Marcus Fabius Quintilianus of Calagurris, a small town on the Upper Ebro, is the last, and perhaps the most distinguished of that school of Spanish writers which bulks so largely in the history of the first century. He was educated at Rome, and afterwards returned to his native town as a teacher of rhetoric. There he made, or improved, the acquaintance of Servius Sulpicius Galba, proconsul of Tarraconensian Spain in the later years of Nero. When Galba was declared Emperor by the senate, he took Quintilian with him to Rome, where he was appointed a public teacher of rhetoric, with a salary from the privy purse. He retained his fame and his favour through the succeeding reigns. Domitian made him tutor to the two grand-nephews whom he destined for his own successors, and raised him to consular rank. For about twenty years he remained the most celebrated teacher in the capital, combining his professorship with a large amount of actual pleading in the law-courts. His published works belong to the later years of his life, when he had retired from the bar and from public teaching. His first important treatise, on the decay of oratory, _De Causis Corruptae Eloquentiae_, is not extant. It was followed, a few years later, in or about the year 93, by his great work, the _Institutio Oratoria_, which sums up the teaching and criticism of his life. The contents of this work, which at once became the final and standard treatise on the theory and practice of Latin oratory, are very elaborate and complete. In the first book, Quintilian discusses the preliminary training required before the pupil is ready to enter on the study of his art, beginning with a sketch of the elementary education of the child from the time he leaves the nursery, which is even now of remarkable interest. The second book deals with the general principles and scope of the art of oratory, and continues the discussion of the aims and methods of education in its later stages. The five books from the third to the seventh are occupied with an exhaustive treatment of the matter of oratory, under the heads of what were known to the Roman schools by the names of _invention_ and _disposition_. The greater part of these books is, of course, highly technical. The next four books, from the eighth to the eleventh, treat of the manner of oratory, or all that is included in the word _style_ in its widest signification. It is in this part of the treatise that Quintilian, in relation to the course of general reading both in Greek and Latin that should be pursued by the young orator, gives the masterly sketch of Latin literature which is the most famous portion of the whole work. The twelfth book, which concludes the work, reverts to education in the highest and most extended sense, that of the moral qualifications of the great orator, and the exhaustive discipline of the whole nature throughout life which must be continued unfalteringly to the end.