M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
to keep safe for me the sweetest of masters, in whom I find a greater solace for this life than you can find for your sorrow from any source.
I have not written with my own hand because after my bath in the evening even my hand was shaky. Farewell, my most delightful of masters.
On the loss of his Grandson[1]
Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.
1. With many sorrows of this kind has Fortune afflicted me all my life long. For, not to mention my other calamities, I have lost five children under the most distressing circumstances possible to myself. For I lost all five separately, in every case an only child, suffering this series of bereavements in such a way that I never had a child born to me except while bereaved of another. So I always lost children without any left to console me and with my grief fresh upon me I begat others.
2. But I bore with more fortitude those woes by which I myself alone was racked. For my mind, struggling with my own grief, matched as in a single combat man to man, equal with equal, made a stout resistance. But no longer do I withstand a single or solitary opponent, for grief upon bitter grief is multiplied and I can no longer bear the consummation of my woes, but as my Victorinus weeps, I waste away, I melt away along with him. Often I even find fault with the immortal Gods and upbraid the Fates with reproaches.[2]
- ↑ This grandson may be the one who died, aged three, in Germany (see Ad Verum, ii. 9, 10, below).
- ↑ See Marcus, Thoughts, ii. 2, 3; 13, 16; iv. 3, 32; vi. 49, etc.
