罗马古代有多假？
罗马古代有多假？这是挑战从罗马帝国到十字军东征的地中海世界传统历史框架的三篇系列文章中的第一篇。这是对近几十年来在学术界边缘（主要是德国、俄罗斯和法国）获得新动力的旧辩论的集体贡献。在此过程中将提出一些可行的假设，最后一篇文章将以基于确凿考古证据的范式转变的形式提出全球解决方案。塔西佗和布拉乔里尼科尼利厄斯·塔西佗（Cornelius Tacitus，公元 56-120 年）是我们关于罗马帝国最详细的历史资料之一，他的主要著作《编年史》和《历史》涵盖了从公元 14 年奥古斯都去世到 96 年图密善去世的罗马帝国历史。以下是法国学者波利多尔·霍查特（Polydor Hochart）在1890年介绍他对“塔西佗编年史和历史的真实性”的调查结果，该研究建立在约翰·威尔逊·罗斯（John Wilson Ross）十二年前出版的著作《塔西佗和布拉乔利尼：十五世纪锻造的编年史》的基础上第 世纪 （1878）：“在十五世纪初，学者们没有塔西佗作品的一部分可供使用;他们应该迷路了。大约在 1429 年，佛罗伦萨的波焦·布拉乔里尼 （Poggio Bracciolini） 和尼科利 （Niccoli） 发现了一份手稿，其中包含《编年史》的最后六卷和《历史》的前五卷。正是这份原型手稿用于制作在使用印刷术之前一直在流通的副本。现在，当人们想知道它在哪里以及如何进入他们的手中时，人们会惊讶地发现他们在这个问题上给出了不可接受的解释，他们要么不想，要么不能说真话。大约八十年后，教皇利奥十世得到了一卷包含《编年史》前五卷的书。它的起源也被黑暗所包围。/ 为什么会有这些奥秘？那些展示这些文件的人应该得到什么信心？我们对它们的真实性有什么保证？在考虑这些问题时，我们首先要看到，波焦和尼科利并不以诚实和忠诚而著称，对他们来说，寻找古代手稿是一种产业，一种赚钱的手段。我们还将注意到，波焦是他那个时代最有学问的人之一，他也是一位聪明的书法家，他甚至在他的薪水中训练抄写员，以伦巴第和卡罗林字符在羊皮纸上以非凡的方式书写。因此，正如他自己所说，从他手中出来的书卷可以完美地模仿古代手稿。/ 我们还将能够看到编年史和历史是由哪些元素组成的。最后，在寻找谁可能是这种文学欺诈的作者时，我们会认为，伪塔西佗很可能就是波焦·布拉乔里尼本人。霍查特的演示分两个阶段进行。首先，他追溯了波乔和尼科利发现的手稿的来源，将波乔的信件作为欺骗的证据。然后，霍查特谈到了第二份手稿的出现，两年前，教皇利奥十世（美第奇家族）承诺，任何能向他提供古希腊人或罗马人未知手稿的人都会获得丰厚的黄金奖励。利奥奖励了他不知名的提供者 500 克朗，这在当时是一笔财富，并立即下令印刷这份珍贵的手稿。霍查特的结论是，这份手稿一定是让-弗朗索瓦·布拉乔利尼（Jean-François Bracciolini）间接提供给利奥十世的，他是波乔私人图书馆和文件的儿子和唯一继承人，当时他恰好是利奥十世的秘书，他利用匿名中间人来逃避怀疑。这两份手稿现在都保存在佛罗伦萨，所以它们的年代可以科学地确定，不是吗？这是值得怀疑的，但无论如何，事实是他们的年龄只是假设的。对于塔西佗的其他作品，例如《日耳曼尼亚》和《德·阿格里科拉》，我们甚至没有任何中世纪的手稿。大卫·沙普斯告诉我们，日耳曼尼亚在整个中世纪都被忽视，但在 1425 年在赫斯菲尔德修道院发现的一份手稿中幸存下来，被带到意大利并由后来的教皇庇护二世和布拉乔利尼的埃内亚·西尔维奥·皮科洛米尼 （Enea Silvio Piccolomini） 和布拉乔利尼 （Bracciolini） 检查，然后从视线中消失。波焦·布拉乔里尼（Poggio Bracciolini，1380-1459 年）因“重新发现和恢复了大量古典拉丁文手稿而受到赞誉，这些手稿大多在德国、瑞士和法国的修道院图书馆中腐烂和遗忘”（维基百科）。霍查特认为，塔西佗的书并不是他唯一的伪造品。西塞罗、卢克莱修、维特鲁威和昆蒂利安的其他作品受到怀疑，仅举几例。例如，卢克莱修唯一已知的作品《自然之歌》“在中世纪几乎消失了，但于1417年在德国的一座修道院中被波焦·布拉乔利尼（Poggio Bracciolini）重新发现”（维基百科）。昆蒂利安现存的唯一著作，一本十二卷的修辞学教科书《演说家学院》（Institutio Oratoria）也是如此，波焦在一封信中叙述了其发现：“在大量的书籍中，我们发现昆蒂利安仍然安然无恙，尽管霉菌和灰尘肮脏。因为这些书不是在图书馆里，而是在一座塔楼底部的肮脏阴暗的地牢里，即使是被判犯有死罪的人也不会被关在那里。
如果霍查尔是对的，那么波乔是否是一个例外，证实了人类因“重新发现”伟大经典而感谢的人文主义者的诚实规则？正如我们将看到的，几乎没有。即使是伟大的伊拉斯谟（1465-1536）也屈服于以圣塞普里安（De duplici martyrio ad Fortunatum）的名义伪造论文的诱惑，他假装是在古代图书馆偶然发现的。伊拉斯谟用这种策略来表达他对天主教混淆美德和苦难的批评。在这种情况下，异端放弃了伪造者。但是，有多少伪造品因缺乏原创性而未被发现？贾尔斯·康斯特布尔（Giles Constable）在《中世纪的伪造和剽窃》中写道：“成功的伪造者和剽窃者的秘诀是将欺骗与他们那个时代的欲望和标准如此紧密地协调，以至于在创作时不会被发现，甚至不会被怀疑。换句话说：“伪造和剽窃......追随而不是创造时尚，可以毫无悖论地被认为是他们那个时代最真实的产品之一。我们在这里关注的是文学伪造，但还有其他种类。米开朗基罗本人通过伪造古董雕像开始了自己的职业生涯，其中包括一个被称为沉睡的丘比特（现已丢失）的雕像，当时他受雇于佛罗伦萨的美第奇家族。他用酸性泥土使雕像看起来古色古香。它通过经销商卖给了圣乔治的红衣主教里亚里奥，后者最终发现了这个骗局并要求退还他的钱，但没有对这位艺术家提出任何指控。除了这种公认的赝品之外，林恩·卡特森（Lynn Catterson）还提出了一个强有力的理由，即“拉奥孔和他的儿子们”雕塑组可追溯到公元前40年左右，据说于1506年在罗马的一个葡萄园中被发现，并立即被教皇朱利叶斯二世收购，是米开朗基罗的另一件赝品。).
