M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
. . . . then follows a much weightier and austerer thought if . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . circumstances so compel . . . . the one word specific—companion, the other figurative—artizan. Nor is there any connexion or relationship between these words. The ear therefore is offended by the inherent contrast obtruded upon it . . . . . . . . . . . . Sallust says . . . . "and one who had also wasted his patrimony manu ventre pene."[1] You see how much the writer has effected by the likeness in the form of the words, so that the last word though far from modest does not strike one as indecent: for the reason doubtless that two similar words precede it. But if on the other hand he had spoken the words thus: quique pene bona patria laceraverat, the obscenity attached to the words would be obvious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . must lack disposition and digression.
3. To be sure you would read a book to your philosopher;[2] listen in silence while your master explained it; shew by nods that you understood him; while others were reading, you would yourself mostly sleep; would hear reiterated at length and often What is the first premiss? What is the second? with windows wide open hear the point laboured, If it is day, it is light. Then you would take your departure without a care, as one who had nothing to think over or write up the whole night long, nothing to recite to a master, nothing to say by heart, no hunting up of words, no garniture of a single synonym, no parallel turning of Greek into our own tongue. Against them[3] too did my master Dionysius the
- ↑ Catil. 14.
- ↑ Fronto is making fun of the dialectic method of teaching contrasted with the rhetorical.
- ↑ The dialecticians.
G 2
