359 



other Etrarian localities or historical persons, he has recourse to an 

 inscribed stone dng ont of the ground, and then he says the application 

 is proved " inexpugnabile argumento."^ 



In a work of Antonio Augustinus, Archbishop of Tarragona, it is 

 stated by the author that a certain learned person of Yiterbo, worthy 

 of credit, used, when speaking of Annius, to tell him (Antonio Au- 

 gustinus) good humoiu'edly solebat narrare jucunde") that he was 

 charged with sculpturing the letters of an inscription which, by the 

 orders of Annius, was buried in a vineyard not far from Yiterbo, and 

 dug up before witnesses, when the sarcojjhagus in which it was en- 

 closed was taken to the senators of the city, and received with public 

 honours ; for Annius had taken care to make the city far more ancient 

 than E.ome, and dated its foundation from Isis and Osiris. f 



On the other hand, in Tooron's '^Histoire des Honimes lUustres de 

 rOrdre de Saint Dominiq^ue" (torn, iii., p. 655, et seq.), there is an eulo- 

 gistic memoir of Annius. Touron states that this learned member of 

 his order died, it is said, by poison, in 1502, in Eome, in the office of 

 Master of the Sacred Palace, Csesar Borgia being suspected of having 

 been his miu-derer. Touron makes mention of the several fragments of 

 the lost writings of the ancients that he claimed the discovery of, be- 

 sides those of Berosus and Manetho, namely, of llyi'sylus of Lesbos, 

 Cato, Sempronius, Archilochus, Zenophon, Metasthenes, Pictor, Philon, 

 Prontinas, and a fragment of the ''Itinerary" of Antoninus. 



On many of these works, Touron adds, he wrote learned commen- 

 taries, especially concerning the hrst twenty-four kings of Spain, and 

 declared that he had obtained several of the old MSS. from which he 

 had taken the matter of his publications from Pere Mathias, a Provin- 

 cial of his order in Armenia, when the latter was passing through 

 Grenoa, and especially the manuscript of Berosus. Touron admits the 

 manuscripts in question were spurious ; but that Annius was guilty only 

 of credulity, not of fraud, with respect to them. He relies chiefly on 

 the defence of the Bishop of Guevara — a writer who, however, was one of 

 the most celebrated literary impostors of his age — witness his " Life and 

 Conversations of the Emperor Aurelian." 



Touron insists that Annius's original of Berosus was a MS., not in- 

 scribed plates or stones, as others assert ; and that the account of the 

 Spanish writer, Antonio Augustinus, is on the authority of one Lati- 

 nius of Yiterbo, who said fJmt he had engraved the marbles secretly with 

 the inscriptions, and had concealed them after, by the directions of An- 

 nius, in a vineyard. This statement Touron calls a puerile story, for 

 Latinius was born several years after Annius's death. 



Whether the story of Latinius is puerile or not, the intrinsic evi- 

 dence cannot be got over of imposture in the commentaries of Annius 



* F2c/«"InstitutionesAnnii,"p 25. 



t Antonio Augustino — " Dialogiis Antiquitatum Eomanonim et Hispaniorum apud 

 Vos. De His. Lat," p. 610. 



