M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
famed as much for their eloquence as for their wisdom?[1]
5. Or do you think that Epictetus did not use words of set purpose? . . . .[† 1] would have preferred even a mantle foul with dirt to one that was white and spotlessly clean. Unless you think perchance that Epictetus became lame too of set purpose and of set purpose was born a slave. What then is it? So easily he . . . . never would have donned voluntary rags of words. Even a slave by accident he was of set purpose born a wise man. But so eloquence was divorced from soundness of feet[2] . . . .
On Eloquence 1
Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.
1 . . . . to distinguish between the place, rank, weight, age, and dignity of words, that they may not be put together absurdly in a speech, as it might be in a drunken and confused carouse; on what principles words are to be doubled and sometimes trebled, on occasion drawn up four deep, often carried to a fifth place[3] or even extended further than that; that words be not heaped to no purpose or at random but be combined within fixed and intelligent limits.
2. When all these have been examined, tested, distinguished, defined, and understood, then from
- ↑ All this was surely addressed to Marcus and not Verus.
- ↑ Epictetus, it is said, was made lame by the cruelty of his master, Epaphroditus.
- ↑ See for an illustration the first two lines of § 2, and cp. last letter, § 2, verba multiiuga.
- ↑ Four lines are illegible.
