Note 151 — BOOK VI.

This Tomás Gracián Dantisco was the grandson of Diego García, camarero mayor at the court of the Catholic Kings, and son of Diego Gracián de Alderete, Secretary of State and official Interpreter during the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II. The latter studied at the University of Louvain where his name was wrongly Latinized as Gratianus (instead of Gracianus), and, on his return to Spain, he adopted the form Gracián. He married a daughter of Johannes de Curiis, called (from his birthplace) Dantiscus, successively Bishop of Culm (June, 1530) and of West Ermeland (January, 1538), and Polish ambassador at the court of Charles V.: see Leo Czaplicki, De vita et carminibus Joannis de Curiis Dantisci (Vratislaviae, 1855). Some of Diego Gracián de Alderete's letters are included by Sr. D. Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín in his very interesting collection entitled Clarorum Hispaniensium epistolae ineditae (Paris, 1901), printed in the Revue Hispanique (Paris, 1901), vol. viii., pp. 181-308.

Tomás Gracián Dantisco succeeded his father as official Interpreter, and published an Arte de escribir cartas familiares (1589). His brother, Lucás Gracián Dantisco, signed the Aprobación to the Galatea: see the Introduction to the present version, p. x, n. 4. Another brother, Antonio Gracián Dantisco, secretary to the King, was a good Greek scholar. He translated a treatise by Hero of Alexandria under the title De los Pneumaticos, ó machuinas que se hazen por atraccion de vacio. The manuscript has apparently disappeared; but it existed as late as the time of Nicolás Antonio (Bibliotheca Hispana, Romae, 1672, vol. i., p. 98). See also Charles Graux' Essai sur les origines du fonds grec de l'Escurial (Paris, 1880), which forms the 46th fascicule of the Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Etudes, and an interesting note by M. Alfred Morel-Fatio in the Bulletin hispanique (Bordeaux, 1902), vol. iv., p. 282.