Tacitus and Bracciolini | Page 8

made to the Annals by any person from the time when
Tacitus lived until shortly before the day when Vindelinus of Spire first
ushered the last six books to the admiring world from the mediaeval
Athens. When it appeared it was at once pronounced to be the brightest
gem among histories; its author was greeted as a most wonderful
man,--the "unique historian", for so went the phrase--"inter historicos

unicus."
Now, are we to be asked quietly to believe that there never lived from
the first quarter of the second century till after the second quarter of the
fifteenth, a single individual possessed of sufficient capacity to discern
such eminent and obvious excellence as is contained in the Annals? Are
we to believe that that could have been so? in a slowly revolving cycle
of 1,000 years and more? ay, upwards of 1,300! If that really was the
case, it is enough to strike us dumb with stupor in contemplating such a
miraculous instance of perpetuated inanity,--among the lettered,
too!--the learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case,
what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It indicates
one of two things,--duncelike stupidity or studious contempt. Both
these surmises must be dismissed,--the first as too absurd, the second as
too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture--Taste for
intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had
vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence of forty
generations of mankind. Again, this supposed probability is too
preposterously extravagant to be for an instant credited because it
cannot for a moment be comprehended. In short, how marvellous it is!
how utterly unaccountable! how inexpressibly mysterious!
Pliny does not say a word about the Annals. The earliest Latin father,
Tertullian, quotes only the History (Apol. c. 16). St. Jerome, in his
Commentary on Zechariah (iii. 14), cites the passage in the fifth book
of the History about the origin of the Jews; he also notices what Tacitus
says of another important event, the Fall of Jerusalem, which, having
occurred in the reign of Vespasian, must have been narrated in the
History. The "single book" treating of the Caesars, which Vopiscus
says Tacitus wrote, must have been the "History," ten copies of which
the Emperor Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public
libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the
Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth
century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work,
Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and
disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib.
V., cc. 5 and 10), and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,--the
Temple of Janus being open from the time of Augustus to Vespasian
(vii. 3);--the number of the Jews who perished at the siege of Jerusalem

(vii. 9); and the possibly large number of Romans who were killed in
the wars with the Daci during the reign of Domitian (vii. 10):--all
which passages must have been in the lost portions of the History.
In his Epistles and Poems, that man of wit and fancy, with an intellect
and learning above the fifth century in which he lived, --Sidonius
Apollinaris,--has one quotation from Tacitus and three references to
him. The quotation, which occurs in the fourteenth chapter of the fourth
book of his Epistles, is from the last section of the History, (that part of
the speech of Civilis where the seditious Batavian touches on the
friendship which existed between himself and Vespasian); and his three
references are, first, to the "ancient mode of narrative," combined with
the greatest "literary excellence" (iv. 22); secondly, to "genius for
eloquence" (Carm. xxiii. 153-4); and thirdly, to "pomp of manner"
(Carm. ii. 192); the not inelegant Christian writer enumerating qualities
that specially commend themselves in the History. When Spartian
praises Tacitus for "good faith," the eulogy is more appropriate to the
writer of the History than the Annals, howbeit that so many moderns,
including the famous philologist and polygrapher, Justus Lipsius; the
Pomeranian scholar of the last century, Meierotto; Boetticher and Prutz
all question the veracity of Tacitus; while for what he says of the Jews
Tertullian vituperates him in language so outrageous as to be altogether
unbecoming the capacious mind of the Patristic worthy, who calls him,
"the most loquacious of liars,"--"mendaciorum loquacissimus;" --in
which strain of calumny he was, from the same cause of religious
fervour, followed centuries after,--in the seventeenth,--by two of the
most renowned preachers and orators of their day, the famous Jesuit,
Famianus Strada, and his less known contemporary, but most able
Chamberlain of Urban VIII., Augustino Mascardi,--as if all these pious
Christians found it quite impossible to pardon a heathen, blinded by the
prejudices of paganism, for believing