Collins. Renaissance Epigraphy

RENAISSANCE EPIGRAPHY AND ITS LEGITIMATING POTENTIAL:

ANNIUS OF VITERBO, ETRUSCAN INSCRIPTIONS, AND THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION

AMANDA COLLINS

1492 was an eventful year in the history of western civilization. It saw the discovery of America by Columbus. It saw the capture of the Islamic stronghold of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the expulsion of the Jews from the entire Spanish kingdom. The printing press was appearing widely in the wake of the invention of moveable type. Italian cities were becoming the self-conscious exponents of high Renaissance splendour. But there was also a less optimistic side: jin de sibcle cultural anxieties were exacerbated by the symbolic nature of the approaching half-millennium, 1500. Apocalyptic prophecies circulated with increasing intensity, fuelled by the threat to Christendom from the east of Europe as the Ottoman Turks steadily occupied more and more territory. In the same year, 1492, in Florence, the death of the great Medici prince, Lorenzo the Magnificent, ushered in an era of insecurity and rising panic. Yet in Rome, at the heart of Christendom, there was cause to celebrate the approach of a new era: Michelangelos new dome at St Peters was rising above the City; and Rome had a new bishop. In 1492 Rome saw the election of perhaps the most notorious Renaissance Pope of all, Alexander VI, the Spaniard known to us as Rodrigo Borgia.

Meanwhile, some thirty miles to the north of Rome, in the town of Viterbo, a Dominican friar named Giovanni Nanni, or Annius, was busy preparing to rewrite the entire history of western civilization, with the help of a small number of so-called ancient inscriptions. We will see how Annius did not so much rediscover, reinvent, and reuse his inscriptions as in the first place invent, then discover, and use them. This chapter will focus on the central role of these mostly pseudo-Etruscan inscriptions within Anniuss creation of an alternative world history after the Flood.

We must begin with Annius himself; a native of Viterbo, he was born between 1432 and 1437, so by the 1490s he was a man of considerable maturity. The portrait in the Palazzo Communale in Viterbo (Fig. 6.1) does him no favours, merely emphasizing his somewhat eccentric nature. His ideas were indeed quite unique, as were his methods, particularly with regard to his treatment of inscriptions and ancient history. Yet it should be noted immediately

The following biographical details are taken from Roberto Weiss, Traccia per una biografia di Annio da Viterbo, Italia medioevale e umanistica 5 (1962) 425-41, especially 427-33; Vincenzo De Caprio, La tradizione originaria in Annio da Viterbo, in La tradizione e il trauma. Idee del Rinascimento romano, ed. Massimo Miglio (Rome 1991) 189-258.

57

58 THE AFTERLIFE OF INSCRIPTIONS

Fig. 6.1 Iohannes Annius (Giovanni Nanni) from the 1556/58 fresco in Viterbo

AMANDA COLLINS: RENAISSANCE EPIGRAPHY 59

that Annius was a serious and capable scholar; in 1464 he was admitted to the Magisterium in theology. A few years later we find him in Genoese aristocratic circles, employed as a tutor in grammar, theology, and astrology (a respectable and quite common combination of scholarly disciplines). He was at that time preparing a commentary on the Apocalypse, which, in tune with many contemporary prophecies (as noted above), focused on the threat to Christianity posed by the Turks; indeed this was still only twenty years after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Yet a rather more immediate and down-to-earth anxiety which was to dominate Anniuss career was already obvious in the 1470s: the need for patronage. In 1472 he sent a speculative enquiry to the court of the Sforza dukes of Milan in the form of an astrological prognostication for 1473. It must have borne some fruit, because in 1475 Galeazzo Maria Sforza requested that Annius draw up something similar for 1476. Let us hope that Annius did not execute this commission, predicting a long and happy life, because it would hardly have done his reputation as an astrologer any good: Galeazzo Maria was assassinated in December 1475.2 Anniuss ideas of a career in Milan must have evaporated, but he remained in Genoa until around 1489, when he earned some notoriety in a debate on the Immaculate Conception and decided to return to Viterbo. Anniuss career as an academic continued with his appointment as a public teacher and lecturer (magister praedicatorum) by the governors of the town. At this point we may presume that his interest in the history of his home town began to take shape.

Annius had many models to imitqte. Foundation myths and civic histories flourished in the fifteenth century; there are extraordinary and fascinating stories for almost all Renaissance Italian cities, which sought to legitimate their present economic and cultural grandeur with claims - often historically suspect - of great antiq~ity.~ Florence, famously the epitome and archetype of the Renaissance city, offers a particularly rich example. Late-mediaeval Florentine historians from Giovanni Villani to Machiavelli liked to believe that their city had been founded as an independent township by Sulla or at least by Caesar: Florence made much of its heritage as the daughter of Rome. Elaborate myths boosted civic morale and formed part of the ideological armoury of rivals for cultural and economic power across the Italian peninsula, anything but united in this period. It was not until the latter half of the sixteenth century that irresistible new information, based on antique epigraphic evidence, burst the Florentine bubble; Vincenzo Borghini used a Roman inscription, recently uncovered by the humanist scholar Pier Vettori, to prove that Florence had been set up, effectively, as a non- autonomous staging post, and no earlier than 40 BC!

Vettoris assertion of the strict historical truth with the aid of epigraphic evidence, even at a cost to Florences civic pride, could not offer a better contrast with Anniuss activities in Viterbo in 1492, only a half-century previously. Viterbos own mythical origins were

Weiss, Traccia per una biografia (above, n.1) 430.

See, for example, the case of Venice: P. Fortini Brown, Acquiring a classical past. Historical appropriation in Renaissance Venice, in Antiquity and its interpreters, eds A. Payne, A. Kuttner, R. Smick (Cambridge 1999) 27-39.

