M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
against its success. For I feel that my protracted illness can be made more bearable only by a consciousness of unfailing care and strict obedience[1] to the doctors' orders. Besides, it were shame, indeed, that a disease of the body should outlast a determination of the mind to recover health. Farewell, my most delightful of masters. My mother greets you.
Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar
To my Lord.
I have been troubled, my Lord, in the night with widespread pains in my shoulder and elbow and knee and ankle. In fact, I have not been able to convey this very news to you in my own writing.
Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar
To my Lord.
I have received your letter, most charmingly expressed, in which you say that the intermission in my letters has caused a longing for them to arise in you. Socrates was right, then, in his opinion that "pleasures are generally linked to pains," when in his imprisonment he held that the pain caused by the tightness of his chains was made up for by the pleasure of their removal.[2] Precisely so in our case the fondness which absence stimulates brings as much comfort as the absence itself causes affliction. For fond longing comes from love. Therefore, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this is far
- ↑ We know from Galen (xiv. 216, Kühn) that Marcus was in later life, too, a good and intelligent patient.
- ↑ In Plato's Phaedo, ad init.
