruities, contradictions and
disagreements from the History of Tacitus.--V. Craftiness of the
writer.--VI. Subordination of history to biography.--VII. The
author of the Annals and Tacitus differently illustrate Roman
history.--VIII. Characters and events corresponding to characters
and events of the XVth century.--IX. Greatness of the Author of
the Annals.
I. Before proceeding to point out the imitations, and show where,
in the efforts to write, and make history after the likeness of
Tacitus, the author of the Annals fails; and, from the signal
nature of his failures, his efforts are seen to be counterfeit, I
may observe that a constant endeavour on his part to escape
detection renders his imposture difficult to perceive and still
more difficult to expose. A man of his penetration and power to
enter far into subjects was, of course, deep enough to contrive
every species of artifice to conceal his fraud; and as we have no
record of his having been seen in the act of fabrication, or of
his ever having been even suspected of so doing, I must prove the
forgery by a detail of facts and circumstances. I can do this only
by going through the Annals minutely,--examining the matter,
manner, treatment, knowledge, views, sentiments, language, style,
--in fact, a variety of circumstances,--everything that can be
thought of;--for if it really be a forgery, it cannot be exactly
like the History of Tacitus in any one thing, whatever that one
thing be;--then I shall leave the reader to himself, to take into
account the whole of the circumstances, and judge whether such a
combination could have existed in a genuine work by Tacitus, and
is compatible with such a production.
We are to look, first, what the nature of the history purports to
be;--whether there is nothing peculiar as to its character.
It will be obvious to the least sagacious that the most paramount
and absolutely necessary thing to be accomplished was a vast and
comprehensive execution that should correspond to the vast and
comprehensive execution of Tacitus. Here was something to be done
seemingly insuperable; for how can any one hope to imitate the
execution of another, with such marvellous nicety that no
distinction can be discerned between the two on the minutest test
of microscopic investigation? more especially if the execution to
be imitated be that of a man of real genius, consequently
unparalleled in its way, of a mighty nature, and, in addition to
its mightiness, a thing of the purest individuality. Now, the
History of Tacitus is an execution of this description; it is a
work of real genius; therefore, it is a distinct essence,--a
realization of all the special aptitude possessed by the master-spirit
that penned it. But though this cannot be done, yet any one
having genius,--and a powerful genius,--by following its bent
directly, may expect to exhibit in the execution of a work an
ability that shall be considered equal to the ability displayed in
the execution of another, even though that other be a man of great
genius; but it can only be upon this very sage precaution,--that
he exercises his ability, which must necessarily be of a very
different kind, in quite a different manner. The forger of the
Annals had much too acute a discernment not to know this;--he was
also well aware that he had a very strong forte. We know the
department in which he excelled,--dealing with despotism,
servility and bloodshed. But then, if he was to do this, he would
do that, which would be a very strong proof that his work was a
forgery; for if he was to do this, he could not take up the
continuance of history as Tacitus intended to go on with it
namely, with Nerva and Trajan;--that he could not do, because in
dealing with those two rulers he would have to deal with men
remarkable for mildness, generosity, leniency and good-
heartedness;--thus he would have to deal with a subject which must
be fatal to his attempt; for it would be opposed to the play of
his peculiar gifts, which to be brought out properly required that
he should write only of Emperors noted for cruel, unnatural,
blood-thirsty tyranny. The plan of his undertaking, to be attended
with success, therefore compelled him, whether he liked it or not,
to go back to Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
II. This must have been greatly against his will as a forger,
because this difficulty must have risen up before his mental
vision in colossal magnitude--that nobody, on careful
consideration, could admit that Tacitus would have written the
narrative of the half-century from the death of Augustus to the
accession of Galba, after what he says at the commencement of his
History, that the subject next to engage his attention would be
the events that happened in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. This,
I repeat, is a point that brings forcibly before us the certainty
of the Annals being forged, unless any one can believe with
Niebuhr that, if Tacitus completed his History before the death of
Trajan, and could not write of that Emperor as long as that
Emperor lived, but "feeling a void," and "desiring to produce
another work," he resumed History with the rule of Tiberius; but
nobody can believe this, because it gets us into this enormous,
nay, inexplicable difficulty--Why the writer, who, in the History,
had shown an epic construction, with an epic opening and an epic
story, should observe in the Annals quite another arrangement, and
distribute the narrative in a studiously annalistic form? when,
too, the disjointed record of the journalist was to be combined
with the distinct arrangement of the historian who took the
continued transactions of a nation in their multiplicity of
details as they occurred at the same time in different places, and
related them in clear and due unity in the subject.