当人们认真思考这个问题时，人们会发现有几个理由怀疑这样的杰作在文艺复兴之前的任何时候都是可能的，其中之一与人体解剖学的进步有关。许多其他古董作品也提出了类似的问题。例如，将马库斯·奥勒留（Marcus Aurelius）的青铜骑马雕像（以前被认为是君士坦丁的）与路易十四（Louis XIV）的雕像进行比较，会让您感到疑惑：为什么在五世纪和十五世纪之间找不到任何接近这种成就的水平？我们甚至可以确定马库斯·奥勒留是一个历史人物吗？“描述马库斯生平和统治的主要来源是不完整的，而且经常不可靠”（维基百科），其中最重要的一个是高度可疑的奥古斯塔历史（稍后会详细介绍）。
利润丰厚的文学赝品市场“近代早期欧洲的文学伪造，1450-1800年”是2012年会议的主题，其论文集于2018年由约翰霍普金斯大学出版社出版（该出版社还出版了440页的目录，Bibliotheca Fictiva：与文学伪造有关的书籍和手稿集，公元前400年至公元2000年）。该书中讨论的一位伪造者是维泰博的安尼乌斯（1432-1502 年），他制作了 11 个文本集，归因于迦勒底人、埃及人、波斯人以及几个古希腊人和罗马人，旨在表明他的家乡维泰博在伊特鲁里亚时期是重要的文化中心。安尼乌斯将他的文本归因于可识别的古代作家，他们的真迹已经轻易地消失了，他继续对自己的赝品进行大量评论。这个案例说明了许多文学伪造中政治和商业动机的结合。历史写作是一种政治行为，在15世纪，它在意大利城市之间的声望竞争中发挥了至关重要的作用。塔西佗的罗马史是由布拉乔里尼提出的，三十年后，一位名叫莱昂纳多·布鲁尼（Leonardo Bruni，1369-1444 年）的佛罗伦萨总理将他的佛罗伦萨人民史 （Historiae Florentini populi） 写了 12 卷（通过剽窃拜占庭编年史）。政治价值转化为经济价值，古代作品的市场达到了天文数字的价格：据说，仅出售了一本提图斯·李维（Titus Livy）的手稿，布拉乔里尼（Bracciolini）就在佛罗伦萨为自己买了一栋别墅。在文艺复兴时期，“购买古典文物已经成为一种新的时尚，一种展示权力和地位的新方式。城镇和富有的统治者现在不再收集圣徒的骨头和身体部位，而是收集古代世界的碎片。就像文物贸易一样，需求远远超过供应“（来自圣地亚哥”恶作剧博物馆“的网站）。在古典研究的主流中，如果古代文本没有被证明是伪造的，它们就被认为是真实的。西塞罗的《安慰》现在被普遍认为是出生于摩德纳的意大利人文主义者卡罗卢斯·西戈尼乌斯（Carolus Sigonius，1520-1584 年）的作品，只是因为我们有一封西戈尼乌斯本人承认伪造的信。但是，如果没有这样的坦白，或者一些公然的不合时宜，历史学家和古典学者只会忽略欺诈的可能性。例如，他们永远不会怀疑弗朗切斯科·佩特拉卡（Francesco Petrarca，又称彼特拉克，1304-1374 年）伪造了他发现的西塞罗信件，尽管他继续以完美的西塞罗风格出版自己的信件。杰里·布罗顿（Jerry Brotton）在《文艺复兴时期的集市》（The Renaissance Bazaar）中写道：“西塞罗对彼特拉克和随后的人文主义发展至关重要，因为他提供了一种新的思维方式，即有教养的个人如何将生活中的哲学和沉思的一面与其更积极和公共的维度结合起来。[...]这是彼特拉克人文主义的蓝图。彼特拉克发现的中世纪手稿早已失传，那么除了彼特拉克的声誉之外，我们还有什么证据证明它们的真实性呢？想象一下，如果历史学家认真质疑我们最珍视的一些古典宝藏的真实性。他们中有多少人能通过测试？如果霍查尔是对的，塔西佗被从可靠来源名单中删除，那么罗马帝国的整个历史大厦就遭受了重大的结构性失败，但如果古代史学的其他支柱在类似的审查下崩溃了呢？提图斯·李维（Titus Livy）呢，他比塔西佗早一个世纪，写了一部不朽的罗马历史，共142卷，从公元前753年罗马的建立开始，一直到奥古斯都统治时期。自路易·德·博福特（Louis de Beaufort）的批判性分析（1738年）以来，人们承认李维历史的前五个世纪是一个虚构的网络。但是我们能相信剩下的吗？布罗顿告诉我们，也是彼特拉克，他“开始拼凑像李维的《罗马史》这样的文本，整理不同的手稿片段，纠正语言中的腐败，并模仿其风格，写出一种语言更流畅、修辞更有说服力的拉丁语形式。彼特拉克使用的手稿都不再可用。奥古斯都历史（Historia Augusta）呢，这是爱德华·吉本（Edward Gibbon）完全信任的罗马编年史，因为他写了《罗马帝国的衰亡》（Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire）？此后，它被揭露为冒名顶替者的作品，他通过从头开始发明来源来掩盖他的欺诈行为。然而，出于某种模糊的原因，人们认为伪造者生活在五世纪，无论如何，这应该使他的伪造物变得有价值。实际上，它的一些故事听起来像是对文艺复兴时期习俗的隐晦讽刺，另一些则像是基督教对前基督教宗教的诽谤。例如，在整个地中海盆地被崇拜为奥西里斯化身的英雄安提诺斯，是奥古斯都历史中讲述的哈德良的同性恋情人（eromenos）的可能性有多大？这种合理性的问题被专业历史学家完全忽略了。但是，它们会跳到任何对学术共识不以为然的非专业读者的脸上。例如，只要在维基百科页面上阅读苏埃托尼乌斯的《十二凯撒生平》的摘要，就足以引起非常强烈的怀疑，不仅是欺诈，而且是嘲弄，因为我们在这里处理的显然是具有伟大想象力的传记，但没有任何历史价值。小说作品也受到怀疑。我们应归功于 The Satyricon 的完整版本，据说是在尼禄时期写成的，归功于 Poggio Bracciolini 在科隆发现的手稿。阿普莱乌斯的小说《金驴》也被波焦发现在与塔西佗的《编年史》和《历史》片段相同的手稿中。它在 13 世纪之前不为人知，其核心部分丘比特和普赛克的故事似乎源自 12 世纪罗马 de Partonopeu de Blois 中发现的更古老的版本。可以提出一个问题，为什么罗马人会费心在纸莎草纸上书写和复制这些作品，但更重要的问题是：为什么中世纪的僧侣会将它们复制并保存在昂贵的羊皮纸上？这个问题适用于所有异教作家，因为他们中没有一个是在据称早于九世纪的手稿中到达文艺复兴时期的。“僧侣们，出于纯粹的科学兴趣，有责任为后代，为了异教的更大荣耀，为古代的杰作保存吗？”霍查特问道。不仅是杰作，还有成捆的信件！在16世纪初，维罗尼亚人弗拉·乔瓦尼·乔孔多（Veronian Fra Giovanni Giocondo）发现了一卷121封小普林尼（塔西佗的朋友）和图拉真皇帝在112年左右交换的信件。拉丁学者雅克·赫贡（Jacques Heurgon）写道，这本“书”在整个中世纪都消失了，人们可以相信它绝对丢失了，当它在16世纪的头几年突然出现在一份手稿中时，它被复制了一部分，然后又完全丢失了。这种毫无戒心的呈现说明了古典学者对他们的拉丁语来源的盲目信任，这些来源在中世纪不为人知，在文艺复兴时期却神奇地从无处出现。霍查尔说，最奇怪的是，基督教僧侣应该在昂贵的羊皮纸上抄写了数千本异教书籍，却把它们当作毫无价值的垃圾：“为了解释前几个世纪的学者们仍然不知道有多少拉丁作家的作品被文艺复兴时期的学者发现，据说僧侣们通常将图书馆里的大部分异教著作放到修道院的阁楼或地窖里。因此，当他们被允许在那里搜索时，正是在被丢弃的物品中，有时是在垃圾中，手稿的发现者发现了，他们声称，古代的杰作。在中世纪的修道院中，抄写手稿是一种商业手艺，专门关注宗教书籍，如诗篇、福音书、弥撒、教理问答和圣徒传说。它们大多被复制在纸莎草纸上。羊皮纸和牛皮纸是为豪华书籍保留的，由于它是一种非常昂贵的材料，因此通常的做法是刮掉旧卷轴以重复使用它们。异教徒的作品是第一个消失的。事實上，他們的毀滅，而不是保存，被認為是一種聖潔的行為，正如聖語學家在他們的聖徒生活中充分說明的那樣。凯撒大帝有多真实？巴塞尔大学教授罗伯特·巴尔道夫（Robert Baldauf）独立于霍查特，基于语言学的考虑，认为许多最著名的古拉丁语和希腊语作品都起源于中世纪晚期（Historie und Kritik，1902）。“我们的罗马人和希腊人一直是意大利人文主义者，”他说。他们给了我们一个完整的古代幻想世界，这个世界“已经植根于我们的感知中，以至于任何实证主义的批评都无法使人类怀疑其真实性。例如，巴尔道夫指出，贺拉斯的拉丁语受到德国和意大利的影响。基于类似的理由，他得出结论，朱利叶斯·塞萨尔（Julius Cesar）的书因其精美的拉丁文而备受赞赏，是中世纪晚期的伪造品。最近的高卢历史学家，现在从考古学中了解到，实际上对塞萨尔的《贝洛·加利科评论》感到困惑——这是我们关于难以捉摸的 Vercingetorix 的唯一来源。从地理、人口学、人类学和宗教的角度来看，所有不是来自波塞冬奥斯历史第二十三卷的东西似乎都是错误的或不可靠的。一个巨大的谜团笼罩着所谓的作者本人。我们被告知，“凯撒”是一个含义和起源不明的绰号（昵称），在凯撒大帝死后立即被采用为帝国头衔;换句话说，我们被要求相信，皇帝们都称自己为凯撒，以纪念那位甚至不是皇帝的将军和独裁者，而且这个词获得了如此高的声望，以至于它后来被俄罗斯的“沙皇”和德国的“皇帝”所采用。但这个词源长期以来一直受到那些人（包括伏尔泰）的挑战，他们声称凯撒来自印欧语系的词根，意思是“国王”，这也给了波斯语Khosro。这两个起源不可能都是真的，第二个似乎有充分的根据。塞萨尔的绅士（姓氏）尤利乌斯并没有减轻我们的困惑。维吉尔告诉我们，它可以追溯到塞萨尔所谓的祖先尤卢斯或尤勒。但维吉尔也告诉我们（引自老加图，约公元前 168 年）它是木星（Jul Pater）的简称。它恰好是一个印欧语词根，表示阳光或白天的天空，与斯堪的纳维亚语中太阳神的名字Yule相同（希腊人为Helios，高卢人为Haul，德国人为Hel，法语Noël，Novo Hel由此而来）。“凯撒大帝”是“太阳王”吗？此外，还要考虑：1.罗马皇帝传统上被宣布为太阳神朱庇特或“不败太阳”（Sol Invictus）的养子。2. 据称，第一位皇帝屋大维·奥古斯都是朱利叶斯·凯撒的养子，他以尤利乌斯·凯撒·迪武斯的名义（1 月 1 日庆祝）将他占卜，同时为了纪念他，将夏季的第一个月改名为七月。如果奥古斯都是神圣太阳的养子，又是神圣朱利叶斯的养子，如果朱利叶斯或朱鲁斯是太阳的神圣名字，那就意味着神圣的朱利叶斯就是神圣的太阳（而所谓的“儒略”历法就是“太阳”历法）。尤利乌斯·凯撒（Julius Caesar）从天上降到地上，从神话转移到历史。根据乔治·杜梅齐尔（Georges Dumézil）的说法，这是罗马历史上的一个常见过程，他解释了罗马神话臭名昭著的贫困，因为它“在神学层面上被彻底摧毁，但以历史的形式蓬勃发展”，也就是说，罗马历史是建立在神话结构之上的文学小说。围绕尤利乌斯·凯撒的谜团当然具有重大意义，因为罗马帝国的史学都落在他身上。如果朱利叶斯·凯撒是虚构的，那么罗马帝国的大部分内容也是如此。请注意，在他那个时代的硬币上，第一位皇帝被简单地命名为奥古斯都·凯撒，这不是一个名字，而是一个可以应用于任何皇帝的头衔。
