words, si possis recte, si non, quocunque modo.' Or, as Juvenal asks,

'Quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam, Præmia si tollas?'

Machiavelli would answer, he would be a fool who did so, being a prince; the præmia are the things to secure.' Thus his moral tone is not only below that of Tacitus, but is absolutely a zero of neutrality. He assumes as tenable that which Tacitus detests; but having a profound sense of the decencies and a strong regard to consistency, he studiously, as it seems, avoids any reference to one before whom his 'genius would stand rebuked.' But when in chap. vii. he refers to the emperors who from a private station arrived at 'empire by corrupting the soldiery,' in chap. ix. to the prince who owes his exaltation to the favour of the people,' and to the risk incurred' by the prince who seeks to 'change a civil principality into an absolute rule,' we can hardly doubt that his mind's eye rested on Otho and Vitellius, Augustus and Tiberius; or that the sphinx-like impenetrability with which the last-named baffled the Senate, eager to read 'the day's disasters in his morning face,' inspired the sentence in chap. xviii., It is necessary to disguise the appearance of 'craft, and thoroughly to understand the art of feigning and 'dissembling.' The Florentine hierophant of statecraft must have closely sympathised with the politic secrecy which falls like a veil on the face of Cæsarian history, and baffled the penetration of Dio, its later historian, of whom Mr. Furneaux says:

'He, with all the materials before him which we have, and much more which we have not, finds himself, at the establishment of the principate, passing from daylight into comparative darkness, deepening, no doubt, towards his own time, as publicity was more and more suppressed.

In former days, public affairs were discussed before Senate and people, by persons of every shade of opinion; now the forum was silenced, even the minutes of the Senate no longer public, and the vast departments centred in the princeps received their intelligence and transacted their business in private, and communicated no more than they thought fit. What was divulged could not be tested, and those who disbelieved the information had only surmise to substitute for it. Sometimes, no doubt, light was afterwards thrown on a dark place, through the record of their own transactions by public men, or authentic private communications which found their way into history, and exposed the falsifications of an imperial bureau.' (Vol. i. Introd. p. 17.)

Traces of the influence of Tacitus's Dialogue 'de Oratoribus,'

the earlier part of which is a controversy on the respective attractions of oratory and poetry, may be found in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Defence of Poesie,' especially as regards the declamatory spirit which pervades it; and the illustrative enlargement added by Lord Bacon to his original ten Essays 'Civil and Moral' in the later editions seems enriched from meditations on the Cæsars.* The episode of Sejanus in Ann. iv. and vi. gave Ben Jonson his play of that name, in which several scenes come directly from the Latin of Tacitus. To the Dialogue' we shall have occasion to recur. Our editors alike enrich the reader with a wealth of literary aids which results from their own and others' industry. They write as though nothing had been told while anything remains untold, and pile Pelion upon Ossa in masses of historical and critical elucidation. No doubt the convenience to the man of literary leisure is great when he finds between the boards of his volume all and more than all which is necessary to understand and even enjoy his author. The editions before us seem compiled for such, and comprise the Tacitean specialties of a well-found library thoroughly up to date, besides opening side-doors of reference, alike tempting and enabling further research. They are thus intellectual éditions de luxe. But to the student, even of matured powers, attacking his author'de novo, the mountainpile of preliminaries is rather bewildering. By such the sources of information' to, and the use of his materials' by the historian-both the outcome of modern controversy over his trustworthiness-would be taken for granted. Mr. Furneaux is especially abundant in these highly readable excursions. To take his first volume only, the 'Introduction,' following a Preface' of five pages, contains nine chapters, as follows:-Chap. i., Life and Works of Tacitus, 6 pp. ; chap. i., Genuineness of the Annals,' 3 pp.; chap. iii., Sources of Information, nearly 9 pp.; chap. iv., Use of materials by Tacitus, nearly 10 pp.; chap. v., Syntax and style, over 30 pp. ; chap. vi., Constitution of the early Principate, 12 pp. ; chap. vii., Rome under Augustus and Tiberius, 27 pp.; chap. viii., Character aud Government of Tiberius, 25 pp.; chap. ix., Genealogy, with Notes, 14 pp. All these, except v. and ix., are thickly studded with references and occasionally with original quotations in

*This is most conspicuous in the Latin form of the essays. See, for a good instance, Essay ii, 'De Morte,' which has three or four textual quotations from Tacitus or Suetonius.

the footnotes; in the excepted chapters they are dispersed, more suitably to the subjects, in the body of the page. The total of the dimensions of this vast portico to the following structure of text and comment, which two divide about equally the remaining pages, is over one-fourth of the entire volume, and its proportion in the second volume falls but a very little short of the same. Nor is Mr. Spooner much less liberal. His preface is short, but his introduction of a hundred pages in seven sections includes in the fourth of these an entire review of all the provinces of the empire, following and popularising Mommsen; and in the last, a close and copious résumé of that intricate passage of history, the revolt of Civilis. Each editor has industriously affixed his index, but the only map in either is one of Armenia at the end of Mr. Furneaux's vol. ii., which might have been more conveniently placed close to the essay on Parthia and 'Armenia.' We regard this essay, from the difficulty of the subject and the lucidity of the treatment, as the most masterly of the whole. Tacitus, it should be noticed, is here at his worst. His editor finds therein occasion, and takes it, to be at his best; and it is hardly possible to bestow greater praise. The narrative of the 'Annals' breaks the subject into four portions interrupted and resumed,† but with such an absence of chronological data and such a total unconcern about geographical, as to make it impossible to assign with certainty the year of each campaign, or to trace its movements on the map. Their geography indeed, as the editor remarks, is the standing reproach of all Roman historians. We have no trace of the existence of official maps among the tabularia of Rome. Not only here, but in his British campaign of Claudius, the gravest doubts as to the lines of march indicated by Tacitus remain insoluble. He seems to cover the area, but never to touch the ground; and the modern editor, bent on hopeless accuracy, toils after him in vain.