III. Out of this variance in the two works arises another
tremendous difficulty which we have to look at:--The Annals and
the History are intended, the one to be the complement to the
other. Then two works, which are necessary to each other, ought to
be, when separated, incomplete: if one man wrote them they would
be incomplete when separated; but if two men wrote them, they
would be complete in themselves. Now, are the History and the
Annals incomplete, when separated? or complete in themselves?
Everybody acknowledges that they are complete in themselves; each
contains everything requisite for the full understanding and
enjoyment of each; each has its peculiar force; each its distinct
beauty; and for uniformity to exist in the two many passages in
both must be destroyed; and the most ingenious can give no just or
adequate cause for the destruction of the passages, even as he can
give no just or adequate cause for their existence, except that
which I am advancing that it was because two men wrote the two
works.
IV. This accounts at once for all the incongruities they owe their
existence naturally enough to the following simple causes:--the
different kinds of information possessed as well as the different
views of things entertained by two different individuals; and,
along with these, an occasional failing of the memory; for a man,
who forges such a very long work as the Annals, must every now and
then forget,--however tenacious his memory may be,--what the man,
whom he simulates, has said, here and there, in this or that work,
upon some minor point in Roman history, not associated with nor
essential to the principal thing he has always to keep steadily in
mind,--his main matter. Thus we find no end of little trips in the
Annals, many of which we will point out in their proper places as
we proceed with this investigation: at present it is sufficient
for the illustration of our remark to call the reader's attention
to this fact:--In the Annals Augustus is represented having as his
successors in the first degree Tiberius and Livia; in the second
degree his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and in the third
degree the leading nobles, including even some of those whom he
hated, such, we may presume, as Labeo, his detractor, Gallus
Asinius, who was thirsting for empire, and Lucius Arruntius, who
would have made the attempt to unseat him had the opportunity
presented itself:--"Tiberium et Liviam haeredes habuit ... in
spem secundam, nepotes pronepotesque: tertio gradu primores
civitatis scripserat, plerosque invisos sibi, sed jactantia
gloriaque ad posteros" (An. I. 8). Such an account of Augustus
adopting these relations, and, after them, strangers and enemies,
"out of vain-glory and for future renown,"--that is, to be admired
by posterity for an unexampled display of humanity,--could not
have been written by Tacitus, being different in every respect
from what he relates,--and what he says, by the way, is also said
by Suetonius,--that Augustus, looking for a successor in his own
family, placed next to himself in dignity, so as to be prepared to
be his successor, his nephew, Marcellus, then his son-in-law,
Agrippa, next his grandsons, and lastly, his step-son, Tiberius
Nero:--"divi Augusti, qui sororis filium, Marcellum, dein generum,
Agrippam, mox nepotes suos, postremo Tiberium Neronem, privignum,
in proximo sibi fastigio collocavit" (Hist. I. 15).
Such disagreements, due,--in all probability, more than to
anything else,--to the occasional failure of the memory,--are
sufficient in themselves to prove that the Annals and the History
did not proceed from the same source. Accordingly, the man who
forged the Annals, having apparently, this overwhelming and
troublesome difficulty ever uppermost in his mind, seems to have
taken measures for guarding against it as well as he could, and
with as much care as he could. This taking precautions against the
failure of memory must have been one of the main reasons, why he
elected writing of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when, as
Tacitus, he ought to have written of Nerva and Trajan. He was thus
enabled to relate a series of events prior to, and entirely
different from the series of events related by Tacitus; there was
thereby no possibility of his narrative clashing with that of his
archetype; the most trying difficulties were in this way got over
with sufficient ease; the only danger was with regard to a few
individuals who lived during the two periods, and a few facts,
that trailed their circumstances from one period into the other;
but his main history would have nothing in common with the main
history of Tacitus.
