M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
meaning hard to express and needing almost a midwife's aid. You have given me joy, you have overjoyed me, may you be preserved to me. In having this letter written by my secretary I have saved my fingers from a heavy task,[1] as they are not at present to be trusted.
On Eloquence 3
Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neither a virgin that lisps may be chosen as a Vestal nor one that speaks indistinctly[2] . . . . Words descriptive of stammerers to be variously employed . . . . the utterance of stammerers is generally described as follows: an impeded utterance, a tied utterance, a laboured, a defective, an imperfect, a discordant utterance. The contraries of these have, I doubt not, already rewarded your search: a free utterance, a distinct, an easy, a perfect, a smooth utterance. Your utterance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A survey of all the terms applied to indistinct speakers . . . .
2. The lovers of melodious utterance are said to have listened first to the birds in a shady covert. Next shepherds delighted themselves and their flocks with the newly-invented pipes. Pipes seemed far more melodious than birds . . . . they take delight by way[3] of eloquence in the soft notes of
- ↑ A great part of this letter has obviously been lost.
- ↑ See Aulus Gellius, i. 12. This paragraph seems rather out of place. It has much affinity with the similar passage in De Orationibus, ad. med. below.
- ↑ Reading luco, we must translate "of whisperers, or warblers, in the grove of eloquence."
