M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
mutterers. Anon they nevertheless put up with Ennius and Accius and Lucretius, resonant now with a fuller bass. But when the trumpet of Cato and Sallust and Tullius is heard upon the air, they are excited and affrighted and bethink them of flight, vainly, for even there in the teachings of Philosophy, where they think they have a safe refuge, the resonant periods of Plato will have to be heard.
3. This little story[1] applies to those who having no aptitude for it, shun eloquence in despair. But to you, O Caesar, if ever to man, has been given by the Gods a sublime and lofty and splendid genius; for your earliest thoughts and the infancy of your studies came under my ken. From the very first there was no hiding your nobility of mind and the dignity of your thoughts: they wanted then but one thing, the illumination of words: that too, we were providing by a varied course of study.
4. At this point, in the manner of the young and from a dislike of drudgery, you seem to have deserted the pursuit of eloquence, and to have turned aside after philosophy,[2] in which there is no exordium to be carefully elaborated, no marshalling of facts concisely and clearly and skilfully, no dividing of a subject into heads, no arguments to be hunted for, no amplification . . . . . . . . to complete what is imperfect, to fill up gaps with padding . . . . this age requires a friend for counsel rather than for help . . . . to complete what is imperfect, to fill up a hiatus, to make rough places smooth . . . .
- ↑ The evolution of eloquence just given.
- ↑ See i. p. 217, Ad M. Caes. iv. 13, and cp. Thoughts, i. 7 and 17, §4.
