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The undoubted spuriousness of that work is now universally admitted, and indeed the forgery is too clumsy to be even worth reading. But it is worth while inquiring whether in the circumstances of the time there is even a bare possibility that Seneca should ever have been among the readers or the auditors of Paul. And the answer is, There is absolutely no such probability.
I have heard a clever critic and antiquarian declare that he is not very fond of Philae; that he feels a certain "spuriousness" in the temple due to the mingling of Greek with Egyptian influences. He may be right. I am no antiquarian, and, as a mere lover of beauty, I do not feel this "spuriousness." I can see neither two quarrelling strengths nor any weakness caused by division.
Evanson excepts the Gospel of Luke only from the charge of spuriousness: though he says that it is grossly corrupted, and interpolated. From these corruptions and interpolations, he endeavours to purify it; in which attempt wo think he has had very indifferent success.
II. Julius Caesar and the Pomoerium. III. Julia, the wife of Tiberius. IV. The statement about her proved false by a coin. V. Value of coins in detecting historical errors. VI. Another coin shows an error about Cornutus. VII. Suspicion of spuriousness from mention of the Quinquennale Ludicrum. VIII. Account of cities destroyed by earthquake contradicted by a monument.
III. XIV. Political Neutrality This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author, properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a similar uncertainty as to his literary property.
Very different is the character of the historical literature which starts into being in Florence at the opening of the fourteenth century. See Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, Florentiner Studien, Leipzig, 1874, Carl Hegel, in his defense of Compagni, Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung, Leipzig, 1875, admits the proof of spuriousness. See the preface, p. v.
But the House of Stuart was not always to represent the side of victory. Thirty years after the Rout of Sedgemoor, the son of James, whose name was clouded by rumor with the same stain of spuriousness as that of his unfortunate cousin, was proclaimed by the Earl of Mar. The Jacobites were forced to drink to the dregs the cup of bitterness they had so gladly administered to others.
The evidence of free-hand forgery and tracing is chiefly in the greater liability of the forger to inject into the writing his own unconscious habit and to fail to reproduce with sufficient accuracy that of the original writing, so that when subjected to rigid analysis and microscopic inspection, the spuriousness is made manifest and demonstrable.
But it is unfortunately undeniable that the bulk of this department of Greek literature is spurious to begin with, and uninteresting, even if spuriousness be permitted to pass. It is a rule, general and almost universal, that every branch of Latin literature is founded on, and more or less directly imitative of Greek.
If by independent methods, such as an examination of manuscripts, the spuriousness of the chapter could now be shown, this would verify the faculty of criticism which has already objected to its contents: thus it would justly urge us to apply similar criticism to other passages. I farther remembered, and now brought together under a single point of view, other undeniable mistakes.
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