in elegance and plastic power, or yet in venality and emptiness, and we are justified in taking into account withal the fact of their being fellow-countrymen; yet the mere possibility of weaving such a garland of poets shows the importance of the Spanish element in the literature of the time. But the pearl of Spanish-Latin authorship is Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (35-95) from Calagurris on the Ebro. His father had already acted as a teacher of eloquence in Rome; he himself was brought to Rome by Galba, and occupied, especially under Domitian, a distinguished position as tutor of the emperor's nephews. His textbook of rhetoric and, in some degree, of the history of Roman literature, is one of the most excellent which we possess from Roman antiquity, pervaded by fine taste and sure judgment, simple in feeling as in presentation, instructive without weariness, pleasing without effort, contrasting sharply and designedly with the fashionable literature that was so rich in phrases and so empty of ideas. It was in no small degree due to him that the tendency became changed at any rate, if not improved. Subsequently, amidst the general emptiness the influence of the Spaniards comes no further into prominence. What is, historically, of special moment in their Latin authorship is the complete clinging of these provincials to the literary development of the mother-country. Cicero, indeed, scoffs at the clumsiness and the provincialisms of the Spanish votaries of poetry; and even Latro's Latin did not meet the approval of the equally genteel and correct Roman by birth, Messalla Corvinus. But after the Augustan age nothing similar is again heard of. The Gallic rhetors, the great African ecclesiastical authors have, as Latin writers, retained in some measure a foreign complexion; no one would recognise the Senecas and Martial by their manner and style as belonging to one or to another land; in hearty love to his own literature and in subtle understanding of it never has any Italian surpassed the teacher of languages from Calagurris. Footnotes. [24: There triumphed over Spain--apart from the doubtless political triumph of Lepidus--in 718 {36.} Cn. Domitius Calvinus (consul in 714 {40.}), in 720 {34.} C. Norbanus Flaccus (consul in 716 {38.}), between 720 {34.} and 725 {29.} L. Marcius Philippus (consul in 716 {38.}) and Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul in 716 {38.}), in 726 {28.} C. Calvisius Sabinus (consul in 715 {39.}), and in 728 {26.} Sex. Appuleius (consul in 725 {29.}). The historians mention only the victory achieved over the Cerretani (near Puycerda in the eastern Pyrenees) by Calvinus (Dio, xlviii. 42; comp. Velleius, ii. 78, and the coin of Sabinus with _Osca_, Eckhel, v. 203).]