Cited in Eric Cochrane, Historians and historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago 1981) 432. As he puts it, [Florence] was no more the heir of the Roman Republic than were the hundreds of other identical colonies scattered throughout the Mediterranean basin.


associated, in mediaeval legend and civic chronicle, with the figure of Hercules. But Annius was to push the story of Viterbos foundation much, much further into the distant past. The search for patronage was still a priority, naturally. His first Viterban treatise, of February 1491, was dedicated to Ranuccio Farnese (brother of Alessandro, the future Pope Paul 111), and demonstrated the descent of the Farnese from the heirs of the Egyptian god-king Osiris. At this stage Annius was claiming, on the evidence of Diodorus Siculus, that Osiris and Isis sailed the Mediterranean, establishing colonies and bringing civilization: Osiris, then, was the founder of Viterbo? Anniuss second production, again just before 1492, was a more general historical outline of Viterbo; this offered a more elaborate statement of Anniuss Egyptian foundation theory.* This was dedicated to Pope Innocent VIII; Innocents prompt death, however, once again deprived Annius of a potential sponsor.

The third, and for our purposes here the most significant, of the c. 1492 treatises is a short piece entitled De marmoreis volturrhenis tabulis. This tract, as its modern editor has claimed,? is no less than the first epigraphic study in western scholarship. It is addressed to the eight senior magistrates (Octovirs) of the city of Viterbo. The first section offers us a r6sum6 of Anniuss new account of the origins of the local peoples of Italy, based largely upon the evidence of these inscriptions, combined with a geographical survey of the entire region, which is based, however, on a rather suspect onomastic technique. The novel aspect of this

See especially G. Baione, Viterbiae historiae epitoma: opera inedita di Giovanni Nanni da Viterbo, in Annio da Viterho. Documenti e ricerca, ed. Massimo Pallottino (Rome 1981) 13-251 (27 n.14 on the seven different mediaeval sources which Annius used). The best known was Godfrey of Viterbo, the early twelfth-century chronicler: see Walter Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus: counterfeit and fictive authors of the early sixteenth century, Ph.D dissertation (Cornell University 1979) especially 76-79,

Much of Anniuss pro-Egyptian (and, as we will see, anti-Greek) stance probably derived from the euhemeristic (and far from accurate) accounts of the classical Sicilian historian, Diodorus Siculus 1.14-29, 96-98; 2.29-31 (all references are to C. H. Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily (Loeb Classical Library: London and Cambridge, Mass. 1933) vol. 1). A taste for ancient Egyptian writings and artefacts was developing in the later fifteenth century; eg. the Pimander case of 1484, see Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: ancient books and Renaissance readers (Ann Arbor 1997).

The Farnese were actually from Parma. Clearly they failed to supply the support which Annius required; he moved into different channels of influence. The treatise itself, De Viterbii viris et factis illustribus, does not survive in its original form: see Roberto Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract by Annius of Viterbo, in Italian studies presented to E. R. Vincent, eds C. P. Brand, Kenelm Foster, U. Limentani (Cambridge 1962) 101-20 (102 and 106, n.15). Recently it has been suggested that the tract was to be reworked as the sixth book of Anniuss Viterban History: Baffone, Viterbiae historiae epitoma (above, n.5) 30.

The outline, or Livian-style epitome, in the Vatican Library, Rome (MS Vat. Lat. 6263, 346r-371 v), is the only surviving part of Anniuss Historia Viterbiae itself (the work was quite possibly never finished). According to the proemium of the Epitoma the full history was supposed to be a work in seven volumes starting with the towns foundation by Osiris as Biturgion, meaning on the river Urgion (hence by the process of phonetic morphology Viterbo). See Baffione, Viterbiae historiae epitoma (above, n.5) 30-31.

126, 143-44, 155-56.

Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 101.

lo Anniuss procedure appears to have been to take the name of a town or settlement, then extrapolate backwards from this to discover the name of its founder, who is then asserted as one of the


new historical and geographical survey was Anniuss interest in the ancient Etruscans, an interest shared by a number of his Renaissance contemporaries. Much more unusual, in an era when ancient Greek philosophy was the daily preoccupation of learned Academicians, was Anniuss fervently held belief that the ancient Greeks were merely the jealous imitators of the achievements of their Italian neighbours across the Mediterranean, and that in their own accounts of world history, the Greeks deliberately concealed the central role of the Etruscans in favour of claims for their own cultural supremacy.

After his Etruscan summary Annius then moves to a de~cription~ of the first two tablets, which he calls the Libiscillan tablets after the zone in which they were discovered. It is a brief and somewhat mysterious description of two small, slender tablets of alabaster and white marble respectively, both inscribed in literis [sic] etnr~cis.~ Neither survives, so we only have Anniuss word for their contents and their authenticity. The smaller one he translates into Latin letters as saying Libiscilla Viturgia. The second one, however, he describes as a lapis incantatus, an enchanted or magical stone; he explains that if you turn the tablet one way, you see the letters carved into the stone, but the other way, the letters stand out.15 The magical aspect, in a general sense, taps into the mediaeval reputation of the ancient Etruscans. But Annius went further. Other contemporary scholars, such as Alberti, entirely failed to decipher Etruscan script, but Annius marches straight into a Latin transcription of the verses. In brief, he offers us two to three lines of rather unclear Latin referring to both the military and the religious superiority of the ancient inhabitants of his native region.

The second pair of tablets, however, had more to offer Anniuss audience and is also more significant for us. The relevant section of the treatise is entitled De tabulis Cybelicis. The first tablet, according to Annius, refers (inter alia) to Cybele, whom, in proper euhemeristic

descendants of Osiris. His source may have been Diodorus Siculuss account of Osiriss colonization techniques (1.20). Anniuss paradigm is the connection of Hercules and Castro Ercole, which is only slightly more convincing than the rest of his assertioy. This technique, aequivocatio (things having the same name and thus evidently having being founded by the personage), may be found passim in Annius writings; it is nicely analysed by Christopher Ligota, Annius of Viterbo and historical method, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987) 44-56, at 52-54.

l 1 I have discussed this elsewhere in more detail: Amanda Collins, The Etruscans in the Renaissance: the sacred destiny of Rome and the Historia Viginti Saeculorum of Giles of Viterbo (c.1469-1532), Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 64 (1998) 337-65.

l2 The anti-hellenism of Cato, Diodorus Siculus, and Juvenal merely helped justify what was to become Anniuss favourite tag: Graecia mendax. In this treatise we find it at 1.55 (Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 108). See E. N. Tigerstedt, Iohannes Annius and Graecia Mendax, in Classical, medieval and Renaissance studies in honor of Berthold Louis Ullman, ed. C. Henderson (Rome 1964) vol. 2, 293-310; Walter Stephens, The Etruscans and ancient theology in Annius of Viterbo, Umanismo a Roma nel Quattrocento (Rome and New York 1984) 309-22; 315 for a nice analysis of Tigerstedts apologia for Annius. Also Ligota, Annius of Viterbo and historical method (above, n.lO) 46-47.

l 3 Entitled, vividly, De crustis et fragmentis marmorum excisis.

