EarlDoherty

Not that I want to give the recently buried Fathom a chance at resurrection, but the question of the authenticity of Tacitus’ Christian reference is a subject I am engaged in at the moment, and it involved a consideration of Roger Pearse’s tertullian site on which he discusses the non-feasibility of the theory that the Annals was a Renaissance forgery. I pointed out that some of his material on that was too vague and even misleading, and sent him the section on that subject from my new chapter on Tacitus for the second edition of The Jesus Puzzle. He suggested I post it (the section, not the whole chapter) here, for discussion. I’ll preface it by saying that I do not subscribe to the Renaissance forgery theory, but my section on it entails a fuller study of the source used by Roger in support of his position, and it does have something to say toward the general issue of the Tacitean reference to Christ and Christians. (Please forgive me if I don’t take the trouble to italicize all the appearances of book titles.)

Could Tacitus’ Annals be a Renaissance Forgery?

There has long been a popular line of thought that the entire Annals as we have it may be a Renaissance forgery, perhaps by the Italian who allegedly “discovered” it, a certain Poggio Bracciolini in the 15th century. This is something of an urban legend that has taken on a life of its own (perhaps as persistent as Robert Eisler’s description of Jesus in the Halosis being somehow reliable), but it does take a certain effort to discredit it. For most of the following, I am dependent upon C. W. Mendell’s Tacitus: The Man and his Work, published in 1957.

The current strength of our ‘urban legend’ proceeds from the end of the 19th century in two books by W. R. Ross and P. Hochart. Arthur Drews a century ago accepted the latter’s case and considered the forgery theory persuasive, and while no mainstream Tacitean scholars accepted it (and still don’t) other skeptics of Drews’ day came on board as well. (Their views often crop up in Internet lists of reasons to reject Annals 15:44 as being authentic to Tacitus.)

But as Mendell recounts, the first six books of the Annals (with the exception of a few hiatuses, including those two years covering the period when Jesus’ ministry was traditionally thought to have taken place) survive only in a single manuscript known as Medicean I, found in Germany shortly after 1500. This text is in Carolingian minuscules identified with the 9th century. It is almost certainly the surviving portion of a manuscript which contained the complete Annals as well as the Histories, from which, at some point, it was split off as part of a first volume. The second volume, containing Annals 11-16 as well as the Histories, does not survive, but it gave rise to the manuscript known as Medicean II, containing the latter part of the Annals, as well as to all of the now-known manuscripts of the Histories. Medicean II is from the 11th century, and there is evidence that it was used at Monte Cassino before 1340. The material in Medicean I seems to have been used at Fulda in the 9th century. So there is indication that both parts of the Annals were known before the 15th century.

Around 1360, Boccaccio discovered what may have been the original Volume 2 containing the later books of the Annals and the Histories. He spread knowledge of these works throughout much of Europe, and a search for others led to the above-mentioned discovery of Medicean I. (It is not clear when Annals 7-10 became lost, or whether they were an original part of one of the volumes.) Boccaccio’s manuscript ended up in the hands of Niccolo Niccoli in the early 15th century, and was loaned to Poggio Bracciolini in 1427, but was returned as being in too poor a state to be used. Subsequently, it (or was it a copy of it?) went to the Laurentian Library in Florence, as did Medicean I. The first printing-press edition of Annals 11-16 (plus the Histories) was published about 1470, not from the Boccaccio manuscript, but apparently from a descendant, now in Venice.

Some confusion is created by the fact that, apparently some time prior to Jerome, the Histories and the Annals were combined into a single series, known as “Ab excessu divi augusti” (From the death of the divine Augustus). Although written first, the Histories covered the later period of the Flavian emperors (Vespasian, Titus and Domitian), beginning in the year 69 with the civil wars involving Galba, Otho and Vitellius. The latter part of the Histories is missing, breaking off in the year 70 before the end of the Jewish War and in the middle of a campaign against the German tribes on the Rhine. The Annals was written later, going back and covering the earlier period of the Julio-Claudians, from Tiberius to Nero; portions of that work are missing as well. Eventually, the two were combined in reverse order to present a ‘lives of the Caesars’ from Tiberius to the Flavians (somewhat as William Whiston in his translation of Josephus presented the Antiquities of the Jews before the Jewish War as though a single history, even though they were written in reverse order). In the original Tacitus compendium (which Jerome refers to), the fourteen books of the Histories were tacked on to the sixteen books of the Annals as numbers 17 to 30; sometime over the next several centuries, the last nine books of the Histories became lost.