在这一点上，大多数读者会失去耐心。对于那些好奇心超过怀疑的人，我们现在要争辩说，罗马帝国实际上在很大程度上是君士坦丁堡的虚构镜像，这种幻想在十一世纪开始出现，当时教皇对拜占庭帝国发动了文化战争，并在十五世纪得到巩固， 在被称为文艺复兴时期的拜占庭文化掠夺的背景下。当然，这会引起许多反对意见，其中一些将在这里讨论，另一些将在以后的文章中讨论。第一个反对意见：君士坦丁堡不是由罗马皇帝君士坦丁大帝建立的吗？所以说。但是，这个传说中的君士坦丁有多真实呢？君士坦丁大帝有多真实？如果说凯撒大帝是西罗马帝国的阿尔法，那么君士坦丁就是欧米茄。它们之间的一个主要区别是我们来源的性质。对于君士坦丁的传记，我们完全依赖于基督教作家，从凯撒利亚的尤西比乌斯开始，他的君士坦丁生平，包括皇帝皈依基督教的故事，是悼词和圣训的混合体。从尤西比乌斯那里得出的普遍观念是，君士坦丁将他的帝国的首都从罗马迁至拜占庭，他以自己的名义重新命名了拜占庭。但是，对第一部《帝国》的一般叙述本身就充满了内在的矛盾。首先，君士坦丁并没有真正将首都迁往东方，因为他本人就来自东方。他出生在奈苏斯（今塞尔维亚的尼斯），当时被称为色雷斯以西的莫西亚地区。根据标准历史，君士坦丁在进军罗马并从马克森提乌斯手中征服这座城市之前从未踏足过罗马。君士坦丁不仅仅是一个碰巧出生在莫西亚的罗马人。他的父亲君士坦提乌斯也来自莫西亚。他的前任戴克里先也是如此，他出生在莫西亚，在那里建造了他的宫殿（斯普利特，今天在克罗地亚），并在那里去世。在拜占庭编年史中，戴克里先被称为 Dux Moesiae （Wikipedia），意思是“Moesia之王”，因为早在中世纪早期，dux 或多或少是 rex 的同义词。教科书历史告诉我们，戴克里先在成为皇帝后决定与马克西米安分享他的权力，成为共同皇帝。这已经够奇怪了。但他没有为自己保留帝国的历史中心，而是将其留给了他的下属并定居在东方。七年后，他将帝国进一步分裂为四国;现在不是奥古斯都凯撒，而是奥古斯都和凯撒。戴克里先退居小亚细亚远东地区，与波斯接壤。与他之后的君士坦丁一样，戴克里先从未在罗马统治过;他一生中去过一次。这就引出了帝国范式的第二个内在矛盾：君士坦丁并没有真正将帝国首都从罗马迁至拜占庭，因为罗马在286年不再是帝国首都，取而代之的是米兰。到戴克里先和君士坦丁时代，整个意大利实际上在三世纪危机（公元 235-284 年）期间陷入了无政府状态。公元 402 年，东方皇帝霍诺里乌斯恢复了半岛的秩序，将其首都迁至亚得里亚海沿岸的拉文纳。因此，从286年开始，我们应该有一个罗马帝国和一个荒芜的罗马。
当我们比较罗马和拜占庭文化时，这个难题只会变得更加浓厚。根据翻译帝国范式，东罗马帝国是西罗马帝国的延续。但拜占庭学者坚持认为，讲希腊语的拜占庭文明与早期的拉蒂姆文明之间存在巨大差异。拜占庭主义者安东尼·卡德利斯（Anthony Kaldellis）写道：“拜占庭人不是一个好战的民族。[...]他们宁愿付钱给敌人，要么离开，要么互相争斗。同样，他们帝国核心的宫廷也试图用荣誉、花哨的头衔、成捆的丝绸和金流来换取效忠。政治是一种狡猾的艺术，它提供恰到好处的激励措施来赢得支持者并保持他们的忠诚。金钱、丝绸和头衔是帝国首选的治理和外交政策工具，而不是刀剑和军队。拜占庭文明不欠罗马任何东西。它继承了古典希腊的所有哲学、科学、诗歌、神话和艺术传统。在文化上，它更接近波斯和埃及，而不是意大利，它将其视为殖民地。在公元第二个千年的黎明，它几乎不记得它所谓的拉丁历史，以至于十一世纪最著名的拜占庭哲学家迈克尔·普塞洛斯（Michael Psellos）将西塞罗与凯撒混为一谈。君士坦丁翻译帝国的教科书故事如何符合这个观点？事实并非如此。事实上，这个概念是有很大问题的。出于充分的理由，历史学家不愿意接受君士坦丁在拜占庭定居以将罗马留给教皇的基督教故事，他们努力为转移找到一个合理的解释，他们通常满足于这个解释：在旧首都陷入不可逆转的颓废之后（很快被高卢人洗劫）， 君士坦丁决定将帝国的心脏靠近其最濒危的边界。这有什么意义吗？即使确实如此，将一个拥有元老院、官僚和军队的帝国首都转移到一千英里之外，导致一个罗马帝国蜕变成另一个政治结构、语言、文化和宗教完全不同的罗马帝国，这有多合理？这个荒谬概念的主要来源之一是君士坦丁的虚假捐赠。虽然人们承认这份文件是中世纪教皇伪造的，以证明他们对罗马的主张是正当的，但其基本前提，即帝国首都向东方的翻译，并没有受到质疑。我们认为，君士坦丁的 translatio imperii 实际上是 translatio studii 的真正相反运动的神话掩护，拜占庭文化向西方的转移始于十字军东征之前，并在十字军东征之后演变成系统的掠夺。中世纪晚期的罗马文化通过君士坦丁堡罗马起源的相反神话来合理化和掩饰其不那么光荣的拜占庭起源。这将在下一篇文章中变得更加清晰，但这已经是东罗马帝国和西罗马帝国之间公认的亲子关系不可逾越的矛盾的一个例子。罗马人留给我们西方文明的最基本和最宝贵的遗产之一是他们的民法传统。罗马法仍然是我们法律制度的基础。那么，罗马法为什么在十一世纪末从拜占庭传入意大利呢？哈罗德·伯曼（Harold Berman）或阿尔多·斯基亚沃内（Aldo Schiavone）等专家坚持认为，罗马法的知识在西欧已经完全消失了700年，直到1080年左右被博洛尼亚学者发现查士丁尼编纂的拜占庭副本（《文摘》）。罗马法在西方的这种“长达700年的日食”，是一个无可争议但几乎不可理解的现象。谁是第一批“罗马人”对罗马和君士坦丁堡之间关系颠倒的观点的一个明显反对意见是，拜占庭人称自己为罗马人（Romaioi），并认为他们生活在罗马尼亚。波斯人、阿拉伯人和土耳其人称他们为鲁米人。甚至希腊半岛的希腊人在古代晚期也称自己为罗马人，尽管他们憎恶拉丁人。这证明拜占庭人认为自己是在意大利罗马建立的西方罗马帝国的继承人。但事实并非如此。奇怪的是，神话和词源都表明，就像“凯撒”这个名字一样，“罗马”这个名字是从东方传播到西方的，而不是相反。Romos，拉丁语为Romus或Remus，是一个希腊词，意思是“坚强”。意大利罗马人是来自小亚细亚吕底亚的伊特鲁里亚人。他们很清楚自己的东方血统，他们的记忆保存在他们的传说中。根据维吉尔在他的史诗《埃涅阿斯纪》中阐述的传统，罗马是由来自特洛伊的埃涅阿斯在博斯普鲁斯海峡附近建立的。根据另一个版本，罗马是由奥德修斯和喀耳刻的儿子罗莫斯建立的。据推测，生活在公元前一世纪的历史学家斯特拉博（但仅引用公元五世纪）报告说，“另一个古老的传统使罗马成为阿卡迪亚殖民地”，并坚持认为“罗马本身起源于希腊”（Geographia V，3）。哈利卡纳苏斯的否认者在他的《罗马古物》中宣称“罗马是一座希腊城市”。他的论点用三段论来概括：“罗马人是特洛伊人的后裔。但特洛伊人起源于希腊。所以罗马人是希腊血统。提图斯·李维（Titus Livy）（I，3）讲述的罗穆卢斯（Romulus）和雷穆斯（Remus）的著名传说通常被认为是后来的起源。它很可能是中世纪晚期的发明。阿纳托利·福缅科（Anatoly Fomenko）认为，它的中心主题是同时建立两座城市，一座是帕拉蒂尼山上的罗穆卢斯，另一座是阿文丁河上的雷姆斯，是两个罗马之间争夺优势的神话般的反映。正如我们将要看到的，罗慕路斯谋杀莱姆斯是第四次十字军东征所发生事件的恰当寓言。有趣的是，这个传说让人想起瓦伦斯和瓦伦丁尼安兄弟的历史，据说他们分别在 364 年至 378 年间统治君士坦丁堡和罗马（他们的故事来自一位作者阿米安努斯·马塞利努斯，一位用拉丁语写作的希腊人）。碰巧 valens 是希腊语 romos 的拉丁语等价物。我们在本文的开头提出，西罗马帝国的大部分历史都是文艺复兴时期的发明。但随着我们调查的进展，另一个互补的假设将会出现：西罗马帝国的大部分历史都是从东罗马帝国的历史中借来的，要么是故意抄袭，要么是由于拜占庭人称自己为罗马人和他们的城市罗马这一事实造成的混淆。该过程可以从一些明显的重复中推断出来。这里有一个例子，取自拉丁历史学家乔丹内斯，他的《哥特人的起源和事迹》是出了名的不合时宜：441 年，阿提拉渡过多瑙河，入侵巴尔干半岛，威胁君士坦丁堡，但无法占领这座城市并带着巨大的战利品撤退。十年后，同一个阿提拉越过阿尔卑斯山，入侵意大利，威胁罗马，但无法占领这座城市，带着巨大的战利品撤退.拉丁语的神秘起源另一个反对质疑西罗马帝国存在的反对意见是拉丁语在整个地中海世界及其他地区的传播。众所周知，拉丁语最初是拉丁语的语言，是法语、意大利语、奥克西坦语、加泰罗尼亚语、西班牙语和葡萄牙语的起源，被称为“西方罗曼语”。然而，业余历史学家和语言学家 M. J. Harper 发表了以下评论：“语言学证据非常精确地反映了地理情况：葡萄牙语比任何其他语言都更像西班牙语;法语比其他任何法语都更像奥克西坦语;奥克西坦语类似于加泰罗尼亚语，加泰罗尼亚语类似于西班牙语等等。那么哪种语言是你的语言呢？说不出来;它可以是其中任何一个。或者它可能是一种早已消失的语言。但原始语言不可能是拉丁语。 所有的罗曼语，甚至葡萄牙语和意大利语，都比任何一种语言都更像拉丁语，而且相差很大。出于这个原因，语言学家假设“罗曼语”不是直接源自拉丁语，而是源自通俗拉丁语，这是罗马帝国士兵、定居者和商人使用的拉丁语的流行和口语社会语言。粗俗的拉丁语或原始浪漫主义是什么样的？没人知道。事实上，最像拉丁语的语言是罗马尼亚语，虽然分为几种方言，但它本身就构成了罗曼语东部分支的唯一成员。它是唯一保留了拉丁语古老特征的罗曼语，例如大小写系统（单词的结尾取决于它们在句子中的角色）和中性性别。但是罗马尼亚人是怎么说粗俗拉丁语的呢？那里还有另一个谜团。公元 106 年，图拉真皇帝征服了罗马尼亚语的部分语言区，并在短短 165 年的时间里形成了罗马的达契亚省。一两个军团驻扎在达契亚的西南部，虽然不是意大利人，但他们应该用通俗的拉丁语交流，并将他们的语言强加给整个国家，甚至在多瑙河以北，那里没有罗马人的存在。在罗马人征服达契亚南部之前，人们在达契亚说什么语言？没有人知道。“达契亚语”“是一种已灭绝的语言，......记录不多。...据信只有一个达契亚铭文幸存下来。据推测，只有 160 个罗马尼亚语单词起源于达契亚语。达契亚语被认为与色雷斯语密切相关，色雷斯语本身是“一种已灭绝且证据不足的语言”。让我再说一遍：多瑙河以北的达契亚居民从公元 106 年到 271 年驻扎在其领土下部的非意大利军团那里采用了拉丁语，完全忘记了他们的原始语言，以至于没有留下任何痕迹。他们被罗马化了，以至于他们的国家被称为罗马尼亚，罗马尼亚语现在比其他欧洲罗曼语更接近拉丁语。然而，罗马人几乎从未占领过达契亚（在上面的地图上，达契亚甚至不算作罗马帝国的一部分）。下一部分也是非同寻常的：达契亚人如此轻易地放弃了他们的原始语言而使用粗俗拉丁语，然后变得如此依恋粗俗拉丁语，以至于导致罗马人在 271 年撤退的德国入侵者未能将他们的语言强加于人。匈奴人也是如此，更令人惊讶的是，斯拉夫人自七世纪以来一直统治着该地区，并在地名中留下了许多痕迹。只有不到百分之十的罗马尼亚语单词起源于斯拉夫语（但罗马尼亚人采用斯拉夫语作为他们的礼仪）。还有一件事：虽然拉丁语是帝国的书面语言，但罗马尼亚人被认为直到中世纪才有书面语言。第一份用罗马尼亚语写成的文件可以追溯到 16 世纪，它是用西里尔字母写成的。显然，存在以下替代理论的空间：拉丁语是一种起源于达契亚的语言;古代达契亚语并没有神秘消失，而是拉丁语和现代罗马尼亚语的共同祖先。如果你愿意的话，达契亚语是通俗拉丁语，先于古典拉丁语。达契亚也被称为罗马尼亚这一事实的一个可能的解释是，它——而不是意大利——是建立君士坦丁堡的罗马人的故乡。这与罗马语（拉丁语）在公元六世纪之前一直是东方帝国的行政语言的概念是一致的，当时它被希腊语所放弃，希腊语是大多数臣民使用的语言。反过来，这与拉丁语本身的特征是一致的。哈珀说：“拉丁语不是一种自然语言。在书写时，拉丁语大约占据了书面意大利语或书面法语（或书面英语、德语或任何自然欧洲语言）的一半空间。由于拉丁语似乎出现在公元前一千年的前半叶，也就是字母表首次在地中海盆地传播的时间，因此假设拉丁语最初是意大利语使用者为书面（机密？商业？）交流而编制的速记，这似乎是一个合理的工作假设。这将解释：a） 意大利语和拉丁语词汇之间的非常接近;b）拉丁语的简洁性，例如，省去了单独的介词、复合动词形式和其他“自然”语言障碍;c） 管理拉丁语语法和句法的异常正式的规则;d） 缺乏不规范、非标准的用法;e） 在西欧语言中不寻常地采用了一种特定的动词格（“亲爱的马库斯，回复你的信......”）。拉丁语是一种“非人口”语言的假设，是帝国的一种文化产物，是为写作而开发的文化产物，最早由俄罗斯研究人员伊戈尔·达维登科（Igor Davidenko）和雅罗斯拉夫·凯斯勒（Jaroslav Kesler）在《文明之书》（2001）中提出。古罗马建筑有多古老？当然，对古罗马帝国是虚构的理论最强烈的反对意见是她的许多建筑遗迹。这个主题将在后面的文章中更全面地探讨，但引用詹姆斯·布莱斯子爵的有影响力的著作《神圣罗马帝国》（1864 年）将指出答案：“现代旅行者，在罗马的最初几天，当他从圣彼得大教堂的山顶眺望坎帕尼亚，在梵蒂冈寒冷的走廊上踱步，在万神殿的回声圆顶下沉思时，当他经过皇家、共和和以及教皇罗马的纪念碑时，他开始寻找君士坦丁和教皇朱利叶斯二世之间一千二百年的一些遗迹。他问道，“中世纪的罗马，阿尔贝里克、希尔德布兰德和里恩齐的罗马在哪里？罗马挖了那么多条顿人主人的坟墓;朝圣者蜂拥而至;国王鞠躬的命令从何而来？基督教建筑最辉煌的时代，孕育了科隆、兰斯和威斯敏斯特的时代，托斯卡纳的大教堂和威尼斯的波浪冲刷的宫殿给了意大利，这些时代的纪念碑在哪里？这个问题没有答案。罗马是艺术之母，几乎没有一座建筑来纪念那个时代。据官方统计，罗马几乎没有中世纪遗迹，其他据信建于古代的意大利城市也是如此。弗朗索瓦·德·萨雷（Françoisde Sarre）是本文所介绍的研究领域的法国贡献者，他首先对罗马皇帝戴克里先（公元284-305年）的宏伟宫殿感兴趣，该宫殿位于斯普利特市中心，今天在克罗地亚。文艺复兴时期的建筑与它融为一体，形成了一个完美的建筑群，几乎无法区分。很难相信十个世纪将两个建筑阶段分开，就好像古代建筑在整个中世纪都没有受到影响一样。订阅新专栏
