M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
the likenesses of kind, the likenesses of form, the whole, the parts, the individual traits, the differences, the contraries, the consequences and the resultants, the names, the accidents, the elements, and generally everything from which arguments are drawn, the point in fact so often dwelt upon when we were dealing with the commonplaces of the arguments of Theodorus.[1] If any of them have slipped your memory, it will not be amiss for us to go over them afresh when time serves. In this simile, which I have sketched out about your father and you, I have taken one of the accidentals of the subject, the identity of the safety and the enjoyment. Now it remains for you, by those ways and paths which I have pointed out above, to discover how you may most conveniently come at your Aenaria.
3. The pain in my elbow is not much better. Farewell, my Lord, with your rare abilities. Give my greeting to my Lady your mother. On another occasion we will follow out,[2] with more care and exactness, the whole art of simile-making; now I have only touched upon the heads of it.
Eulogy of Smoke and Dust
Fronto to his own Caesar.
1. The majority of readers may perhaps from the heading despise the subject, on the ground that nothing serious could be made of smoke and dust. You, with your excellent abilities, will soon see whether my labour is lost or well laid out.
- ↑ There were two rhetoricians of this name, one of Byzantium, the other of Gadara. The latter is probably meant.
- ↑ We have more on the subject in a letter to Marcus's mother (Epist. Graec. 1).
