M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
am not bold enough for your taste. On that point I am desperately doubtful—there's a home-grown hendecasyllable for you! So I must call a halt with you before I fall into the poetic vein. Farewell, most missed of men and dearest to your Verus,[1] most honourable consul, master most sweet. Farewell, my sweetest soul.
To my Lord Aurelius Caesar your consul Fronto.
1. What nice ears men have nowadays! What taste in judging of speeches! You can leam from our Aufidius[2] what shouts of applause were evoked in my speech, and with what a chorus of approval were greeted the words in those days every bust was decorated with patrician insignia; but when, comparing a noble with a plebeian race, I said, As if one were to think the flame kindled on a pyre and on an altar to be the same because both alike give light, at this a few murmurs were heard.
2. Why have I told you this? That you, my Lord, may be prepared, when you speak before an assembly of men, to study their taste, not, of course, everywhere and by every means, yet occasionally and to some extent. And when you do so, remind yourself that you are but doing the same as you do when, at the people's request, you honour or enfranchise those who have slain beasts manfully in the
- ↑ His name at this time was Marcus Aurelius Verus.
- ↑ i.e. Victorinus, afterwards the son-in-law of Fronto. He was one of Marcus's school friends. Lucian, writing a little later, speaks similarly of the critical audiences (Quom. Hist. Scrib. 10). The passage here quoted may have appealed to patrician pride; or its cadence with its repetition of the letter i may have pleased the hearers.
