Ross charges the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini, famous hunter of lost classical manuscripts, with composing the Annals of Tacitus himself and selling them as ancient. He builds the case from the Latin style, the alliterations, the differences from the Histories, and Poggio’s own letters about mysterious copies that no monastery ever held.
Scholars have firmly rejected its thesis, but it remains a fascinating, combative curiosity of Victorian classical controversy. Download the free EPUB.