M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
Slender[1] indite a quite artistic apologue on a dispute between the Vine and the Holm-oak tree.
4. The vine vaunted herself above the holm-oak because she bore the most delicious of all fruits for the banquets of men and the altars of Osiris, alike sweet to eat and delightful to quaff. Then, again, she was arrayed with more care than queenly Cleopatra, with more taste than lovely Lais. So fair were her branches that from them were wound the thyrsus-wands for Liber, a garland for Silenus, and chaplets for the Nymphs and Maenads. But the holm-oak was rough, barren, unattractive, and never produced anything of any goodness or beauty except acorns . . . . . . . . . . . .[† 1] Now I purposely end with fictions that, if I have said anything too severe, it may be softened down by being mingled with fictions.
Fronto to Lucius Verus
To my Lord Verus Augustus.
. . . . I was so distressed in mind that I could not . . . . But on the receipt of your letter, the very fact that you had written with your own hand raised my hopes at the outset; then came your good news that after three days' fasting and a prompt and rather drastic letting of blood you had been freed from the risk of a threatened illness.[2] So I breathed again and recovered and made my prayers at every
- ↑ He was called λεπτός (see Athen. xi. 7), and also ἀσκάλαφος, from a line in Homer (Il. ii. 512) which he often quoted.
- ↑ Capit. (Vit. Veri, 6) tells us that Verus, while on his way to Asia for the Parthian war, was taken ill at Canusium. It appears that he narrowly escaped having a stroke, such as caused his death in January, 169, at the age of thirty-nine.
- ↑ About a column and a half are lost in the lacunae.
