III. Out of this variance in the two works arises another
tremendous difficulty which we have to look at:--The Annals and
the History are intended, the one to be the complement to the
other. Then two works, which are necessary to each other, ought to
be, when separated, incomplete: if one man wrote them they would
be incomplete when separated; but if two men wrote them, they
would be complete in themselves. Now, are the History and the
Annals incomplete, when separated? or complete in themselves?
Everybody acknowledges that they are complete in themselves; each
contains everything requisite for the full understanding and
enjoyment of each; each has its peculiar force; each its distinct
beauty; and for uniformity to exist in the two many passages in
both must be destroyed; and the most ingenious can give no just or
adequate cause for the destruction of the passages, even as he can
give no just or adequate cause for their existence, except that
which I am advancing that it was because two men wrote the two
works.

IV. This accounts at once for all the incongruities they owe their
existence naturally enough to the following simple causes:--the
different kinds of information possessed as well as the different
views of things entertained by two different individuals; and,
along with these, an occasional failing of the memory; for a man,
who forges such a very long work as the Annals, must every now and
then forget,--however tenacious his memory may be,--what the man,
whom he simulates, has said, here and there, in this or that work,
upon some minor point in Roman history, not associated with nor
essential to the principal thing he has always to keep steadily in
mind,--his main matter. Thus we find no end of little trips in the
Annals, many of which we will point out in their proper places as