M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
in my love for you, and that is, if you were to neglect eloquence. Yet indeed I would rather you neglected it than cultivated it in the wrong way. For as to that hybrid eloquence of the catachanna[1] type, grafted partly with Cato's pine-nuts,'[2] partly with the soft and hectic plums of Seneca, it ought in my judgment to be plucked up by the roots, nay, to use a Plautine expression, by the roots of the roots. I am aware that he is a man who abounds in thoughts, aye bubbles over with them; but I see his thoughts go trot-trot, nowhere keep on their course under the spur at a free gallop, nowhere shew fight, nowhere aim at sublimity: like Laberius, he fashions wit-bolts, or rather wit-flashes, rather than wit-sayings.
3. Do you then suppose that you could find weightier thoughts and on the same subject in your Annaeus than in Sergius? But (in Sergius)[3] not so rhythmical: I grant it; nor so sprightly: it is so; nor with such a ring: I do not deny it. But what, if the same meal be set before two persons, and the one take up the olives set on the table with his fingers, carry them to his open mouth, let them come between his teeth for mastication in the decent and proper manner, while the other throw his olives into the air, catch them in his mouth, and shew them when caught, like a juggler his pebbles, with the tips of his lips. Schoolboys of course would clap the feat and the guests be amused, but the one will
- ↑ See i. p. 140.
- ↑ The plain, austere eloquence of Cato is compared to the fruit of the wild pine (Hauler refers to Cato, R.R. xlviii. 3), as contrasted with the soft, feverish style of Seneca.
- ↑ Sergius Flavius, who, says Quintilian (Inst. viii. 3), formed many new words, some very harsh.
