M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
From Lucius Verus to Fronto
To my master, greeting.
. . . .[† 1] I have refrained from relating to you myself all that had necessarily to be set right or provided for in good time, or quickly remedied or carefully arranged.[1] Make allowance for my scrupulosity, if shackled with urgent cares I have dealt first with the business in hand and, counting on your good-natured indulgence towards me, have meanwhile given up writing. Pardon my reliance on our love if I have fought shy of describing my measures in detail, liable as they were to daily alteration and while the issue was still doubtful and all forecast precarious. Accept, I beseech you, the reason for so legitimate a delay. Why, then, write to others oftener than to you? To excuse myself shortly: because, in fact, did I not do so, they would be angry, you would forgive; they would give up writing, you would importune me; to them I rendered duty for duty, to you I owed love for love. Or would you wish me to write you also letters unwillingly, grumblingly, hurriedly, from necessity rather than from choice? Now why, you will say, not from choice? Because not even yet has anything been accomplished such as to make me wish to invite you to share in the joy. I did not care, I confess, to make one so very dear to me, and one whom I would wish to be always happy, a partner in anxieties which night and day made me utterly wretched,[2] and almost brought me to despair
- ↑ Verus is writing from Syria not long after his arrival at the seat of war, while the Parthians had not yet been definitely beaten.
- ↑ Nazarius (Paneg. xxiv. § 6) says that Varus in a panic offered the Parthian king terms which were scornfully rejected, but he means Lucius.
- ↑ The best part of a page is lost between the end of Ad Verum, ii. 1, and here.
