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​ THE CORRESPONDENCE OF M. CORNELIUS FRONTO

​ THE CORRESPONDENCE OF M. CORNELIUS FRONTO

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 139 A.D. Fronto to my Lord.[1] 1. In all arts, I take it, total inexperience and ignorance are preferable to a semi-experience and a half-knowledge. For he who is conscious that he knows nothing of an art aims at less, and consequently comes less to grief: in fact, diffidence excludes presumption. But when anyone parades a superficial knowledge as mastery of a subject, through false confidence he makes manifold slips. They say, too, that it is better to have kept wholly clear of the teachings of philosophy than to have tasted them superficially and, as the saying goes, with the tips of the lips; and that those turn out the most knavish who, going about the precincts of an art, turn aside or ever they have entered its portals. Yet in other arts it is possible, sometimes, to escape exposure, and for a man to be deemed, for a period, proficient in that wherein he is an ignoramus. But in the choice and arrangement of words he is detected instantly, nor can anyone make a pretence[2] with ​words for long without himself betraying that he is ignorant of them, that his judgment of them is incorrect, his estimate of them haphazard, his handling of them unskilful, and that he can distinguish neither their propriety nor their force. 2. Wherefore few indeed of our old writers have surrendered themselves to that toil, pursuit, and hazard of seeking out words with especial diligence. M. Porcius alone of the orators of all time, and his constant imitator C. Sallustius, are among these; of poets Plautus especially, and most especially Q. Ennius and his zealous rival L. Coelius, not to omit Naevius and Lucretius, Accius, too, and Caecilius, also Laberius. Besides these, certain other writers are noticeable for choiceness in special spheres, as Novius, Pomponius, and their like, in rustic and jocular and comic words, Atta in women's talk, Sisenna in erotics, Lucilius in the technical language of each art and business. 3. At this point, perhaps, you will have long been asking in what category I should place M. Tullius, who is hight the head and source of Roman eloquence. I consider him on all occasions to have used the most beautiful words, and to have been magnificent above all other orators in embellishing the subject which he wished to set out. But he seems to me to have been far from disposed to search out words with especial care, whether from greatness of mind, or to escape toil, or from the assurance that what others can scarcely find with careful search would be his at call without the need of searching. And so, from a most attentive perusal of all his writings, I think I have ascertained that he has with the utmost copiousness and opulence handled all ​other kinds of words—words literal and figurative, simple and compound and, what are conspicuous everywhere in his writings, noble words, and often-times also exquisite ones: and yet in all his speeches you will find very few words indeed that are unexpected and unlooked for, such as are not to be hunted out save with study and care and watchfulness and the treasuring up of old poems in the memory. By an unexpected and unlooked-for word I mean one which is brought out when the hearer or reader is not expecting it or thinking of it, yet so that if you withdrew it and asked the reader himself to think of a substitute, he would be able to find either no other at all or one not so fitted to express the intended meaning. Wherefore I commend you greatly for the care and diligence you shew in digging deep for your word and fitting it to your meaning. But, as I said at first, there lies a great danger in the enterprize lest the word be applied unsuitably or with a want of clearness or a lack of refinement, as by a man of half-knowledge, for it is much better to use common and everyday words than unusual and far-fetched ones, if there is little difference in real meaning. 4. I hardly know whether it is advisable to shew how great is the difficulty, what scrupulous and anxious care must be taken, in weighing words, for fear the knowledge should check the ardour of the young and weaken their hopes of success. The transposition or subtraction or alteration of a single letter in many cases changes the force and beauty of a word and testifies to the taste or knowledge of the speaker. I may say I have noticed, when you were reading over to me what you had written ​and I altered a syllable in a word, that you paid no attention to it and thought it of no great consequence. I should be loth, therefore, for you not to know the immense difference made by one syllable. I should say Os colluere,[3] but in balneis pavimentum pelluere,[4] not colluere; I should, however, say lacrimis genas lavere,[5] not pelluere or colluere; but vestimenta lavare,[6] not lavere; again, sudorem et pulverem abluere,[7] not lavare; but it is more elegant to say maculam eluere than abluere; if, however, the stain had soaked in and could not be taken out without some damage, I should use the Plautine word elavere.[8] Then there are besides mulsum diluere,[9] fauces proluere,[10] unguium iumento subluere.[11] 5. So many are the examples of one and the same word, with the change of a syllable or letter, being used in various ways and meanings; just as, by Hercules, I should speak with a nicer accuracy of a face painted with rouge, a body splashed with mud, a cup smeared with honey, a sword-point dipped in poison, a stake daubed with bird-lime. 6. Someone maybe will ask, Who, pray, is to prevent me saying vestimenta lavere rather than lavare, sudorem lavare rather than abluere? As for you, indeed, no one will have any right to interfere with or prescribe for you in that matter, as you are a free man born of free parents, and have more than a knight's income,[† 1] and are asked your opinion in the Senate; we, however, who have dedicated ourselves in dutiful service to the ears of the cultured must ​needs with the utmost care study these nice distinctions and minutiae. Some absolutely work at their words with crowbar and maul as if they were flints; others, however, grave them with burin and mallet as though they were little gems. For you it will be better, for greater deftness in searching out words, to take it to heart when corrected, than to demur or flag when detected in a fault. For if you give up searching you will never find; if you go on searching you will find. 7. Finally, you seemed even to have thought it a work of supererogation when I changed your order of a word, so that the epithet three-headed should come before the name Geryon. Bear this, too, in mind: it frequently happens that words in a speech, by a change in their order, become essential or superfluous. I should be right in speaking of a ship with three decks, but ship would be a superfluous addition to three-decker. For there is no danger[12] of anyone thinking that by three-decker was meant a litter, a landau, or a lute. Then, again, when you were pointing out why the Parthians wore loose wide sleeves, you wrote, I think, to this effect, that the heat was suspended[13] by the openings in the robe. Can you tell me, pray, how the heat is suspended? Not that I find fault with you for pushing out somewhat boldly[14] in the metaphorical use of a word, for I agree with Ennius his opinion that "an orator should be bold." By all means let him be bold, as Ennius lays down, but let him in no case deviate from the meaning which he would express. So I greatly approved and applauded your intention when you ​set about seeking for a word; what I found fault with was the want of care shewn in selecting a word which made nonsense. For by openings in sleeves, which we occasionally see to be loose and flowing, heat cannot be suspended: heat can be dispelled through the openings of a robe, it can be thrown off, it can radiate away, it can be given a passage, it can be diverted, it can be ventilated out—it can be almost anything, in fact, rather than be suspended, a word which means that a thing is held up from above, not drawn away through wide passages. 8. After that I advised you as to the preparatory studies necessary for the writing of history,[15] since that was your desire. As that subject would require a somewhat lengthy discussion, I make an end, that I overstep not the bounds of a letter. If you wish to be written to on that subject too, you must remind me again and again.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 139 A.D. To my Lord. Gratia[16] came home last night. But to me it has been as good as having Gratia, that you have turned your "maxims" so brilliantly; the one which I received to-day almost faultlessly, so that it could be put in a book of Sallust's without jarring or shewing any inferiority. I am happy, merry, hale, in a word become young again, when you make such progress. It is no light thing that I shall require; but ​what I remember to have been of service to myself, I cannot but require of you also. You must turn the same maxim twice or thrice, just as you have done with that little one. And so turn longer ones two or three times diligently, boldly. Whatever you venture on, such are your abilities, you will accomplish: but, indeed, with toil have you coveted a task that is truly toilsome, but fair and honourable and attained by few . . . .[† 2] you have got (it) perfectly out. This exercise will be the greatest help to you in speech making; undoubtedly, too, the excerpting of some sentences from the Jugurtha or the Catiline. If the Gods are kind, on your return from Rome I will exact again from you your daily quota of verses. Greet my Lady, your mother.[17]

