M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
glorious soldier? Nay, you have what you have asked for in ail your prayers, a brave brother, "a good man skilled in speaking."[1] He says the same things as you, but expresses them more concisely than you.
4. At the very moment, when I was turning this over in my mind, following yours came the speech of Antoninus—Good heavens, how many admirable things, how many true! Every saying, every word quite fascinating, steeped in loyal affection and trust and love and longing. What then? which of both my two friends, the petitioner or the petitioned, should I praise the more? Antoninus with all his imperial power was complaisant, but you, Lucius, with all your complaisance, were for very love imperious. Carrying those two speeches in my right hand and my left, methought I was more honoured and more richly adorned than the priests of Eleusis carrying their torches, and kings holding sceptres in their hands, and the quindecimvirs opening the Sacred Books; and thus did I make my prayer to my ancestral[2] Gods: O Jupiter Ammon, I beseech thee, Libya's God . . . . some of the Gods also preferred to be worshipped as speaking rather than as silent . . . . . . . . . . . . the obstinate be inoculated with eloquence. Even the levin-bolt would lose half its terror did it not fall to the accompaniment of thunder. That very power of thundering was not committed to Father Dis or to Neptune or to the other Gods, but to their sovran emperor Jove, that by the crashing of clouds and the roaring of storms,
- ↑ A phrase found in the Elder Seneca (Controv. i.) and Quint. (Instit. i. pr.). It apparently originated with Cato.
- ↑ Fronto was a native of Cirta.