The first measured one digit in height and two in length, the second four digits square. A third tablet non satis est intellegibilis (is not satisfactorily comprehensible) and is not therefore included in Anniuss catalogue of inscriptions.

l5 At 11.123-27.

14

62 THE AFrERLIFE OF INSCRIPTIONS

fashion, he re-invents as an early Etruscan queen. We know her as the Magna Mater, the eastern cult figure imported into Republican Rome; according to Anniuss explanation, however, Cybele was the wife of Jasius, king of the Etruscans. She only emigrated much later in life to the Middle East.16 So when she was re-imported to Italy by the early Romans, in fact, as an Etruscan queen, she was merely coming home. This served in turn to reinforce Anniuss contention that the Etruscan, and not some other civilization - Greek or Asiatic - was the ancient medium of cultural transmission, and, moreover, that this Ur-Italian civilization was based in and around Viterbo, the heart of ancient Etruria.

Anniuss techniques were, as we have noted before, highly dubious, however. The very title De tubulis Cybelicis is paradigmatic of Anniuss specious use of onomastic and toponymical evidence. Annius claimed that the tablets were recently discovered, in colle Cibelurio, an area between Tuscania and Viterbo. This Latin name is merely Anniuss somewhat grandiose and formal version of its local, volgure name, the so-called Cipolluru or Onion Zone, as we might tran~1ate.I~ By sliding from Cipollara to the Latin Cibelurius to the name Cybele, Annius had deliberately and rather neatly blurred the etymological distinction between onions and an ancient goddess.

To return to the inscriptions themselves, there is one very distinct difference between these tablets and the previous pair; this latter pair is in Greek. Given Anniuss antipathy to all things Hellenic, we immediately have to wonder why an inscription would be produced in Greek. Anniuss resolution of this paradox, offered some years afterwards in a later reformulation of all this evidence, has been described as lame and comical.18 He claimed that the Etruscans of the time of the inscription, which he dates to just before Numas reign in Rome, were quite prepared to set up public documents, ie. inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, for common consumption, but that only their own language would suffice for literary or religious texts, so as not to corrupt the sacredness of their culture.

If the weakness of this answer does not already expose Annius, there is also the small matter that the Greek script itself in this inscription is not in the least convincingly antique. On the contrary, the capital letters used on these two tablets are very close in form to the Greek letters

I6The full story was reworked no fewer than four times in Anniuss later work published in 1498, the Antiquitates (described more fully below): see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 158 for references. There were some subtle changes in the accounts of events, which have been documented and analysed in detail by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 170-75.

l7 This is also the name given in a near-contemporary official document of the Viterban Commune: see Adriana Emiliozzi, I1 Muse0 Civic0 di Viterbo. Storia delle raccolte archeologiche (Rome 1986) 23.

Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 162 for full references. Stephens suggests that the actual reason for Anniuss use of Greek in the inscription was that he was not yet in 1492 so hostile as he was to become towards the Greeks. However, this fails to take into consideration Anniuss use, already, of what would become his catch-phrase regarding the lying Greeks (at 1.55 of De marmoreis), and that he had already, it would seem, taken on Diodorus Siculuss line that much of ancient Greek civilization was dependent on Osiris and the Egyptians (1.23,96-98). In 1492 Annius failed to anticipate and defuse responses to this inconsistency in his line. My own suspicion is that Annius was simply not linguistically capable of composing a credible narrative inscription in pseudo-Etruscan (as it is, the Greek barely passes muster, which fits with what Annius says of himself at 1.197-198 - admittedly disingenuously - as non multum eruditus in literis [sic] gruecis, not very learned in the Greek script).


used in early Christian Byzantine liturgical manuscript^.'^ Whoever designed these tablets had both an historical and an ecclesiastical turn of mind, but relatively limited linguistic capacities; we have little choice but to suspect our Dominican antiquarian himself.*

But what do they actually say? The first of the two tablets, according to Annius, was partly in Greek and partly in what he describes as Ararathean. He tells us that he expounded the contents of the tablet in the presence of the vice-governor of Viterbo but had to ask a local rabbi, a Talmud scholar called Samuel, to interpret the Ararathean letters. We will return to this significant interpretation below. The tablet itself, apparently, refers to the discovery of a much earlier inscription which no longer exists, and probably never did; another Annian smokescreen. This earlier, more ancient tablet, had been in another ancient language; its contents were here (ie. on this more recent tablet) transliterated into Greek letters.2 The earlier tablet, according to this later inscription, recorded the foundation of what was to become the town of Viterbo by Cameses, and his father Janus.22 It also referred to the fortifications built later by Hercules the Egyptian; not to be confused with Hercules the Greek, an inferior hero along with his entire nation (a Greek could never have contributed to the establishment of the great Etruscan capital of world ci~ilization).~ The tabula Cybelica aruruthea, then, went some way towards providing concrete - or as it happened, alabaster - proof of Anniuss theories about the beginnings of ancient Italic civilization.

The second tablet of the Cybelican pair survives in the Museo Civico in Viterbo (Fig. 6.2).24 Annius claimed that the tablet was in Greek but with what he called Maeonic elements

l9 Already by the mid-sixteenth century the Spanish scholar Barreiros had pointed out that Annius was only barely familiar with Latin literature, read Greek mostly in translation, and certainly could not distinguish between classical and Byzantine Greek (see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 13).

2o Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 106 n.20 suggests that Annius carved the inscriptions himself on the soft alabaster, but as Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 173 says, this is not proven.

2L Untranslatable phrases such as ... P ~ h a y ~ y 6 a h a h ~ a ~ i p p ~ c p ~ ~ a a 6 ~ v a ~ p a E p K E h papa ... (1.154) were those presumably interpreted by Samuel the Talmudist. Illustrations of a contemporary transcription of the Ararathean tablet, now in the Bavarian state library in Munich (Codex Latinus 7 16: 76r-86r), are at 0. A. Danielsson, Etruskische Inschrijten in handschriflicher Ueberlieferung (Uppsala 1928) illust. xii [= Cod. Lat. 716, 79rl; also at Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civico di Viterbo (above, n. 17) 22, fig. 2.