同样令人费解的是，一个鲜为人知的事实是，古罗马建筑使用了先进的技术，例如质量卓越的混凝土（阅读 这里 和 这里），例如用于建造万神殿保存完好的圆顶。维特鲁威（Vitruvius）的多卷本著作《建筑学》（公元前一世纪）描述了罗马混凝土制造的秘密。我们被告知，中世纪的人对这项技术完全一无所知，因为“维特鲁威的作品在很大程度上被遗忘了，直到 1414 年，佛罗伦萨人文主义者 Poggio Bracciolini 在圣加仑修道院的图书馆中'重新发现'了 De architectura”（维基百科）。
作为一个暂时的结论：我们指出的所有奇怪之处都像是拼图的碎片，不太符合我们的传统表现形式。我们稍后将能够将它们组合成更合理的图片。但在此之前，在下一篇文章中，我们将重点关注从古代晚期到中世纪的教会文学，因为它是伟大的历史扭曲的原始来源，后来在被标准化为现代年表学和史学的教条之前，它已经独立存在。笔记 Polydor Hochart， De l'authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite，1890 年（archive.org），第 viii-ix 页。 大卫·沙普斯，“塔西佗的《阿格里科拉的发现和丢失的手稿》，《古典语言学》，第 74 卷，第 1 期（1979 年 1 月），第 28-42 页，第www.jstor.org 页。 贾尔斯·康斯特布尔（Giles Constable），“中世纪的伪造和剽窃”，在中世纪欧洲的文化与灵性中，Variorum，1996年，第1-41页，以及 www.degruyter.com/abstract/j/afd.1983.29.issue-jg/afd.1983.29.jg.1/afd.1983.29.jg.1.xml 林恩·卡特森（Lynn Catterson），“米开朗基罗的'拉奥孔'”，《艺术与历史》，第26卷，第52期，2005年，第29-56页，第www.jstor.org 页。 大卫·卡雷特（David Carrette），《发明》（L'Invention du Moyen Âge）。La plus grande falsification de l'histoire，Magazine Top-Secret，Hors-série n°9,2014 年。 杰里·布罗顿（Jerry Brotton），《文艺复兴时期的集市：从丝绸之路到米开朗基罗》，牛津大学出版社，2010年，第66-67页。 路易·德·博福特（Louis de Beaufort），《罗马历史史论文》（1738年），www.mediterranee-antique.fr/Fichiers_PdF/ABC/Beaufort/Dissertation.pdf。 杰里·布罗顿，《文艺复兴时期的集市》，同前，第66-67页。 例如，罗伊斯顿·兰伯特（Royston Lambert）在他的《挚爱与上帝：哈德良和安提诺斯的故事》（Beloved and God： The Story of Hadrian and Antinous， Phoenix Giant， 1984）中从未提出过这个问题。 Petronius， The Satyricon， trans. P. D. Walsh ， Oxford UP， 1997， “Introduction”， p. xxxv. Gédéon Huet，“Le Roman d'Apulée était-il connu au Moyen Âge？”，Le Moyen Âge，第 22 期（1909 年），第 23-28 页。 https://www.persee.fr/doc/bsnaf_0081-1181_1958_num_1956_1_5488 让-路易·布鲁诺（Jean-Louis Brunaux），《凯尔特高卢人：众神、仪式和圣所》，劳特利奇出版社，1987年;David Henige，“他来了，他看到了，我们数了：凯撒高卢数字的史学和人口学”，Annales de démographie historique，1998-1，第 215-242 页，www.persee.fr 乔治·杜梅齐尔（Georges Dumézil），Heur et malheur du guerrier。Aspects mythiques de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens （1969），Flammarion，1985年，第66和16页。例如，Dux Francorum 和 rex Francorum 在 Peppin II 中互换使用。 安东尼·卡德利斯（Anthony Kaldellis），《黄金之流，血河：拜占庭的兴衰，公元 955 年至第一次十字军东征》，牛津大学，2019 年，第 xxvii 页。 哈罗德·伯曼（Harold J. Berman），《法律与革命，西方法律传统的形成》，哈佛大学出版社，1983年;Aldo Schiavone，《西方法律的发明》，哈佛大学出版社，2012年。 桑德·戈德堡（Sander M. Goldberg），《共和罗马的史诗》，牛津大学出版社，1995年，第50-51页。 阿纳托利·福缅科（Anatoly T. Fomenko），《历史：小说还是科学？》第1卷，德拉米尔出版社，2003年，第357页。 M.J.哈珀，《英国历史揭秘》，Icon Books，2006年，第116页。 克拉拉·米勒-布鲁姆菲尔德，“罗马尼亚语：被遗忘的罗曼语”，2015 年。 我们需要考虑到罗马尼亚东南部位于庞蒂克草原，根据广泛持有的库尔干假说，该草原是最早的原始印欧语系语言社区的发源地。 M.J.哈珀，《英国历史揭秘》，同前，第130-131页。 詹姆斯·布莱斯子爵，《神圣罗马帝国》（1864），第www.gutenberg.org 弗朗索瓦·德·萨雷（François de Sarre），Mais où est donc passé le Moyen Âge ？Le récentisme， Hadès， 2013， 可在此处获得。 林恩·兰开斯特（Lynne Lancaster）的罗马混凝土建筑的更多信息，《罗马帝国的混凝土拱形建筑：上下文中的创新》，剑桥大学，2005年。
This is the first of a series of three articles challenging the conventional historical framework of the Mediterranean world from the Roman Empire to the Crusades. It is a collective contribution to an old debate that has gained new momentum in recent decades in the fringe of the academic world, mostly in Germany, Russia, and France. Some working hypotheses will be made along the way, and the final article will suggest a global solution in the form of a paradigm shift based on hard archeological evidence.Tacitus and BraccioliniOne of our most detailed historical sources on imperial Rome is Cornelius Tacitus (56-120 CE), whose major works, the Annals and the Histories, span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in 14 AD, to the death of Domitian in 96.Here is how the French scholar Polydor Hochart introduced in 1890 the result of his investigation on “the authenticity of the Annals and the Histories of Tacitus,” building up on the work of John Wilson Ross published twelve years earlier, Tacitus and Bracciolini: The Annals forged in the XVth century (1878):“At the beginning of the fifteenth century scholars had at their disposal no part of the works of Tacitus; they were supposed to be lost. It was around 1429 that Poggio Bracciolini and Niccoli of Florence brought to light a manuscript that contained the last six books of the Annals and the first five books of the Histories. It is this archetypal manuscript that served to make the copies that were in circulation until the use of printing. Now, when one wants to know where and how it came into their possession, one is surprised to find that they have given unacceptable explanations on this subject, that they either did not want or could not say the truth. About eighty years later, Pope Leo X was given a volume containing the first five books of the Annals. Its origin is also surrounded by darkness. / Why these mysteries? What confidence do those who exhibited these documents deserve? What guarantees do we have of their authenticity? / In considering these questions we shall first see that