M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
arena;[1] criminals even they may be or felons, yet you release them at the people's request. Everywhere, then, the people prevail and get their way. Therefore must you so act and so speak as shall please the people.
3. Herein lies that supreme excellence of an orator, and one not easily attainable, that he should please his hearers without any great sacrifice of right eloquence, and should let his blandishments, meant to tickle the ears of the people, be coloured indeed, but not along with any great or wholesale sacrifice of dignity: rather that in its composition and fabric there should be a lapse into a certain softness but no wantonness of thought. So, too, in a garment, I should prefer it to be of the softness that belongs to wool rather than to an effeminate colour; it should be of finely woven or silken thread, and itself purple not flame-red[2] or saffron. You and your father, moreover, who are bound to wear purple and crimson, must on occasion clothe your words, too, in the same dress. You will do this and be restrained and moderate with the best moderation and restraint. For this is what I prophesy, that what has ever been done in eloquence will be done to the full by you, so great is your natural capacity, and with such zeal and application do you devote yourself to learning;[3] although, in others, either application without capacity, or capacity alone without application, has won outstanding glory. I feel sure, my Lord, that you spend no little time in writing prose also. For
- ↑ Marcus himself refused to do this; see Dio, lxxi. 21). It was subsequently forbidden by law (Cod. IX. xlvii. 12).
- ↑ For luteus see Aul. Gell. ii. 26, § 8, = "flame-coloured," used of a bride's veil. For Fronto's thought cp. Seneca, Ep. 114 and 100 §§ 5 ff., quorundam non est compositio, modulatio est; adeo blanditur et molliter labitur; and lege Ciceronem; compositio una est; pedem servat lenta et sine infamia mollis.
- ↑ Capit. Vit. Mar. iii. 7, says of Marcus: tantum operis et laboris studiis impendit, ut corpus adficeret.
