BOOK THE FIRST.

TACITUS.


"Allusiones saepe subobscurae ... mihi conjectandi aliquando,
et aliquando exploratae veritatis fundamento innitendi materiam
praebuere."
DE TONELLIS. Praef. ad Poggii Epist.




TACITUS AND BRACCIOLINI.


CHAPTER I.

TACITUS COULD BARELY HAVE WRITTEN THE ANNALS.

I. From the chronological point of view.--II. The silence
preserved about that work by all writers till the fifteenth
century.--III. The age of the MSS. containing the Annals.


I. The Annals and the History of Tacitus are like two houses in
ruins: dismantled of their original proportions they perpetuate
the splendour of Roman historiography, as the crumbling remnants
of the Coliseum preserve from oblivion the magnificence of Roman