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.
CHAPTER III.
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,
