Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/672

662 Niehuhr on the Distinction Since the revival of literature this inquiry has often been renewed, and the answers proposed have generally been drawn from the remarks of Gellius coupled with an opinion delivered with a very authoritative air, in Servius (ad Mn. i. 373). All this is too well known and too obvious to be worth transcribing: but it may not be superfluous to shew why it is not satis- factory. We shall leave wholly out of the question the observation of Sempronius Asellio : that he aimed at something higher in his memoirs than the Annals, which related nothing but wars and triumphs, and were ignorant of the causes of events, and silent about the policy of the government and the objects of the laws. It is true that the pontifical Annals could not go beyond this, nor could the sage Coruncanius himself have written otherwise : for who would have presumed, in tables exposed to public view, to pronounce judgement on the senate or the tribunes, and to weigh the laudableness and wisdom of their proceedings? But this jejuneness of the ancient annals is no reason for questioning the propriety of assigning the same title to those of Tacitus, notwithstanding the deep views they contain. We should rather say that, as Gellius himself very clearly perceived, every narrative of events digested according to years may admit of this title in the larger sense : only it does not follow from this that a history like that of Tacitus should not observe the same arrangement, any more than that a nar- rative so distributed necessarily belongs in a peculiar sense to the class of annals, or that it always may be so named with- out doing violence to one'^s sense of propriety in language. Coesar'^s Commentaries are not Annals, though the books and the years correspond to each other. From the earliest times there have been two ways of transmitting the knowledge of events. In the one it is done progressively, by recording what takes place under the years in which it occurred : unconnectedly, without any combination with the past or any preparation for the future : by noting all that engages attention for the present, without paying any regard to its nature, or considering how soon it may become utterly immaterial. The other way is by comprehensive nar- ratives, the subject of which is entire and complete : these do