M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
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.[1] If any evil threatens you, "may it fall on the Pyrrhaeans' heads."[2] 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.
