M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
every day, and I am elated as if I were still your master. For while I love and cherish all your merits, yet I confess that I derive my chief "and peculiar pleasure from your eloquence. Just as it is with parents, when in their children's faces they discern their own lineaments, so it is with me when in the speeches of either of you I detect marks of my school—and glad in her heart was Latona:[1] for I cannot express in my own words the intensity of my joy. And do not feel compunction at the recollection, or be vexed in the least with the consciousness, of not having devoted yourself continuously to eloquence. For the fact is that, if a man endowed with great natural capacity has been from the first brought into and trained in the right way of eloquence, although he have given it the go-by for a time or rested on his oars, as soon as ever he resolves to make a fresh start and set forward, he will get to the end of his journey somewhat less quickly of course, but less successfully not a whit. But believe me when I say that, of all the men whom I have ever known, I have never met with any one gifted with richer ability than yourself: I used, indeed, to affirm this with an oath to the immense disagreement of our dear Victorinus and his immense disgust, when I said that he could not aspire to the charm of your natural gift. Then that friend of mine, the Roman Rusticus,[2] who would gladly surrender and sacrifice his life for your little finger, yet on the question of your natural ability gave way against his will and with a frown.
- ↑ Hom. Od. vi. 106 = Verg. Aen. i. 502.
- ↑ About this time Consul II. and praef. urbi. For Marcus's relations with him see Thoughts, i. 17, §§ 4, 6. Soon after this letter was written he condemned Justin Martyr and his companions to death as Christians.
