M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
it in your youth; but in such a way as when a cloudless day begins to break with newly-dawning light. Now already your full excellence has risen with dazzling disc and spread its rays on every side: and yet you call me back to that bygone measure of my dawning love for you, and bid the morning twilight shine at noonday! Hear, I pray you, how much enhanced beyond your former is your present excellence, that you may more easily understand how much larger a measure of love you deserve, while you cease to claim only as much.
3. To begin my comparison of yourself to yourself with your dutifulness, I will mention your bygone devotion to your father,[1] and contrast it with your present attention to duty. Who does not know that, when your father was unwell, you used to discontinue baths in order to keep him company, deny yourself wine, even water and food; that you never studied your own convenience in the matter of sleep or waking or food or exercise, but sacrificed everything to your father's convenience? . . . .
Five Letters between Marcus and Fronto of which only the opening Words Remain
To my master, greeting. I have been unwell, my master . . . .
To my Lord Antoninus Augustus. If you can walk yet . . . .
To my master, greeting. I hasten to write, my master . . . .
- ↑ His adoptive father Pius. Marcus's pietas is also mentioned Capit. v. § 8, vii. § 2, and Dio, lxxi. 35.