Poggio and Niccoli were not distinguished by honesty and loyalty, and that the search for ancient manuscripts was for them an industry, a means of acquiring money. / We will also notice that Poggio was one of the most learned men of his time, that he was also a clever calligrapher, and that he even had in his pay scribes trained by him to write on parchment in a remarkable way in Lombard and Carolin characters. Volumes coming out of his hands could thus imitate perfectly the ancient manuscripts, as he says himself. / We will also be able to see with what elements the Annals and the Histories were composed. Finally, in seeking who may have been the author of this literary fraud, we shall be led to think that, in all probability, the pseudo-Tacitus is none other than Poggio Bracciolini himself.”Hochart’s demonstration proceeds in two stages. First, he traces the origin of the manuscript discovered by Poggio and Niccoli, using Poggio’s correspondence as evidence of deception. Then Hochart deals with the emergence of the second manuscript, two years after Pope Leo X (a Medici) had promised great reward in gold to anyone who could provide him with unknown manuscripts of the ancient Greeks or Romans. Leo rewarded his unknown provider with 500 golden crowns, a fortune at that time, and immediately ordered the printing of the precious manuscript. Hochart concludes that the manuscript must have been supplied indirectly to Leo X by Jean-François Bracciolini, the son and sole inheritor of Poggio’s private library and papers, who happened to be secretary of Leo X at that time, and who used an anonymous intermediary in order to elude suspicion.Both manuscripts are now preserved in Florence, so their age can be scientifically established, can’t it? That is questionable, but the truth, anyway, is that their age is simply assumed. For other works of Tacitus, such as Germania and De Agricola, we don’t even have any medieval manuscripts. David Schaps tells us that Germania was ignored throughout the Middle Ages but survived in a single manuscript that was found in Hersfeld Abbey in 1425, was brought to Italy and examined by Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, as well as by Bracciolini, then vanished from sight.Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) is credited for “rediscovering and recovering a great number of classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries” (Wikipedia). Hochart believes that Tacitus’ books are not his only forgeries. Under suspicion come other works by Cicero, Lucretius, Vitruvius, and Quintilian, to name just a few. For instance, Lucretius’ only known work, De rerum natura “virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany by Poggio Bracciolini” (Wikipedia). So was Quintilian’s only extant work, a twelve-volume textbook on rhetoric entitled Institutio Oratoria, whose discovery Poggio recounts in a letter:“There amid a tremendous quantity of books which it would take too long to describe, we found Quintilian still safe and sound, though filthy with mould and dust. For these books were not in the library, as befitted their worth, but in a sort of foul and gloomy dungeon at the bottom of one of the towers, where not even men convicted of a capital offence would have been stuck away.”
Provided Hochart is right, was Poggio the exception that confirms the rule of honesty among the humanists to whom humankind is indebted for “rediscovering” the great classics? Hardly, as we shall see. Even the great Erasmus (1465-1536) succumbed to the temptation of forging a treatise under the name of saint Cyprian (De duplici martyrio ad Fortunatum), which he pretended to have found by chance in an ancient library. Erasmus used this stratagem to voice his criticism of the Catholic confusion between virtue and suffering. In this case, heterodoxy gave the forger away. But how many forgeries went undetected for lack of originality? Giles Constable writes in “Forgery and Plagiarism in the Middle Ages”: “The secret of successful forgers and plagiarists is to attune the deceit so closely to the desires and standards of their age that it is not detected, or even suspected, at the time of creation.” In other words: “Forgeries and plagiarisms … follow rather than create fashion and can without paradox be considered among the most authentic products of their time.”We are here focusing on literary forgeries, but there were other kinds. Michelangelo himself launched his own career by faking antique statues, including one known as the Sleeping Cupid (now lost), while under the employment of the Medici family in Florence. He used acidic earth to make the statue look antique. It was sold through a dealer to Cardinal Riario of San Giorgio, who eventually found out the hoax and demanded his money back, but didn’t press any charges against the artist. Apart from this recognized forgery, Lynn Catterson has made a strong case that the sculptural group of “Laocoon and his Sons,” dated from around 40 BC and supposedly discovered in 1506 in a vineyard in Rome and immediately acquired by Pope Julius II, is another of Michelangelo’s forgery (read here).
