This is the first of a series of three articles challenging the conventional historical frxwork 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.

本文是挑戰(zhàn)地中海世界從羅馬帝國到十字軍東征的傳統(tǒng)歷史框架的三篇系列文章中的第一篇。這是對一場古老辯論的集體貢獻(xiàn)，近幾十年來，這場辯論在學(xué)術(shù)界的邊緣(主要是在德國、俄羅斯和法國)獲得了新的動力。在此過程中，我們將提出一些可行的假設(shè)，最后一篇文章將基于確鑿的考古證據(jù)，以范式轉(zhuǎn)變的形式提出一個全球性的解決方案。

Tacitus and Bracciolini
One 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):

塔西佗和布拉喬里尼
我們對羅馬帝國最詳細(xì)的歷史資料之一是科尼利厄斯·塔西佗(公元56-120年)，他的主要著作《編年史》（the Annals）和《歷史》（the Histories）涵蓋了羅馬帝國的歷史，從公元14年奧古斯都去世到96年多米提安去世。
法國學(xué)者Polydor Hochart在1890年介紹了他對“塔西佗編年史和歷史的真實性”的調(diào)查結(jié)果，該調(diào)查是在約翰·威爾遜·羅斯12年前出版的《塔西佗和布拉喬利尼:15世紀(jì)偽造的編年史》(1878年)的基礎(chǔ)上進(jìn)行的:

“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 manuscxt that contained the last six books of the Annals and the first five books of the Histories. It is this archetypal manuscxt 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 manuscxts 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 manuscxts, 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.”

"在15世紀(jì)初，學(xué)者們沒有塔西佗的任何著作;它們應(yīng)該是遺失了。大約在1429年，佛羅倫薩的波喬·布拉喬利尼和尼科利發(fā)現(xiàn)了一份手稿，其中包括《編年史》的后六卷和《歷史》的前五卷。在印刷術(shù)使用之前，正是這種原型手稿制作了流通中的副本。現(xiàn)在，當(dāng)你想知道他們是在哪里以及如何得到它的時候，你會驚訝地發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們對這個問題的解釋是不可接受的，他們要么不想說，要么不能說真話。大約80年后，教皇利奧十世得到了一本包含《編年史》前五卷的書。它的發(fā)現(xiàn)也被黑暗所包圍。
為什么會有這些謎團(tuán)?展示這些古籍的人應(yīng)該得到多大程度的信任?我們對它們的真實性有什么保證?在考慮這些問題時，我們首先會看到，波喬和尼科利并不以誠實和忠誠著稱，對他們來說，尋找古代手稿是一種行業(yè)，一種賺錢的手段。
我們還會注意到，波喬是他那個時代最有學(xué)問的人之一，他也是一個聰明的書法家，他甚至付費訓(xùn)練了抄寫員，用倫巴第和卡洛林的文字在羊皮紙上以一種非凡的方式書寫。就像他自己說的那樣，從他手中出來的書可以完美地模仿古代手稿。/我們也將能夠看到《編年史》和《歷史》是用什么元素組成的。最后，在尋找誰可能是這個文學(xué)騙局的作者時，我們將被引導(dǎo)認(rèn)為，在所有的可能性中，偽塔西佗不是。”

Hochart’s demonstration proceeds in two stages. First, he traces the origin of the manuscxt discovered by Poggio and Niccoli, using Poggio’s correspondence as evidence of deception. Then Hochart deals with the emergence of the second manuscxt, two years after Pope Leo X (a Medici) had promised great reward in gold to anyone who could provide him with unknown manuscxts 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 manuscxt. Hochart concludes that the manuscxt must have been supplied indirectly to Leo X by Jean-Fran?ois 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.

