FRONTO, THE ORATOR AND THE MAN
figures and devices of the art of rhetoric, and his knowledge of the Roman language and literature was profound.
It has too hastily been assumed that he slighted the great writers of the best age, except Cicero and Sallust, and totally ignored the silver age authors except Lucan and Seneca. But he constantly imitates Terence, recognizes the literary eminence of Caesar and quotes him with approval,[1] calls Lucretius sublime, quotes him, and ranks him with his prime favourites, quotes Horace, whom he calls memorabilis, more than once, shows an intimate knowledge of Vergil,[2] and borrows from Livy. He also shows some acquaintance with Quintilian, Tacitus and Juvenal.
Fronto has been repeatedly called a pedant, but he was a true lover of his own language and guarded it jealously from unauthorized innovations and ignorant solecisms. His aim seemed to have been to shake the national speech out of the groove into which the excessive and pedantic purism of Cicero, Caesar and their followers had confined it. To do this effectually it was necessary to call in the aid of the great writers of an earlier age, such as Plautus and Ennius and Cato. But this sort of archaism was nothing novel. Thucydides was a thorough archaist, and so was Vergil, and Sallust was eminently one.[3] As the cramping
- ↑ Aul. Gell. xix. 8.
- ↑ Aul. Gell. ii. 26.
- ↑ Bacon "spangled his speech with unusual words," and Ben Jonson says that Spenser "in affecting the ancients writ no language."
