M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
set about seeking for a word; what I found fault with was the want of care shewn in selecting a word which made nonsense. For by openings in sleeves, which we occasionally see to be loose and flowing, heat cannot be suspended: heat can be dispelled through the openings of a robe, it can be thrown off, it can radiate away, it can be given a passage, it can be diverted, it can be ventilated out—it can be almost anything, in fact, rather than be suspended, a word which means that a thing is held up from above, not drawn away through wide passages.
8. After that I advised you as to the preparatory studies necessary for the writing of history,[1] since that was your desire. As that subject would require a somewhat lengthy discussion, I make an end, that I overstep not the bounds of a letter. If you wish to be written to on that subject too, you must remind me again and again.
Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar
To my Lord.
Gratia[2] came home last night. But to me it has been as good as having Gratia, that you have turned your "maxims" so brilliantly; the one which I received to-day almost faultlessly, so that it could be put in a book of Sallust's without jarring or shewing any inferiority. I am happy, merry, hale, in a word become young again, when you make such progress. It is no light thing that I shall require; but
- ↑ Marcus (see Thoughts, iii. 14) possibly wrote some sort of History of the Greeks and Romans, which Nicephorus Callistus (iii. 31) may perhaps refer to. But Marcus in his Thoughts, i. 17 ad fin., disclaims the study of histories.
- ↑ Gratia was Fronto's wife. He had also a daughter Gratia, who was married about 160, and so probably born between 140 and 145.
