FRONTO, THE ORATOR AND THE MAN
a vogue of a least 300 years, as Sidonius Apollinaris mentions the Frontoniani in an obscure passage.[1]
The great service that Fronto did to his countrymen was to leave their language a freer and more plastic instrument of speech than he found it, by reinforcing it with those elements which were in danger of atrophy for want of use, or were being wasted by being left outside the pale of good literature. Moreover by minute accuracy in the use of words and careful definition of their meaning, he gave precision and clarity to the language, which was a work well worth doing, and deserving of credit.
To the reader his style is easy and perspicuous, and far less abnormal and fantastic than that of his fellow African Apuleius. Unfortunately Fronto lacked originality of thought, and his humour is rather heavy, but his fatal foible lay not in his leanings to archaism but in his faith in εἰκόνες, which disfigure even the real pathos of his dirge over the loss of his grandson, and lessen the force of his special pleading for Volumnius of Concordia, though in his
- ↑ Ep. i. 1. "Nor did Jul. Titianus picture Cicero's whole epistolary style in a worthy image (by means of a series of fictitious letters) under the names of noble women. On this account all the Frontonians, as rivals of their fellow-disciple, because he followed the languid (Ciceronian) style of speaking, called him the orators' ape." Here the style of Cicero's letters, which Fronto calls remissior, easy or careless, seems to be disparaged. See Barth, Advers. xlvii. 9, and Nieb., Introd. to his ed. of Fronto, p. xxiii. The word used by Sidonius is veternosus. How Cicero's style could be called laguid or senile (veternosus) is incomprehensible.