22 Anniuss geographical conception of ancient Viterbo is confusing: it is sometimes apparently coterminous with Etruria as a whole, though more often the modern name for an ancient settled area with several core areas. One of these, Annius claims, was the Etruscan settlement called Vetulonia by ancient authors, and it was Vetulonia rather than Viterbo which he read on this tablet (eg. 1.151, ow8uhovia). This was not an implausible geographical claim at the time; archaeologists would only locate the real Vetulonia centuries afterwards (the excavations lie a few miles outside Grosseto, considerably to the north of present Viterbo). For the continuity of ancient Vetulonia and mediaeval Viterbo, see Anniuss treatment of the Lombard tablet, described below.

23 For the two Hercules, of Egypt and Greece respectively, see Diodorus Siculus 1.24.

24 Also described and illustrated in Danielsson, Etruskische Inschrifen (above, 11.21) illust. xi, and Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civico di Viterbo (above, n. 17) 22, fig. 1.


and words.25 The first part of the inscription on this circular tablet records the marriage of Cybele and the Etruscan ruler Jasius, and his subsequent betrayal to his death by his brother Dardanus, which has been discussed above. It also mentions that at this very special celebration no less a personage than the elderly Isis (5 10 years old by now) was present, and for the occasion, being the maximfrumentaria (a sort-of matriarchal agricultural specialist) she invented bread.26 The tablet itself, according to Annius, was set up by Pupinus and Marsias, later rulers of Etruria.

There was yet more. Annius further claimed, in his translation of the inscription into Latin, that this Maeonic stone also referred to another lapis vetustissimus, a most ancient tablet;27 he then gives the text of that notional older tablet. This appears to be, unsurprisingly, almost identical to the older inscription similarly referred to on the previous Ararathean tablet; ie. it refers to the foundation of Viterbo by Janus and Cameses and to the subsequent establishment of a fortified settlement by Hercules the LibyanBgyptian.

These two Cybelican tablets provided the bulk of the historical evidence Annius attempted to pass. There were two further tablets, however, which he describes in the treatise De marmoreis; the first one was not supposedly ancient at all, but mediaeval, the so-called Decretum Desiderii (Fig. 6.3). The tablet is yet another forgery; it uses a Beneventan script which only ever appeared in manuscript and was certainly never used in an epigraphic context. There is some question as to whether it was in fact forged by Annius, since there is evidence to suggest the townspeople of Viterbo had displayed it already in a public location over a century beforehand.28 It was also known to other humanist collectors of syllogai of inscriptions in the 1490s, though Anniuss other inscriptions were not.29 Still, even if Annius did not forge this inscription (and it is quite possible that he did), by building this literal piece

25 These are much less clear than in the Ararathean tablet. Here we find the phrase napa zov hrprov puaparov 6-7 lines from the bottom, which suggests that the Libyan, Hercules, also bears the Old Testament name Misraim; Annius made this connection explicit in his later work. See De Caprio, La tradizione originaria (above, n.1) 250.

26 Apparently, according to the 1498 version, the Etruscans had previously lived on acorn-based bread (see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 35): from Diodorus Siculus 1.14. 27 At 1.208 Annius writes Lapis vetustissimus repertus barbarice sub his sententiis, a rather loose translation of the corresponding Greek phrase (at 11.187-89 of the tract) ohu8oc T C ~ ~ C U C O T ~ ~ O < wuve8q ~ a p ~ a p t ~ t J 6x0 zaurorc hoyoi~. This Greek phrase, in turn, was his somewhat inaccurate transcription (or correction of the Mahnic elements?) of his own words on the tablet, just below the middle line of the inscription, which read ON8OX IIAAAEXATOZ ErPEOH BAFBAPIXTI TIIO TAIITOIX AOIOIX.

* Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 118 n.41 presents with scepticism the account of the sixteenth-century Viterban patriot Domenico Bianchi, who claimed it had been discovered in 1219, and the assertions of the eighteenth-century Etruscologist Mariani, that it had been fixed to the top of the cathedral in Viterbo until 1380. Weiss provides meticulously uncovered references from other near-contemporary sources which suggest that the inscription was more recent.

29 For the nachleben of this inscription, its use by humanists including Politian, and its exposure as spurious see Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 118 n.41, and Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, n.17) 28 n.42, 31, 39-40. Of the six inscriptions Annius describes in this treatise, the Decretum Desiderii had the longest shelf-life: though it was challenged and disproved frequently, it was still inspiring a passionate defence in 1775.


Fig. 6.3 The Decretum Desiderii; alabaster inscription


Fig. 6.4 The Herculean tablet of Osiris

of local history into his treatise he was still, without doubt, reinforcing his own authority in terms of his otherwise deliberately artificial resurrection of the mytho-history of Viterbo. The tablet itself purports to be a decree of the Lombard king Desiderius, restoring the local Etruscan hegemony of the three centres Longula, Turrhena and Vetulonia, now enclosed by a single town wall and given the name Viterbo. Desiderius was defeated in the year 774 by Charlemagne, who was ostensibly acting on behalf of Pope Hadrian I. In fact, for Anniuss purposes, probably the most important aspect of the decree was that it established a continuity link between - or an identification of - the settlement called Vetulonia in the previous ancient inscriptions and the late-mediaeval community of Viterbo.30

The last of the inscriptions in Anniuss treatise comes from a tablet he named the Herculean tablet of Osiris (Fig. 6.4), so-called because it was found in a place called Castrum Herculis, placed below the pulpit of the church by our ancestors, as Annius put it.32 It is perhaps the most ambitious and least convincing of his forgeries. Annius claims, on the authority of Diodorus S i c u I u ~ , ~ ~ that when the ancient Egyptians went on geographic

