M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
As to my praises of yourself, which I pronounced the same day in the Senate, I would have you look on them in this light, that you then shewed rare I natural ability, but now a consummate excellence; that you were then as corn sprouting in a field, but are now as the harvest fully ripe and gathered in the | garner. All was hope then, all is having now. Hope has turned to reality.
What you asked me, however, to send you, on receiving your letter . . . . . . . . men of Attica hard by chewing the cud of their native herbs and the wild thyme of Hymettus . . . . You could pluck either weighty thoughts from the speeches of the ancients or sweet thoughts from their poems, or splendid thoughts from history, or kindly ones from comedies, or courtly ones from the national drama, or witty and humorous ones from the Atellane farces . . . .
Lucius Verus to Fronto
To my master.
. . . .[† 1] My friend, I mean Calpurnius, and I are having a dispute, but I shall easily confute him in the presence of all, and with you, too, if you are present, as a witness, that Pylades is superior to his master, [1] just insomuch as he is more like Apolaustus.[2] But to speak seriously, tell your Valerius Antonius to hand me the petition, that by our reply, also, the
- ↑ Also called Pylades. They were both pantomimi.
- ↑ Probably a freedman of Verus, named after the great actor Apolaustus (mentioned Vit. Veri, viii.).
- ↑ It is not known how much is lost, probably not much.
