MISTAKES THAT PROVE FORGERY
I. The gift for the recovery of Livia.
II. Julius Caesar and the Pomoerium. III.
Julia, the wife of Tiberius. IV. The statement
about her proved false by a coin. V. Value of
coins in detecting historical errors. VI.
Another coin shows an error about Cornatus. VII.
Suspicion of spuriousness from mention of the Quinquennale
Ludicrum. VIII. Account of cities destroyed
by earthquake contradicted by a monument. IX.
Bracciolini’s hand shown by reference to the
Plague. X. Fawning of Roman senators more like
conduct of Italians in the fifteenth century.
XI. Same exaggeration with respect to Pomponia
Graecina. XII. Wrong statement of the images
borne at the funeral of Drusus. XIII.
Similar kind of error committed by Bracciolini in his
“Varietate Fortunae”. XIV.
Errors about the Red Sea. XV. About the
Caspian Sea. XVI. Accounted for.
XVII. A passage clearly written by Bracciolini.
FURTHER PROOFS OF BRACCIOLINI BEING THE AUTHOR OF
THE FIRST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.
I. The descriptive powers of Bracciolini
and Tacitus. II. The different mode of
writing of both. III. Their different manners
of digressing. IV. Two statements in the
Fourth Book of the Annals that could not have been
made by Tacitus. V. The spirit of the Renaissance
shown in both parts of the Annals. VI.
That both parts proceeded from the same hand shown
in the writer pretending to know the feelings of
the characters in the narrative. VII.
The contradictions in the two parts of the Annals and
in the works of Bracciolini. VIII. The
Second Florence MS. a forgery. IX. Conclusion.
TACITUS.
“Allusiones saepe subobscurae ...
mihi conjectandi aliquando, et aliquando exploratae
veritatis fundamento innitendi materiam praebuere.”
DE TONELLIS. Praef. ad Poggii Epist.
TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.
I. From the chronological point of view.—II.
The silence preserved about that work by all writers
till the fifteenth century.—III. The
age of the MSS. containing the Annals.
I. The Annals and the History of Tacitus are like
two houses in ruins: dismantled of their original
proportions they perpetuate the splendour of Roman
historiography, as the crumbling remnants of the Coliseum
preserve from oblivion the magnificence of Roman architecture.
Some of the subtlest intellects, keen in criticism
and expert in scholarship, have, for centuries, endeavoured
with considerable pains, though not with success in
every instance, to free the imperfect pieces from
difficulties, as the priesthood of the Quindecimvirs,
generation after generation, assiduously, yet vainly,
strove to clear from perplexities the mutilated books
of the Sibyls. I purpose to bring,—parodying
a passage of the good Sieur Chanvallon,—not
freestone and marble for their restoration, but a
critical hammer to knock down the loose bricks that,
for more than four centuries, have shown large holes
in several places.