30 See n.22 above. The point is also made by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 167.

31 For a full description see Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, n.17) 30, and figs. 6 and 7.

32 De marmoreis, 1.270.

33 For Anniuss references, see 1.288, and Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 119 n.50.


expeditions, they usually left some monument - such as this - recording the event. It consists of two profile heads, one male, one female, looking at each other, situated above a relief showing an oak tree, surrounded by motifs such as a grapevine, birds, and a reptile. The tree relief, though of course Annius does not mention this, probably dates from the twelfth century, and has been inserted, very obviously, into a stone frame; the heads are clearly contemporary (ie. fifteenth-century) in style and form. How could Annius possibly describe this as an inscription? He immediately explains thal these motifs are precisely the sacred letters of Egypt; that is, that these figural representations were hier~glyphs.~~ He provides no explanation of the meaning of the symbolic figures (the heads, the birds, the reptile), merely referring us to a more detailed analysis of the Osiris tablet in his so-called Lucubr~ t iones .~~ He states that in this fuller treatment he will prove - in fact he says he already has proved - incontrovertibly that the tablet records the founding, by Osiris and his wife Isis, of various colonies. They left behind cultores (agricultural tutors?) and monuments like this one for us Vetulonians, now Viterban~.~~ This implies that the settlement later to be called Viterbo was already in situ, which conflicts with Anniuss earlier assertion that Osiris was actually the founder of Viterbo. This latter point is, again, important and we will come back to it before the end of this chapter.

Annius then sums up the entire treatise, addressing his final remarks, as he had his opening remarks, to the eight priors, the senior magistrates of the town of Viterbo. He lists again the tablets, this time in reverse order: the Osiris tablet, the Lombard tablet, the two cybelluriue (Cipollara or Cybele-related) tablets, and the f is t two Libiscillan tablets, one magical, the other with this inscription viturgiu. He concludes by telling us that his purpose in presenting the evidence of these tablets is to supplement and correct the ancient accounts of Ptolemy, Strabo, and the elder Pliny with regard to the names and origins of various towns in central Italy. This of course is disingenuous. What he has done, in reality, in this treatise is to present his readers with a historical narrative and then to adapt his evidence to fit that narrative. That evidence takes two forms, the first being the onomastic and etymological evidence Annius manages to derive from the names of towns in his region, on the basis that practically every town had to have had a founder with a similar name; hence the philological gymnastics we saw in the case of Cybele/Cipollara. The second type of evidence, the historical, of course, is drawn from his inscriptions. Taken together, the evidence from the inscriptions proves the foundation of an ancient Etruscan realm, rich in the sacred and magical arts, by Janus and his son Cameses; the hegemony of the Vetulonians, who later become the Viterbans; and the endorsement of this cultural supremacy by Osiris and Isis who teaches agricultural skills. Osiriss heir Hercules the Libyan further guarantees the military superiority of the future Viterbans. Annius then introduces Jasius, a third or fourth generation descendant of Januss

34 Annius does not use the precise term hieroglyph, but the phrase tavola geroglifica was applied to this same inscription by the later sixteenth century: see Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, n.17) 29. Annius (1.292) cites Pliny the Elders Natural History 35.8 as validation of his claim that this was the sacred language of Osiris.

35 At 1.269 (also 1.294). No work under this title appeared, though he was to provide a more detailed narrative of the role of Osiris and family in 1498. See Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 34.

36 At lines 286-87. This may bear a somewhat indirect relationship to Diodorus Siculuss comments at 1.19, 28-29.


brother Gomerus; that is, Jasius, husband of Cybele, who absconds with Jasiuss brother Dardanus, founder of Troy. Here, then, we have the core of a new ancient history; one which not only runs parallel to, but actually predates the civilization of the Homeric epics of ancient Greece; a history which situates the origins of the spiritual and economic dominion of the world not in Greece, nor even in Egypt and Asia Minor, but in Italy (and specifically in Viterbo at that).

Clearly this demonstrates the sort of universal claims which could be made, in 1492, on the basis of a disparate range of manufactured, or deliberately misinterpreted, antique inscriptions. That they were forged is not the point: the point is that Annius expected his audience - an audience of scholars, fellow-clerics, and other Vatican careerists, and of top- ranking politicians, civic officials, and well-educated diplomats - to believe not just the inscriptions themselves, but the conclusions he drew from them. The evidence of inscriptions was just beginning, in European scholarship, to be given the status of privileged source material for the study of the ancient world. We are, therefore, looking at the Renaissance origins of the modern discipline of epigraphy.

One could also perhaps make the case that Anniuss treatise stands at the moment of inception of the modem discipline of Etruscology. One of the points to which we must return is Anniuss implication (see above), in the De marmoreis treatise of 1492, that it was not, after all, Osiris who founded what became Viterbo. In this treatise, instead, he insists upon the role of Janus, the Etruscan god later adopted by the Romans, and his son Cameses, as the originators of the Etruscan civilization that was superior to all others (and especially to that of the Greeks). This shift away from the Egyptian colonization theory is most significant, and it is connected to the second point noted above to which we must return; that is, Anniuss reference to the interpretation of the so-called Ararathean inscription by the local rabbi Samuel. We can only infer from this that the Ararathean script invented by Annius as the language of his Etruscans was in some way related to Hebrew or A~-amean.~ It would seem that in 1492 Annius began, tentatively, to formulate quite a different set of origins for Etruscan, therefore Italian, therefore world civilization.

This Jewish connection - and where the figures of Janus and Cameses fit in - took another six years to bring to fruition. Finally in 1498 Anniuss magnum opus appeared. This took the form of an astonishing incunabulum of over two hundred large-scale folios (ie. four hundred pages), involving different font types and sizes, tables, columns, and an entirely fanciful illustration of early (ie. Etruscan) Rome. It was known as the Antiquitutes though its colophon gives it the title a commentary on various sources that talk of antiquities. Before we examine its main thesis, however, we must, as ever, ask Anniuss own burning question, where on earth does a scholar find the sponsorship for this, one of the most beautiful, elaborate, and obviously vastly expensive early printed books of the Renaissance?

37 In fact, there is an explicit reference in the treatise at lines 63 and 65 to so-called Aramean terminology.

38 Cornrnentaria super opera diversorurn auctorurn de antiquitatibus loquentiurn. It was first published by Eucharius Silber in Rome on 3 August, 1498. A condensed quarto version of only 36 folios - an epitome? - appeared soon afterwards in the same year, printed by Bernardino of Venice.

