As the abolition of gold cannot directly cause the restoration of a ruined city, the word γάρ must be taken as referring back to 1. 348: ‘Enemies will make peace; for gold, the cause of quarrels, will be abolished.’ But the awkwardness of the connexion suggests a suspicion that the passage has been in some way altered or rearranged.

The sense appears to be somewhat as follows: ‘An ill-fated army of “Siceli” shall come, bringing terror with it; but God shall give them evil and not good. Again and again stranger shall plunder stranger.’.

Certain proximities between two distinguished but very dissimilar contemporaries, Quintilian and Tacitus, may be stated. Contemporary they were, though the former, born probably a little before A.D. 40, was older by about twenty years. Both were from outside Rome, Quintilian certainly of provincial, Spanish, origin, Tacitus very probably from one of the Galliae, yet both exemplars of Romanitas.