M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
office is a clog round my feet. For there are a few days of it left, and these more than ever taken up with its duties. Once released from them, methinks I shall run to you with far more eagerness than those who run the course; for they, after a moment's delay at the starting-place, are forthwith despatched on their race, while I have already been kept from running to you these two months.
2. The right thing, it seems, would have been that all women from all quarters should have gathered for this day and celebrated your birth-feast, first, all the women that love their husbands and love their children and are virtuous, and, secondly, all that are genuine and truthful, and the third company to keep the feast should have been the kind-hearted, and the affable and the accessible and the humble-minded; and many other ranks of women would there be to share in some part of your praise and virtue, seeing that you possess and are mistress of all virtues and accomplishments befitting a woman, just as Athena possesses and is mistress of every art, whereas of other women each one is mistress of some one branch of excellence and commended for it, just as the Muses are praised individually, each one for a single art.
3. But had I been at your door, acting as a sort of introducer of those who were worthy of the festival, the first I should have shut out, on Homer's authority, would have been those who make a pretence of good-will and are insincere, who "hide one thing in their hearts while their lips speak another,"[1] with whom everything, from
- ↑ Homer, Il. ix. 312.