70 THE AFTEW,IFE OF INSCRIPTIONS

For the answer we need to return, once again, to the aftermath of 1492. This year, as we have noted, saw inter alia the arrival of the Borgias and a whole new era of glamour and intrigue in Papal politics, and thus Papal patronage. Annius was not slow to respond to the challenge. Viterbo was one of the more important residences within the Papal patrimony, and in his peregrinations around the Papal States Rodrigo Borgia - Alexander VI - was bound to arrive with his cortege sooner or later. And this was exactly what happened, at some point between October and December 1493. A later account narrates that the Papal entourage were out hunting hares in the regi0.n between Tuscania and Vi te rb~;~ a hare slipped down a hole and the dogs burrowed in after it, causing the ground to cave in and reveal an Etruscan tomb complete with funerary monuments, ie. both statues and inscriptions? Annius, conveniently enough, was on hand to give a lecture on the identity of the statues and the meaning of the inscriptions. Of course, this archaeological find happened on the very same site where the Cybelican tablets - which he had just written about in De marmoreis volturrhenis tabulis - were discovered; that is, the tablets which referred to the marriage of Jasius and Cybele, in the presence of Isis. It was not too much of a coincidence then that the statues turned out to represent, according to Annius, those very characters. The statues may have been genuine archaeological finds: throughout the preceding century and beyond people had been uncovering Etruscan art and artefacts? Still, their relocation to a spot precisely where the papal cortege happened to be passing, the attachment of (yet another) set of forged inscriptions, and a11 on an occasion when Annius happened to be on hand to explain their meaning, are factors which strongly suggest that Annius had the statues placed there in advance, and the inscriptions manufactured, for the occasion.

If I may digress for a moment, only the very pompous ought to be shocked at this blatant fixing: modern archaeology is hardly squeaky-clean and certainly in Italy the tradition of patronage and politics in archaeology continues today as ever. Though it is no defence of Anniuss forgeries, the modern history of Etruscology is littered with bogus pieces: in 1873 the British Museum purchased a group supposedly originating from Cerveteri, which rapidly became one of the most popular exhibits. It was withdrawn quietly in 1936 when curators discovered that it had been sculpted and buried by Pietro and Enrico Penelli. Just like Annius, these men were not (or not merely) unscrupulous archeo-relic peddlars: Enrico held the post of official restorer of the Campana collection in the Louvre? The following year (1937) in

39 Santi Marmocchini, Dialog0 in defensione della lingua Toschana (1544). See Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, n.17) 25 and Danielsson, Efruskische Inschriffen (above, n.21) 12-13 for the full quotation and discussion of the variant narratives; also 0. A. Danielsson, Annius von Viterbo uber die Griindungsgeschichte Roms, in Corolla Archaeologica (Lund 1932) 1-1 6. Anniuss own brief accounts (eg. at Antiquitafes fol. 16v) refer only to the discovery and not to the circumstances.

40 It is not an implausible account, as archaeologists of the Etruscan tombs in the area around Viterbo and Tuscania attest. The circumstances may not have been quite so dramatic, however; an earlier account mentions that the finds were first uncovered while digging a vineyard. Annius not only forges the statues and seeds the ground, as it were, but alters his later accounts of the discoveries.

See Nancy De Grummond, Rediscovery, in Etruscan life and afterlife: a handbook of Etruscan studies, ed. Luisa Bonfante, (Warminster, Michigan 1986) 18-46; Collins, The Etruscans in the Renaissance (above, n.11) 339-41.

42 See Otto Kurz, Fakes (New York 1967) 147.

41


New York, Gisela Richter, then curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, produced a rich monograph on a recent Etruscan acquisition. Though there were immediate attempts to debunk the statues these were not properly investigated and exposed until 1961.43 Before we apply (and often with knee-jerk condemnation) modern standards of scholarly integrity and professionalism to Annius, we should recall that Renaissance boundaries between emulation, imitation, cataloguing, and forgery were much more blurred than in the present century. As the stories here demonstrate, even the present century is far from immune to the temptation to tag pseudo-Etruscan artefacts as genuine. Anthony Graftans survey, ranging from the Hitler diaries to the most ancient frauds, shows how forgery is a necessary concomitant, the flip side, of the development of critical scholarship.a

But back in 1492, and always one to strike while the iron was hot, Annius promptly followed up the dramatic pseudo-discovery of ancient Etruria, publishing a treatise specially dedicated to Pope Alexander: the so-called Borgiana lucubraciuncula.45 We do not know exactly how Alexander VI responded to the episode or the treatise, but Anniuss career swiftly benefited; his elevation within Roman curial circles can be traced through the 1490s. It is, of course, by no means certain that Annius convinced the sophisticated Pope or his circle. However, as Machiavelli noted in The Prince, Rodrigo Borgia himself was the great master in the art of deception.& Plausibility was more important than authenticity, and Annius could be used in turn to help legitimate Borgia autocracy. We have seen how Anniuss treatise on the six inscriptions of 1492 was dedicated to his paymasters, the communal governors of Viterbo; but the implication is over-cynical, since Viterbo remained central to Anniuss reorientation of the origins of world civilization. Nonetheless, the publications during the years after 1492 do reveal that Anniuss historical assertions could be manipulated to fit into Borgia ideology. It is possible that the many Osirian and other Egyptian themes which can be traced in Pinturrichios decoration of the Vatican Borgia apartments were inspired by Anniuss writings. The clearest expression of pro-Borgia ideology however comes from Anniuss Antiquitates of 1498, in which one entire section of the magnum opus was dedicated to the history of the Spanish monarchs. This was partly a tribute to the aristocratic Spanish origins of the Borgia dynasty, and partly a tipping of the hat to the Spanish royal ambassador to the Papal Court, who, it turns out, actually paid for the publication of the Antiquitates. Patronage was assured at last, then. In the same year, 1498, Annius was given a senior appointment in the Curia, the post of Magister Sacri Palatii, official court theologian. In 1499,

43 See Arvid Andrkn, Deeds and misdeeds in classical art and antiquities (Partille 1986) 70.

44 Anthony Grafton, Forgers. Creativity and duplicity in western scholarship (Princeton 1990) epilogue.

45 The precise date of this treatise is unclear but early 1494 would seem to be reasonable. The treatise is edited by Danielsson, Etruskische Znschriften (above, 11.21) 13-19.