V. To borrow a phrase of Gualterius--he ran the risk of "falling
into Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis":
"Incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charybdin."
How could he convince the world that Tacitus would act with such
twofold inconsistency as to write of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius
and Nero, when he had said that he would not do so, on account of
the number of writers who had recorded the occurrences of their
reigns, and that if he resumed the duties of an historian it would
be with the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. The world,--and nobody
knew it better than the author of the Annals,--is easily
convinced; and there is no inconsistency, however monstrous, that
it considers unaccountable. He, therefore, set about the task of
convincing the world that Tacitus did this. Acting up to his own
maxim, that "the way to get out of disgraceful acts that are
evident is by audaciousness": "flagitiis manifestis subsidium ab
audacia petendum" (An. XI. 26), he resorted to audacity in a
trick, which has been hitherto eminently successful,--making the
world believe from a single remark which he introduced into his
narrative as the double of Tacitus, that that noble Roman was
really guilty of this twofold inconsistency, so that
changeableness, unsteadiness of purpose and self-contradiction
should seem to be his leading characteristics. Without ever
intending to write the history of Augustus,--or he never would
have begun the Annals with an introduction in which he epitomizes
principal events in the Roman State from its very foundation,
otherwise what had he left to himself in a subsequent historical
composition of a prior date for an appropriate exordium,--he says
in his third book that he would make the memorable events in the
reign of Augustus the subject of a new history, should his health
and life continue:--"cetera illius aetatis memorabo, si plures ad
curas vitam produxero" (An. III. 24)--evidently only because
Tacitus had said at the commencement of his History, that he had
reserved as the employment of his old age, should his life be long
enough, the reigns of Nerva and Trajan:--"quod si vita suppeditet,
principatum Divi Nervae et imperium Trajani ... senectuti seposui"
(Hist. I. 1). There was then one and the same man saying in one
place:--"I am going to write the History of Augustus when I am an
old man;"--(and this being said in the Annals, the author of that
book must have wanted the world to presume that the writer would
have chosen the form of biography for it):--and in another place:
"I am going to write the history of Nerva and Trajan when I am an
old man"; (and this being said in the History, the author of the
Annals must have supposed that the world might presume that the
writer would have chosen the form of history for this continued
production).
The author of the Annals having done this, opened out before himself
the very widest field for indulging in all sorts of contradictions;
for, after this, who would not be, and who is not, prepared for any
contradictions? The contradictions come; and they are strange and
numerous.
VI. There is a systematic subordination of history to biography
throughout the Annals, in which imperial events are sacrificed to
the prominence and effect of individual delineations: in the
History there is a general, comprehensive review of the Empire at
the time of Nero's death; Rome is the centre, and the subject
matter the condition of a people affected by the imperial system
of government. The History conveys political instruction; the
Annals supplies materials for studying the human mind and the
motives of human conduct: in imparting a knowledge of events
respecting the Roman nation, the writer of the History, who is
gifted with graphic power, places _images_ before us, whereas
the writer of the Annals, aware that in picturesqueness he was
inferior to Tacitus, gives us _impressions_, while he investigates
social phenomena and elucidates the principles of human nature.
One work is historic, the other philosophic. One man generalizes,
the other particularizes. We are presented with one set of
interests in the History, with another set in the Annals.
In the History we see the struggles of an empire and the
convulsions of the world; in the Annals we are shut out from such
a prospect, to have our view limited to the deeds of one or two
emperors, and a few renowned individuals.