When one comes to think about it seriously, one can find several reasons to doubt that such masterworks were possible any time before the Renaissance, one of them having to do with the progress in human anatomy. Many other antique works raise similar questions. For instance, a comparison between Marcus Aurelius’ bronze equestrian statue (formely thought to be Constantine’s), with, say, Louis XIV’s, makes you wonder: how come nothing remotely approaching this level of achievement can be found between the fifth and the fifteenth century? Can we even be sure that Marcus Aurelius is a historical figure? “The major sources depicting the life and rule of Marcus are patchy and frequently unreliable” (Wikipedia), the most important one being the highly dubious Historia Augusta (more later).
The lucrative market of literary forgeries“Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1800” was the subject of a 2012 conference, whose proceedings were published in 2018 by the John Hopkins University Press (who also published a 440-page catalog, Bibliotheca Fictiva: A Collection of Books & Manuscripts Relating to Literary Forgery, 400 BC-AD 2000). One forger discussed in that book is Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), who produced a collection of eleven texts, attributed to a Chaldean, an Egyptian, a Persian, and several ancient Greeks and Romans, purporting to show that his native town of Viterbo had been an important center of culture during the Etruscan period. Annius attributed his texts to recognizable ancient authors whose genuine works had conveniently perished, and he went on producing voluminous commentaries on his own forgeries.This case illustrates the combination of political and mercantile motives in many literary forgeries. History-writing is a political act, and in the fifteenth century, it played a crucial role in the competition for prestige between Italian cities. Tacitus’ history of Rome was brought forward by Bracciolini thirty years after a Florentine chancellor by the name of Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) wrote his History of the Florentine people (Historiae Florentini populi) in 12 volumes (by plagiarizing Byzantine chronicles). Political value translated into economic value, and the market for ancient works reached astronomical prices: it is said that with the sale of just a copy of a manuscript of Titus Livy, Bracciolini bought himself a villa in Florence. During the Renaissance, “the acquisition of classical artifacts had simply become the new fad, the new way of displaying power and status. Instead of collecting the bones and body parts of saints, towns and wealthy rulers now collected fragments of the ancient world. And just as with the relic trade, demand far outstripped supply” (from the website of San Diego’s “Museum of Hoaxes”).In the mainstream of classical studies, ancient texts are assumed to be authentic if they are not proven forged. Cicero’s De Consolatione is now universally considered the work of Carolus Sigonius (1520-1584), an Italian humanist born in Modena, only because we have a letter by Sigonius himself admitting the forgery. But short of such a confession, or of some blatant anachronism, historians and classical scholars will simply ignore the possibility of fraud. They would never, for example, suspect Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch (1304-1374), of faking his discovery of Cicero’s letters, even though he went on publishing his own letters in perfect Ciceronian style. Jerry Brotton is not being ironic when he writes in The Renaissance Bazaar: “Cicero was crucial to Petrarch and the subsequent development of humanism because he offered a new way of thinking about how the cultured individual united the philosophical and contemplative side of life with its more active and public dimension. […] This was the blueprint for Petrarch’s humanism.”The medieval manuscripts found by Petrarch are long lost, so what evidence do we have of their authenticity, besides Petrarch’s reputation? Imagine if historians seriously questioned the authenticity of some of our most cherished classical treasures. How many of them would pass the test? If Hochart is right and Tacitus is removed from the list of reliable sources, the whole historical edifice of the Roman Empire suffers from a major structural failure, but what if other pillars of ancient historiography crumble under similar scrutiny? What about Titus Livy, author a century earlier than Tacitus of a monumental history of Rome in 142 verbose volumes, starting with the foundation of Rome in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus. It is admitted, since Louis de Beaufort’s critical analysis (1738), that the first five centuries of Livy’s history are a web of fiction. But can we trust the rest of it? It was also Petrarch, Brotton informs us, who “began piecing together texts like Livy’s History of Rome, collating different manuscript fragments, correcting corruptions in the language, and imitating its style in writing a more linguistically fluent and rhetorically persuasive form of Latin.” None of the manuscripts used by Petrarch are available anymore.What about the Augustan History (Historia Augusta), a Roman chronicle that Edward Gibbon trusted entirely for writing his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? It has since been exposed as the work of an impostor who has masked his fraud by inventing sources from scratch. However, for some vague reason, it is assumed that the forger lived in the fifth century, which is supposed to make his forgery worthwhile anyway. In reality, some of its stories sound like cryptic satire of Renaissance mores, others like Christian calumny of pre-Christian religion. How likely is it, for example, that the hero Antinous, worshipped throughout the Mediterranean Basin as an avatar of Osiris, was the gay lover (eromenos) of Hadrian, as told in Augustan History? Such questions of plausibility are simply ignored by professional historians. But they jump to the face of any lay reader unimpressed by scholarly consensus. For instance, just reading the summary of Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Cesars on the Wikipedia page should suffice to raise very strong suspicions, not only of fraud, but of mockery, for we are obviously dealing here with biographies of great imagination, but of no historical value whatsoever.Works of fiction also come under suspicion. We owe the complete version of The Satyricon, supposedly written under Nero, to a manuscript discovered by Poggio Bracciolini in Cologne. Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass was also found by Poggio in the same manuscript as the fragments of Tacitus’ Annales and Histories. It was unknown before the thirteenth century, and its central piece, the tale of Cupid and Psyche, seems derived from the more archaic version found in the twelfth-century Roman de Partonopeu de Blois.The question can be raised of why Romans would bother writing and copying such works on papyrus volumen, but the more important question is: Why would medieval monks copy and preserve them on expensive parchments? This question applies to all pagan authors, for none of them reached the Renaissance in manuscripts allegedly older than the ninth century. “Did the monks, out of pure scientific interest, have a duty to preserve for posterity, for the greater glory of paganism, the masterpieces of antiquity?” asks Hochart.And not only masterpieces, but bundles of letters! In the early years of the sixteenth century, the Veronian Fra Giovanni Giocondo discovered a volume of 121 letters exchanged between Pliny the Younger (friend of Tacitus) and Emperor Trajan around the year 112. This “book”, writes Latinist scholar Jacques Heurgon, “had disappeared during the whole Middle Ages, and one could believe it definitively lost, when it suddenly emerged, in the very first years of the sixteenth century, in a single manuscript which, having been copied, partially, then completely, was lost again.” Such unsuspecting presentation is illustrative of the blind confidence of classical scholars in their Latin sources, unknown in the Middle Ages and magically appearing from nowhere in the Renaissance.The strangest thing, Hochart remarks, is that Christian monks are supposed to have copied thousands of pagan volumes on expensive parchment, only to treat them as worthless rubbish:“To explain how many works of Latin authors had remained unknown to scholars of previous centuries and were uncovered by Renaissance scholars, it was said that monks had generally relegated to the attics or cellars of their convents most of the pagan writings that had been in their libraries. It was therefore among the discarded objects, sometimes among the rubbish, when they were allowed to search there, that the finders of manuscripts found, they claimed, the masterpieces of antiquity.”In medieval convents, manuscript copying was a commercial craft, and focused exclusively on religious books such as psalters, gospels, missals, catechisms, and saints’ legends. They were mostly copied on papyrus. Parchment and vellum were reserved for luxury books, and since it was a very expensive material, it was common practice to scrape old scrolls in order to reuse them. Pagan works were the first to disappear. In fact, their destruction, rather than their preservation, was considered a holy deed, as hagiographers abundantly illustrate in their saints’ lives.How real is Julius Caesar?Independently of Hochart, and on the basis of philological considerations, Robert Baldauf, professor at the university of Basle, argued that many of the most famous ancient Latin and Greek works are of late medieval origin (Historie und Kritik, 1902). “Our Romans and Greeks have been Italian humanists,” he says. They have given us a whole fantasy world of Antiquity that “has rooted itself in our perception to such an extent that no positivist criticisms can make humanity doubt its veracity.”Baldauf points out, for example, German and Italian influences in Horace’s Latin. On similar grounds, he concludes that Julius Cesar’s books, so appreciated for their exquisite Latin, are late medieval forgeries. Recent historians of Gaul, now informed by archeology, are actually puzzled by Cesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico—our only source on the elusive Vercingetorix. Everything in there that doesn’t come from book XXIII of Poseidonios’ Histories appears either wrong or unreliable in terms of geography, demography, anthropology, and religion.A great mystery hangs over the supposed author himself. We are taught that “Caesar” was a cognomen (nickname) of unknown meaning and origin, and that it was adopted immediately after Julius Caesar’s death as imperial title; we are asked to believe, in other words, that the emperors all called themselves Caesar in memory of that general and dictator who was not even emperor, and that the term gained such prestige that it went on to be adopted by Russian “Czars” and German “Kaisers”. But that etymology has long been challenged by those (including Voltaire) who claim that Caesar comes from an Indo-European root word meaning “king”, which also gave the Persian Khosro. These two origins cannot both be true, and the second seems well grounded.Cesar’s gentilice (surname) Iulius does not ease our perplexity. We are told by Virgil that it goes back to Cesar’s supposed ancestor Iulus or Iule. But Virgil also tells us (drawing from Cato the Elder, c. 168 BC) that it is the short name of Jupiter (Jul Pater). And it happens to be an Indo-European root word designating the sunlight or the day sky, identical to the Scandinavian name for the solar god, Yule (Helios for the Greeks, Haul for the Gauls, Hel for the Germans, from which derives the French Noël, Novo Hel). Is “Julius Caesar” the “Sun King”?Consider, in addition, that: 1. Roman emperors were traditionally declared adoptive sons of the sun-god Jupiter or of the “Undefeated Sun” (Sol Invictus). 2. The first emperor, Octavian Augustus, was allegedly the adoptive son of Julius Caesar, whom he divinized under the name Iulius Caesar Divus (celebrated on January 1), while renaming in his honor the first month of summer, July. If Augustus is both the adoptive son of the divine Sun and the adoptive son of the divine Julius, and if in addition Julius or Julus is the divine name of the Sun, it means that the divine Julius is none other than the divine Sun (and the so-called “Julian” calendar simply meant the “solar” calendar). Julius Caesar has been brought down from heaven to earth, transposed from mythology to history. That is a common process in Roman history, according to Georges Dumézil, who explains the notorious poverty of Roman mythology by the fact that it “was radically destroyed at the level of theology flourished in the form of history,” which is to say that Roman history is a literary fiction built on mythical structures.The mystery surrounding Julius Caesar is of course of great consequence, since on him rests the historiography of Imperial Rome. If Julius Caesar is a fiction, then so is much of Imperial Rome. Note that, on the coins attributed to his era, the first emperor is simply named Augustus Caesar, which is not a name, but a title that could be applied to any emperor.
