M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
M. Aurelius as Caesar to Fronto
To my master.
Cicero's letter interested me wonderfully. Brutus had sent his book[1] to Cicero for corrections . . . .[† 1]
Fronto to M. Aurelius as Caesar
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[2] 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.[3] 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
- ↑ Possibly the book De Virtute; see Cicero, Tusc. v. 1. For his other philosophical works see Cicero, Acad. Part. i. 12.
- ↑ As in Aul. Gell. xv. 7 and Tac. Ann. i. 8; Hildebrand on Apul. Met. iv. 27, takes it as = ambigua.
- ↑ Fronto is nettled at something Marcus had said against conventional insincerities of language. It was not for nothing that he was called Verissimus.
- ↑ Two pages are lost, to molliantur.