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 139 A.D. To my master. I have received two letters[18] from you at once. In one of these you scolded me and pointed out that I had written a sentence carelessly; in the other, however, you strove to encourage my efforts with praise. Yet I protest to you by my health, by my mother's and yours, that it was the former letter which gave me the greater pleasure, and that, as I read it, I cried out again and again O happy that I am! Are you then so happy, someone will say, for having a teacher to shew you how to write a maxim more ​deftly, more clearly, more tersely, more elegantly? No, that is not my reason for calling myself happy. What, then, is it? It is that I learn from you to speak the truth.[19] That matter—of speaking the truth—is precisely what is so hard for Gods and men: in fact, there is no oracle so truth-telling as not to contain within itself something ambiguous or crooked or intricate, whereby the unwary may be caught and, interpreting the answer in the light of their own wishes, realize its fallaciousness only when the time is past and the business done. But the thing is profitable, and clearly it is the custom to excuse such things merely as pious fraud and delusion. On the other hand, your fault-findings or your guiding reins, whichever they be, shew me the way at once without guile and feigned words. And so I ought to be grateful to you for this, that you teach me before all to speak the truth at the same time and to hear the truth. A double return, then, would be due, and this you will strive to put it beyond my power to pay. If you will have no return made, how can I requite you like with like, if not by obedience? Disloyal, however, to myself, I preferred that you, moved by excess of care . . . . since I had those days free, I had the chance . . . . of doing some good work and making many extracts . . . . Farewell, my good master, my best of masters. I rejoice, best of orators, that you have so become my friend. My Lady[20] greets you. ​ Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 139 A.D. Hail my best of masters. If any sleep comes back to you after the wakeful nights of which you complain, I beseech you write to me and, above all, I beseech you take care of your health. Then hide somewhere and bury that "axe of Tenedos,"[21] which you hold over us, and do not, whatever you do, give up your intention of pleading cases, or along with yours let all lips be dumb. You say that you have composed something in Greek[22] which pleases you more than almost anything you have written. Are you not he who gave me such a castigation for writing in Greek? However, I must now, more than ever, write in Greek. Do you ask why? I wish to make trial whether what I have not learnt may not more readily come to my aid, since what I have learnt leaves me in the lurch. But, an you really loved me, you would have sent me that new piece you are so pleased with. However, I read you here in spite of yourself and, indeed, that alone is my life and stay. It is a sanguinary theme you have sent me. I have not yet read the extract from Coelius which you sent, nor shall I read it until I, on my part, have hunted up my wits. But my Caesar-speech[23] grips me with its hooked talons. Now, if never before, I find what a task it is to round and shape[24] three or five lines and to take time over writing. Farewell, breath of my life. Should I not burn with ​love of you, who have written to me as you have! What shall I do? I cannot cease. Last year it befell me in this very place,[25] and at this very time, to be consumed with a passionate longing for my mother. This year you inflame that my longing. My Lady[26] greets you.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 139 A.D. A Discourse on Love[27] 1. This is the third letter, beloved Boy, that I am sending you on the same theme, the first by the hand of Lysias, the son of Kephalus, the second of Plato, the philosopher,[28] and the third, indeed, by the hand of this foreigner, in speech little short of a barbarian, but as regards judgment, as I think, not wholly wanting in sagacity. And I write now without trenching at all upon those previous writings, and so do not you disregard the discourse as saying what has been already said. But if the present treatise seem to you to be longer than those which were previously sent through Lysias and Plato, let this be a proof to you that I can claim in fair words to be at no loss for words. But you must consider now whether my words are no less true than new. 2. No doubt, O Boy, you will wish to know at the very beginning of my discourse how it is that I, who am not in love, long with such eagerness for the ​very same things as lovers. I will tell you, therefore, first of all how this is. He who is ever so much a lover is, by Zeus, gifted with no keener sight than I who am no lover, but I can discern your beauty as well as anyone else, aye, far more accurately, I might say, even than your lover. But, just as we see in the case of fever patients, and those who have taken right good exercise in the gymnasium, the same result proceeds from different causes. They are both thirsty, the one from his malady, the other from his exercise. It has been my lot also to suffer some such malady from love . . . . . . . .[† 3] 3. But me you shall not come near to your ruin, nor associate with me to any detriment, but to your every advantage. For it is rather by non-lovers that beautiful youths are benefited and preserved, just as plants are by waters. For neither fountains nor rivers are in love with plants, but by going near them and flowing past them they make them bloom and thrive. Money given by me you would be right in calling a gift, but given by a lover a quittance. And the children of prophets say that to gods also is the thank-offering among sacrifices more acceptable than the sin-offering, for the one is offered by the prosperous for the preservation and possession of their goods, the other by the wretched for the averting of ills. Let this suffice to be said on what is expedient and beneficial both to you and to him. 4. But if it is right that he should receive aid from you . . . . you set this on a firm basis . . . . you framed this love for him and devised Thessalian love-charms . . . . . . . . . . . . owing to his insatiable desire . . . . unless you have manifestly done wrong.[† 4] ​5. And do not ignore the fact that you are yourself wronged and subjected to no small outrage in this, that all men know and speak openly thus of you, that he is your lover; and so, by anticipation and before being guilty of any such things,[29] you abide the imputation of being guilty. Consequently the generality of the citizens call you the man's darling; but I shall keep your name unsullied and inviolate. For as far as I am concerned you shall be called Beautiful,[30] not Darling. But if the other use this name as his by right because his desire is greater, let him know that his desire is not greater, but more importunate. Yet with flies and gnats the especial reason why we wave them away and brush them off is because they fly at us most impudently and importunately. It is this, indeed, that makes the wild beast shun the hunter most of all, and the bird the fowler. And, in fact, all animals avoid most those that especially lie in wait for and pursue them. 6. But if anyone thinks that beauty is more glorified and honoured by reason of its lovers, he is totally mistaken. For you, the beautiful ones, through your lovers, run the risk of your beauty winning no credence with hearers, but through us non-lovers you establish your reputation for beauty on a sure basis. At any rate, if anyone who had never seen you were to enquire after your personal appearance, he would put faith in my praises, knowing that I am not in love; but he would disbelieve the other as praising not truthfully but lovingly. As many, then, as are maimed or ugly or deformed would naturally pray for lovers to be theirs, for they would find no others ​to court them but those who approach them under the madness and duress of love; but you, such is your beauty, cannot reap any greater advantage from a lover. For non-lovers have need of you no less than they. And indeed, to those who are really beautiful, lovers are as useless as flatterers to those who deserve praise. It is sailors and steersmen and captains of warships and merchants, and those that in other ways travel upon it, who give excellence and glory and honour and gain and ornament to the sea—not, heaven help us, dolphins that can live only in the sea: but for beautiful boys it is we who cherish and praise them disinterestedly, not lovers, whose life, deprived of their darlings, would be unlivable. And you will find, if you look into it, that lovers are the cause of the utmost disgrace. But all who are right-minded must shun disgrace, the young most of all, since the evil attaching to them at the beginning of a long life will rest upon them the longer. 7. As, then, in the case of sacred rites and sacrifices, so also of life, it behoves above all those who are entering upon them to have a care for their good name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[† 5] For indeed by such adornments lovers do them no honour, but are themselves guilty of affectation and display, and, as it were, vulgarize the mysteries[31] of love. Your lover, too, as they say, composes some amatory writings about you in the hope of enticing you with this bait, if with no other, and attracting you to himself and ​catching you; but such things are a disgrace and an insult and a sort of licentious cry, the outcome of stinging lust, such as those of wild beasts and fed cattle, that from sexual desire bellow or neigh or low or howl. Like to these are the lyrics of lovers. If, therefore, you submit yourself to your lover to enjoy where and when he pleases, awaiting neither time that is fitting nor leisure nor privacy, then, like a beast in the frenzy of desire, will he make straight for you and be eager to go to it nothing ashamed. 8. I will add but one thing before I conclude my discourse, that we are formed by nature to praise and admire, but not to love, all the gifts of the gods and their works that have come for the use and delight and benefit of men—those indeed of them which are wholly and in every way divine, I mean the earth and sky and sun and sea—while in the case of some other beautiful things of less worth, and formed to fulfil a less comely part, these at once are the subject of envy and love and emulation and desire. And some are in love with wealth, others again with rich viands, and others with wine. In the number and category of such is beauty reckoned by lovers, like wealth and viands and strong drink; but by us, who admire, indeed, but love not, like sun and sky and earth and sea, for such things are too good for any love and beyond its reach. 9. One thing more will I tell you, and if you will pass it on to all other boys, your words will seem convincing. Very likely you have heard from your mother, or from those who brought you up, that among flowers there is one that is indeed in love with the sun and undergoes the fate of lovers, lifting ​itself up when the sun rises, following his motions as he runs his course, and when he sets, turning itself about; but it takes no advantage thereby, nor yet, for all its love for the sun, does it find him the kinder. Least esteemed, at any rate, of plants and flowers, it is utilized neither for festal banquets nor for garlands of gods or men. Maybe, O Boy, you would like to see this flower.[32] Well, I will shew it you if we go for a walk outside the city walls as far as the Ilissus . . . .

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 139 A.D. Hail my best of masters. 1. Go on, threaten as much as you please and attack me with hosts of arguments, yet shall you never drive your lover, I mean me, away; nor shall I the less assert that I love Fronto, or love him the less, because you prove with reasons so various and so vehement that those who are less in love must be more helped and indulged. So passionately, by Hercules, am I in love with you, nor am I frightened off by the law you lay down, and even if you shew yourself more forward and facile to others, who are non-lovers, yet will I love you while I have life and health. For the rest, having regard to the close packing of ideas, the inventive subtilties, and the felicity of your championship of your cause, I hardly like, indeed, to say that you have far outstripped those Atticists, so self-satisfied and challenging, and yet I ​cannot but say so. For I am in love and this, if nothing else, ought, I think, verily to be allowed to lovers, that they should have greater joy in the triumph of their loved ones. Ours, then, is the triumph, ours, I say. Is it . . . .[† 6] preferable to talk philosophy under ceilings rather than under plane-trees, within the city bounds than without its walls, scorning delights than with Lais herself sitting at our side or sharing our home? Nor can I "make a cast" which to beware of more, the law which an orator[33] of our time has laid down about this Lais, or my master's dictum about Plato. 2. This I can without rashness affirm: if that Phaedrus of yours ever really existed, if he was ever away from Socrates, Socrates never felt for Phaedrus a more passionate longing than I for the sight of you all these days: days do I say? months I mean . . . .[† 7] unless he is straightway seized with love of you. Farewell, my greatest treasure beneath the sky, my glory. It is enough to have had such a master. My Lady mother sends you greeting.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto Probably from Naples 139 A.D. To my master. When you rest and when you do what is good for your health, then am I, too, the better for it. Humour yourself and be lazy. My verdict, then, is: you have acted rightly in taking pains to cure your ​arm.[34] I, too, have done something to-day since one o'clock on my couch, for I have been successful with nearly all the ten similes; in the ninth I call you in as my ally and adjutant, for it did not respond so readily to my efforts in dealing with it. It is the one of the inland lake in the island Aenaria;[35] in that lake there is another island, it, too, inhabited. From this we draw a certain simile. Farewell, sweetest of souls. My Lady[36] greets you.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 139 A.D. To my Lord. 1. As to the simile, which you say you are puzzling over and for which you call me in as your ally and adjutant in finding the clue, you will not take it amiss, will you, if I look for the clue to that fancy within your breast and your father's[37] breast? Just as the island lies in the Ionian or Tyrrhenian sea, or, maybe, rather in the Adriatic, or, if it be some other sea, give it its right name—as then that sea-girt island (Aenaria) itself receives and repels the ocean waves, and itself bears the whole brunt of attack from fleets, pirates, sea-monsters and storms, yet in a lake within protects another island safely from all dangers and difficulties, while that other nevertheless shares in all its delights and pleasures (for that island in the inland lake is, like the other, washed by the waters, like it catches the health-giving breezes, like it is inhabited, like it ​looks out on the sea), so your father bears on his own shoulders the troubles and difficulties of the Roman empire while you he safeguards safely in his own tranquil breast, the partner in his rank and glory and in all that is his. Accordingly you can use this simile in a variety of ways, when you return thanks to your father,[38] on which occasion you should be most full and copious. For there is nothing that you can say in all your life with more honour or more truth or more liking than that which concerns the setting forth of your father's praises.[39] Whatever simile I may subsequently suggest will not please you so much as this one which concerns your father. I know this as well as you feel it. Consequently I will not myself give you any other simile, but will shew you the method of finding them out for yourself. You must send me any similes you search out and find by the method shewn you for that purpose, that if they prove neat and skilful I may rejoice and love you. 2. Now, in the first place, you are aware that a simile is used for the purpose of setting off a thing or discrediting it, or comparing, or depreciating, or amplifying it, or of making credible what is scarcely credible. Where nothing of the kind is required, there will be no room for a simile. Hereafter when you compose a simile for a subject in hand, just as, if you were a painter, you would notice the characteristics of the object you were painting, so must ) T ou do in writing. Now, the characteristics of a thing you will pick out from many points of view, ​the likenesses of kind, the likenesses of form, the whole, the parts, the individual traits, the differences, the contraries, the consequences and the resultants, the names, the accidents, the elements, and generally everything from which arguments are drawn, the point in fact so often dwelt upon when we were dealing with the commonplaces of the arguments of Theodorus.[40] If any of them have slipped your memory, it will not be amiss for us to go over them afresh when time serves. In this simile, which I have sketched out about your father and you, I have taken one of the accidentals of the subject, the identity of the safety and the enjoyment. Now it remains for you, by those ways and paths which I have pointed out above, to discover how you may most conveniently come at your Aenaria. 3. The pain in my elbow is not much better. Farewell, my Lord, with your rare abilities. Give my greeting to my Lady your mother. On another occasion we will follow out,[41] with more care and exactness, the whole art of simile-making; now I have only touched upon the heads of it.

