FRONTO, THE ORATOR AND THE MAN
and critics of Rome, and regarded as an oracle on linguistic and grammatical questions, and in his letters we find him always inculcating a careful precision in the use of words and a deference to the authority of older writers.
How far was his great reputation as orator and pleader justified? Unfortunately we have no specimen, even approximately complete, of his oratory, whether forensic or epideictic, on which to base a verdict. The longest extract extant is from a speech respecting oversea wills, possibly delivered before the Emperor's Court of Appeal. There is besides the well-known fragment of an indictment of the Christians,[1] preserved by Minucius Felix in his Octavius, which reads like a set declamation, or an episode in a speech on behalf of some client. But we do not know how far the writer has given Fronto's words verbatim.
The interesting and important letter to Arrius Antoninus on behalf of Volumnius Quadratus[2] is an example of legal causidicatio. There remain besides a few sentences quoted by the orator himself[3] from his speech of thanks to Pius in 143, and a simile, perhaps from the same speech, quoted by Eumenius,
- ↑ Octavius, ix. It seems probable that the section immediately preceding this, and describing the "Thyestean feasts" attributed to the Christians, also comes from the same speech. Some think the whole of the anti-Christian polemic of the Octavius is drawn from a Frontonian source. .See Schanz, Rhein. Mus. 1895, 114–36.
- ↑ Ad Amicos, ii. 7.
- ↑ Ad M. Caes. i. 8, pp. 118 ff.
