THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar
Fronto to my Lord.[1]
1. In all arts, I take it, total inexperience and ignorance are preferable to a semi-experience and a half-knowledge. For he who is conscious that he knows nothing of an art aims at less, and consequently comes less to grief: in fact, diffidence excludes presumption. But when anyone parades a superficial knowledge as mastery of a subject, through false confidence he makes manifold slips. They say, too, that it is better to have kept wholly clear of the teachings of philosophy than to have tasted them superficially and, as the saying goes, with the tips of the lips; and that those turn out the most knavish who, going about the precincts of an art, turn aside or ever they have entered its portals. Yet in other arts it is possible, sometimes, to escape exposure, and for a man to be deemed, for a period, proficient in that wherein he is an ignoramus. But in the choice and arrangement of words he is detected instantly, nor can anyone make a pretence[2] with
- ↑ Certainly an early letter, possibly the earliest preserved (see § 4). In a subsequent letter to Marcus, as Emperor, it seems to be referred to as prima ilia lougiuscula epistula (see Ad Ant. i. 2). Marcus became consul in 140, and this fact could scarcely have been ignored in § 6.
- ↑ The Latin phrase verba dare alicui means "to use mere words to a person," i.e. to deceive him. It is difficult to reproduce the subtle play on the words.
B 2
