M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
ing both sides of the question, Ariston will, I am sure, never sleep so soundly as to allow me to do that![1] Farewell, best and most honoured of masters. My Lady greets you.
Fronto to Marcus as Caesar
To my Lord.
I cannot see you, my Lord, till the day after tomorrow; for I am still laid up with pain in the elbow and neck. Bear with me, I beseech you, if what I ask of you is too great and difficult, so rooted in my mind is the conviction that you can succeed in all your endeavours. And I will let you hate me, if you do not accomplish all that I ask, provided that you apply, as you do, heart and mind to it. Farewell, my Lord, dearer to me than my life. Greet my Lady your mother.
Fronto to Marcus as Caesar
To my Lord.
1. The coining of new words, or onomatopoeia, which is allowed to poets to enable them more easily to express their thoughts, is a necessity to me for describing my joy. For customary and habitual words do not satisfy me; so transported am I with joy that I cannot in ordinary language signify the gladness of my heart at your having written me so many letters in so few days,[2] composed too with
- ↑ Here came the parting of the ways, and philosophy and his teacher Rusticus definitely vanquished Fronto and rhetoric. See Thoughts, i. 7 and 17, § 4.
- ↑ Philost. (Vit. Soph. 242, Kays.) tells us that Marcus sometimes wrote to Herodes three letters in one day.
