M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
I am not so ungrateful as not to recognize what a favour you have done me by letting me see your extracts,[1] 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.
Fronto to his own Caesar.
. . . .[† 1] 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.
Marcus Caesar Imperator[2] 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
- ↑ Excerpts from Terence, Vergil, Cicero, and Sallust, entitled Exempla Elocutionum, attributed by some to Fronto, have come down to us. Marcus followed this habit of making extracts. See Thoughts, iii. 14, and below, Ad Caes. ii. 10.
- ↑ Marcus did not receive the Imperium till 147 (with the Trib. Pot.), nor was he styled Imperator till 161. There must be some error in the word. The number (I.) that follows the heading may mean the first letter by Marcus in the Codex, in which case the whole first quaternion, which is lost, must have contained letters of Fronto.
- ↑ Two pages are lost.