VII. Such differences, so striking and so essential, prove the
Annals to be a forged book; for all these differences in the two
works can only be ascribed to the entirely different turns of mind
peculiar to two writers. Tacitus wrote as he did, from having a
profounder knowledge of the springs of action in the political
world than the author of the Annals. The author of the Annals,
surpassing Tacitus with respect to the moral world, wrote as he
did, from knowing better the motives that influence men's minds,
and the passions that sway their hearts. The result of two such
very different men composing two such very different works, is,
that the contrast is almost as great when we turn from the History
to the Annals, as when we turn from a general history of England
by a Hume or a Lingard where we notice the origin of Englishmen's
liberties and privileges, the chivalrous scenes of the past and
the proud glories of the present, to the local record of some
county, as Kent or Lancashire, by a Hasted or a Baines, embodying
information of boroughs and parishes, town councils and
corporations, where such things become of substantial importance
as the clauses of charters, the collection of market dues,
donations of maces and drinking cups to mayors, and gold or silver
cradles to their ladies on the birth of babies during the year of
office.
If the Annals is really to be considered a forgery, this, instead
of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be
expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be
suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the
curious inquirer into a research of the present description would
thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to
discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and
conviction of others, the incompatibility of the workings of one
spirit in one book with the workings of the other spirit in the
other book, when the two compositions were so differently
contrived. But if the Annals is to be considered as genuine, then
nobody can explain why the same individual should illustrate Roman
history in this singular fashion,--both works being designed, as
universally admitted, the one to be a complement to the other.
What should be the inducement of the author of the Annals if he
did not wish the world to deny that it was his handiwork to write
his book so very differently from the History of Tacitus? For what
was there in the times of Rome under Galba, Otho, Vitellius and
Vespasian so very different from what the Roman Empire was under
their immediate predecessors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and
Nero, that the part which has to do with events in the days of the
first-named four emperors should treat of imperial transactions
and be deficient in many of the memorials which claim notice in
the part dealing with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero; and,
that the part which has to do with events in the times of the
last-named four emperors should all but avoid what is amply
recorded in the part, dealing with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and
Vespasian, imperial occurrences finding but an occasional and
almost accidental notice in the Annals, where the mind is
encumbered with the minutiae of circumstantial details of
individual deeds.
VIII. The author of the Annals, who (as I shall convincingly show
hereafter) lived in the XVth century, seems, on account of that,
to have had a still stronger reason than those just given for
selecting as his subject the half century after the death of
Augustus: its characters and events corresponded closely to the
characters of the princes who ruled, and the nature of the
movements that were going on all over Europe in his time; for in
forging history, that was to pass as written by Tacitus, it was
incumbent that he should have the same advantage as the Roman,--be
on the same level with him in the occupation of ground. Now, the
ground occupied by Tacitus was the time of himself, which enabled
him to give a complete and copious reflex of a period through
which he had lived with thoughtful attention. Thus his colours are
bright. Unless antiquity supplied the author of the Annals only
the framework of his picture, and the events of the time when he
lived gave the scenes for the painting, his colours would fail,
and his outlines become unsteady. In other words, there could not
be the scrupulous minuteness and the perfect freedom which make
history live and breathe, unless, like Tacitus, he registered
facts in which he took the deepest interest, from feeling their
influence directly and powerfully exerted over himself, and the
living and loved around him. Thus his hand, by being guided as the
hand of Tacitus, would throw life into his work. And, truly, there
is as much life in the Annals as in the History; but, instead of
the air of the first century breathing around it, it is the air of
the fifteenth.
This can be tested by many a character; one will suffice, that of
Caius Piso in the fifteenth book (48). Pliny and Juvenal tell us
that Piso was consul suffectus under Claudius: the Tabulae Arvales
add that he was a member of the College of Twelve who offered
sacrifice when there was increase in the produce of the soil.