Now let’s survey the references to Tacitus in the period after publication up to the time of Boccaccio in the 14th century. For purposes relating to the authenticity of Annals 15:44, it is of course necessary to make a distinction between which particular works of Tacitus are being referred to. There is no dispute that Tacitus was known throughout late antiquity and through the Middle Ages. But to what extent and in regard to which works? Mendell states that use of his writings

“up to the time of Boccaccio is slight. It is not true, however, that Tacitus and his writings were practically unknown. They were neglected…” (p.225)

By far, however, such knowledge and use as can be seen is restricted to the Histories and certain minor works. The Annals is scarcely in view at all. Thus, Mendell’s comment that “Tacitus is mentioned or quoted in each century down to and including the sixth” should not be used to support or imply a wide knowledge or use of the Annals in the centuries before the later Middle Ages.

1. The first of those listed by Mendell (p.225f) relates to the Annals, but it is a shaky one. The geographer and astronomer Ptolemy in the middle of the second century lists towns along the northern shore of Germany. Two are given as (in Greek) “Phlēoum” and “Siatoutanda.” Mendell says: “The latter name occurs nowhere else and has a dubious sound.” In Annals 4:72-73, Tacitus is recounting the raising of the siege of the fortress of “Flevum” at the mouth of the Rhine by the Frisii. This matches the first town named by Ptolemy. For the second, Mendell (drawing on a German 1888 study) points to one of the sentences in that account. In Latin, the final phrase of it reads: “…et ad sua tutanda degressis rebellibus.” In English: “[(Apronius) threw (his forces) on the Frisii, raising at once the siege of the fortress] and dispersing the rebels in defence of their own possessions.” Compare the words in bold. One must admire the search programs of 1888, but this seems somewhat bizarre, despite Mendell’s claim that “The source of Ptolemy’s mistake is obvious.” A competent geographer invents a town on the German coast by reading a passage in Tacitus, finds two Latin words not referring to a town at all and mistakes and accepts them as a place name? If that is the extent of alleged references to the Annals that can be deduced in the first three centuries after it was written (and it seems to be), one may be forgiven for regarding the situation as desperate.

2. Cassius Dio (early 3rd century) seems to draw on Tacitus’ Agricola, a biographical work about his father-in-law. Dio, as we have seen, passed up any reference to the Christians from Annals 15 when composing his own material on Nero and the great fire.

3. Tertullian, in Apology 16, is defending the Christians against the charge that they worshiped an ass. He claims that it was Tacitus who started this “notion,” referring to the Histories, Book 5. Mendell misleadingly says, “(Tacitus) had spoken without respect of the Jews and had implied that the Christians were an undesirable sect of the Jews.” But the ‘implication’ is entirely Tertullian’s, even if he is imputing it to Tacitus, when he recounts Tacitus’ version of the consecration of an ass’s head by Jews after the Exodus, since this animal had led them to water in the desert. He says: “And as Christianity is nearly allied to Judaism, from this, I suppose, it was taken for granted that we too are devoted to the worship of the same image.” Then he goes on to tell of Tacitus’ account of Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem (67 BCE) and his entry into the temple sanctuary. Needless to say, the Histories V contains no mention of Christians.

4. The same discussion appears again in Ad Nationes I, 11. And in II, 12 a statement about Saturn is noted in the same book of the Histories.

5. Lactantius (late 3rd century) is appealed to as on one occasion showing “a resemblance” with the style of Tacitus’ minor work, Germania.

6. Eumenius of Autun (same period) shows reliance on Tacitus’ Agricola.

7. Vopiscus (4th century) cites Tacitus as one of the greatest of Roman historians. He mentions certain techniques, but does not appeal to any specific text.

8. Says Mendell: “Ammianus Marcellinus, about 400, published his history, which began where Tacitus left off, indicating a knowledge at least of what Tacitus had written.” Since the Histories is where Tacitus “left off,” this tells us little if anything about the extent of knowledge about the Annals.

9. Claudian, late Roman poet of the 4th century, makes references to Tiberius and Nero, but a derivation from Tacitus cannot be affirmed. Servius, a grammarian of the same period, refers to a lost passage of Tacitus, whether from the Annals or the Histories cannot be said.

10. Pseudo-Hegesippus (c.380) contains “additions” from the Histories.

11. Mendell talks of two 5th century writers: Sidonius Apollinaris quotes from Histories V, while Orosius’ citations in his Adversos Paganos are all from the Histories.

12. Cassiodorus in the 6th century draws on Germania and echoes Histories IV, 15. A little later, Jordanes shows knowledge of Agricola.

