M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
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.
. . . .[† 1] 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,[1] or a vegetable of Aricia,[2] 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,[3] 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
- ↑ See Pliny, N.H. xv. 19.
- ↑ ibid. xix. 41. The cabbage of Aricia (brassica oleracea) is said by Pliny to be the most useful of all, but the argument requires that it should be only for pleasure.
- ↑ From an interesting anecdote in Philost. (Vit. Soph. p. 231, Kays.) we find that Marcus formed a higher estimate of Polemo in later life.
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- ↑ Six pages are lost from vidi in Ad Caes. ii. 4 above.