Writers and records of antiquity say no more of Caius Piso, not
even mentioning the name of his father. On such a little known man
a forger of Roman history could safely expatiate; the author of
the Annals does so in a portraiture that bears the stamp of the
fifteenth century: this is particularly observable when Piso is
spoken of as "of brilliant repute among the populace for virtues,"
or, rather, "qualities that wore the form of virtues,"--"species
virtutibus similes";--that he was "far from being morosely moral,
or restrained by moderation in pleasures; mild in temper and soft
in manners; given to pompous show and occasionally steeping
himself in luxurious excesses,"--"procul gravitas morum, aut
voluptatum parsimonia: lenitati ac magnificentiae et aliquando
luxui indulgebat." This does not appear to be at all applicable to
the character of any conspicuous personage belonging to the Roman
Empire in the first century, when Romans were warriors still,
preserving, amid some effeminacy, much of the hardy vigour of
their Republican predecessors, ever and anon throwing aside the
toga for the sagum, and rushing from the Forum to the field, to
battle with ferocious and demi-nude savages, whom ever subduing
they carried home captives chained to their triumphal chariots;
but it does seem to be uncommonly applicable to a time when many a
priest, whose writings manifest a lax habit of thinking and betray
a levity, indeed, licentiousness, ill according with a religious
turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the
Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind. As
that was an age when Alexander VI. was a Pope, and Lucretia Borgia
the daughter of a Pontiff and consort of a reigning Duke of Italy,
we can readily credit the author of the Annals, and laud him for
admirable, life-like portraiture, when he says that a character
and conduct, such as Piso's, "met with the approbation of a large
number of people, who, indulging in vice as delightful, did not
want at the head of affairs a strict practiser of the moral duties
and an austere abstainer from vice:"--"pluribus probabatur, qui in
tanta vitiorum dulcedine summum imperium non restrictum nec
perseverum volunt."
The character is too vague in its outlines to be any particular
individual's; but as all its points fit many an Italian priest who
became a Cardinal or a Bishop and a chief minister to a prince, in
the time of the Renaissance, as well as in the period immediately
before it, and that immediately after it,--it shows how men
reflect the age they live in,--how the principal biographies in
any certain time convey a pretty accurate idea of the tone of mind
then prevailing; further, and above all, it shows to what a great
degree the books of the Annals reflect the chief features of the
period when they were written, and how deeply their author enters
into the spirit of his age.
As with characters so with events. Heaps of passages in the Annals
read like incidents in the fifteenth century. It is more like a
picture in an Italian court at that period than in a Roman
Emperor's in the first century, when the arrest is made of Cneius
Novius for being found treacherously armed with a dagger while
mixing with the throng of courtiers bowing to the prince; and then
when he is stretched on the rack, no confession being wrung from
him as to accomplices; and the doubt that prevailed whether he
really had fellow-conspirators. "Cneius Novius, eques Romanus,
ferro accinctus reperitur in coetu salutantium principem. Nam,
postquam tormentis dilaniabatur, de se non infitiatus conscios non
edidit, incertum an occultans." (An. XI. 22.)
IX. In this way do I fancy I perceive the author of the Annals
chose his subject and worked his materials, so as to do most
justice to his talents, and more easily reach the height attained
by Tacitus. When he had apparently thus sketched the plan of his
edifice, and set about struggling with the difficulties of the
elaboration, he encountered these with such eminent success that
the reality of his literary labour is one of the most surprising
facts in the history of the human mind. He seems never to have
once deviated from his design nor to have ever been perplexed by
embarrassments in the course of his undertaking, notwithstanding
the voluminousness of its nature. In such a procedure, where the
time he chose to descant upon fits in with all he wanted to
accomplish, we see the first indication of the vast judgment he
possessed, as well as the correct notion he had formed of the
extent of his superior powers. In detecting in the author of the
Annals so much judgment and such an exact estimate of his great
mental faculties, we see the difficulty to be coped with in
distinguishing between him and Tacitus, and thus in distinguishing
between the spurious and the genuine: but this distinguishing can
be accomplished by a minute, and only a most minute examination of
the two works.