Tacitus and Bracciolini | Page 9

what he did of the Hebrews; and
for recording which belief he ought to receive immediate forgiveness,
seeing that Justin, Plutarch, Strabo and Democritus said as bad, if not
worse things of that ancient people and their sacred books. [Endnote
019]
Cassiodorus, the Senator, is the only writer of the sixth century, who
makes any allusion to Tacitus, and that but once, in the fifth book of his
Epistles, to what the Roman says in his Germany of the origin of amber,

about which naturalists are still divided, that it is a distillation from
certain trees. Freculphus (otherwise written Radulphus), Bishop of
Lisieux, who died in the middle of the ninth century (856), in the
second volume of his Chronicles, --the sixth chapter of the second
book,--quotes Tacitus as the author of the History, the passage being in
reference to the Romans who fell in the Dacian war. We have no proof
that the Annals was in existence in the twelfth century from what John
of Salisbury says in his Polycraticon (viii. 18), that Tacitus is among
the number of those historians, "qui tyrannorum atrocitates et exitus
miseros plenius scribunt;" for in his completed History Tacitus must
have expatiated pretty freely on the "atrocious tyranny" of Domitian,
and the "unfortunate termination of the lives of tyrants."
From the time of John of Salisbury till shortly before the publication of
the Annals, no further reference is made to Tacitus by any writer or
historian, monkish or otherwise, not even of erudite Germany,
beginning with Abbot Hermannus, who wrote in the twelfth century the
history of his own monastery of St. Martin's at Dornick, and ending
with Caspar Bruschius, who, in the sixteenth century, wrote an Epitome
of the Archbishoprics and Bishoprics of Germany, and the Centuria
Prima (as Daniel Nessel in the next century wrote the Centuria Secunda)
of the German monasteries. And yet in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, all kinds of writers quote the Annals about as freely and
frequently as they quote the History, and that not once or twice, but
five or six, and even seven and eight times, in the same work. It would
be impossible to mention them all, the writers being "as numerous as
the leaves in Vallambrosa's vale";--a figure that can hardly be
considered hyperbolic when the enormous number of these writers can
be partially guessed from the following catalogue of those who
delighted in antiquarian researches, whose productions cited are
archaeological, and who made all their references to the Annals for the
purpose of merely illustrating archaic matters; nevertheless, the number
of such writers alone amounts to as many as a score; moreover, the
whole twenty are to be found in one compilation comprised in but five
volumes,--Polenus's New Supplement to the collections of Graevius
and Gronovius, entitled "Utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatum Romanarum
Graecarumque Nova Supplementa";--the Friesland scholar, Titus
Popma in his "De Operis Servorum"; the Italian antiquary, Lorenzo

Pignorio, Canon of Trevigo, in his treatise "De Servis"; the renowned
critic, Salmasius, in his explanation of two ancient inscriptions found
on a Temple in the island of Crete ("Notae ad Consecrationem Templi
in Agro Herodis Attici Triopio"); Peter Burmann in his "De
Vectigalibus"; Albertinus Barrisonus in his "De Archivis"; Merula, the
jurist, historian and polygrapher, in his "De Legibus Romanorum";
Carolus Patinus in his Commentary "In Antiquum Monumentum
Marcellinae"; Polletus in his "Historia Fori Romani"; Aegyptius in his
"De Bacchanalibus Explicatio"; Gisbert Cuper in his "Monumenta
Antiqua Inedita"; Octavius Ferrarius in his "Dissertatio de
Gladiatoribus"; William à Loon in his "Eleutheria"; Schaeffer in his
"De Re Vehiculari"; Johannes Jacobus Claudius in his "Diatribê de
Nutricibus et Paedagogis"; Antonius Bombardinus in his "De Carcere
Tractatus"; Gutherlethus in his work on the "Salii," or Priests of Mars;
the learned Spaniard, Miniana, in his "De Theatro Saguntino Dialogus";
Gorius in his "Columbarium Libertorum et Servorum"; Spon in his
"Miscellanea Erudita Antiquitatis" and Jaques Leroy in his "Achates
Tiberianus." In fact, the Annals of Tacitus is noticed, or quoted, or
referred to, or commented upon at length (as at the commencement of
the sixteenth century by Scipione Ammirato), in an endless list of
works, with or without the names of the authors, which by itself is all
but conclusive that the Annals was not in existence till the fifteenth
century, and not generally known till the sixteenth and seventeenth.
But to return for a moment to what was done by two writers, who lived
before the fifteenth century,--Sulpicius Severus, who died A.D. 420;
and Jornandez, who, in the time of Justinian, was Secretary to the
Gothic kings in Italy. Now, it must not be withheld,--for it would be too
uncandid,--that identical passages are found in the Annals ascribed to
Tacitus and the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus.
In order that the reader may see the identity of the passages,