Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/117

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

M. CORNELIUS FRONTO

that you have read, there are many fresh things introduced, not inelegantly as I fancy, particularly a passage on my past life, which I think will please you. if you read that excellent speech on a similar subject in defence of P. Sulla left us by M. Tullius: not that you should compare us as equals, but that you should recognise how far my mediocre talent falls short of that man of unapproachable eloquence.


On Speeches

? 163 A.D.

Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.

1. . . . . I will subjoin a few possibly unreasonable and unjust criticisms, for I will make you again have a taste of me as a master.[1] And you are aware that all this company of masters is more or less futile and fatuous—little enough of eloquence and of wisdom nought! You will I am sure bear with me for taking up anew my old-time authority and title of master.

2. For I confess, what is the fact, that only one thing could happen to cause any considerable set-back

  1. Owing to the confusion in the leaves of the Codex and their partial illegibility, it is impossible to be quite sure of the position of the various parts of this tractate, and consequently of the thread of the argument. It is obviously connected with the similar letters De Eloquentia above, being like them an appeal to Marcus not to neglect eloquence for philosophy. Little seems lost at the beginning, and Fronto enters at once on an indictment of the false eloquence of Seneca and his school, whom he accuses of trickeries and tautology, taking Lucan especially as an instance of the latter fault. He compares their mannerisms to a harpist in a cantata repeating a note again and again. He also charges such writers with meanness and slovenliness of diction, with effeminate fluency and preciosity. Turning to a speech lately delivered by Marcus, he praises him for his invention, and repeats (§ 8) what he had said in the De Eloquentia about clear and imperfect utterance. In connexion with this he refers to a treatise of Theodorus. which he had evidently used in his lessons. In § 9 an unfortunate gap obscures the trend of the argument, but we find him still discussing the Senecan style. From this he turns to the grandiloquence of a Gallic rhetor and his inappropriate use of Ennius. But the abrupt transition from Alexander to the Tiber is puzzling. In conclusion, he criticises severely an edict of Marcus and adds a warning against the debased style.
101