Tacitus and Bracciolini | Page 7

must have been born, at least, as far back as the
year 44.
This will be reconcilable with all that Pliny says, as well as with his
being married when "young"; for he would then be 32 or 33, and his
bride 22 or 23; for the daughter of Agricola was born when her father

was quaestor in Asia--"sors quaesturae provinciam Asiam dedit ...
auctus est ibi filiâ." (Agr. 9). Nor let it be supposed that a Roman
would not have used the epithet "young" to a man of 32 or 33, seeing
that the Romans applied the term to men in their best years, from 20 to
40, or a little under or over. Hence Livy terms Alexander the Great at
the time of his death, when he was 31, "a young man," "egregium
ducem fuisse Alexandrum ... adolescens ... decessit" (ix. 17): so Cicero
styles Lucius Crassus at the age of 34;--"talem vero exsistere
eloquentiam qualis fuerit in Crasso et Antonio ... alter non multum
(quod quidem exstaret), et id ipsum adolescens, alter nihil admodum
scripti reliquisset". (De Orat. ii. 2): so also does Cornelius Nepos speak
of Marcus Brutus, when the latter was praetor, Brutus being then 43
years of age:--"sic Marco Bruto usus est, ut nullo ille adolescens
aequali familiarius" (Att. 8); to this passage of Nepos's, Nicholas
Courtin, his Delphin editor, adds that the ancients called men "young"
from the age of 17 to the age of 46; notwithstanding that Varro limited
youth to 30 years:--"a 17 ad 46 annum, adolescentia antiquitus
pertingebat, ut ab antiquis observatum est. Nihilominus Varro ad 30
tantum pertingere ait." But Tacitus being born in 44 is not reconcilable
with his being the Author of the Annals, as thus:--
Some time in the nineteen years that Trajan was Emperor,--from 98 to
ll7,--Tacitus, being then between the ages of 54 and 73, composed his
History. He paused when he had carried it on to the reign of Domitian;
the narrative had then extended to twenty-three years, and was
comprised in "thirty books," if we are to believe St. Jerome in his
Commentary on the Fourteenth
Chapter of
Zechariah:
"Cornelius Tacitus ... post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas
Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." [Endnote 013] It was scarcely
possible for Tacitus to have executed his History in a shorter
compass;--indeed, it is surprising that the compass was so short,
looking at the probability of his having observed the symmetry
attended to by the ancients in their writings, and having continued his
work on the plan he pursued at the commencement, the important
fragment which we have of four books, and a part of the fifth,

embracing but little more than one year. Whether he ever carried into
execution the design he had reserved for his old age,--writing of Nerva
and Trajan,--we have no record. But two things seem tolerably certain;
that he would have gone on with that continuation to his History in
preference to writing the Annals; and that he would not have written
that continuation until after the death of the Emperor Trajan. He would
then have been 73. Now, how long would he have been on that separate
history? Then at what age could he have commenced the Annals? And
how long would he have been engaged in its composition? We see that
he must have been bordering on 80, if not 90: consequently with
impaired faculties, and thus altogether disqualified for producing such a
vigorous historical masterpiece; for though we have instances of poets
writing successfully at a very advanced age, as Pindar composing one
of his grandest lyrics at 84, and Sophocles his Oedipus Coloneus at 90,
we have no instance of any great historian, except Livy, attempting to
write at a very old age, and then Livy rambled into inordinate
diffuseness.
II. The silence maintained with respect to the Annals by all writers till
the first half of the fifteenth century is much more striking than
chronology in raising the very strongest suspicion that Tacitus did not
write that book. This is the more remarkable as after the first
publication of the last portion of that work by Vindelinus of Spire at
Venice in 1469 or 1470, all sorts and degrees of writers began referring
to or quoting the Annals, and have continued doing so to the present
day with a frequency which has given to its supposed writer as great a
celebrity as any name in antiquity. Kings, princes, ministers and
politicians have studied it with diligence and curiosity, while scholars,
professors, authors and historians in Italy, Spain, France, England,
Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have applied their minds to it
with an enthusiasm, which has been like a kind of worship. Yet, after
the most minute investigation, it cannot be discovered that a single
reference was