REMAINS OF FRONTO
the much too mean and vulgar expressions brought by Laberius into use in Latin."
4. Then Postumius Festus, turning to a Latin grammarian, a friend of Fronto's, said, "Apollinaris has told us that nani is a Greek word. Will you inform us whether, as commonly used of mules and small horses, it is a Latin word, and in what author it is found?"
5. And the grammarian, a man without a doubt exceptionally versed in the writings of the ancients, said, "If I am not guilty of criminal presumption in saying, with Apollinaris present, what I think of any Greek or Latin word, I venture, Festus, in answer to your question to say that this word is Latin and is found written in the poems of Helvius Cinna,[1] no mean or unlearned poet," and he recited his actual verses, which, as they happened to stick in my memory, I have added:
Now swiftly past Cisalpine willow-thickets
My phaeton and pair of jennets whirled me.
Speech of Thanks in the Senate on behalf of the Carthaginians. Address to Antoninus Pius[† 1]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Just as you rebuilt Rhodes. Whatever Gods there
- ↑ The poet slain by mistake for the conspirator Cinna at the murder of Caesar.
- ↑ Found by Mai in a palimpsest (Cod. Palat. xxiv. ff. 53 and 46). Only the last 400 or so letters from the end of the speech are consecutively decipherable out of about 2,600. The scattered words legible from the rest of the speech contained a reference to the Carthaginian sea-power and empire, to seditiones orbi, to a shrine, and possibly, as Mai thinks, to the elder Faustina. The dots in the last lines represent the actual letters lost.
