MR. FURNEAUX'S "ANNALS OF TACITITS."* THIS second part of Mr.
Furneaux's edition of the Annals shows all the admirable qualities which distinguished the first. The Prolegomena run to an unexpected length, being almost identical in amount with the dissertations prefixed to the text in the first volume, though these, of course, included a. full treatment of the large subject of the Tacitian peculiari- ties of style and syntax. We do not find, however, that there is a page too much. Two very considerable lacuna in the history have to be filled up, the first being the whole reign of -Caligula and the first six years of Claudius ; the second, the last two years of Nero. These occupy together nearly twelve years, as against the brief period of something less than two years which was included in the lost part of Book v. The defects are supplied by two excel- lent summaries of events. We observe that Mr. Furneaux holds that the Annals must have extended to eighteen books, taking the view which has been mentioned more than once in these columns, that this number gives a symmetrical arrange- ment, six books being allotted to Tiberius, six to Caligula and Claudius, and as many again to Nero. We do not see why this view " seems to make it very difficult not to suppose some error in the statement of Jerome that the whole work of Tacitus, from the death of Augustus to that of Domitian, was contained in thirty Books." Twelve seems a probable number for the Histories. It is true that the disproportionate amount of four are occupied with the year 69; but then, this was the " longus et unus 8/111118" of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, as Tacitus himself describes it in the " Dialogue on Great Orators." The other eight books would take in twenty-seven years, or a fraction more than three years to a. book, the proportion in the Annals, if the number was eighteen, being three exactly. A chapter is given to an estimate of the character and govern- ment of Claudius, and another to the " Youth " and the " Rule of Nero." Neither subject presents the fascinating difficulties which surround the subject of Tiberius. There are historic improbabilities, indeed, in the story of Claudius—the incredible license of Messalina, for instance—while the long-enduring popularity of Nero remains to be accounted for; but, on the whole, there is little room for modifying the historian's estimate of these two rulers. It is substantially confirmed by the fact which Mr. Furneaux states in his note "good tune spectaretur " (the quod referring to Silanus's kindred with Augustus), that "no question of descent from Augustus entered into the qualifications for any princeps after Nero." The world had been effectually sickened of the Julian and Claudian.
• The Annals of Tacitus. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Henry
Farneanx, M.A. Vol. II.—Books Oxford : Olexendon Press. 1891.
houses. Considerable light is thrown by the chapter on " Parthia and Armenia" on Tacitus's narrative of the rela- tions between Rome and her neighbours on the Euphrates frontier, a narrative involved in difficulties, geographical and chronological. A useful account, illustrated by a map, is given of the geography of Armenia. A similar chapter traces the history of our own island from the time of Clesar's return from his second expedition, down to the close of the period included in the Annals. Three appendices add considerably to the completeness and value of the volume. The first deals with a peculiarly interesting subject of the speech delivered by Claudius on the admission of Senators from Gallia Comata. The fragments of this oration, as they appear on the brass tables dug up in 1524 at Lyons, have been annotated by Mr. Furneaux, and compared with the summary which the his- torian gives. It is a summary which does more than justice to the original, which, indeed, hardly bears out the commenda- tion: "Nec in Claudio, quotiens meditata dissereret, elegantiam requireres." For the sake of his own work, the historian made the best of it ; he had, too, a strong sympathy with the unhappy Emperor's genuine literary taste, a sympathy which we find the Younger Pliny also expressing. The second appendix is devoted to " The Neronian Persecution of the Christians." After disposing of Mons. Bochart, who has taken a leaf, so to speak, out of Pere Hardonin's book, and boldly pronounced the whole of Tacitus's narrative of the occurrence, as well as the famous letter of Pliny and Trojan's answer, to be forgeries, Mr. Furneaux discusses the subject with minute care. The chief difficulty is in the words ingens multitudo, which are certainly difficult to accept when we consider the circumstances under which Christianity was preached at Rome, and the silence, broken only by very slight exceptions, with which the phenomenon was passed over by writers of the time. It becomes, indeed, somewhat more probable if we accept the theory, favoured by writers as different in their standpoint as M. Renan. and Bishop Lightfoot, that the accused originally included the Jews as well as the Christians of Rome, and that the former were enabled by the help of Popp ea, whose Jewish sympathies may be taken as established, to shift the charge from them- selves on to a body to which they were unfeignedly hostile. If, as seems highly probable, the earlier date (A.D. 70) is to be assigned to the composition of the Apocalypse, we may find references, not certain perhaps, but possessing no slight amount of verisimilitude, to an extensive persecution ordered by an oppressor of preter-human malignity.
We wish that Mr. Furneaux could have found space for a connected estimate of Seneca. He does not spare his censure on the statesman-philosopher, for from time to time he makes his appearance in the narrative ; and we cannot say that the censure is unjust. Yet he is manifestly touched by the dignity of his end, and is ready to credit him with the possession of some noble qualities. Seldom, indeed, has there been a more conspicuous example of a double life, that of the unscrupulous politician, and that of the genuine thinker of noble thought. But was ever philosopher pat in a position so trying The continuous commentary with which Mr. Furneaux has supplied the text is so uniformly good, that we find no occasion to suggest error or defect. If we find ourselves differing from his views, we always see that he has good reasons for his own choice. We are inclined to think that the tense as well as the context favours the view of rendering " nondum tamen morte acquiescebat," "could not reconcile herself to death" (of Octavio, in her last extremity, when she was " prmsagio malorum ram Titre exempta. ") ; but Mr. Furneaux has the majority of commentators on his side.
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