M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
sudden and at first sight. So in orchards and gardens the growth of shrubs, reared and watered by hand, is not like that of the oak and the fir and the alder[1] and the cedar and the pine on their native hills which, springing up self-sown and set without plan and without order, owe nothing to the toil or services of a planter, but are fostered by the wind and the rain.
6. That love of yours, therefore, unplanted and sprung up without reason, will, I trust, grow steadily on with the cedars and the oaks; whereas if it were cherished by reason of services done, it would not outgrow the myrtles and the bays, which have scent enough but too little strength. In a word, love spontaneous is as superior to love earned by service as fortune is to reason.
7. But who is there knows not that reason is a term for human judgment, while Fortuna is a goddess and the chief of goddesses? that temples, fanes, and shrines have been dedicated to Fortuna[2] all the world over, while to Reason has been consecrated neither image nor altar anywhere? I cannot be wrong then in preferring that your love for me should be born rather of fortune than of reason.
8. Indeed reason can never compare with fortune either in grandeur or utility or worth. For neither can you match your pyramids, raised by hand and reason, against the hills, nor your aqueducts against the rivers, nor your cisterns against the fountains. Again, reason that guides our actions is called wisdom, the intuition of the seer is named divination. Nor is there anyone who would rather put faith in
- ↑ The alder seems out of place among upland and forest trees.
- ↑ See Plutarch, On the Fortune of the Romans, ch. x.; and for the various Fortunes cp. De Orat., ad init.