46 Niccolb Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth 1961) 100; also noted by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 14.

47 S e e Paola Mattiangeli, Annio da Viterbo ispiratore di cicli pittorici, in Pallottino, Annio da Viterbo (above, n.5) 255-342 (especially 279-302). The case for Anniuss relationship with Pinturrichios frescoes, begun at the end of 1492, is scathingly rebutted, however, in one review of her work (Edoardo Fumagalli, Aevum 56/3 (1982) 542-53).

SNOILdItIXNI dO EkII~EJJAV 9H.L ZL


date from 1493-94, have been described as a Semitic-Hebraic mi~h-mash.~ They are a further attempt by Annius, again in epigraphical form, to assert an ancient connection or even identification between the Jews and the Etruscans.

However, it was not until the publication in 1498 of the Antiquitutes that this theme reached its fullest and most astounding elaboration. We finally see thefilo rosso which connects Janus, Osiris, Hercules, the Etruscans, and the ancient Jews. The AntiquitUtes consists of seventeen books, of which fifteen are editions in Latin, translated by Annius, of previously lost ancient texts, including the reworking of the inscriptions he had discovered earlier, all with a new, detailed commentary. Both his stated agendum - to produce fine new editions of recently rediscovered ancient texts - and his technical modus operundi, with collation, summae, translation, apparatus, and commentary, are impressively h~manist.~ However, antiquities is a misnomer, to say the least. Just as with his so-called ancient inscriptions, all of these texts are partially or entirely forged to support his underlying historical thesis. The inscriptions were forged on soft alabaster; the new antique texts were rather easier to produce, since the originals were never required to be displayed. The sources Annius used in the Antiquitutes range from rediscovered fragments of Cat0 the Elder,52 Fabius Maximus, Propertius, and even Philo of Alexandria, to an epitome of the work of the ancient Babylonian astronomer, priest, and scribe, Berosus the Chaldean.53 Berosus was, in fact, the longest and most important of Anniuss creations; to cut a long story short,54 Berosus tells us no less than the history of the world, from Adam, to the Flood, to the foundation of Etruria. He describes events here at the heart of civilization, including the foundations of Rome and of Troy; the invention of writing, of viticulture, and of agriculture; and he narrates the tale of the murder of Jasius and the departure of his widow Cybele for Phrygia, a story familiar to us from Anniuss inscriptions.

Most importantly, Berosuss account tells us how Noah and his family, after surviving the Deluge and ending up in Armenia, travelled across the Mediterranean, and up the Tiber, colonizing an area we now know as the Vatican and Janiculan. From here Noah taught his followers the true religion - so Anniuss readers could see how Rome, and the Vatican especially, stood at the heart of world religion long before the Romans, let alone the Christians - an ingenious piece of retroactive geographical legitimation on Anniuss part.

50 Danielsson, Etruskische Inschrifen (above, n.2 1) 22 (also cited by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 171 n.45). Full illustrations at Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, n. 17) 27, figs 3-5. 51 Stephens,Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) dissertation abstract, gives this process the impressive title of philological mimesis. Ligota, Annius of Viterbo and historical method (above, n.lO) 45 argues persuasively, on the premise of Anniuss historical and methodological techniques, that Annius was not a humanist.

52 On Cat0 specifically, see Edoardo Fumagalli, Un falso tardo-quattrocentesco: lo pseudo-Catone di Annio di Viterbo, in Vestigia: studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, ed. R. Avesani (Rome 1984)

53 Annius had used the epitome format before; he had written a similarly distilled version of his Viterban history in 1491, now edited by Baffone (see n.5 above).

54 The five books of Berosus occupy 53% folios of the 200+ folios of Antiquitutes (with the Supplement of Manetho to Berosus this increases to 63 folios).

1, 337-60.

74 THE AFERLIFE OF INSCRIPTIONS

There is more: Noah, teacher of all the bonae artes, invented wine, and ignorant of its potential effects tried it out. AnniusBerosus neatly dovetailed this into the biblical story (at Genesis 9.20-24) of Noahs shame, grovelling drunken and naked before his sons. At this point Anniuss philological and etymological expertise comes in. The Hebrew-Aramean word for wine, as Annius tells us, is ja-jin, pronounced ya-yin. Noah is remembered, therefore, in local ie. Etruscan myth, as lain, the creator of wine. And who was the Etruscan god mythically associated with the invention of wine for the ancient Italic peoples? Ianus, Latinized to Janus, the Etruscan deity whose pre-Roman cult was associated with the left bank of the Tiber, the Janiculan hill. Noah and Janus were, according to Anniuss assertions, one and the same figure. This figures descendants, whom we know as the Etruscans, brought not just the arts of civilization but also the sacred worship of God himself to the Janiculan hill, right next to the Vatican, and thence to all mankind.

Anniuss theory of the origins of human culture therefore accelerated, in an exponential fashion, to outdo the book of Genesis itself. Berosus calmly usurped the traditional role given to Moses, who was assumed to be the author of the earliest accounts in the Old Testament, as the authority for the earliest history of mankind. In so doing, Annius, through Berosus, managed to replace the Jews with the Etruscans as Gods chosen people. This was no small claim, it may be imagined.

We may not find Anniuss hypothetical reconstruction of ancient history and ancient theology very convincing, of course, but it should be noted that its reception was almost guaranteed in the atmosphere of contemporary Renaissance philosophy and scholarship. The same period saw the dissemination of the supposedly ancient texts of Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, and the so-called Chaldean Oracles; all of which, though not blatantly forged, were pseudonymous and late antique, not prehistoric. This sense of a fundamental concordance and continuity - a kabbalah or secret tradition of sacred knowledgG6 - was widely supported in Renaissance culture high and low. Annius merely pushed this one stage further: by-passing the ancient Egyptians, off-setting the ancient Jews and, of course, spurning entirely the ancient Greeks, he posited instead a direct connection between the Armenian-Chaldean Noah, ancestor of the Jews, and the Italian world of the Etruscans.

Berosus the Chaldean was by no means an implausible source; he certainly existed, because his name was mentioned by two ancient authors, though nothing survived of his writings, at least until Anniuss discoveries. In addition, mediaeval legend had it that he was the father

55 See Collins, The Etruscans in the Renaissance (above, n.11) 344 n.27 for a fuller treatment of this idea and its reuse by Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo a generation later.

