REMAINS OF FRONTO
When we were thus listening to all this that Fronto said, as was natural, not only with approbation but with admiration, he added:
"Take care, however, not to think that multi mortales should be used always and on every occasion for multi homines, that the Greek proverb from Varro's Satire, myrrh-oil on a dish of lentils, may not be actually exemplified."[1]
This criticism of Fronto's, though concerned with trifling and unimportant locutions, I thought worthy to be recorded, that we should not fail, perchance, through neglect or inadvertence to apply a nice discrimination to words of this kind.
On praeter propter
That the expression praeter propter, which has come to be a vulgarism, is found in Ennius.
1. I remember that Julius Celsinus Numida and I once went to call on Cornelius Fronto who was at the time suffering from gout. When we were admitted, we found him lying on a pallet-bed of Grecian pattern with many persons eminent for learning, birth or fortune sitting round him. Several architects, called in for the construction of a new bath, were in attendance, and they were exhibiting various sketches of baths drawn upon little scrolls of parchment. When he had chosen one
- ↑ A proverb for "wasting a good thing"; see .also Cic. Ad Att. i. 19.
