entirely different conclusions from the facts which Dessau had adduced as proofs of forgery. The progress of Mommsen's study forced him to admit what he had so entirely repudiated at first, that the lives do contain hints of a later period, all of which, he asserts, can be accounted for by the manner in which the collection took form. Mommsen's opinion, as finally stated, was that about A.D. 330 an editor collected the available material and then filled in the gaps with his own work. Again, at a later time a reviser retouched this whole collection and added the evidence of the latest period, which has caused all the trouble. By him also the work resembling Eutropius and Victor was inserted. It is not the clearest of statements, and had to be so modified, as it proceeded, that it certainly has not the weight attaching to it that others of Mommsen's works carry.
During the year 1890 two works appeared, the first by Seeck,[1] who attempted to assist Dessau, the other by Klebs,[2] who had accepted a modified Mommsen estimate of the authenticity of the Scriptores. Seeck began by pointing out that a work which was first heard of in the latter part of the fourth[3] century was not likely to arouse sufficient interest to induce any one to revise it during the earlier part of that century. He attacked the work attributed to Vopiscus, Pollio, and Spartianus in particular, pointing out, in the case of Vopiscus, that had he written under Constantine he would
- ↑ "Die Entstehungszeit der S.H.A.," Neue Jahrhuch Phil. vol. cxli.
- ↑ "Die Sammlung der S.H.A.," Rhein. Mus. vol. xlv.
- ↑ Seeck, op. cit.
