M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
morass, everything rotting. What, however, escapes most people, I should know, that you, a strenuous man and a strong by training, and much more by nature . . . .[† 1]
Fronto to Praecilius Pompeianus,[1] greeting.
You shall hear from me, my Pompeianus, the true state of the case; and I would ask you to accept it from me as the truth. It is nearly a year ago that I took that speech For the Bithynians[2] in hand and set about revising it. I also made certain promises to you about the speech when you were in Rome at that time. And, indeed, if I remember rightly, when we were discussing the rhetorical heads of a speech, I claimed, and with some pride, that I had in that speech very thoroughly analyzed in argument and confuted the assumption which turned on the charge of murder by mandate. Meanwhile, a more than usually severe attack of neuritis came on, which proved to be more persistent and troublesome than usual. And I cannot pay any attention to writing or reading letters when my limbs are racked with pain; nor have I ever ventured to make such a demand upon my strength. When philosophers, those wondrous creatures, tell us that the wise man, even if shut up in the Bull of Phalaris,[3] would still
- ↑ Nothing is known for certain about him. He was possibly a fellow-countryman of Fronto's from Cirta.
- ↑ Nothing more is known of this speech beyond what Fronto tells us.
- ↑ A commonplace of the orators. See Cic. Tusc. ii. 7; Seneca, Ep. 66, etc.
- ↑ A lacuna of four pages follows to meremur in Ad Amicos, i. 12, below.