56 Anniuss very limited acquaintance with the linguistic and numerological exegetical techniques associated with the Jewish Cabbala, then beginning to circulate in the circles of the erudite, has been examined by M. Procaccia, Talmudistae Caballarii e Annio, in Cultura umanistica a Viterbo, ed. Massimo Miglio, 11 1-21. See also Collins, The Etruscans in the Renaissance (above, n.11) 346 n.32.

57 Vitruvius De Architectura 9.2.1, 9.6.2, 9.8.1 and, most importantly, Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.128-31 (cited by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 86). Manetho and Berosus were to become Anniuss most important sources. He even called the Berosus account a defloratio, after Josephus, maintaining that this was an archaic term for an epitome or summary (see Ligota, Annius of Viterbo and historical method (above, n.10) 49). The twelfth-century author Godfrey of Viterbo also used Josephus as a source for names of ancient authors: see, for a full account of Anniuss debt to Godfrey and to Josephus, Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 72-73,86-88.


of the Cumaean Many of Anniuss contemporaries received the Antiquitutes with open arms, though there were some notable sceptics.59 The 200-folio Antiquitutes was nonetheless reprinted nineteen times. Despite generally effective seventeenth-century attempts to debunk the entire work, an apologia for the Decretum Desiderii appeared as late as 1775.6 The Antiquitutes and their bogus histories, moreover, circulated right across Europe, and in quite elite circles: in the Bodleian library, in the Upper Reading Room, approaching the reserve desk in the Tower of the Five Orders from the history side, one may note, in the early seventeenth-century frieze, the three ancient worthies whose medallions appear: Homer, Hesiod, and Berosus the Babylonian.6

This new history of the world, from the Creation, to the Flood, and on to the foundation of Etruria, was the logical end-point of a process which very early on encompassed the archaeological discovery and the philological interpretation of a handful of ancient inscriptions. The evidence that those inscriptions presented was used from 1492 onwards to validate the contents and place beyond doubt the authenticity of the textual discoveries finally published in 1498, texts which, in turn, lent entirely inappropriate but very convincing authority to the epigraphic materials. This mimesis or, even more harshly, travesty62 of Renaissance humanist antiquarian scholarship was hugely persuasive. Of course the circularity of text legitimating inscription validating text is a not-uncommon historiographical fallacy. It is merely the crowning irony63 that the first epigraphic treatise of modern scholarship, in 1492, was an entire forgery; and that it was embedded subsequently within a work which should be considered one of the most astonishingly successful historical frauds of the western canon, the Antiquitutes of 1498.

Something very genuine that Anniuss forgeries do reveal, however, is the growing value being given to inscriptions, by 1500, within the canon of scholarly evidence. The inscription outdoes a bogus text, such as the Donation of Constantine, or a manufactured artefact, such

58 Noted by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 116.

59 See Weiss, Traccia per una biografia (above, n. 1) 437-38; Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civico di Viterbo (above, n. 17) 29; Cochrane, Historians and historiography (above, n.4) 265, and particularly 433; Grafton, Forgers (above, n.44) 86, 101, 113; Philip Jacks, The antiquarian and the myth ofantiquity (Cambridge 1993) 169-70, 257. The most interesting sceptic was Erasmus, who, though extremely suspicious of Anniuss genealogy of Christ (Weiss, Traccia per una biografia (above, n.1) 437) nevertheless was himself later condemned for accepting other parts of the Antiquitares (Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) 6). Of course, Erasmus himself, the greatest patristic scholar of the sixteenth century, was not above forging pseudo-patristic texts himself (see Grafton, Forgers (above, n.44) 45). This did not, of course, render Erasmus stupid or dishonest, though we may treat his situation, as Annius, with considerable retrospective irony; it is both patronizing and reprehensibly paradoxical in contemporary historians to presume given standards of historical accuracy (and issue judgement accordingly) out of contemporary context.

Weiss, An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 119 n.46; Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civico di Viterbo (above, n.17) 39-40.

To his left is the only woman of the series of over 200, Sappho. Annius himself was evidently not considered sufficiently important to be included.

62 Terms used by Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus (above, n.5) (passim).

63 Weiss has called it somewhat comic: An unknown epigraphic tract (above, n.7) 106 n.14.

76 THE AFTERLIFE! OF INSCRIPTIONS

as the Shroud of Turin,@ because the inscription is at the same time both artefact and text, both form and content. Like those other notorious fakes, the Donation and the Shroud, Anniuss inscriptions were produced for a number of tangled motives. Cynically, they launched him into a career in the highest ecclesiastical circles of the time, ensuring his reputation and his fortune. Less cynically, though equally manipulatively, the inscriptions permitted him to exercise his patriotic bias towards Viterbo particularly and Italy more generally. Most importantly, they served Anniuss sincere intellectual and spiritual convictions: he gave his inscriptions a cosmic spin, by using them as evidence for his own special version of the sacred history of the world.

Even so, before scholars dismiss Annius of Viterbo as a madman, or at the very least a b l a sphe rn~us~~ charlatana and pseudo-scholar of appallingly bad faith, perhaps there is at least one positive result of his career we should bear in mind. His evident devotion to archaeological finds, Etruscan finds in particular, helped launch a collection that may be considered one of the earliest Renaissance museums, in V i t e r b ~ . ~ ~ And perhaps even more importantly, his enthusiasm for, and publication of, epigraphic material which was dis- seminated for three centuries across the whole of Europe may be said to have helped to found and certainly to publicize the same scholarly discipline which has inspired the present book.

64 The philologist Valla finally debunked the infamous Donation in the mid-fifteenth century; the Turin Shroud was not exposed as a fourteenth-century image until the late 1980s.

65 Cochrane, Historians and Historiography (above, n.4) 358.

66 Weiss, Roberto, The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity, 2nd edn (Oxford 1988) 206.

67 See Emiliozzi, I1 Museo Civic0 di Viterbo (above, 11.17) 19-21; despite his withering scorn passim, Weiss was prepared to acknowledge this aspect of Anniuss contribution to scholarship (Traccia per una biografia (above, n.1) 441).

Documents

Collins. Renaissance Epigraphy