A political poet again, Juan Cruz, of Argentina, gracefully proclaimed the glory of the Unitarian party and that of the reformer Rivadavia. The contemporary writers of the Revolution did not forget the instruction received in Spain, in the universities of the eighteenth century, where they studied in Latin and commented upon the classics of Greece and Rome. They read and imitated Horace and Virgil, and were inspired by the ancient democracies, and the heroes of Plutarch; the Isthmus of Panama was compared to that of Corinth. At their birth the Republics appointed consuls and triumvirs. In speeches and proclamations of the time we find numerous classical reminiscences; politicians and poets borrowed their images from Pindar, Horace, Homer, and Virgil. The influence of the classics and of Quintana is especially to be remarked in Olmedo, the poet of Ecuador, who chanted the victory of Junin and the genius of Bolivar. The movement of his verses is that of a Latin ode, while the eloquence, sonority, and graceful progression of his stanzas recalls the Spanish classics. The Venezuelan lyrist Bello, a true humanist, was inspired by Virgil, and attained a truly classic perfection. {252} But Quintana was not alone in serving as model to the lost colonies; others, the fiery Gallego, and Moratin, the author of delightful comedies; a critic, Alberto Lista; Melendez, Cienfugos, and Martinez de la Rosa, cultivators of a correct, elegant, and frigid form, were also imitated, and the imitators could not free themselves from their impoverished classicism. Olmedo (1780) and Bello (1781) were both masters of metre, taste, and harmony. It is not easy in their case to separate the politician from the artist, they themselves considering their art to be a high republican function; Olmedo counsels federation in his _Canto à Junin_, and José Eusebio Caro attacks the tyrant Lopez in a poem upon liberty, while Felipe Pardo writes political satires. Of the American democracies he says: "Zar de tres tintas, indio, bianco y negro, Que rige el continente americano Y que se llama Pueblo Soberano."[2]