M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
5. I say nothing of Gaius Caesar, Cleopatra's keenest foe and afterwards paramour, nothing of Augustus, the husband of Livia. As regards Romulus himself the founder of this city, when he slew the leader of the enemy in a hand-to-hand combat and brought the Spolia Opima[1] to Jupiter Feretrius, do you think he. was content with half rations? Verily no hungry or ascetic man could have conceived the idea of carrying off grown-up maidens from a public festival.[2] What? did not the aged Numa, most holy of men, pass his life putting sacred offerings and tithes to secular uses, and sacrificing bulls, sheep, and swine, he the dictator of festivals, the inaugurator of banquets, the promulgator of holidays? I call him a gourmand and a holiday-maker. And do you of all men keep your holidays fasting? Nor will I pass over your own Chrysippus,[3] who used to get mellow, so they say, every day in the year. And very many . . . . Plainly Socrates himself, as you may gather from the Symposia, the Dialogues, and the Letters of the Socratics, was a man of much shrewdness and wit—the Socrates, mark you, who was Aspasia's pupil and Alcibiades's teacher.
6. Now if you have declared war on play, relaxation, good living, and pleasure, yet do sleep as a freeman should. (When you have worked) hard till the last (hour of the day, will you continue your labours) till the dawn? Prithee, if no one had
- ↑ The choice spoils taken by a general from the general of the enemy slain in single combat.
- ↑ The rape of the Sabine women.
- ↑ So Diog. Laert. Chrys. 4. Horace (Odes, III. xxi. 11) says the same of Fronto's hero Cato.
