protasis from its apodosis by a colon instead of a comma, I have uniformly retained; because, though it may at first strike the eye as strange, it is strictly correct. The same peculiarity will be found in my edition of the Aeneid.

Some few other deviations from the ordinary orthography of Latin books printed in our country will be readily detected, and doubtless have already become familiar through the constantly increasing use of German editions of the classics.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, June, 1865.

H. S. FRIEZE.

INTRODUCTION.

MOST of the representative writers of the so-called silver age were natives of Spain. Cordova gave birth to the two Senecas* and Lucan. Pomponius Mela was from Cingitera, Martial from Bilbilis, Columella from Cadiz, and Quintilian from Calagurris. That so many distinguished authors, each at that period first in his class, should make their appearance in a country but just now peopled with warlike barbarians, indicates a change in national character and pursuits, such as only Roman conquerors and Roman laws could have produced. Indeed, the Iberians, or Spaniards, though the most obstinate of all the foreign tribes ever encountered by the Roman armies, and the most difficult to subdue, were, after their subjugation, imbued more rapidly and more thoroughly than any other European nations with the manners and civilization of their new masters. The elder Seneca, even in the time of Horace, migrated from Cordova to Rome, and there took a high position as a teacher of rhetoric. And it was not without reason that the poet spoke of the Spaniard, even then, as the peritus Iber. † Nor is the tradition without significance which tells of a Spanish scholar of Cadiz making a pilgrimage to Rome on purpose to see the historian Livy. Such incidents shadow forth the fact that the literary cultivation of the Romans had already permeated the Spanish provinces; and there is good reason for the remark of Mr. Merivale, that "the great Iberian peninsula was more thoroughly Romanized than any other part of the dominions of the republic." §

*The elder Seneca, M. Annaeus, is properly assigned to the post-Augustan, or silver age, as his writings were published in the reign of Tiberius, though he also flourished as a teacher under Augustus.

In return for the boon of civilization Spain reared a noble succession of scholars and writers to infuse new vigor into the thought and the literary life of the mother country. As the conquered Italians* two centuries earlier had given to Roman literature its first impulses, and had impressed upon the Latinity of the golden age its characteristic types, so now the provincials of Spain became the teachers of the great metropolis, and imparted to the literature of the silver age all the principal features of thought and style which distinguished it from that of the preceding period.

Two of these Spanish authors, the two most widely known and most universally read, were Seneca, the younger, and Quintilian. And it is worthy of remark that with these two illustrious writers originated the two antagonistic schools or styles of Latinity which were struggling with each other for preeminence during the latter part of the first century of the empire. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris, now Calahorra, in the north-eastern or Tarraconese province of Spain, about A.D. 35. † It is said, though on doubtful authority, that the father of Quintilian was a successful orator and teacher of rhetoric. At an early age Quintilian accompanied his father to Rome and was placed under the instruction of Marcus Aper, a native of Gaul. Aper was one of the most eminent of the Roman orators then living, and was far advanced in life. After his death, which took place about A.D. 60, Quintilian returned to his native city, and commenced his professional life as a legal advocate and teacher of rhetoric. It was then that his reputation and singular merit attracted the notice of Galba, who was at that time governor of Spain, and who soon afterwards, on his accession to the imperial throne (A.D. 68), invited the young and brilliant orator to accompany him to Rome. Quintilian entered the city in the train of the new emperor, and henceforth made Rome the permanent seat of his professional labor. He at once gained applause both as an advocate and lecturer. His success and his fame were unexampled. Students flocked to Rome from Italy and from distant provinces to receive his instructions. The first year of Quintilian's residence in Rome was marked by a rapid series of political revolutions, terminating in the overthrow of

Nearly all the fathers of Roman literature, especially the early poets, were Italians rather than Romans.

+ Others give the date 40 or 42.