Eulogy of Smoke and Dust ? 139 A.D. Fronto to his own Caesar. 1. The majority of readers may perhaps from the heading despise the subject, on the ground that nothing serious could be made of smoke and dust. You, with your excellent abilities, will soon see whether my labour is lost or well laid out. ​2. But the subject seems to require a little to be said first on the method of composition, for no writing of this kind of sufficient note exists in the Roman tongue,[42] except some attempts by poets in comedies or Atellane farces. Anyone who practises this kind of composition will choose out an abundance of thoughts and pack them closely and cleverly interweave them, but will not stuff in superfluously many duplicate words, nor forget to round off every sentence concisely and skilfully. It is different with forensic speeches, where we take especial care that many sentences shall end now and again somewhat roughly and clumsily. But here, on the contrary, pains must be taken that there should be nothing left uncouth and disconnected, but that everything, as in a fine robe, should be woven with borders and trimmed with edgings. Finally, as the last lines in an epigram ought to have some sparkle, so the sentence should be closed with some sort of fastening or brooch. 3. But the chief thing to be aimed at is to please. For this kind of discourse is not meant as a speech for the defence in a criminal trial, nor to carry a law, nor to hearten an army, nor to impassion the multitude, but for pleasantry and amusement. The topic, however, must everywhere be treated as if it were an important and splendid one, and trifling things must be likened and compared to great ones. Finally, the highest merit in this kind of discourse is an attitude of seriousness. Tales of gods or men must be brought in where appropriate; so, too, ​pertinent verses and proverbs that are applicable, and ingenious fictions, provided that the fiction is helped out by some witty reasoning. 4. One of the chief difficulties, however, is so to marshal our materials that their order may rest on logical connexion. The fault for which Plato blames Lysias in the Phaedrus, that he has mingled his thoughts in such careless confusion that the first could change places with the last and the last with the first without any loss, is one which we can only escape if we arrange our arguments in classes, and so concatenate them, not in a scattered way and indiscriminately piled together like a dish of mixed ingredients, but so that the preceding thought in some sort overlaps the subsequent one and dovetails into it; that the second thought may begin where the first left off; for so we seem to step rather than jump from one to the other. 5. But these do not . . . . Variety even with some sacrifice is more welcome in the discourse than a correct continuity . . . . Merry things must be severely said, brave things with a smile . . . . . . . only let that sweetness be untainted and chaste, of Tusculan and Ionian strain, that is in the style of Cato or Herodotus . . . . In every case it is easier to master the method of speaking than to possess the power of performing . . . . to wish (others) well and to pray for their welfare, things which are compassed by voice and mind without aid. 6. Accordingly the more generously disposed a man shews himself, the more persons will he praise, nor those only whom others before him decked with praises; but he will choose out gods and men that ​have been most passed by in the praises of others, and there give proofs of his generous disposition, just as a farmer shews his industry, if he sows a field never before ploughed, and a priest his devotion, if he sacrifices at a desolate and inaccessible shrine. 7. I will therefore praise gods who are indeed not much in evidence in the matter of praises, but are very much in evidence in the experience and life of men, Smoke and Dust, without whom neither altars, nor hearths, nor highways, as people say, nor paths can be used. But if any cavil at this, whether Smoke can be counted among gods, let him consider that Winds too are held to be gods and though they can scarcely be distinguished from Smoke, Clouds and Mists, are reckoned goddesses and are seen in the sky, and according to the poets gods "are clad in clouds,"[43] and a cloud shielded from onlookers Jove and Juno as they couched.[44] Again, and this is a property peculiar to the divine nature, you cannot grasp smoke in the hand any more than sunlight, nor bind nor beat nor keep it in nor, if there be the slightest chink open, shut it out . . . . . . . .[† 8]

Eulogy of Negligence ? 139 A.D. Fronto to his own Caesar. 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For those, who are too anxious in the performance of their duties, rely too little on friendship . . . . . . . . . . I have taken upon myself to indite the ​praises of Negligence, and the reason why I have never to this day indited them, that too, as the subject demands, I neglect to give . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[† 9] is checked by self-control. Generally too is the mildness praised, which readily pardons the sins of men, but unless you good-naturedly neglect offences, you are not likely to deal over mildly with them. 2. A man may think negligence to be unsafe and exposed to dangers, but my view is clean contrary, that it is diligence which is much much more liable to perils. For there is not one who takes the trouble to lay traps for negligence, judging that even without a trap it would be easy work to take in a negligent man always and everywhere and at pleasure: against the diligent, however, and the wide-awake and those who watch over their wealth, wiles and deceptions and traps are made ready. So general is it for negligence to be safeguarded by contempt, diligence to be assailed by craft. Mistakes too, committed through negligence are more readily pardoned and for kindnesses so done a more gracious gratitude is felt. For that a man in all other respects neglectful should not have neglected to do a kindness in season is from its unexpectedness grateful. 3. Now the famous golden age celebrated by the poets, if you think over it, you will find to have been the age of negligence, when the earth neglected bore rich crops and, without trouble taken, provided all the requisites of life to those who neglected it. These arguments shew that negligence comes of good lineage, is pleasing to the gods, commended by ​the wise, has her share of virtues, is the teacher of mildness, shielded from traps, welcomed in well-doing, pardoned in faults, and, finally, pronounced golden. Who pray prevents us from painting-in much colour from the paint-box of our friend Favorinus[45]? The more a woman relies on her looks, the more easily does she neglect her complexion and her coiffure; but with most women it is because they distrust their beauty that all the alluring devices which care can discover are brought into being that they may particularly adorn themselves. 4. The myrtle and the box and all the other shrubs and bushes that submit to the shears, accustomed as they are to being most diligently and carefully pruned, watered, and trimmed, creep on the ground, or raise their tops but little over the soil where they stand; but those unshorn firs and neglected pines hide their aspiring heads amid the clouds. 5. Lions are not so diligent in seeking their food and procuring their prey as ants, while spiders are more diligent in weaving than any Penelope or Andromache. And altogether insignificant abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[† 10] How small a part, I ask you, of the Lucullan . . . . . . . .

​ Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 140–143 A.D. Hail, my best of masters. 1. I knew that on everyone's birthday his friends undertake vows for him whose birthday it is. I, however, since I love you as myself, wish to offer up on this day, which is your birthday, hearty prayers for myself. I call, therefore, with my vows to hear me each one of all the Gods, who anywhere in the world provide present and prompt help for men; who anywhere give their aid and shew their power in dreams or mysteries, or healing, or oracles; and I place myself according to the nature of each vow in that spot where the god who is invested with that power may the more readily hear. 2. Therefore I now first climb the citadel of the God of Pergamum and beseech Aesculapius[46] to bless my master's health and mightily protect it. Thence I pass on to Athens and, clasping Minerva by her knees, I entreat and pray that, if ever I know aught of letters, this knowledge may find its way into my breast from the lips of none other than Fronto.[47] Now I return to Rome and implore with vows the gods that guard the roads and patrol the seas that in every journey of mine you may be with me, and I be not worn out with so constant, so consuming a desire for you. Lastly, I ask all the tutelary deities of all the nations, and the very grove, whose rustling fills the Capitoline Hill, to grant us this, that I may keep with you this day, on which you were born for me, with you in good health and spirits. Farewell, my sweetest and dearest of masters. I beseech you, take care of yourself, that when I come I may see you. My Lady greets you. ​ Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 140–143 A.D. To my Lord. All is well with us since your wishes are for us, for there is no one who deserves more than you to win from the Gods fulfilment of his prayers, unless I should rather say that, when I pray for you, there is no one who deserves more than you the fulfilment of prayers offered on your behalf. Farewell, most sweet Lord. Greet my Lady.

