M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
of your brother a history written in no perfunctory spirit would be likely to add some interest and celebrity, just as the blowing even of a light breeze can fan a fire however great.
As soon as your brother sends me his memoranda, I will undertake the writing of a full account, provided however that this, which I send as a foretaste, finds favour . . . . . . . .[† 1]
Preamble to History[1]
Fronto to Lucius Verus.
1. . . . . . . . . these great exploits wrought by you such as Achilles himself would fain have wrought and Homer written . . . . . . . . . . . . I am quite afraid that through some novelty and unusualness . . . . I shall have sung something not accordant with songs and measures . . . .
2. . . . . Sallust . . .: In fact their natural gifts, however rich, would have been of no avail had they not concerned themselves with the writing of their splendid achievements, and likewise were not their talents as writers on a par with the greatness of the deeds . . . . . . . .
- ↑ A preface to the history of the Parthian war which Fronto was to write from materials supplied to him by Lucius. This we may presume would have had considerable historical value. This preamble covered twenty-eight pages of the Codex. Fronto praises Lucius extravagantly, setting him even above the great Trajan. But much of the eulogy is mere rhetoric, and he seems to have had his eye on a rhetorical common place, Livy's sketch of Hannibal. The piece is too mutilated for us to be able to judge Fronto's performance fairly, but his account of the virtues and exploits of Lucius does not tally with what we learn of him elsewhere. Lucian may be referring to Fronto in his Quom. Hist. Scrib. § 19, where he ridicules the contemporary historians of the Parthian war, when he speaks of ἄλλος τις ἀοίδιμος ἐπὶ λόγων δυνάμει.
- ↑ Four and a half lines lost.
