M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
men themselves do, if called away from their own individual habits and principles—Socrates from arguing, Zeno from disputing, Diogenes from finding fault, Pythagoras from sanctioning anything, Heraclitus from wrapping anything in mystery, Clitomachus from calling anything in question?
4. But that we may not dwell on this first part longer than is compatible with the compass of a letter, it is time to consider first what is your view about words. Tell me then, pray, whether in your opinion the choicest words must be disdained and rejected, even if they come to me of their own accord, without any toil and pursuit of mine? or, while forbidding the searching out of choice words with toil and eagerness, do you at the same time bid me receive them like Menelaus at the banquet,[1] if only they come of their own accord, unbidden by me and uninvited? For to forbid that indeed is downright harsh and barbarous, It is as though from a host who welcomes you with Falernian wine, which being produced on his own estate is abundant at home, you should call for Cretan or Saguntine, to be got—bad cess to it!—from elsewhere and paid for. What . . . . Epictetus unconcerned . . . . Socrates . . . . Xenophon . . . . Antisthenes . . . . Aeschines . . . . Plato . . . .[† 1] Would they then not indicate this, if . . . .[† 2] What in our own recollection of Euphrates,[2] Dio,[3] Timocrates, Athenodotus?[4] What of their master Musonius?[5] Were they not gifted with a supreme command of words, and
- ↑ Hom. Il. ii. 408.
- ↑ A Stoic philosopher friend of Pliny the younger. He committed suicide under Hadrian.
- ↑ Of Prusa, called "Golden-mouthed," orator and philosopher. He died about 117.
- ↑ Fronto's master.
- ↑ A Stoic philosopher under Nero and Vespasian.
E 2