Hochart的論證分為兩個階段。首先，他追溯了波喬和尼科利發(fā)現(xiàn)的手稿的來源，用波喬的通信作為欺騙的證據(jù)。然后，Hochart處理了第二份手稿的出現(xiàn)，兩年前，教皇利奧十世(美第奇家族)曾承諾，任何人只要能向他提供古希臘或羅馬的未知手稿，就會得到豐厚的黃金獎勵。利奧給了這位不知名的提供者500個金克朗，這在當(dāng)時是一筆財富，并立即下令印刷這珍貴的手稿。Hochart的結(jié)論是，手稿一定是由讓-弗朗索瓦·布拉喬利尼間接提供給利奧十世的，讓-弗朗索瓦·布拉喬利尼是波喬私人圖書館和文件的唯一繼承人，他當(dāng)時恰好是利奧十世的秘書，為了避免懷疑，他使用了一個匿名的中間人。

Both manuscxts 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 medi manuscxts. David Schaps tells us that Germania was ignored throughout the Middle Ages but survived in a single manuscxt 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 manuscxts, 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).

兩份手稿現(xiàn)在都保存在佛羅倫薩，所以它們的年代可以科學(xué)地確定，不是嗎?這是值得懷疑的，但事實是，無論如何，它們的年代只是假設(shè)的。塔西佗的其他作品，比如《日耳曼尼亞》和《論農(nóng)業(yè)》，我們甚至沒有任何中世紀(jì)的手稿。大衛(wèi)·夏普斯告訴我們，《日耳曼尼亞》在整個中世紀(jì)都被忽視了，但1425年在赫斯菲爾德修道院發(fā)現(xiàn)的一份手稿保存了下來，被帶到意大利，由后來的教皇庇護(hù)二世和布拉奇奧利尼檢查，然后從人們的視線中消失了。
Poggio Bracciolini(1380-1459)被認(rèn)為“重新發(fā)現(xiàn)并恢復(fù)了大量古典拉丁語手稿，這些手稿大多已經(jīng)腐爛并被遺忘在德國、瑞士和法國的修道院圖書館中”(維基百科)。Hochart認(rèn)為塔西佗的書并不是他唯一的偽造作品。西塞羅、盧克萊修、維特魯威和昆提連等人的其他作品也受到懷疑。例如，盧克萊修唯一為人所知的作品《論自然》“在中世紀(jì)幾乎消失了，但1417年在德國的一座修道院被波喬·布拉喬利尼重新發(fā)現(xiàn)”(維基百科)。
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://www.top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處


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.”

昆提連唯一現(xiàn)存的著作也是如此，一本十二卷的修辭學(xué)教科書，名為《演講機構(gòu)》(Institutio Oratoria)，波喬在一封信中敘述了他的發(fā)現(xiàn):
“在一大堆書中，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)昆提連還安然無恙，只是滿是霉菌和灰塵。因為這些書并不是放在圖書室里(這與它們的價值相稱)，而是放在一座塔樓底部的一間陰暗骯臟的地牢里，即使是被判了死罪的人也不會被關(guān)在那里。”

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.”

如果Hochart是對的，那么波喬是不是一個例外，證實了人類對“重新發(fā)現(xiàn)”偉大經(jīng)典而感激的人文主義者的誠實原則呢?很難，我們將會見證的。即使是偉大的伊拉斯謨(1465-1536)也禁不住誘惑，偽造了一篇以圣塞普里安(De duplici martyrio ad Fortunatum)為名的論文，他假裝是在一個古老的圖書館里偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)的。
伊拉斯謨用這個策略來批評天主教對美德和苦難的混淆。在這種情況下，異端暴露了偽造者。但有多少贗品因為缺乏原創(chuàng)性而未被發(fā)現(xiàn)呢?賈爾斯·康斯特布爾(Giles Constable)在《中世紀(jì)的偽造與抄襲》中寫道:“造假者和剽竊者成功的秘訣在于，他們的騙局與他們那個時代的欲望和標(biāo)準(zhǔn)非常接近，以至于在創(chuàng)作時不會被發(fā)現(xiàn)，甚至不會被懷疑?！睋Q句話說:“偽造和抄襲……不是創(chuàng)造時尚，而是追隨時尚，可以毫無矛盾地加以考慮。

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)