I have left out of Mendell’s list of “each century down to and including the sixth” the two we are familiar with, Sulpicius Severus and the comment by Jerome, both around the year 400. As can be seen, in the above list not a single offering after the very dubious inference regarding Ptolemy’s town in Germany relates to the Annals. This is not meant to give support to the theory that the Annals is a Renaissance forgery; but it does serve to indicate how little knowledge and usage the Annals seems to have enjoyed for centuries after it was written. We cannot, of course, say that other indications could not have existed that we have lost sight of. But it is clear that the Annals, and with it the specific passage of 15:44, has made virtually no recognizable impression on centuries of Christian writers—something quite surprising in view of the alleged presence in it of the Christ/Christians passage. In fact, in our line of vision, we can recognize but one, Sulpicius Severus. As for Jerome, he simply referred (Commentary on Zacchariah XIV, 1.2) to a tradition known to him that Tacitus had written a history from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian in 30 books. Mendell admits that “he may not even have seen his works at all.” Still, this would testify to the existence of the Annals in the 4th century.

We do not know when the Histories and the Annals were combined into a composite presentation, so evidence of knowledge of the former prior to Jerome does not necessarily entail a tag-along knowledge of the latter, let alone our key passage, especially when such specific usage of the Annals is perplexingly missing, as in Tertullian and Cassius Dio. Besides, the Tacitus ‘boxed set’ Jerome refers to does not necessarily indicate that from that point on, both works only circulated in combination. We might expect separate copying of the Histories and the Annals to continue in some areas. On the matter of the spurious letters between Paul and Seneca, one of which alludes to a general accusation against Christians and Jews for setting fires, it does not specify the great fire at Rome, nor mention any Neronian persecution, much less refer to Tacitus. Mendell considers it “less likely that the author of the correspondence…knew Tacitus.”

As we have seen, even the passage in Sulpicius Severus has its problems. He does not cite Tacitus. His ‘quote’ is not nearly as “word for word” as is often claimed, although some words and the sequence of ideas virtually guarantee a literary derivation in one direction or the other. But that direction need not be an either/or situation, since we do not need to regard the passage as a block. Some material on the fire may have been drawn from the Annals, but the specifically Christian elements relating to the persecution could be Sulpicius’ creation, or drawn from a Christian (or even, as outlined, a pagan) source or tradition, and then later taken from Sulpicius and inserted into the Annals some time before the 11th century, which is the time of the first extant manuscript (the Medicean II) containing Book 15. The centuries-long silence on the Annals and specifically on the Christian persecution supposedly contained in it makes this scenario a not unreasonable one, and there will be more to be said about it later. The ultimate bottom line is that the reference to Christ is the least secure thing of all, especially considering that it does not appear in Sulpicius, and could be an addition by a medieval scribe transplanting Sulpicius into Tacitus.

But as for the claim of forgery of the entire Annals in the Renaissance, there seems little reasonable basis for this. Besides, it is one matter to interpolate a sentence or paragraph and imitate the style of a previous author to a sufficient extent to achieve some success in deceiving readers; but it is surely another matter to forge an entire work and accomplish the same feat. The works of Tacitus have been studied for centuries now; his unique style has become familiar to generations of scholars. No one that I am aware of has perceived anomalies in the Annals in regard to style, structure or characterization. We have no reason to regard Poggio Bracciolini, or any other Renaissance writer, as a master forger capable of such an astonishing degree of imitation and deception. It can also be suggested that early Renaissance historiography was hardly advanced and sophisticated enough to discover or produce all the details found in the Annals. Moreover, are we to consider that Poggio ran out of inspiration for the periods covered in the hiatuses? Would any forgery undertaken be likely to have been presented as incomplete? If it be maintained that this could have been a deliberate ploy to convey authenticity, would a Christian choose as one of those hiatuses to leave out all mention of Jesus in Annals 5? (I have personally not read Ross or Hochart, but it would be interesting to see what arguments they mounted in support of what seems to be an indefensible position.)

Drews, who wagers on Poggian authorship, is forced to reveal a hand which contains one very low card. In a footnote (p.47) he slips in an observation which shows how problematic the forgery position can be. If the Annals did not exist until the Renaissance, then the passage in Sulpicius is original to him; but it would have to have served as an essential source of certain 15:44 details, due to some close literary commonalities. According to Drews, Hochart pointed out that, while certain other works of Sulpicius were found in many medieval libraries, “there was only one manuscript of his Chronicle, probably of the eleventh century….Hence the work was almost unknown throughout the Middle Ages, and no one was aware of the reference in it to a Roman persecution of the Christians.” But then comes an attempt to come up with an explanation for an attendant sticky problem: “It is noteworthy that Poggio Bracciolini seems by some lucky chance to have discovered and read this manuscript.” Of course, there is no actual record that Poggio did have such a fortunate encounter.