? 140–143 A.D. Fronto to his own Caesar. . . . . unless speech is graced by dignity of language, it becomes downright impudent and indecent. In fine you too, when you have had to speak in the Senate or harangue the people, have never used a far-fetched word,[48] never an unintelligible or unusual figure, as knowing that a Caesar's eloquence should be like the clarion not like the clarionet, in which there is less resonance and more difficulty.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 140–143 A.D. Hail, my best of masters.[49] What, am I to study while you are in pain, above all in pain on my account? Shall I not of my own accord punish myself with every kind of penance? It were only right, by Hercules. For ​who else brought on that pain in the knee, which you write was worse last night, who else if not Centumcellae,[50] not to mention myself? What then shall I do, who cannot see you and am racked with such anxiety? Besides, however much I might be minded to study, the courts forbid it, which, as those say who know, will take up whole days. Still I send you to-day's maxim and the day-before-yesterday's commonplace. The whole day yesterday we spent on the road. To-day it is hard to find time for anything but the evening maxim. Do you sleep, say you, the livelong night? Aye, I can sleep, for I am a great sleeper; but it is so cold in my room that I can scarcely put my hand outside the bed-clothes.[51] But in good sooth what most of all put my mind off study was the thought that by my undue fondness for literature[52] I did you an ill turn at the Harbour,[53] as the event shewed. And so farewell to all Catos and Ciceros and Sallusts, as long as you fare well and I see you, though with never a book, established in health. Farewell, my chief joy, sweetest of masters. My Lady greets you. Send me three maxims and commonplaces.

Marcus Fronto's Arion[54] ? 140–143 A.D. 1. Arion of Lesbos, according to Greek tradition foremost as player on the lyre and as dithyrambist. ​setting out from Corinth, where he constantly sojourned, in pursuit of gain, after amassing great riches in the coast-towns of Sicily and Italy, prepared to make his way home from Tarentum to Corinth. For his ship's crew he chose Corinthians by preference, and boldly freighted their ship with his immense gains. When the ship was well out at sea he realized that the crew, coveting the wealth which they carried, were plotting his death. He wearied them with prayers to take all his gold for themselves, but leave him his life alone. When that boon was denied him, he was yet granted another grace, in taking farewell of life to sing as much as he would. The pirates put it down as so much to the good that over and above their booty they should hear a consummate artist sing, to whose voice moreover no one should ever thereafter listen. He donned his robe embroidered with gold, and withal his famous lyre. Then he took his stand before the prow in the most open and elevated place, the crew being afterwards intentionally scattered over the rest of the ship. There Arion, exerting all his powers, began to sing, for sea and sky, look you, the last reminder of his skill. His song ended, with a word on his lips he sprang into the sea: a dolphin received him, carried him on his back, outstripped the ship, landed him at Taenarus as near the shore as a dolphin might. 2. Thence Arion made his way to Corinth, man and robe and lyre and voice all safe; presented himself before Periander, the king of Corinth, who had long known him and esteemed him for his skill; recounted in order what had happened on the ship and subsequently in the sea. The king believed the man but did not know what to think of the miracle, and ​waited for the return of ship and crew. When he learnt that they had put into harbour, he gave orders for their being summoned without any excitement; questioned them with a pleasant countenance and gentle words as to whether they had any news of Arion the Lesbian. They answered glibly that they had seen that most fortunate of men at Tarentum making golden profits and applauded by all, his profession being to sing to the lyre; and that his stay was prolonged by reason of his popularity,[55] his profits, and his praises. As they were saying this, Arion sprang in safe and sound, just as he had stood on the ship's stern with his gold-embroidered robe and his famous lyre. The pirates were dumbfounded at the unexpected sight, nor did they thereafter attempt any denial or disbelief or exculpation. The dolphin's exploit is recorded by a statue set up at Taenarus of a man seated on a dolphin, small in size and executed as a subject-piece rather than as a likeness.

? 140–143 A.D. Aurelius Caesar to his own Fronto greeting.[56] It is a fact that you have often said to me, What can I do to give you the greatest pleasure? Now is the ​opportunity. If my love for you admits of any increase, you can increase it now. The trial approaches in which men, it seems, will not only give a generous ear to your eloquence, but turn a grudging eye upon your angry animosity. And I see no one else who can venture to advise you in this matter. For those who are less friendly to you prefer to see you acting inconsistently, while those who are truer friends are afraid of seeming too friendly to your opponent if they divert you from accusing him as you are entitled to do. Then again, if you have conned some especially choice phrase for the occasion, they cannot bear to rob you of its due delivery by an enforced silence. And so, even if you think me an ill-advised counsellor or a forward boy, or too partial to your opponent, I will not, for all that, shew any the more hesitation in pressing upon you what I think the best counsel. But why have I said counsel, whereas it is a favour I claim, urgently claim, from you and, if it is granted, promise to be bound to you in return? But you will say, What! if assailed, shall I not requite in like terms? Nay, you will win by this means greater glory for yourself if, even when assailed, you make no reply.[57] Still, if he is the first to attack, it will be excusable in you to answer as you can; however, I have begged of him not to begin, and I think I have got my way. For I love both of you, each one for his own merits, and I do not forget that he was brought up in the house of my grandfather,[58] P. Calvisius, and I educated under you. Wherefore I am most anxious that this very disagreeable business ​should be handled as honourably as possible. I trust my advice will commend itself to you, for my goodwill you must commend. At any rate, I would rather fail in judgment by writing than fail in friendship by keeping silence. Farewell, my Fronto, most beloved and most loving of friends.

? 140–143 A.D. Fronto to my Lord Caesar. Rightly have I devoted myself to you, rightly invested in you and your father all the gains of my life. What could be more friendly, what more delightful, what more true[59]? But I beseech you, away with your forward boys and rash counsellors! There is danger, forsooth, of anything you suggest being childishly conceived or ill-advised! Believe me, if you will—if not, I will for my part believe myself—that in good sense you leave your elders far behind. In fact, in this affair, I realise that your counsel is weighty and worthy of a greybeard, while mine is childish. For what is the good of providing a spectacle for friends and foes? If your Herodes be an honourable and moral man, it is not right that such a man[60] should be assailed[61] with invectives by me; if he is wicked and worthless, my fight with him is not on equal terms, nor do we stand to lose the same. For any contact with what is unclean ​contaminates a man, even though you come off best. But the former supposition is the truer, that he, whom you count worthy of your patronage, is a virtuous man. Had I had an inkling of the fact, may all the gods plague me if I should ever have ventured to say a word against any friend of yours.[62] As it is I should wish you for the great love you bear me, wherein I am most blest, to help me with your advice on this point also. I quite admit that I ought not to say anything, which does not bear on the case, to damage H erodes, but those facts which do bear on it—and they are undoubtedly of a most savage character—how am I to deal with them? that is the very thing I am in doubt about, and I ask your advice. I shall have to tell of freemen cruelly beaten and robbed, of one even slain; I shall have to tell of a son unfilial[63] and deaf to his father's prayers, cruelty and avarice will have to be denounced; there is one who must in this trial be made out a murderer. But if on those counts, on which the indictment is based, you think I ought to press and assail my opponent with might and main, assure me, best of Lords and sweetest to me, that such is your opinion. If, however, you think that I ought to let him off lightly in these also, I shall consider what you advise to be the best course. You may, indeed, as I said, rest assured of this, that I shall not go outside the case itself to speak of his character and the rest of his life. But if you think I must do the best for my case, I ​warn you herewith that I shall not even use in a disproportionate manner the opportunity my case gives me, for savage charges are made and must be savagely spoken of. Those in particular which concern the robbing and injuring of freemen shall be so told by me as to smack of gall and spleen: if I chance to call him a greekling and unlearned, it need not mean war to the knife.[64] Farewell, Caesar, and love me, as you do, to the utmost. I, indeed, dote on the very characters of your writing: wherefore, whenever you write to me, I would have you write with your own hand.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 140–143 A.D. Hail, my Lord. After I had already closed and sealed the preceding letter, it occurred to me that those who plead in this case—and many seem likely to plead in it—may speak of Herodes in less measured terms. Take care how you think that I alone am concerned in this affair. Farewell, my Lord, and live, that I may be happy. Capreolus, who is now away, and our friend Marcianus[65] seem likely to plead; Villianus too, it seems.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 140–143 A.D. Hail, my dearest Fronto. I must acknowledge and tender you at once, my dearest Fronto, my thanks, that, so far from ​rejecting my advice, you have approved it. As to the points on which you consult me in your very friendly letter, my opinion is this. Whatever has relation to the case, which you safeguard, should obviously be put forward; whatever to your own private feelings, although legitimate and provoked by the facts, must, nevertheless, be left unsaid. So will you not wound your honour in an all-night business, nor your own standard of self respect. (Let the others conduct the case as they will)[† 11] and say what they please, since the one thing that greatly concerns me is, that you should say nothing that shall seem unworthy of your character, useless to your case, and to your audience deserving of blame. Farewell, my dearest, and to me most delightful Fronto.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 140–143 A.D. To my Lord. I will act, my Lord, as to these counts and as to my whole life in the way I see you wish me to act; and I pray and beseech you never to forbear mentioning what you wish done by me, but dissuade me, as you are now rightly doing, if I ever undertake any such thing against your wishes. I should prefer (all the counts . . . .[† 12] in the) case to be taken separately, that we may apply the method of Cicero. For when they compress that decision into so little, I desire . . . . . . . . but a fight ​could never be conducted in this way. But if we proceed with unbroken speeches, though I go no step outside the case, my glance must needs be somewhat keen, and my voice vehement, and my words stern, and I must shew anger with a gesture here and a finger there; and this your man[66] ought to bear with composure. But it is no easy matter to get that concession from him, for he is said to be inflamed with a passion for pleading. Nor yet do I find fault with even this; but take heed that he seem not to you to put forward what actually belongs to his case too bitterly. But it is your own plea that honour should be the first consideration: and if one practises arms or wrestling, not even these mimic exercises can be carried through without strife . . . . . . . . . . . . I have praised more happily your "country bumpkin."[67]

