M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
have eaten his dinner decently, the other juggled with his lips.
You will say, there are certain things in his books cleverly expressed, some also with dignity. Yes, even little silver coins are sometimes found in sewers; are we on that account to contract for the cleaning of sewers?[1]
4. The first and most objectionable defect in that style of speech is the repetition of the same thought under one dress and another, times without number. As actors, when they dance clad in mantles, with one and the same mantle represent a swan's tail, the tresses of Venus, a Fury's scourge, so these writers make up the same thought in a thousand ways, flourish it, alter it, disguise it, with the same lappet dance diverse dances, rub up one and the same thought oftener than girls their perfumed amber.
5. Has something to be said about fortune? You will find there the whole gallery of Fortunes, Fortunes of Antium, of Praeneste, Fortunes Regardant,[2] Fortunes too of baths, all Fortunes with wings, with wheels, with rudders.
One prelude of a poem[3] I will quote by way of example from a poet of the same time and of the same name, an Annaeus like the other. In the first seven verses at the beginning of his poem he has done nothing but paraphrase the words Wars worse than civil. Count up the phrases in which he rings the changes on this—and sanction granted to wrong: phrase number one; turning their conquering swords, in their own heart's blood to imbrue them:
- ↑ Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, quotes the proverb aurum ex stercore colligere.
- ↑ i.e. ready to aid men; see Cic. De Legg. ii. 11, §28.
- ↑ Lucan's Pharsalia, Book I. 2 ff.
