M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
5. Were you not eager for all the resources of orators, their adroitness in refuting, their talent for amplifying, their charm in evasion, and I know not what kind of downright power and potency, that lies in speaking, of moving and delighting, of deterring and provoking, of exhorting, of conciliating, of inflaming, of calming the minds of hearers or alluring them?
Then if on occasion hindered by perpetual business you had no time to compose a speech, did you not fortify yourself with certain hurried yet valuable recreations in the way of study, by collecting synonyms, at times by searching out remarkable words? so as to turn the periods of old writers and their clauses by the system of synonyms[1]; to render refined what was vulgar, and fresh what was soiled, fit in some image, throw in a figure, embellish with a good old word, add a patina of age. If you despise all this only because you have learnt it, you will also despise philosophy in the learning.
6. But these are not things which you could despise: dislike them of course you might. As in old days a morose Crassus[2] hated laughter, as in our time here a Crassus[3] hid from the daylight, and again in our time a man of consular rank had a horror of plains, and traversed the Pomptine plain and many other places with his litter closed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[† 1] But often even the wisest of men does not know how to speak in a
- ↑ i.e. apparently paraphrasing old writers by using synonymous but more striking expressions.
- ↑ The grandfather of Crassus the triumvir, called ἀγέλαστος.
- ↑ Probably Crassus Frugi, Spart. Vit. Hadr. 5.
- ↑ The lost passage was on Friendship, as we learn from a marginal note.