Vitellius, and the rise of Vespasian and the Flavian family. We now hear, for the first time in the history of Roman education, of government patronage extended on a general and systematic plan to teachers and men of letters. Vespasian, though himself illiterate, convinced of the importance of encouraging education throughout the vast dominions which had fallen under his sway, established annual salaries for the support of rhetoricians and grammarians in Italy and the provinces. Quintilian was the first to whom such a pension was assigned. He was afterwards appointed instructor to the members of the Flavian house, and, as the crowning act of the imperial favor, he was invested by Domitian with the dignity of the consulship.

Twenty years were thus devoted, under the happiest auspices, to the instruction of youth and to the duties of the advocate. At the expiration of this period, following out the precept which he has expressed in the Institutions, that the orator should withdraw from public life before he begins to be inferior to himself,* he retired from the bar and from the lecture-room, and gave himself thenceforth to the composition of his rhetorical works.

Though Quintilian had been so fortunate in his public career, he was not exempt from the trials and misfortunes of life. At the beginning of the sixth book of the Institutions he speaks of the loss of his wife, who had died young, and of the recent death of his two sons, both of whom had given high promise. We learn from this passage that the elder and last surviving of these sons died when the work was already nearly half completed, and, indeed, that it had been undertaken partly with reference to his education. But, like Cicero, he sought in literary labor a solace for affliction. Alluding to Cicero's example, he says: credendum doctissimis hominibus qui unicum adversorum solatium literas putaverunt. t

He lived to an advanced age, and is supposed to have died about the year 118 of our era, at the beginning of the reign of Hadrian.

Of the works of Quintilian the Institutio Oratoria, or Education of the Orator, is the only one which has been preserved. Two other works are ascribed to him, though on insufficient grounds. One of these is a collection of declamations, some of

* Inst. Orat. 12, 11, 1: decet hoc prospicere, nequid pejus quam fecerit, faciat. + Inst. Orat. 6, proem. 14.

which are elaborate, most of them, however, merely sketches or studies, and few of them bearing any resemblance to the writings of Quintilian. The other is the elegant treatise entitled Dialogus de Oratoribus, usually published with the works of Tacitus, and now generally conceded by critics to be from the pen of that author.*

The only work besides the Institutions known to have been published by Quintilian, is mentioned by our author himself in the following sentence at the end of the eighth book: Sed de hoc satis, quia eundem locum plenius in eo libro, quo caussas corruptae eloquentiae reddebamus, tractavimus. The words sive caussas corruptae eloquentiae have sometimes been appended to the title of the above-mentioned Dialogue de Oratoribus, on the supposition that this is the work referred to by Quintilian. But this theory is sufficiently disproved by the one argument, that the Dialogue does not treat of the locum or topic discussed by Quintilian in the last part of the eighth book. †

The Institutio Oratoria is an invaluable contribution both to polite literature and to liberal education. It is not in any sense a rival of the rhetorical works of Cicero. These, at least the best of them, were designed for the entertainment, perhaps for the more perfect finish, of such as had already attained a position as public speakers. But the book of Quintilian is a practical guide for the young man who is passing through the course of preliminary training for public life. It gathers up within comparatively narrow limits, and adapts to the purposes of instruction, the principles and doctrines widely diffused through the rhetorical writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dionysius, and Cicero. A didactic treatise, like this, must be characterized by simplicity of method, precision of statement, and fulness of detail. It must not presuppose in the reader, as do the finest works of Cicero, a high degree of culture in philosophy and letters already attained. In the Institutions, therefore, we shall not look for that originality, ‡ that breadth, that freedom of digression, and that noble negligence, which distinguish the de

* See the excellent introduction to Nipperdey's edition of Tacitus; where the difference between the style of the "Dialogue" and that of the other works of Tacitus is satisfactorily accounted for.

The various arguments are summed up in the note on this passage by Capperonarius.

+ Quintilian says of Cicero: Non enim pluvias, ut ait Pindarus, aquas colligit, sed vivo gurgite exundat.