At this point, most readers will have lost patience. With those whose curiosity surpasses their skepticism, we shall now argue that Imperial Rome is actually, for a large part, a fictitious mirror image of Constantinople, a fantasy that started emerging in the eleventh century in the context of the cultural war waged by the papacy against the Byzantine empire, and solidified in the fifteenth century, in the context of the plunder of Byzantine culture that is known as the Renaissance. This, of course, will raise many objections, some of which will be addressed here, others in further articles.First objection: Wasn’t Constantinople founded by a Roman emperor, namely Constantine the Great? So it is said. But then, how real is this legendary Constantine?How real is Constantine the Great?If Julius Caesar is the alpha of the Western Roman Empire, Constantine is the omega. One major difference between them is the nature of our sources. For Constantine’s biography, we are totally dependent on Christian authors, beginning with Eusebius of Caesarea, whose Life of Constantine, including the story of the emperor’s conversion to Christianity, is a mixture of eulogy and hagiography.The common notion derived from Eusebius is that Constantine moved the capital of his Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed in his own honor. But that general narrative of the first translatio imperii is itself replete with inner contradictions. First, Constantine didn’t really move his capital to the East, because he was himself from the East. He was born in Naissus (today Nis in Serbia), in the region then called Moesia, West of Thracia. According to standard history, Constantine had never set foot in Rome before he marched on the city and conquered it from Maxentius.Constantine wasn’t just a Roman who happened to be born in Moesia. His father Constantius also came from Moesia. And so did his predecessor Diocletian, who was born in Moesia, built his palace there (Split, today in Croatia), and died there. In Byzantine chronicles, Diocletian is given as Dux Moesiae (Wikipedia), which can mean “king of Moesia”, for well into the Early Middle Ages, dux was more or less synonymous with rex.Textbook history tells us that, on becoming emperor, Diocletian decided to share his power with Maximian as co-emperor. That is already odd enough. But instead of keeping for himself the historical heart of the empire, he left it to his subordinate and settled in the East. Seven years later, he divided the Empire further into a tetrarchy; instead of one Augustus Caesar, there was now two Augustus and two Caesars. Diocletian retired to the far eastern part of Asia Minor, bordering on Persia. Like Constantine after him, Diocletian never reigned in Rome; he visited it once in his lifetime.This leads us to the second inner contradiction of the translatio imperii paradigm: Constantine didn’t really move the imperial capital from Rome to Byzantium, because Rome had ceased to be the imperial capital in 286, being replaced by Milan. By the time of Diocletian and Constantine, the whole of Italy had actually fallen into anarchy during the Crisis of the Third Century (AD 235–284). When in 402 AD, the Eastern emperor Honorius restored order in the Peninsula, he transferred its capital to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. So from 286 on, we are supposed to have a Roman Empire with a deserted Rome.
The conundrum only thickens when we compare Roman and Byzantine cultures. According to the translatio imperii paradigm, the Eastern Roman Empire is the continuation of the Western Roman Empire. But Byzantium scholars insist on the great differences between the Greek-speaking Byzantine civilization and the earlier civilization of the Latium. Byzantinist Anthony Kaldellis wrote:“The Byzantines were not a warlike people. […] They preferred to pay their enemies either to go away or to fight among themselves. Likewise, the court at the heart of their empire sought to buy allegiance with honors, fancy titles, bales of silk, and streams of gold. Politics was the cunning art of providing just the right incentives to win over supporters and keep them loyal. Money, silk, and titles were the empire’s preferred instruments of governance and foreign policy, over swords and armies.”The Byzantine civilization owed nothing to Rome. It inherited all its philosophical, scientific, poetic, mythological, and artistic tradition from classical Greece. Culturally, it was closer to Persia and Egypt than to Italy, which it treated as a colony. At the dawn of the second millenium AD, it had almost no recollection of its supposed Latin past, to the point that the most famous byzantine philosopher of the eleventh century, Michael Psellos, confused Cicero with Caesar.How does the textbook story of Constantine’s translatio imperii fit in this perspective? It doesn’t. In fact, the notion is highly problematic. Unwilling, for good reasons, to accept at face value the Christian tale that Constantine settled in Byzantium in order to leave Rome to the Pope, historians struggle to find a reasonable explanation for the transfer, and they generally settle for this one: after the old capital had fallen into irreversible decadence (soon to be sacked by the Gauls), Constantine decided to move the heart of the Empire closer to its most endangered borders. Does that make any sense? Even if it did, how plausible is the transfer of an imperial capital over a thousand miles, with senators, bureaucrats and armies, resulting in the metamorphosis of a Roman empire into another Roman empire with a totally different political structure, language, culture, and religion?One of the major sources of this preposterous concept is the false Donation of Constantine. While it is admitted that this document was forged by medieval popes in order to justify their claim on Rome, its basic premise, the translation of the imperial capital to the East, has not been questioned. We suggest that Constantine’s translatio imperii was actually a mythological cover for the very real opposite movement of translatio studii, the transfer of Byzantine culture to the West that started before the crusades and evolved into systematic plunder after. Late medieval Roman culture rationalized and disguised its less than honorable Byzantine origin by the opposite myth of the Roman origin of Constantinople.This will become clearer in the next article, but here is already one example of an insurmountable contradiction to the accepted filiation between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. One of the most fundamental and precious legacy of the Romans to our Western civilization is their tradition of civil law. Roman law is still the foundation of our legal system. How come, then, that Roman law was imported to Italy from Byzantium at the end of the eleventh century? Specialists like Harold Berman or Aldo Schiavone are adamant that knowledge of Roman laws had totally disappeared for 700 years in Western Europe, until a Byzantine copy of their compilation by Justinian (the Digesta) was discovered around 1080 by Bolognese scholars. This “700-year long eclipse” of Roman law in the West, is an undisputed yet almost incomprehensible phenomenon .Who were the first “Romans”One obvious objection to the idea that the relationship between Rome and Constantinople has been inverted is that the Byzantines called themselves Romans (Romaioi), and believed they were living in Romania. Persians, Arabs and Turks called them Roumis. Even the Greeks of the Hellenic Peninsula called themselves Romaioi in Late Antiquity, despite their detestation of the Latins. This is taken as proof that the Byzantines considered themselves the heirs of the Roman Empire of the West, founded in Rome, Italy. But it is not. Strangely enough, mythography and etymology both suggest that, just like the name “Caesar”, the name “Rome” travelled from East to West, rather than the other way. Romos, latinized in Romus or Remus, is a Greek word meaning “strong”. The Italian Romans were Etruscans from Lydia in Asia Minor. They were well aware of their eastern origin, the memory of which was preserved in their legends. According to the tradition elaborated by Virgil in his epic Aeneid, Rome was founded by Aeneas from Troy, in the immediate vicinity of the Bosphorus. According to another version, Rome was founded by Romos, the son of Odysseus and Circe. The historian Strabo, supposedly living in the first century BC (but quoted only from the fifth century AD), reports that “another older tradition makes Rome an Arcadian colony,” and insists that “Rome itself was of Hellenic origin” (Geographia V, 3). Denys of Halicarnassus in his Roman Antiquities, declares “Rome is a Greek city.” His thesis is summed up by the syllogism: “The Romans descend from the Trojans. But the Trojans are of Greek origin. So the Romans are of Greek origin.”The famous legend of Romulus and Remus, told by Titus Livy (I, 3), is generally considered of later origin. It could very well be an invention of the late Middle Age. Anatoly Fomenko, of whom we will have more to say later on, believes that its central theme, the simultaneous foundation of two cities, one by Romulus on the Palatine Hill, and the other by Remus on the Aventine, is a mythical reflection of the struggle for ascendency between the two Romes. As we shall see, the murder of Remus by Romulus is a fitting allegory of the events unfolding from the fourth crusade. Interestingly, that legend evokes the history of the brothers Valens and Valentinian, who are said to have reigned respectively over Constantinople and Rome from 364 to 378 (their story is known from one single author, Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek writing in Latin). It happens that valens is a Latin equivalent for the Greek romos.We have started this article by suggesting that much of the history of the Western Roman Empire is of Renaissance invention. But as we progress in our investigation, another complementary hypothesis will emerge: much of the history of the Western Roman Empire is borrowed from the history of the Eastern Roman Empire, either by deliberate plagiarism, or by confusion resulting from the fact that the Byzantines called themselves Romans and their city Rome. The process can be inferred from some obvious duplicates. Here is one example, taken from Latin historian Jordanes, whose Origin and Deeds of the Goths is notoriously full of anachronisms: in 441, Attila crossed the Danube, invaded the Balkans, and threatened Constantinople, but could not take the city and retreated with an immense booty. Ten years later, the same Attila crossed the Alps, invaded Italy, and threatened Rome, but couldn’t take the city and retreated with an immense booty .The mysterious origin of LatinAnother objection against questioning the existence of the Western Roman Empire is the spread of Latin throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. It is admitted that Latin, originally the language spoken in the Latium, is the origin of French, Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese, called “Western Romance Languages”. However, the amateur historian and linguist M. J. Harper has made the following remark:“The linguistic evidence mirrors the geography with great precision: Portuguese resembles Spanish more than any other language; French resembles Occitan more than any other; Occitan resembles