我們在這里關(guān)注的是文學(xué)贗品，但還有其他種類。米開朗基羅在佛羅倫薩美第奇家族的雇傭下，通過偽造古董雕像開始了自己的職業(yè)生涯，其中包括一尊名為“沉睡的丘比特”(現(xiàn)已丟失)的雕像。他用酸土使雕像看起來古色古香。這幅畫通過經(jīng)銷商賣給了圣喬治的里奧樞機主教，他最終發(fā)現(xiàn)了騙局，要求退還他的錢，但沒有對這位藝術(shù)家提出任何指控。除了這幅公認(rèn)的贗品外，林恩·卡特森還提出了一個強有力的證據(jù)，即《拉奧孔和他的兒子們》的雕塑群，大約創(chuàng)作于公元前40年，據(jù)說是1506年在羅馬的一個葡萄園里發(fā)現(xiàn)的，并立即被教皇朱利葉斯二世收購，是米開朗基羅的另一尊贗品。


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).

當(dāng)我們認(rèn)真思考這個問題時，我們可以找到幾個理由來懷疑文藝復(fù)興之前的任何時候都可能有這樣的杰作，其中一個與人體解剖學(xué)的進(jìn)步有關(guān)。許多其他古董作品也提出了類似的問題。例如，馬可·奧勒留的青銅騎馬雕像(以前被認(rèn)為是君士坦丁的)與路易十四的雕像之間的比較，讓你想知道:
為什么在五世紀(jì)到十五世紀(jì)之間，沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)任何接近這一水平的成就？甚至，我們可以肯定馬可·奧勒留是一個歷史人物嗎?“描述馬庫斯生活和統(tǒng)治的主要資料來源是不完整的，而且經(jīng)常是不可靠的”(維基百科)，最重要的是《奧古斯塔歷史》是高度可疑的 (稍后)。


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 & Manuscxts 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.

文學(xué)贗品利潤豐厚的市場
“近代早期歐洲的文學(xué)偽造，1450-1800”，是2012年會議的主題，會議記錄于2018年由約翰霍普金斯大學(xué)出版社出版(該出版社還出版了440頁的目錄，《Bibliotheca Fictiva:與文學(xué)偽造有關(guān)的書籍和手稿合集，公元前400年至公元2000年》)。
書中提到的一個偽造者是維泰博的阿尼烏斯(annus of Viterbo, 1432-1502)，他制作了十一篇文獻(xiàn)的合集，被認(rèn)為是迦勒底人、埃及人、波斯人以及幾個古希臘人和羅馬人的作品，聲稱他的家鄉(xiāng)維泰博在伊特魯里亞時期是一個重要的文化中心。阿尼烏斯把他的作品歸功于那些真跡已不了了之的古代作者，他持續(xù)為自己的贗品撰寫大量評論。

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 manuscxt 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”).

這個案例說明了許多文學(xué)贗品中政治和商業(yè)動機的結(jié)合。撰寫歷史是一種政治行為，在15世紀(jì)，它在意大利城市之間的聲望競爭中發(fā)揮了至關(guān)重要的作用。塔西佗的羅馬史是在佛羅倫薩總理萊昂納多·布魯尼(1369-1444)寫了12卷的《佛羅倫薩人的歷史》(Historiae Florentini populi)(抄襲拜占庭編年史)三十年后由布拉喬利尼提出的。
政治價值轉(zhuǎn)化為經(jīng)濟(jì)價值，古代作品的市場價格達(dá)到了天文數(shù)字——據(jù)說，僅憑提圖斯·李維(Titus Livy)的一份手稿，布拉喬利尼就在佛羅倫薩為自己買了一棟別墅。在文藝復(fù)興時期，“獲得古典文物已經(jīng)成為一種新的時尚，一種展示權(quán)力和地位的新方式。城鎮(zhèn)和富有的統(tǒng)治者不再收集圣人的骨頭和身體部位，而是收集古代世界的碎片。就像文物交易一樣，需求遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了供應(yīng)”(來自圣地亞哥“惡作劇博物館”的網(wǎng)站)。

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.”

