Tacitus and Bracciolini. The Annals Forged in the XVth Century

The author contends that the Annals attributed to Tacitus are in fact a fifteenth-century fabrication by Poggio Bracciolini, and supports this by combining textual and stylistic analysis with manuscript history. The study compares the Annals with other works ascribed to the same author to highlight linguistic oddities, factual contradictions, and anachronistic details; it examines the record of recent manuscript discovery, alleged errors in Latin, and parallels with fifteenth-century concerns; and it reconstructs a history of the supposed forgery, offering correspondence, provenance, and claimed payments while tracing Bracciolini's career and possible motives.