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar ? 140–143 A.D. Fronto to my Lord. Since I know how anxious you are[† 13] . . . . sheep and doves with wolves and eagles followed the singer, regardless of ambushes and talons and teeth. This legend rightly interpreted surely signifies this, that Orpheus[68] was a man of matchless genius and surpassing eloquence, who attached to himself numerous followers, from admiration of his virtues and his power of speech, and that he so trained his friends and followers, that, though met ​together from different nations and endowed with diverse characteristics, they, nevertheless, lived sociably together in unity and concord, the gentle with the fierce, the quiet with the violent, the meek with the proud, the sensitive with the cruel. Then all of them gradually put off their ingrained faults, went after virtue and learned righteousness, exchanged shamelessness for a sense of shame, self-will for deference, ill-feeling for kindliness. But if ever anyone by his character had so much influence as to unite his friends and followers in mutual love for one another, you assuredly will accomplish this with far greater ease, for you were formed by nature before you were fitted by training for the exercise of all virtues.[69] For before you were old enough to be trained, you were already perfect and complete in all noble accomplishments, before adolescence a good man, before manhood[70] a practised speaker. But of all your virtues this even more than the others is worthy of admiration, that you unite all your friends in harmony. And I cannot conceal my opinion that this is a far harder task than to charm with the lyre the fierceness of lions and wild beasts: and you will achieve this the more easily, if you set yourself to uproot and utterly to stamp out this one vice of mutual envy and jealousy among your friends, that they may not, when you have shewn attention or done a favour to another, think that this is so much taken from or lost to themselves. Envy among men is a deadly evil and more fatal than any, a curse to enviers and envied alike. Banish it from your circle of friends, and you will keep them, as they now are, ​harmonious and kindly; but let it in any way spread among them, and it can only be stamped out with immense toil and immense trouble. But prithee let us talk of better things. I love Julianus—for this discussion originated with him—; I love all who are fond of you; I love the gods who watch over you; I love life for your sake; with you I love letters; like all your friends I take deep draughts of love for you.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 140–143 A.D. Hail, my dearest or masters. 1. Although I am coming to you to-morrow, yet I cannot refrain, my dearest Fronto, from writing some answer, however trifling, to a letter so friendly, so delightful, so felicitous as yours. But what am I to love first? feel grateful first for what? Shall I not mention this first, that, occupied though you are with such important pursuits at home and business no less important outside, you nevertheless made a point of going to see our friend Julianus[71] chiefly—for I were ungrateful if I did not realize this— on my account. But, you will say, there is not much in that. Yet it does amount to much, if you count in all the rest, your staying there so long, having so protracted a talk, a talk, too, about me, or something to cheer him up in his illness, your making a sick man more comfortable in himself, a friend more friendly to me; then again, your writing out for me a detailed account of all this, giving in your letter most welcome ​news of Julianus himself, the kindest of words, the most wholesome of counsels! Why should I try to dissemble before you what, do what I will, I can never dissemble? At any rate, the very fact of your writing me so long a letter, when I was to come to you to-morrow—that, I confess, was to me the most gratifying thing of all; in that did I think myself above all men most blest, for by it you have shewn me in the most marked and the sweetest way how much you make of me, and how great is the confidence you have in my friendship. What shall I say more except I love you deservedly? But why do I say deservedly? Would that I could love you as you deserve! Aye, and that is why I am often full of wrath and indignation against you when away, because you make it impossible for me to love you as I wish, that is, for my soul to follow your love up to its supreme height. 2. With respect to Herodes proceed with what you say, I beseech you: as our Quintus[72] has it, prevail with persevering persistence. Herodes loves you, and I am doing my best in that quarter, and assuredly he who does not love you neither sees with his eyes nor understands with his heart: of ears I say nothing, for the ears of all hearers have passed under the yoke and are slaves of your voice. To me this day seems, and will seem, longer than a spring day, and the coming night more tedious than a night in winter. For as I desire intensely to greet my Fronto, so I long above all to embrace the writer of this last letter. 3. I have written this to you hurriedly because ​Maecianus[73] was pressing, and it was right that your brother should return to you in good time. I beseech you, therefore, if you find any solecism or confusion of thought or shaky letter herein, put it down to haste. For though I am desperately fond of you as a friend, at the same time I must not forget that I ought to shew no less respect to my master than love to my friend. Farewell, my Fronto, dearest and beyond all things sweetest to me. 4. The Sota[74] of Ennius, which you have returned, seems to be on clearer paper, in a more handsome volume and a prettier hand than before. Let Gracchus[75] bide with the cask of new wine until we come. There is no risk of Gracchus fermenting out[76] meanwhile along with the wine. Fare ever well, my sweetest soul.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto ? 140–143 A.D. His own Caesar to his master. I need not say how pleased I was at reading those speeches of Gracchus, for you will know well enough, since it was you who, with your experienced judgment and kind thoughtfulness, recommended them for my reading. That your book might not be returned to you alone and unaccompanied, I have added this letter. Farewell, my sweetest of masters and friendliest of friends, to whom I am likely to be indebted for all the literature I shall ever know. ​I am not so ungrateful as not to recognize what a favour you have done me by letting me see your extracts,[77] and by ceasing not to lead me daily in the right way and, as the saying goes, "to open my eyes." Deservedly do I love you.

143 A.D. Fronto to his own Caesar. . . . .[† 14] I will send you, therefore, as far as I can, this book copied out. Farewell, Caesar, and smile and be happy all your life long and enjoy the best of parents and your own excellent abilities.

Baiae, 143 A.D. Marcus Caesar Imperator[78] to my master Fronto. 1. What shall I say, that is adequate, as to my ill-fortune, or how inveigh as it deserves against this most hard necessity which keeps me a prisoner here with a heart so anxious and fettered with such great apprehension and does not let me run at once to my Fronto, to my most beautiful of souls, above all to be with him at a time when he is so unwell, to clasp his hands and in fine, as far as may be without pain, to massage the poor foot itself, foment it in the bath, and support him as he steps in? And do you call me a friend, who do not throw aside all ​hindrances and fly in hot haste to you? I, indeed, am more lame than you with that diffidence or, rather, laziness of mine. Oh, as to myself—what shall I say? I am afraid of saying something you would not like to hear, for you indeed have always striven in every way, with your humorous sallies and your wittiest of words, to divert my mind, and to shew me that you can put up with all your ills with unruffled fortitude. But where my fortitude has gone to I know not, if it be not yonder in some mysterious way to you. For mercy's sake endeavour with all self-denial and all abstinence to shake off this attack which you, indeed, can endure with your usual courage, but to me it is the worst and sorest of trials. 2. Write and tell me quickly, I beseech you, to what waters you are going and when, and how well you now are, and set my mind going in my breast again. Meanwhile I will carry about your letter in spite of its sad tenor. Farewell, my most delightful Fronto: and yet I ought to put it more correctly thus—for to fare well is, of course, always your wish—: O ye kind Gods, that are everywhere, grant, I beseech you, health to my Fronto, dearest to me and most delightful: let him ever be well with a hardy, hale, healthy body: let him be well and able to be with me. Most charming of men, farewell.

143 A.D. Fronto to his own Caesar. 1. So without end, Caesar, is your love for this Fronto of yours, that for all your eloquence words ​are scarcely forthcoming fully to express your love and set forth your goodwill. What, I ask you, can be more fortunate, what more happy than I alone am, to whom you send such glowing letters? Nay, more, and this is peculiar to lovers, you wish to run, aye, to fly, to me. 2. My Lady, your mother, is wont at times to say in fun that she envies me for being loved so much by you. What if she read this letter of yours, in which you even beseech the gods and invoke them with vows for my health? O, happy that I am! commended by your lips to the gods! Can any pain, think you, find its way into body or mind of mine to count against delight so great? . . . . hurrah! No longer do I feel any pain, nor any distress: I am whole, I am well, I leap for joy; whither you wish, I will come; whither you wish, I will run. Believe me when I say that I was so steeped in delight as not to be able to answer your letter at once; but the letter, indeed, which I had already written in answer to your previous one, I have sent off to you. However, I have kept back the second messenger that I might recover from my joy. And lo, the night has passed, a second day is already here which is already almost spent, and still what and how to write back to you I find not. For what professions of mine could be more sweetly, what more winningly, what more lovingly expressed than yours for me? And so I rejoice that you make me ungrateful and put a due requital beyond my powers, since, as the matter stands, your affection for me is so great that I can scarcely exceed your love. 3. Therefore, to provide some matter for a longer letter, let me ask you for what desert of mine ​you love me so. What benefit has your Fronto bestowed upon you so great that you should shew him such affection? Has he given up his life for you and your parents? Has he braved perils vicariously in your stead? Has he been the faithful governor of some province? Has he commanded an army? Nothing of the kind. Not even those everyday duties about your person does he discharge more than others; nay, he is, if you wish the truth, remiss enough. For neither does he haunt your house at daybreak, nor pay his respects to you daily, nor attend you everywhere, nor keep you always in sight. See to it then that, if anyone ask you why you love Fronto, you have an easy answer ready. 4. And yet there is nothing I like better than that there should be no reason for your love of me. For that seems to me no love at all which springs from reason and depends on actual and definite causes: by love I understand such as is fortuitous and free and subject to no cause, conceived by impulse rather than by reason, that needs no services, as a fire logs, for its kindling, but glows with self-engendered heat. To me the steaming grottoes of Baiae are better than your bath-furnaces, in which the fire is kindled with cost and smoke, and anon goes out. But the natural heat of the former is at once pure and perpetual, as grateful as it is gratuitous. Just in the same way your rational friendship, kept alight with services, not unfrequently means smoke and watery eyes: relax your efforts for an instant and out they go: but love fortuitous is eternal and enchanting. 5. Again, friendship that is won by desert has no such growth or firm texture as the love that is ​sudden and at first sight. So in orchards and gardens the growth of shrubs, reared and watered by hand, is not like that of the oak and the fir and the alder[79] and the cedar and the pine on their native hills which, springing up self-sown and set without plan and without order, owe nothing to the toil or services of a planter, but are fostered by the wind and the rain. 6. That love of yours, therefore, unplanted and sprung up without reason, will, I trust, grow steadily on with the cedars and the oaks; whereas if it were cherished by reason of services done, it would not outgrow the myrtles and the bays, which have scent enough but too little strength. In a word, love spontaneous is as superior to love earned by service as fortune is to reason. 7. But who is there knows not that reason is a term for human judgment, while Fortuna is a goddess and the chief of goddesses? that temples, fanes, and shrines have been dedicated to Fortuna[80] all the world over, while to Reason has been consecrated neither image nor altar anywhere? I cannot be wrong then in preferring that your love for me should be born rather of fortune than of reason. 8. Indeed reason can never compare with fortune either in grandeur or utility or worth. For neither can you match your pyramids, raised by hand and reason, against the hills, nor your aqueducts against the rivers, nor your cisterns against the fountains. Again, reason that guides our actions is called wisdom, the intuition of the seer is named divination. Nor is there anyone who would rather put faith in ​the wisest of women than in the oracles of the Sibyl. What is the drift of all this? To shew that I do right in preferring to be loved by intuition and chance rather than by reason and my desert. Wherefore, even if there is any adequate reason for your love for me, I beseech you, Caesar, let us take diligent pains to conceal and ignore it. Let men doubt, discuss, dispute, guess, puzzle over the origin of our love as over the fountains of the Nile. 9. It is now close on four o'clock and your messenger is muttering. So my letter must end. I am really much better than I expected; I have given up all idea of waters. Dearly do I love you, my Lord, the glory of our age, my chiefest solace. You will say, Not surely more than I love you? I am not so ungrateful as to dare say that. Farewell, Caesar, and your parents too, and cultivate your abilities to the full.