在古典研究的主流中，如果沒有被證明是偽造的，古代文獻(xiàn)就被認(rèn)為是真實的。西塞羅的《安慰論》現(xiàn)在被普遍認(rèn)為是卡洛勒斯·西格尼烏斯(1520-1584)的作品，西格尼烏斯是一位出生在摩德納的意大利人文主義者，只因我們有西格尼烏斯本人的一封信承認(rèn)這是偽造的。但是，如果沒有這樣的坦白，或者沒有一些明顯的時代錯誤，歷史學(xué)家和古典學(xué)者就會簡單地忽略欺詐的可能性。
例如，他們絕不會懷疑弗朗西斯科·佩特拉卡(又名彼特拉克(1304-1374))偽造了西塞羅信件的發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管他繼續(xù)以完美的西塞羅風(fēng)格出版自己的信件。杰里·布洛頓在《文藝復(fù)興時期的集市》中寫道:“西塞羅對彼特拉克和隨后的人文主義發(fā)展至關(guān)重要，因為他提供了一種新的思考方式，讓人們了解有文化的個人如何將生活的哲學(xué)和沉思方面與更積極和公共的方面結(jié)合起來?！边@是彼特拉克人文主義的藍(lán)圖?！?/b>
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The medi manuscxts 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 manuscxt 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 manuscxts used by Petrarch are available anymore.

彼特拉克發(fā)現(xiàn)的中世紀(jì)手稿已經(jīng)失傳很久了，那么除了彼特拉克的名聲，我們還有什么證據(jù)可以證明它們的真實性呢?想象一下，如果歷史學(xué)家認(rèn)真質(zhì)疑一些我們最珍視的古典寶藏的真實性。他們中有多少人能通過測試?如果Hochart是對的，塔西佗被從可靠來源的名單中剔除，那么整個羅馬帝國的歷史大廈將遭受重大的結(jié)構(gòu)性失敗，但如果古代史學(xué)的其他支柱在類似的審查下崩潰怎么辦?
那提圖斯·李維呢?他比塔西佗早一個世紀(jì)，寫了一部142卷的羅馬歷史巨著，從公元前753年羅馬的建立開始，一直到奧古斯都統(tǒng)治時期。自路易斯·德·博福特(Louis de Beaufort)的批判性分析(1738)以來，人們承認(rèn)，李維的前五個世紀(jì)虛構(gòu)的。但我們能相信剩下的嗎?也是彼特拉克，布羅頓告訴我們，他“開始拼湊像李維的《羅馬史》這樣的文本，整理不同的手稿碎片，糾正語言中的變體，模仿其風(fēng)格，寫一種語言上更流暢、修辭上更有說服力的拉丁語形式?！北颂乩耸褂眠^的手稿都沒有了。

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.[9] 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.

那么《奧古斯都史》(Historia Augusta)呢?這是一部羅馬編年史，愛德華·吉本在撰寫《羅馬帝國衰亡史》時完全信任它。它后來被揭露為一個騙子的作品，他通過從頭開始編造來源來掩蓋自己的欺詐行為。然而，由于一些模糊的原因，考慮到偽造者可能生活在五世紀(jì)，這應(yīng)該使他的偽造無論如何都是值得的。實際上，它的一些故事聽起來像是對文藝復(fù)興時期習(xí)俗的神秘諷刺，另一些故事則像是基督教對前基督世界的宗教的誹謗。
例如，在整個地中海盆地作為奧西里斯化身而受到崇拜的英雄安提努斯，有多大可能是《奧古斯都史》中所說的哈德良的同性戀情人(eromenos) ?這些問題的合理性被專業(yè)歷史學(xué)家完全忽略了。但是，對于任何對學(xué)術(shù)共識不感興趣的外行讀者來說，它們都是直截了當(dāng)?shù)摹?br /> 例如，只要閱讀維基百科頁面上蘇托尼烏斯的《十二凱撒傳》的摘要，就足以引起強烈的懷疑，不僅是欺詐，而且是嘲弄，因為我們顯然在這里處理的是充滿想象力的傳記，但沒有任何歷史價值。
（未完待續(xù)）