Catalan, Catalan resembles Spanish and so forth. So which was the Ur-language? Can’t tell; it could be any of them. Or it could be a language that has long since disappeared. But the original language cannot have been Latin. All the Romance languages, even Portuguese and Italian, resemble one another more than any of them resemble Latin, and do so by a wide margin.”For that reason, linguists postulate that “Romance languages” do not derive directly from Latin, but from Vulgar Latin, the popular and colloquial sociolect of Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the Roman Empire. What was Vulgar Latin, or proto-Romance, like? No one knows.As a matter of fact, the language that most resembles Latin is Romanian, which, although divided in several dialects, constitutes by itself the only member of the Eastern branch of Romance languages. It is the only Romance language that has maintained archaic traits of Latin, such as the case system (endings of words depending on their role in the sentence) and the neutral gender.But how did Romanians come to speak Vulgar Latin? There is another mystery there. Part of the linguistic area of Romanian was conquered by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD, and formed the Roman province of Dacia for a mere 165 years. One or two legions were stationed in the South-West of Dacia, and, although not Italians, they are supposed to have communicated in Vulgar Latin and imposed their language to the whole country, even north of the Danube, where there was no Roman presence. What language did people speak in Dacia before the Romans conquered the south part of it? No one has a clue. The “Dacian language” “is an extinct language, … poorly documented. … only one Dacian inscription is believed to have survived.” Only 160 Romanian words are hypothetically of Dacian origin. Dacian is believed to be closely related to Thracian, itself “an extinct and poorly attested language.”Let me repeat: The inhabitants of Dacia north of the Danube adopted Latin from the non-Italian legions that stationed on the lower part of their territory from 106 to 271 AD, and completely forgot their original language, to the point that no trace of it is left. They were so Romanized that their country came to be called Romania, and that Romanian is now closer to Latin than are other European Romance languages. Yet the Romans hardly ever occupied Dacia (on the map above, Dacia is not even counted as part of the Roman Empire). The next part is also extraordinary: Dacians, who had so easily given up their original language for Vulgar Latin, then became so attached to Vulgar Latin that the German invaders, who caused the Romans to retreat in 271, failed to impose their language. So did the Huns and, more surprisingly, the Slavs, who dominated the area since the seventh century and left many traces in the toponymy. Less than ten percent of Romanian words are of Slavic origin (but the Romanians adopted Slavonic for their liturgy).One more thing: although Latin was a written language in the Empire, Romanians are believed to have never had a written language until the Middle Ages. The first document written in Romanian goes back to the sixteenth century, and it is written in Cyrillic alphabet.Obviously, there is room for the following alternative theory: Latin is a language originating from Dacia; ancient Dacian did not vanish mysteriously but is the common ancestor of both Latin and modern Romanian. Dacian, if you will, is Vulgar Latin, which preceded Classical Latin. A likely explanation for the fact that Dacia is also called Romania is that it—rather than Italy—was the original home of the Romans who founded Constantinople. That would be consistent with the notion that the Roman language (Latin) remained the administrative language of the Eastern Empire until the sixth century AD, when it was abandoned for Greek, the language spoken by the majority of its subjects. That, in turn, is consistent with the character of Latin itself. Harper makes the following remark:“Latin is not a natural language. When written, Latin takes up approximately half the space of written Italian or written French (or written English, German or any natural European language). Since Latin appears to have come into existence in the first half of the first millennium BC, which was the time when alphabets were first spreading through the Mediterranean basin, it seems a reasonable working hypothesis to assume that Latin was originally a shorthand compiled by Italian speakers for the purposes of written (confidential? commercial?) communication. This would explain:a) the very close concordance between Italian and Latin vocabulary;b) the conciseness of Latin in, for instance, dispensing with separate prepositions, compound verb forms and other ‘natural’ language impedimenta;c) the unusually formal rules governing Latin grammar and syntax;d) the lack of irregular, non-standard usages;e) the unusual adoption among Western European languages of a specifically vocative case (‘Dear Marcus, re. you letter of…’).The hypothesis that Latin was a “non-demotic” language, a koine of the empire, a cultural artifact developed for the purpose of writing, was first proposed by Russian researchers Igor Davidenko and Jaroslav Kesler in The Book of Civilizations (2001).How old is ancient Roman architecture?The strongest objection against the theory that ancient Imperial Rome is a fiction is, of course, her many architectural vestiges. This subject will be more fully explored in a later article, but a quotation from Viscount James Bryce’s influential work, The Holy Roman Empire (1864), will point to the answer:“The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome, when he has looked out upon the Campagna from the summit of St. Peter’s, paced the chilly corridors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the twelve hundred years that lie between Constantine and Pope Julius the Second. ‘Where,’ he asks, ‘is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence came the commands at which kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of Venice?’ To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has scarcely a building to commemorate those times.”Officially, there is hardly a medieval vestige in Rome, and the same applies to other Italian cities believed to have been founded during Antiquity. François de Sarre, a French contributor to the field of research here presented, was first intrigued by the magnificent palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian (284-305 AD), in the center of the city of Split, today in Croatia. The Renaissance constructions are integrated to it in such a perfect architectural ensemble as to be almost indistinguishable. It is hard to believe that ten centuries separate the two stages of construction, as if the ancient buildings had been left untouched during the whole Middle Ages.Subscribe to New Columns
Also puzzling is the little-known fact that ancient Roman architecture used advanced technologies such as concretes of remarkable quality (read here and here), used for example to build the Pantheon’s beautifully preserved dome. The secrets of fabrication of Roman concrete is described in Vitruvius’ multi-volume work entitled De architectura (first century BC). Medieval men, we are told, were totally ignorant of this technology, because “Vitruvius’ works were largely forgotten until 1414, when De architectura was ‘rediscovered’ by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini in the library of Saint Gall Abbey” (Wikipedia).
As a temporary conclusion: all the oddities that we have pointed out are like pieces of a puzzle that do not fit well within our conventional representation. We will later be able to assemble them into a more plausible picture. But before that, in the next article, we will focus on ecclesiastical literature from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, for it is the original source of the great historical distortion that later took a life of its own before being standardized as the dogma of modern chronology and historiography.Notes Polydor Hochart, De l’authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1890 (on archive.org), pp. viii-ix. David Schaps, “The Found and Lost Manuscripts of Tacitus’ De Agricola,” Classical Philology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1979), pp. 28-42, on www.jstor.org. Giles Constable, “Forgery and Plagiarism in the Middle Ages,” in Culture and Spirituality in Medieval Europe, Variorum, 1996, p. 1-41, and on www.degruyter.com/abstract/j/afd.1983.29.issue-jg/afd.1983.29.jg.1/afd.1983.29.jg.1.xml Lynn Catterson, “Michelangelo’s ‘Laocoön?’,” Artibus Et Historiae, vol. 26, n° 52, 2005, pp. 29–56, on www.jstor.org. David Carrette, L’Invention du Moyen Âge. La plus grande falsification de l’histoire, Magazine Top-Secret, Hors-série n°9, 2014. Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo, Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 66-67. Louis de Beaufort, Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire romaine (1738), on www.mediterranee-antique.fr/Fichiers_PdF/ABC/Beaufort/Dissertation.pdf. Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar, op. cit., pp. 66-67. It is never raised, for example, by Royston Lambert in his Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous, Phoenix Giant, 1984. Petronius, The Satyricon, trans. P. D. Walsh , Oxford UP, 1997, “Introduction,” p. xxxv. Gédéon Huet, “Le Roman d’Apulée était-il connu au Moyen Âge ?”, Le Moyen Âge, 22 (1909), pp. 23-28. https://www.persee.fr/doc/bsnaf_0081-1181_1958_num_1956_1_5488 Jean-Louis Brunaux, The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites, and Santuaries, Routledge, 1987; David Henige, “He came, he saw, we counted: the historiography and demography of Caesar’s gallic numbers,” Annales de démographie historique, 1998-1, pp. 215-242, on www.persee.fr Georges Dumézil, Heur et malheur du guerrier. Aspects mythiques de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens (1969), Flammarion, 1985, p. 66 and 16. Dux Francorum and rex Francorum were used interchangibly for Peppin II, for example. Anthony Kaldellis, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade, Oxford UP, 2019, p. xxvii. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Harvard UP, 1983; Aldo Schiavone, The Invention of Law in the West, Harvard UP, 2012. Sander M. Goldberg, Epic in Republican Rome, Oxford UP, 1995, pp. 50-51. Anatoly T. Fomenko, History: Fiction or Science? vol. 1, Delamere Publishing, 2003, p. 357. M. J. Harper, The History of Britain Revealed, Icon Books, 2006, p. 116. Clara Miller-Broomfield, “Romanian: The forgotten Romance language”, 2015. We need to take into account that Southeastern Romania is located in the Pontic Steppe which, according to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis, is the original home of the earliest proto-Indo-European speech community. M. J. Harper, The History of Britain Revealed, op. cit., pp. 130-131. Viscount James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (1864), on www.gutenberg.org François de Sarre, Mais où est donc passé le Moyen Âge ? Le récentisme, Hadès, 2013, available here. More on Roman concrete in Lynne Lancaster, Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome: Innovations in Context, Cambridge UP, 2005.
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