Baiae, 143 A.D. M. Caesar to his master Fronto, greeting. 1. Hear now a very few points in favour of wakefulness against sleep[81]: and yet methinks I am guilty of collusion, in that I side with sleep night and day without ceasing: I desert him not, nor is he likely to desert me, such cronies are we. But my hope is that he may be huffed at my indictment of him and leave me for a little space, and give me a chance at last of burning some midnight oil. Now for subtle arguments: of which[82] my first, indeed, ​shall be this, in regard to which, if you say that I have taken up an easier theme in accusing sleep than you who have praised it—for who, say you, cannot easily bring an indictment against sleep?—I will counter thus: what is easy to indict is hard to praise; what is hard to praise can serve no useful purpose. 2. But I let that pass. For the nonce, as we are staying at Baiae in this interminable labyrinth[83] of Ulysses, I will take from Ulysses a few things which bear on my subject. For he surely would not have taken twenty years his fatherland to reach,[84] nor have wandered so long about that pool, nor gone through all the other adventures which make up the Odyssey, had not then sweet sleep seized his weary limbs.[85] Yet on the tenth day his native soil appeared[86]—but what did sleep do? The evil counsel of my crew prevailed:

The bag they opened, and forth rushed the winds;

The fierce gale caught and swept them to the sea,

Weeping with sorrow, from their native shore?[87] What again took place at the island of Trinacria?[88] Nor winds sweet sleep upon mine eyelids shed:

Eurylochus his crew ill counsel gave.[89] Afterwards, when the Sungod's oxen and fat flocks . . they slew and flayed . . and burnt the thighs and ate the flesh,[90] what then Ulysses when awaked? Wailing I cried to all the Gods on high,

Who ruthless to my ruin made me sleep.[91] ​Sleep, however, did not allow Ulysses a long recognition of his native land, from which he yearned to see even the smoke leap upwards.[92] 3. Now I leave the son of Laertes for the son of Atreus. For that with all haste, which beguiled the latter, and led to the defeat and rout of so many legions, surely sprang from sleep and a dream. Again, when the poet would praise Agamemnon, what says he?— Then none might see the godlike Agamemnon sleeping—[93] what, when he is finding fault?— No councillor should sleep the whole night long,[94] verses indeed, which an illustrious orator[95] once wrested in a strange fashion. 4. I now pass on to our friend Q. Ennius, who, you say, drew from sleep and a dream[96] his first inspiration to write. But, marry, had he never waked from sleep, he had never told his dream. 5. From him let us to Hesiod the shepherd, who became a poet, you say, in slumber. But, indeed, I remember reading once upon a time at school: When on the swift steed's track he was leading his sheep to the pasture,

Hesiod once was met in the way by a bevy of Muses.[97] That was met, you see what it implies? Why, that he was walking when the Muses met him. ​What, again, do you think of that, of which its most eloquent advocate says what? Sweet dreamless sleep, death's counterfeit.[98] 6. Enough of this trifling which I have indulged in more from love of you than from my own faith in it. Now after soundly abusing sleep, I am off to sleep: for I have spun all this out for you in the evening. I hope sleep will not pay me out.

143 A.D. Fronto to his Lord Marcus Caesar. 1. On my return home I received your letter which you had, of course, written to me at Rome, and to Rome it had gone; then it was brought back to-day and delivered to me a little while ago. In it, with many happy arguments, you confute the little I had said for sleep so cleverly, so subtly and aptly, that if wakefulness brings you such sharpness and wit,[99] I would absolutely prefer you to keep awake. But, indeed, you confess that you wrote in the evening just before going to sleep. It was the near approach, therefore, and overshadowing of sleep that produced so felicitous a letter. For, like the saffron, sleep, ere it comes close, sheds its fragrance from afar and delights at a distance. 2. To begin, then, with the opening of your letter, collusion with sleep, as you term it, is most happy . . . .[† 15] the word[100] is so apt that, were it withdrawn, ​nothing of equal value and force could be put in its place. That, again, is a happy expression[† 16] . . . . or that turn of yours beside the mark where you say nor all the other things which make up the Odyssey. 3. Indeed all that Latin context is interwoven by you and alternates as skilfully with the Greek verses as the movements of the gaily-drest performers in the Pyrrhic reel when they run together, coalescing now with these, now with those, dressed some in scarlet, others in damask,[101] and crimson, and purple. 4. Again, your transition from Laertius to Atrides was neatly done. But come, that was a nasty return you gave Q. Ennius when you said that, had he not awaked from sleep he could not have recounted his dream. See if my Marcus Caesar can evolve anything more dexterous than that. No sleight of word So clever, no snare, as Laevius says, so cunningly set. What if I beseech you never to wake up? Nay, I beseech you to sleep. Another jester's[102] proverb: Marry, one with whom you can play odd and even in the dark! But am I not blest in seeing and realizing this, and above all in being called by the title master? How I master? who cannot get my way in this one thing I would have you learn—to sleep. Go your own way, provided that, whether you wake early or sleep long, the Gods keep you for me. Farewell, my joy, farewell.

​ M. Aurelius as Caesar to Fronto 143 A.D. To my master. Cicero's letter interested me wonderfully. Brutus had sent his book[103] to Cicero for corrections . . . .[† 17]

Fronto to M. Aurelius as Caesar 143 A.D. To my Lord. 1. . . . . be softened and so more effectually without any friction enter into the minds of hearers. And these are actually the things which you think crooked and insincere and laboured[104] and by no means reconcilable with true friendship! But I think all speech without these conventions rude and rustic and incongruous, in a word, inartistic and inept.[105] Nor, in my opinion, can philosophers dispense with such artifices any more than orators. In support of my contention I will adduce not "family" evidence, as the phrase is, from oratory, but I will call upon the most outstanding philosophers, the most ancient and excellent poets, in fact, the everyday practice and usage of life and the experience of all the arts. 2. What, then, have you to say about that master of eloquence no less than of wisdom, Socrates?—for him, first and foremost, I have subpoenaed as witness before you—did he cultivate a style of speech in which there was nothing crooked, nothing at times ​dissembled? By what methods was he wont to disconcert and entrap Protagoras and Polus and Thrasymachus and the other Sophists? When did he meet them without masking his batteries? When not attack them from an ambush? From whom, if not from him, can we say that the inverted[106] form of speech, which the Greeks call εἰρωνεία, took its rise? In what fashion, again, used he to accost and address Alcibiades and the other young men who prided. themselves on birth or beauty or riches? In terms of censure or in terms of suavity?[107] With bitter reproof when they went wrong, or with gentle persuasion? And yet Socrates assuredly had as much seriousness or force as the cynic Diogenes shewed in his habitual brutality. But he saw, in fact, that the dispositions of men in a measure, and of young men in particular, are more easily won over by courteous and sympathetic than by bitter and unrestrained language. And so he did not attack the errors of youths with mantlets and battering rams, but sapped them with mines, and his hearers never parted from him torn, though sometimes teased. For the race of mankind is by nature stiff-necked against the high-handed, but responds readily to coaxing. Therefore we give way more willingly to entreaties than are frightened into submission by violence, and advice rather than denunciation leads us to improve. So we listen to admonition courteously conveyed, but severity of correction makes us contumacious.[108] ​ Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar 143 A.D. To my Lord. 1. As for your thinking that I slept soundly, I lay awake nearly all night considering with myself whether, maybe from too great partiality for you, I did not think too lightly and indulgently of some shortcoming of yours; whether you should not by now be more trained, more advanced in eloquence, were not your abilities hampered either by sloth or carelessness. Turning these things over anxiously in my mind, I found that you had made much greater progress in eloquence than could be expected from your age, youthful as it is; much greater than the time that you have devoted to these studies would warrant, much greater than the hopes, and those no mean ones, which I had formed of you. But as it came to me only in the dead of night, what a subject you are writing on! actually one of the epideictic kind,[109] the most difficult of all. Why? Because of all the three generally received kinds of subject, the epideictic, the deliberative, the forensic, the first is set on a steep hill, the others are much less of a climb, being in many respects on sloping or level ground. In short, while there are similarly three types, as it were, of oratory, the plain, the medium, the luxuriant, in epideictic speeches there is practically no place for the plain style, which in forensic ​ones is quite essential. In the epideictic speech everything must be said in luxuriant style, eveiywhere there must be ornament, everywhere trappings must be used. The medium style admits but sparingly of these. 2. But you remember the numbers of books, of which you have up to the present made the acquaintance, comedies, farces, old-time orators, few of whom, perhaps none save Cato and Gracchus, blow a trumpet, but all bellow or, rather, shriek. What, then, has Ennius done for you now you have read him? What help have tragedies been to you in composing verse in the grand style? For generally it is verse that gives the best assistance to composing speeches and speeches to writing verse. You have but lately begun to read florid and showy[110] speeches. Do not expect to be able to imitate them all at once. But, as I said, let us bend to the oars, let us make a great effort. Quickly shall I set you upon the very pinnacle of eloquence: I will be your surety for it, your bondsman, your bail. The gods will assist in it, the gods will accomplish it. Farewell, my Lord, be sanguine and stout-hearted and trust to time and practice. Greet your Lady mother. When you spoke of[111] the Persian training, battunt[† 18] was a happy word of yours.