But in both our editors every one of these separate sections of illustrative digest shows an enthusiasm of thoroughness likely to fix and certain to reward the attention of the student; but we fear the whole mounts up to a bulk no less certain to cloy his appetite and overload his powers of assimilation. We would gladly have seen the bulk of historical disquisition shrunk by one-half, and the deficiency, if any,

* Vol. ii. Introd. chap. iv.

Hist. xiii. 34-41, xiv. 23-26, xv. 1-18 and 24-31. VOL. CLXXIX. NO. CCCLXVII.

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made good by a dozen serviceable maps, illustrating such points as the Pannonian revolt in the Annals,' the areas of Upper and Lower Germany, the march of Galba upon Rome, the two battles of Bedriacum, and the topography of the great Neronian conflagration in the fourteen quarters of the city.

At the same time there is no diffuseness in either editor. The wholes are compact, and the parts are distinct. It is the profuseness of this cornucopia which we deprecate; and, as deprecating, must refrain from following its lead into many a flowery corner of historical research. We will venture a hint to Mr. Spooner that his frequent transitions from the past proper to narrative into the present of livelinessand back, do not, especially in an epitome, such as his work necessitates, tend to lucidity. A few remarks on one or two leading samples of these richly stored essays seem, however, due to the editorial care which has grouped their materials with an almost overpowering liberality.

In chapter vi., on The Constitution of the Early Principate,' we have the pith of so much of Professor Mommsen's Römisches Staatsrecht' as refers to the subject, blended with an appreciable quantum of original and independent matter. Here the successive instalments of constitutional power which gradually invested Octavian with all the attributes of supremacy are carefully examined. Among them the title Imperator,' in a permanent sense, distinguished from the spontaneous enthusiasm of victorious. legions greeting their leader in the moment of victory, is specially noticed. It was not, however, peculiar to Octavian, for whom Mr. Furneaux quotes an inscription in Orelli's collection, Imp. Cæsar iii vir R.P.C.' Precisely the same style mutato nomine is given to Mark Antony, one of whose coins shows M. Antonius Imp., &c.,' and on the obverse, iii vir R.P.C.'* One remark may be added on the tribunitial power,' which we think would be better rendered capacity' or 'function,' according to the distinction between potestas and the more abstract potentia. "It appears that in some form he (Octavian) had received it in 718 B.C. 36.' It was in fact a constitutional necessity that he should, or at any rate that one or more of the triumvirate should, receive it. For without it the bestowal at, once of consular power' and 'military (pro'consular) imperium'† would have overridden the ordinary

*Figured in Sir W. Smith's Dictionary of Biography, i. p. 216. Introduction, p. 64.

tribunate and left the mass of the citizens without a protector. The tribunitia potestas was therefore the proper complement to balance, at any rate in theory, these two powerful weights of absolutism. Its early attribution might almost have been assumed, if not expressly mentioned. Indeed, as Mr. Furneaux notices in a note,* the Dictator Cæsar had previously united the same potestas with his imperium, referring to Dio, 42, 20, 3. And Suetonius mentions the reception of that potestas (which he calls perpetua, as, in fact, it became) by Octavian in the same section in which he deals with the 'triumvirate' (Suet. 'Aug.' 27). The distinction, which Dean Merivale failed to make, between the princeps' as a common imperial title, though rather popular than formal, and the princeps senatus, which Octavian and his successors also bore-although not found upon extant inscriptions earlier than Pertinax-is duly impressed by our editor. 'Princeps,' without an epithet, is rarely inscribed, as he rightly informs us. Tiberius is called in one inscription principis et conservatoris; but it may be doubted whether an instance can be quoted of princeps standing alone as a formal title; although in the Ancyran Monument Augustus expressly claims it, as well as that of princeps senatus distinct from it. That each expresses an idea independent of the other seems clear from this last fact. But, if further evidence be sought, we have it in a lost portion of Cicero's treatise de Republica,' referred to by himself in his letter 'ad 'Atticum,' viii. 2, and quoted by Augustin, 'De Civ. Dei,' v. 13, as follows: Tullius dissimulare non potuit in iisdem 'libris quos de republica scripsit, ubi loquitur de instituendo 'principe civitatis, quem dicit alendum esse gloria.' Cicero himself uses to Atticus (ubi sup.) the term 'moderator reipub'lica, quo referre velimus omnia.' But as this part of the text of the 'De República' is lost, we know not by what adjustment he contrived to make it fit existing magistracies, or by what limitations he would have guarded it from mere irresponsible absolutism. Practically the question was solved by consolidating in one pair of hands the imperium, the tribunate, and, when necessary, the censorship, together with the filling up the senatorial roll (lectio senatus). It was like staving so many old casks, and pouring their contents into one reservoir. As for limitations, there were none, save the ratio ultima of conspiracy and assassination. But of these powers, in the case of Augustus, the tribunate only, when once fully

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*Introduction, p. 64.