us when we read (if read we must) German critics who deny Homer's
claim to this or that passage, and Plato's right to half his
accepted dialogues, on grounds of literary taste. And farewell, as
Herodotus would have said, to the Letters of Phalaris, of Socrates,
of Plato; to the Lives of Pythagoras and of Homer, and to all the
other uncounted literary forgeries of the classical world, from the
Sibylline prophecies to the battle of the frogs and mice.

Early Christian frauds were, naturally, pious. We have the
apocryphal Gospels, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which
were not exposed till Erasmus's time. Perhaps the most important of
pious forgeries (if forgery be exactly the right word in this case)
was that of 'The False Decretals.' "Of a sudden," says Milman,
speaking of the pontificate of Nicholas I. (ob. 867 A.D.), "Of a
sudden was promulgated, unannounced, without preparation, not
absolutely unquestioned, but apparently over-awing at once all
doubt, a new Code, which to the former authentic documents added
fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty oldest Popes from
Clement to Melchiades, and the donation of Constantine, and in the
third part, among the decrees of the Popes and of the Councils from
Sylvester to Gregory II., thirty-nine false decrees, and the acts of
several unauthentic Councils." "The whole is composed," Milman
adds, "with an air of profound piety and reverence." The False
Decretals naturally assert the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.
"They are full and minute on Church Property" (they were sure to be
that); in fact, they remind one of another forgery, pious and Aryan,
'The Institutes of Vishnu.' "Let him not levy any tax upon
Brahmans," says the Brahman forger of the Institutes, which "came
from the mouths of Vishnu," as he sat "clad in a yellow robe,
imperturbable, decorated with all kinds of gems, while Lakshmi was