M. Aurelius to Fronto 143 A.D. Hail, my deservedly dear Fronto. I see through that most subtle ruse of yours, which you indeed hit upon in pure kindness of heart. ​For not being able to win credit for your praise of me by reason of your signal partiality in my case you sought to make it credible by throwing in some abuse.[112] But happy am I that I am thought worthy of blame no less than of praise by my Marcus Cornelius, greatest of orators and best of men! What shall I say of your letter so kind, so true, so loving?—true, that is, as far as the first part of its contents goes, but for the rest, where you express approval of me, as some Greek, Theophrastus I think, says, the lover is blind to the faults of his loved one, so have you been almost blinded by love in your judgment of some of my work. But so greatly do I value the fact that, though I do not write well, I should yet be praised by you for no desert of mine, but only because of your love for me, of which you have lately sent me such numerous and such happily-worded assurances that, since you wish it, I will be something. At all events, your letter had the effect of making me feel how much you loved me. But as to my despondency, nevertheless, I am still nervous in mind and a little depressed, lest I shall have said something in the Senate to-day, such that I should not deserve to have you as my master. Farewell, my Fronto, my—what shall I say but—best of friends.

Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar July, 143 A.D. To my Lord. 1. In your last letter you ask me why I have not delivered my speech in the Senate. Well, I ​have to return thanks to my Lord your Father by proclamation also, and that I shall issue at my Games in the Circus; it will begin with these very words: On the day on which, by the kindness of our great Emperor, I am exhibiting a spectacle most attractive to the people and popidar in the highest degree, I have thought it a good opportunity to return thanks to him, that the same day—to be followed by some Ciceronian conclusion. My speech I shall deliver on August 13th. You will ask, perhaps, Why so late? Because I am never in a hurry to discharge a solemn duty at the first possible moment, and anyhow. But, as I ought to deal with you without disguise and without circumlocution, I will tell you what is in my mind. I often praised your grandfather, the deified Hadrian, in the Senate, with a steady zeal, aye, and a ready, and those speeches are constantly in everyone's hands. Yet, if your filial feeling towards him will allow me to say so, I wished to appease and propitiate Hadrian, as I might Mars Gradivus or Father Dis, rather than loved him. Why? Because love requires some confidence and intimacy. Since, in my case, confidence was lacking, therefore I dare not love one whom I so greatly revered. Antoninus, however, I love, I cherish like the light, like day, like life, like breath, and feel that I am loved by him. Him I must so praise that my praise be not hidden away in the Journals of the Senate,[113] but come into the hands and under the eyes of men, else am I ungrateful also towards you. Again, as the runaway syce is reported to have said, I have run sixty miles for my master, I will run a hundred for myself, to escape; so I, too, ​when I praised Hadrian, ran for my master, but today I run for myself; for myself, I say, and write this speech to please myself. I shall compose it, therefore, at my ease, slowly, leisurely, placidly. 2. If you are very impatient for it, amuse yourself the while in other ways; kiss your father, embrace him, lastly, praise him yourself. But you may certainly look forward to hearing on August 13th what you would wish and such as you would wish. Farewell, Caesar, and prove worthy of your father, and if you wish to write anything, write slowly.

Marcus Aurelius to Fronto 143 A.D. My most honourable consul, Fronto. 1. I give in, you have won: beyond question you have conquered in loving all lovers that have ever lived. Take the wreath and let the herald, too, proclaim in the ears of all before your tribunal this your victory—M. Cornelius Fronto, consul, is the winner. He is crowned in the contest of the Great Friendship-Games. Yet, though vanquished, will I not falter or fail in my devotion. Therefore shall you indeed, my master, love me more than any of men loves any man, while I, who have less energy in loving, will love you more than anyone else loves you, more, in fact, than you love yourself. I see I shall have a competitor in Gratia,[114] and I fear that I may not be able to surpass her. For, as Plautus says, in her case, "not only has the rain of love drenched her dress with its thunder-drops, but soaked into her very marrow."[115] ​2. If you only knew what a letter you have written me![116] I could venture to say that she who bore me and nursed me, even she never wrote me anything so delightful, so honeyed. Nor is this due to your word-mastery or eloquence, for apply that test and not my mother only but all that breathe would, as they do, yield the palm at once to you. But I cannot express in words how that letter of yours to me, not for its eloquence or learning, but bubbling up as it does with so much kindness, brimful of such affection, sparkling with so much love, has lifted my heart up to the heavens, inspired it with the most glowing fondness, in a word, as Naevius says, filled it with a love transcendent. 3. That other letter of yours, in which you pointed out why you were going to put off the delivery of the speech in the Senate in which you intend to eulogize my Lord, delighted me so much that—forgive me if I was too hasty—I could not refrain from reading it aloud to my father himself. I need not dwell on the pleasure it gave him, for you know his entire good-will towards you and the matchless felicity of your letter. But from this occasion arose a long talk between us about you, much, much longer than yours and your quaestor's[117] about me. So your ears too must have been tingling about that time in the forum. My Lord, then, quite approves and sympathizes with your reasons for putting off the delivery of your speech till later . . . .[† 19] ​ Marcus Aurelius to Fronto 143 A.D. To my master. From half-past ten till now I have been writing and have also read a good deal of Cato, and I am writing this to you with the same pen, and I greet you and ask you how well you are. Oh, how long it is since I saw you! . . . .

August, 143 A.D. M. Caesar to the most honourable consul his master. . . . .[† 20] Three days ago we heard Polemo declaim—that we may have some talk about men also. If you would like to know what I think of him, listen. He seems to me like a hard-working farmer endowed with the utmost shrewdness, who has laid out a large holding with corn-crops only and vines, wherein beyond question the yield is the fairest and the return the richest. But, indeed, nowhere in all that estate is there a fig tree of Pompeii,[118] or a vegetable of Aricia,[119] or a rose of Tarentum, nowhere a pleasant coppice or a thick-set grove, or a shady plane-tree; all for profit rather than for pleasure, such as one would be bound to praise but not disposed to love. In judging a man of such reputation,[120] am I, think you, bold enough in my purpose and rash enough in my judgment? But when I remember that I am writing to you, I feel that I ​am not bold enough for your taste. On that point I am desperately doubtful—there's a home-grown hendecasyllable for you! So I must call a halt with you before I fall into the poetic vein. Farewell, most missed of men and dearest to your Verus,[121] most honourable consul, master most sweet. Farewell, my sweetest soul.

After August 13, 143 A.D. To my Lord Aurelius Caesar your consul Fronto. 1. What nice ears men have nowadays! What taste in judging of speeches! You can leam from our Aufidius[122] what shouts of applause were evoked in my speech, and with what a chorus of approval were greeted the words in those days every bust was decorated with patrician insignia; but when, comparing a noble with a plebeian race, I said, As if one were to think the flame kindled on a pyre and on an altar to be the same because both alike give light, at this a few murmurs were heard. 2. Why have I told you this? That you, my Lord, may be prepared, when you speak before an assembly of men, to study their taste, not, of course, everywhere and by every means, yet occasionally and to some extent. And when you do so, remind yourself that you are but doing the same as you do when, at the people's request, you honour or enfranchise those who have slain beasts manfully in the ​arena;[123] criminals even they may be or felons, yet you release them at the people's request. Everywhere, then, the people prevail and get their way. Therefore must you so act and so speak as shall please the people. 3. Herein lies that supreme excellence of an orator, and one not easily attainable, that he should please his hearers without any great sacrifice of right eloquence, and should let his blandishments, meant to tickle the ears of the people, be coloured indeed, but not along with any great or wholesale sacrifice of dignity: rather that in its composition and fabric there should be a lapse into a certain softness but no wantonness of thought. So, too, in a garment, I should prefer it to be of the softness that belongs to wool rather than to an effeminate colour; it should be of finely woven or silken thread, and itself purple not flame-red[124] or saffron. You and your father, moreover, who are bound to wear purple and crimson, must on occasion clothe your words, too, in the same dress. You will do this and be restrained and moderate with the best moderation and restraint. For this is what I prophesy, that what has ever been done in eloquence will be done to the full by you, so great is your natural capacity, and with such zeal and application do you devote yourself to learning;[125] although, in others, either application without capacity, or capacity alone without application, has won outstanding glory. I feel sure, my Lord, that you spend no little time in writing prose also. For ​though the swiftness of steeds is equally well exercised whether they run and practise at a gallop or a trot, yet the more serviceable qualities must be the more frequently put into requisition. 4. For by now I do not treat you as if I thought you were twenty-two[126] years old. At an age when I had scarcely touched any of the ancient authors you, by the grace of the gods and your own merit, have made such progress in eloquence as would bring fame to greybeards, and that, too—a far from easy task—in every branch of the art. For your letters, which you write so regularly, are enough to shew me what you can further do in that more familiar and Ciceronian vein. 5. Instead of Polemo the rhetorician, whom you lately presented to me in your letter as a Ciceronian, I have given back to you in my speech, which I delivered in the Senate, a philosopher,[127] if I am not mistaken, of the hoariest antiquity. Come, what say you, Marcus, how does my version of the story of Polemo strike you? Of course, Horatius Flaccus, a famous poet, and one with whom I have a connexion through Maecenas and my "gardens of Maecenas,"[128] supplied me with plenty of smart things on that subject. For this Horatius, in his second book of Satires,[† 21] brings in the story of Polemo, if I remember rightly, in the following lines:— Would you the marks of mental ill forswear,

The scarf, spats, lappet, that the rake declare?

