FRONTO, THE ORATOR AND THE MAN
An inscription found at Calamae (Guelma) in Numidia,[1] of which city, as of Cirta, he was a patronus, gives us the earlier part of his cursus honorum, from which we learn his father's name Titus, the name of his tribe Quirina, and that he was successively triumvir capitalis, quaestor in Sicily, plebeian aedile, and praetor. The office of quaestor gave him a place in the Senate.
In 143, under Pius, he became consul suffectus for July and August, the consul ordinarius for which year was Herodes the eminent Athenian rhetorician, himself like Fronto a tutor to the young princes. Fronto's lesser honour gave occasion for the jesting allusion of Ausonius[2] to the consuls in whose consulship Fronto was consul.
From his place in the Senate he tells us that he extolled Hadrian studio impenso et propenso in speeches that were still read many years later.[3] But he confesses that in this he courted rather than loved him. His great reputation,[4] but no doubt his character also, induced Pius on his accession to choose him as the instructor of his adopted sons in Latin and oratory
- ↑ Corp. Inscr. Lat. viii. 5350.
- ↑ "Unica mihi amplectenda est Frontonis imitatio: quem tamen Augusti magistrum sic consulatus ornavit, ut praefectura non cingeret. Sed consulatus ille cuiusmodi? Ordinario suffectus, bimestri spatio interpositus, in sexta anni parte consumptus, quaerendum ut reliquerit tantus orator, quibus consulibus gesserit consulatum." In Gratiarum Actione, ad med.
- ↑ See p. 110.
- ↑ Dio, lxix. 8; Lucian, De Conscr. Hist. 21, ἀοίδιμος ἐπὶ λόγων δύναμει.
