Gavriil Semenovich Dankov

Apparently, he belonged to the clergy by birth. He studied at the Alexander Nevsky Theological Seminary. In 1782 metropolitan Gavriil Petrov recommended him for a position as a priest at the Russian embassy in Berlin. After his return to St.-Petersburg (1803) he unsuccessfully tried to settle down there, then he found a job as a teacher of German in Kazan Gymnasium. In 1805 he moved with his family to Kazan and was actively involved in the foundation of the university. He translated textbooks on literature from Latin. The first of them was published even before the translator went abroad, in 1781 – “Gimnazicheskii ili seminarskii, to est shkolnyi nastavnik uchashchegosia iunoshestva” ("Gymnasic or Seminary <...> Guide for Young Learners") by Heinrich Mills, which describes in detail the emergence and the purpose of poetry. The second translation was made in Berlin – “Sozertsanie prevoskhodneishikh pisatelei latinskogo iazyka” ("Contemplation of the most excellent writers of Latin") (1783) by Oluf Borch.