Be changed, like Polemo, who, in drunken rage,

Scoffed at the teaching of the sober sage;

But cut to the heart by what he heard, 'tis said,

Plucked off by stealth the garlands from his head. ​6. The verses which you sent me I have sent you back by our Victorinus, and this is how I have sent them. I have carefully sewn the paper across with thread, and so sealed the thread that that little mouse should poke his nose in anywhere. For he himself has never given me any information about your hexameters, so naughty is he and knavish. But he says that you purposely recite your hexameters so glibly and so fast that he cannot commit them to memory. So I have paid him back in his own coin: tit for tat—not to hear a line out of the packet. I remember, too, that you have often impressed upon me not to let anyone see your verses. 7. How is it with you, my Lord? Surely you are cheerful, surely you are well, surely sound in all respects. Other things are of little consequence, so you never give us the bad fright you did on your birthday.[129] If any evil threatens you, "may it fall on the Pyrrhaeans' heads."[130] Farewell, my joy, my refuge, happiness, glory. Farewell, and love me, I beseech you, every way in jest as in earnest. I have written your mother a letter, such is my assurance, in Greek, and enclose it in my letter to you. Please read it first, and if you detect any barbarism in it, for you are fresher from your Greek than I am, correct it and so hand it over to your mother. I should not like her to look down on me as a goth. Farewell, my Lord, kiss your mother when you give her my letter, that she may read it the more gladly. ​ 143 A.D. Fronto to the Emperor Antoninus Pius Augustus.[† 22] As you remember, Caesar, when I returned thanks[131] to you in the Senate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Farewell.[† 23]

143 A.D. Antoninus Caesar to Marcus Fronto. How great is your goodwill towards myself I have long known well enough, by Hercules, but what astonishes me . . . .[† 24] best of orators, is that in such a hackneyed and thread-bare subject you can find anything to say that is new and worthy of your abilities. But no doubt the mere wish is an immense help towards what you can do so well. Nothing could be more effective than your thoughts, nothing more complimentary, yet without any sacrifice of good sense, than your expression of them. For I will not be guilty of defrauding you of your legitimate praise for fear of arrogantly praising the praise of myself. You have done your duty pleasingly and in unexceptionable fashion, for which, apart from all question of the subject, you deserve every credit. But as for shewing me your mind, it has not done much in that way, for I knew well enough that you always would put the most favourable construction on every word and act of mine. Farewell, my Fronto, my very dear friend. ​That part of your speech, which you most kindly devoted to honouring my Faustina,[132] seemed to me as true as it was eloquent. For this is the plain fact: By heaven, I would sooner live with her in Gyara[133] than in the palace without her.

143 A.D. Marcus Caesar to his own consul and master. 1. Whether the Greeks of old ever wrote anything so good,[134] verily let those see to it who know; for myself, if I may say so, nowhere have I noticed in M. Porcius an invective so perfect as your praise. Oh, if my Lord could be praised enough, surely he had been enough praised by you. This work is not done in these days. Easier were it for one to rival Pheidias, easier Apelles, easier, in fine, Demosthenes himself or Cato himself, than this perfect and finished fork. Never have I read anything so refined, so classical, so polished, so Latin. Oh, happy you to be gifted with such eloquence! Oh, happy I to be in the hands of such a master! What reasoned thoughts! What orderly arrangement! What elegance! What wit! What beauty! What diction! What brilliance! What subtlety! What charm! What practised skill! What everything! My life on it, but some day you ought to have the wand[135] placed in your hand, the diadem round your brow, the tribunal under your feet: then the henild should summon all of us—why do I say us? I mean all your learned folk and your eloquent—one by one you should wave them along with your wand and ​admonish them with the words of your lips. For myself I never had any fear of these admonitions; I have more reasons than enough for setting foot in your school.[136] 2. I am writing this to you in the utmost haste, for what need of a longer letter from me when I send you so gracious a one of my Lord's? Farewell, then, glory of Roman eloquence, pride of your friends, a man of mark,[137] most delightful of men, most honourable consul, master most sweet. 3. In future be chary of telling so many fibs, especially in the Senate, about me. This speech of yours is "awfully"[138] well written. Oh, if I could only kiss your head for every heading of it! You have absolutely put everyone else in the background. With this speech before our eyes, vain is our study, vain our toil, vain our efforts. Fare ever well, sweetest of masters.

Fronto to Domitia Lucilla 143 A.D. To the mother of Caesar. 1. What excuse[139] of mine can win your pardon for my not having written to you all this time, if it be not by my stating the true cause of my want of leisure, that I had composed a speech about our great Emperor? The Roman saw bids us "not hate a friend's ways but ken them."[140] What mine are I will tell you, and not conceal them. From my great natural incapacity and worthlessness ​I labour under much the same defect as the animal called by the Romans a hyena, whose neck, they say, can be stretched out straight forward but cannot be bent to either side.[141] So I, when I am putting together anything with more than usual care, am, in a way, immovable, and, giving up all else, aim at that alone, like the hyena not turning to the right hand or to the left. Again, they say that the snakes called "darters"[142] in much the same way project themselves straight forwards, but never move sideways; and spears and arrows are most likely to hit the mark when they are propelled straight, neither made to swerve by the wind, nor foiled by Athene's hand or Apollo's, as were the arrows shot by Teucer or the suitors. 2. These three similes, then, have I applied to myself, two of them fierce and savage, that of the hyena and that of the snake, and a third drawn from missiles, it, too, non-human and harsh. And if, indeed, I were to say that of winds the one astern was especially to be commended because it takes a ship straight forward nor lets it make leeway, this would be a fourth simile, and that a forcible one. And if I added this also of the line, that the straight line is the chiefest of all lines, I should produce a fifth simile, not only inanimate like that of the spears, but this one also incorporeal. 3. What simile, then, can be found convincing? One above all that is human, better still if it be also cultured; and if it partake, too, of friendship and love, the simile would be all the more a similitude. They say that Orpheus rued his turning to look ​back: had he looked and walked straight ahead he had not rued. Enough of similes. For this, too, is somewhat unconvincing, this simile of Orpheus fetched up from Hades. 4. But I will now for the rest plead in excuse what will most easily win me pardon. What, then, is this? That in writing the Emperor's encomium I was doing, in the first place, what was especially gratifying to you and your son; in the next I remembered and mentioned both of you in the composition, just as lovers name their darlings over every cup. But, indeed, the craftmanship of similes is an insinuating thing and grows on us. This one, at any rate, has occurred to me, which I add to all the others, and irideed it can most fairly be called a simile (or likeness), being taken from a painter. Protogenes the painter is said to have taken eleven[143] years to paint his Ialysus, painting nothing but the Ialysus all those eleven years. But, as for me, I painted not one but two Ialysuses at once, being no ordinary ones either of them, nor easy to depict, not only in respect of their faces and figures, but also of their characters and qualities, for the one is the great Imperator of all land and sea, and the other the great Imperator's son, his child in the same way as Athene is of Zeus, but thy son as Hephaestus is of Hera. But let there be no "halting"[144] in this simile from Hephaestus. This defence of mine, then, would seem to be wholly verisimilous and picturesque, full as it is in itself of similes entirely. 5. It remains that I should, after the fashion of geometers, ask—what? If any word in this letter be ​obsolete or barbarous, or in any other way unauthorized, or not entirely Attic, look not at that, but only, I beseech you, at the intrinsic meaning of the word, for you know that I do spend time on mere words or mere idiom. And, indeed, it is said that the famous Scythian Anacharsis was by no means perfect in his Attic, but was praised for his meaning and his conceptions. I will compare myself, then, with Anacharsis, not, by heaven, in wisdom, but as being like him a barbarian. For he was a Scythian of the nomad Scythians, and I am a Libyan of the Libyan nomads. I as well as Anacharsis may browse fresh pastures, bleat therefore as well as he while browsing, just as one wills to bleat. See, I have assimilated barbarism to bleating. So will I make an end of writing nothing but similes.

143 A.D. M. Caesar to the most honourable consul Fronto. 1. . . . . connected by marriage[145] and not subject to guardianship and stationed besides in a social position in which, as Q. Ennius says, All give foolish counsel, and look in all to pleasing only; and Plautus, too, in his Colax, says finely on the same subject, Crafty cajolers, who with fast-pledged faith

Take in the trustful: these stand round a king,

And what they speak is far from what they think. ​These drawbacks used formerly to be confined to kings, but now, indeed, even the sons of kings have more than enough of men who, as Naevius[146] says, Still flatter with their tongues and still assent,

And fawn upon them to their heart's content.[147] I do right, then, my master, in being so ardent, right in setting before me one single aim, right in thinking of one man only when I take my pen in hand. 2. You very kindly ask for my hexameters, and I too should have sent them at once if I had had them with me. But my secretary—you know him, I mean Anicetus—did not pack up any of my work when I set out. For he knows my failing and was afraid that, if they came into my hands, I should do as I usually do, and consign them to the flames. But, as a matter of fact, those particular hexameters were in next to no danger. For, to tell my master the truth, I dote on them. I pore over them o' nights, for the day is spent in the theatre. And so I get through but little in the evening, being tired, and in the morning I get up sleepy. Still I have made for myself these last few days five notebooks full of extracts from sixty volumes. But when you read sixty, don't be staggered by the number, for included in them are the little Atellane farces of Novius and Scipio's speechlets. 3. As you have mentioned your Polemo, please don't mention Horace again, who, with Polio,[148] is ​dead and done with as far as I am concerned. Farewell, my dearest, my most beloved friend; farewell, my most honourable consul, my most sweet master, whom I have not seen these two years. For as to what some say, that two months[149] have intervened, they only count days. Shall I ever see you?

143 A.D. To the most honourable consul, his master, M. Caesar, greeting. Three years ago I remember turning aside with my father to the estate of Pompeius Falco[150] when on our way home from the vintage; and that I saw there a tree with many branches, which he called by its proper name of catachanna.[151] But it seemed to me a new and extraordinary tree, bearing as it did upon its single stem off-shoots of almost every kind of tree . . . .[† 25]

Naples, 143 A.D. M. Aurelius Caesar to his own consul and master, greeting. 1. Since my last letter to you nothing has happened worth writing of, or the knowledge of which would be of the slightest interest to you. For we have passed whole days more or less in the same occupations: the s