The one point which Mendell does not address is the time and location of the first attestation to the presence of the Christ and Christians reference in Annals 15. (Not having been a New Testament scholar, Mendell shows no particular interest in 15:44.) One does assume—and Drews seems to state it as fact (p.47), drawing on Hochart—that the Medicean II, the earliest surviving manuscript of the latter Annals from the 11th century, contains it, and in a form which raises no suspicion of contemporary insertion. Mendell informs us that Paulinus Venetus (d. 1340) first shows knowledge of Medicean II and “cites Cornelius Tacitus and quotes without acknowledgment from Books 13-15” (p.236), but it would be helpful to know what those quotes are, and if they include 15:44. He tells us that the material in Medicean II, thanks to Boccaccio, became known to many others by 1400, mentioning that Jean de Montreuil by that time “was quoting Cornelius Tacitus on the plagues of Egypt.” But was anyone quoting him on Christ and the Christians? If Sulpicius Severus could supposedly do it, why did no one before or after him, for several centuries? We should note, however, that the group of Renaissance manuscript hunters succeeding Boccaccio, while Christian, were ‘humanist’ scholars and not churchmen and may have felt no strong impulse to call special attention to whatever they found in Annals 15:44.

Earl Doherty

mountainman

The text of Ross is available at www.gutenberg.org/etext/9098.

I have listed the contents here as follows:


Another papal forgery? It's an odds on bet.


Best wishes


Pete Brown

neilgodfrey

Is this a reference to Laupot's discussion on Roger's page?

Thanks,
N

EarlDoherty

No, although I discuss Laupot's view in another part of the chapter, unrelated to any discussion of it by Roger, which I have not encountered.

It relates to Roger's arguments and listing of reasons (from Mendell) against the theory that the Annals is a Renaissance forgery. I found that listing and discussion of it a bit wanting, and so I did my own, which you see in my OP. I can't right at the moment locate that particular page in Roger's complex website, and can't remember how I originally found it--which is not helped by the fact that it's past 2 AM here!

P.S. to Pete: Thanks for the info on Ross, but rather than giving us its long Index as proof of "papal forgery" of the Annals you might try to answer some of my arguments that such a forgery is not reasonable. Or did you mean that Ross was a papal forgery? (Humor there)

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

IIUC the primary reference for the claim that Paulinus Venetus used Tacitus is K J Heilig Wiener Studien 53 (1935) pps 95ff
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J...s_brr=0&pgis=1

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

The mistake by Ptolemy is more plausible than at first appears
“…et ad sua tutanda degressis rebellibus.” reads at first sight as meaning and dispersing the rebels towards sua tutanda

In fact ad is used here in its secondary meaning for the purpose of thus we read and dispersing the rebels for the purpose of defence of their own property.

However someone who was a little weak in Latin might plausibly misunderstand sua tutanda as the place towards which the rebels dispersed.

Andrew Criddle

EarlDoherty

Yes, I did realize that this was the basis on which Mendell's source was postulating Ptolemy's misunderstanding. I also realized that the Tacitus passage happening to read like this is the only reason why such a postulation could be made.

But a geographer like Ptolemy (who presumably did not do all his geographizing from his armchair in the middle of some Greek enclave in Egypt) was surely widely traveled and knew enough Latin to be able to understand what the phrase actually meant. And if his Latin was weak, what was he doing reading Tacitus, and moreover relying on that weak reading to discover some hitherto unknown town in Germany?

If he was that inefficient, his work should be full of laughable errors. (Of course, he did say that the sun went around the earth...)

To postulate solely on the basis of this accident of wording that Ptolemy did in fact make such a mistake is what I find bizarre, and a sign of desperation in seeking evidence for early knowledge of the Annals. Anything, of course, can be possible, but still...

Earl Doherty

mountainman

The era of the period 14th-15th-16th centuries was one in which forgery abounded and one which included the transition from handwritten documents to the printing press. How much relative power was in the hands of the people in self-appointed power of the publishing? To answer your questions you will need to gather a bunch of people together who have already researched that period, and ask them for a candid opinion.



No. The popes were the sponsors (directly or indirectly) of centuries and centuries and centuries of forgeries and fraudulent misprepresentations of the historical truth for the benefit of their own designs for christendom.

Isn't it time to be equanimous about the evidence of forgery?

Best wishes,


Pete

EarlDoherty

Yes, but this does not guarantee that any one particular document is a forgery. Each case has to be examined, and I maintain that in the case of the Annals, such an examination does not allow for Renaissance forgery.

You still have not addressed the arguments in that particular case.

Earl Doherty

mountainman

Ross had the reputation of being a very good classical scholar, and it is he who felt compelled to write a series of arguments against that particular case. The contents of this book - available online - indicate that he takes this issue seriously - specifically the Annals.

If you want to argue the case that it was not indeed a forgery the opportunity of refuting the detailed arguments of Ross would be the most expedient path. My research has been confined to the period before 400 CE and as such - aside from a preliminary listing in a thread entitled an index of fraud concerning "christian" history by century I have confined my research to ancient history.

Best wishes,


Pete