He is best known for his
Antiquitatum Variarum, originally titled the
Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium (
Commentaries on the Works of Various Authors Discussing Antiquity) and often known as
the Antiquities of Annius. In this work, he published alleged writings and fragments of several pre-Christian Greek and Latin secular authors, destined to throw an entirely new light on ancient history. He claimed to have discovered them at
Mantua. Among his numerous other writings were
De futuris Christianorum triumphis in Turcos et Saracenos (
Future Triumphs of the Christians over the Turks and the Saracens), a commentary on the Apocalypse, dedicated to Sixtus IV, to Christian kings, princes, and governments, and
Tractatus de imperio Turcorum (
The Empire of the Turks). The author identifies
Mohammad as the
Antichrist, and predicts that the end of the world will take place when the Christians will have overcome the Jews and the Muslims, an event which did not appear to him to be far distant. One influential suggestion he made — in his commentary on the
Breviarium de Temporibus of
Pseudo-Philo — was that the genealogy of Jesus in the
Gospel of Luke traced the lineage through the father of
Mary. In the
Breviarium de Temporibus, the Christ's grandfather Eli according to Luke was identified with Eliachim, an alleged variant of St
Joachim, the Virgin Mary's father according to the apocryphal
Protoevangelium of James. According to Annius, the Marian direct descendance from king David testified Christ's inheritance of the throne of Israel in the lineage of His holy mother. The more important of his unpublished works are: •
Volumen libris septuaginta distinctum de antiquitatibus et gestis Etruscorum; •
De correctione typographica chronicorum; •
De dignitate officii Magistri Sacri Palatii (
On the Esteem of the Office of the Master of the Sacred Palace); •
Chronologia Nova, in which he undertakes to correct the
anachronisms in the writings of
Eusebius of Caesarea; •
De marmoreis volturrhenis tabulis: the modern editor's preface affirmed it was "the first epigraphic study in western scholarship". He was notorious for his text depicting the history and
topography of ancient Rome from the "most ancient" authors. His
Auctores vetustissimi printed at Rome, 1498, was an
anthology of seventeen purportedly classical texts, all of which he had written himself, with which he embarks in the gigantic attempt to write a universal history of the post-diluvian West civilization, where the Etruscan people and the town of Viterbo/Etruria, custodian of the original knowledge of divine nature, takes on the leading role in the march of Man towards the future. Annius's map of Rome as founded by
Romulus is a loose interpretation of one of his own
forgeries. It prominently features
Vicus Tuscus, the home of the
Etruscans, whom Annius and his fellow Viterbans claimed as their ancestors. Part of the forgeries were motivated by a desire to prove that Viterbo was the site of the Etruscan
Fanum Voltumnae. In a defense of the
papal lending institution, the
Monte di Pietà, published c. 1495 under the title
Pro Monte Pietatis, Annius contributed the essay
Questiones due disputate super mutuo iudaico & ciuili & diuino, arguing against the
usury of the Jews. Looking for a patronage, Annius published its first treatise in February 1491 and dedicated it to Ranuccio Farnese. Analyzing the works of
Diodorus Siculus, Annius supposed
Isis and
Osiris established new colonies in the
Mediterranean Sea, the latter founding Viterbo, so as to derive a divine and Egyptian ancestry for the family of the ongoing Pope Alexander III, brother of Ranuccio. ==Detection of his forgeries==