M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
admonish them with the words of your lips. For myself I never had any fear of these admonitions; I have more reasons than enough for setting foot in your school.[1]
2. I am writing this to you in the utmost haste, for what need of a longer letter from me when I send you so gracious a one of my Lord's? Farewell, then, glory of Roman eloquence, pride of your friends, a man of mark,[2] most delightful of men, most honourable consul, master most sweet.
3. In future be chary of telling so many fibs, especially in the Senate, about me. This speech of yours is "awfully"[3] well written. Oh, if I could only kiss your head for every heading of it! You have absolutely put everyone else in the background. With this speech before our eyes, vain is our study, vain our toil, vain our efforts. Fare ever well, sweetest of masters.
Fronto to Domitia Lucilla
To the mother of Caesar.
1. What excuse[4] of mine can win your pardon for my not having written to you all this time, if it be not by my stating the true cause of my want of leisure, that I had composed a speech about our great Emperor? The Roman saw bids us "not hate a friend's ways but ken them."[5] What mine are I will tell you, and not conceal them. From my great natural incapacity and worthlessness
- ↑ He knows his own weakness and never feared admonition, because he knows how much he needs it and such a teacher.
- ↑ Demosth. 928, 6.
- ↑ Horribiliter appears to be a slang use.
- ↑ A marginal note in the Codex says that this letter was to excuse Fronto's silence post integritatem redditam. Fronto's health seems meant.
- ↑ "Amici mores noveris non oderis." See Trench, On Proverbs, p. 49, note.
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