THE CORRESPONDENCE OF 
 PRONTO AND M. AURELIUS 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 
 OXFORD, DECEMBER 3, 1903 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX OF EMENDATIONS 
 OF THE LETTERS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBINSON ELLIS, M.A., HON. LL.D. 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OK LATIN 
 
 California 
 Regional 
 facility
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 date stamped below ' 
 
 PA25 Ellis- 
 
 C68 The correspond- 
 v74 enoe of Pronto 
 and M. Aurelius.
 
 THE CORRESPONDENCE OF 
 PRONTO AND M. AURELIUS 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 
 OXFORD, DECEMBER 3, 1903 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX OF EMENDATIONS 
 OF THE LETTERS 
 
 BY 
 | 
 
 ROBINSON (ELLIS, 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN 
 
 CONDON 
 HENR^Y FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AMEN CORNER, E.G. 
 OXFORD: 116 HIGH STREET 
 
 1904
 
 C68 
 
 AT the beginning of the nineteenth century all that sur- 
 vived of the once famous orator M. Cornelius Fronto was a 
 few short fragments quoted in Charisius, in Servius' Com- 
 mentary on Vergil, and 'in the short treatise de Abstrusis 
 Sermonibus of Fulgentius Planciades. Yet his greatness as 
 a speaker had been attested not only by the fact of his being 
 selected to train the young Caesars M. Aurelius and L. Verus 
 in rhetoric,but by the united verdict of the Panegyrist Eume- 
 nius and the poet Ausonius, the former of whom comparing 
 him with Cicero had pronounced Fronto the second, but not 
 inferior, glory of Roman eloquence, while Ausonius, contrast- 
 ing his own elevation to the Consulship with Fronto's two 
 months' tenure of the same office, deprecates any rivalry 
 with Fronto's acknowledged eloquence, but prefers his own 
 Emperor Gratianus to Fronto's patron M. Aurelius. It 
 was remembered too that M. Aurelius, in the very first 
 chapter of his Reflexions, had ascribed to Fronto his percep- 
 tion of the jealousy, artifice, and insincerity which mark 
 tyrants, as well as the want of natural affection often found 
 in the so-called aristocracy. These were recommendations 
 of no slight kind to that ' great age ' in which the French 
 Revolution was still new, and the monarchs of Europe had 
 one after another been dispossessed by Napoleon. Great, 
 therefore, was the curiosity which greeted the announce- 
 ment in 1815 that an Italian scholar, the now famous Mai, 
 had discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan a palim- 
 psest containing on 282 pages of double columns, 24 lines 
 in each column, part of the correspondence between Fronto 
 and his pupil M. Aurelius. Later, when Mai removed to 
 Rome as librarian of the Vatican, he found there another 
 part of the same palimpsest, containing further letters of 
 
 B 2 
 
 3
 
 4 
 
 Fronto in 106 pages. Over the original writing had been 
 superscribed a Latin account of the Acts of the Council 
 of Chalcedon. On the antiquity of the original writing 
 various opinions have been formed ; Mai considered it 
 to be very old, indeed not later than the fourth century ; 
 Mebuhr referred it to the beginning of the seventh, 
 arguing from the shape of the letters, which are not 
 unlike those of the Pandects in the famous MS. at Florence. 
 Naber assigns it to the beginning of the sixth century, 
 and considers it to approximate most nearly to the 
 Vienna MS. of Livy. This view he conceives to be further 
 supported by the form and character of the Greek letters 
 (the MS. contains several epistles of and to Fronto in Greek) 
 and the absence of accents and marks of aspiration. There 
 are few contractions, q' for que, B' for bus, IMP. for irti- 
 perator. The facsimile given by Mai at the end of his Milan 
 edition, 1815, has in some cases a large comma written above 
 the line, apparently to divide words from each other, or 
 show when sentences end ; but it is hard to speak confi- 
 dently, as in a short letter of thirty-six words and five 
 sentences, the comma is introduced five times, but in two 
 of the five after words which do not end a sentence, and 
 one which does not even end a clause. The text of Fronto 
 in the MS. was emended at an early period by a person 
 whose name Caecilius was formerly legible at the end of 
 the third book of Epistles, though it has now been obliterated. 
 He has written in the margin sometimes words, sometimes 
 sentences, now transposed and altered, now in imperfect ex- 
 cerpts, now in full. His notes are more numerous towards 
 the end. There are a few various readings. All this is 
 reproduced in Naber's edition of Fronto (1867). After the 
 publication of the Ambrosian part by Mai, it was again 
 edited by Niebuhr, Buttmann, and Heindorf conjointly. 
 Mai, on the discovery of the Vatican portion, re-edited the 
 whole in 1823, since which time nothing of much impor- 
 tance was done till 1858 J , when Naber's friend, Du Rieu, 
 
 1 Sec Du Rieu'a Schedae Vaticancu, Praef., p. a, published in 1860.
 
 again examined the MS. very carefully, and rearranged the 
 whole. Instead however of publishing his results himself, 
 he entrusted them to Naber, whose edition of 1867 still 
 remains the only adequate form in which the text of the 
 Letters can be studied. In 1874 Klussmann published hisi 
 excellent Emendationes Frontoniariae with an Epistula 
 Critica by Studemund, and in 1902 the Dutch scholar 
 Brakman in his Frontoniana contributed the results of 
 a new examination of both palimpsests, which must be 
 considered valuable. From a short conversation with 
 Dr. Hauler of Vienna in 1897 I learnt that he was then 
 meditating a new edition. 
 
 The literary interest of this correspondence is consider- 
 able. It comprises 8 books ad M. Caesarem et inuicem, i.e. 
 between Fronto and M. Aurelius, still Caesar, 2 to M. Aure- 
 lius as Imperator, 2 Ad Verum Imperatorem, to Aurelius' 
 colleague Verus, i to Marcus Antoninus de eloquentia, 
 i to the same de oTationibus, i to Antoninus Pius, 2 Ad 
 Amicos et inuicem. Besides these, there are six short and 
 imperfect treatises: (i) Principia Historiae, (2) Laudes 
 Fumi et Pulueris, (3) Laudes Negligentiae, (4) De Bella 
 Parthico, (5) De Feriis Alsiensibus, (6") De Nepote Amisso t 
 (7) Arion. There is finally a short book of Greek letters, 
 in which two Latin letters are included. We have thus, 
 numerically, a tolerably large body of remains from which 
 to estimate the literary merits and position of Fronto, 
 among the writers of African Latin the most conspicuous 
 figure that has survived to modern times with the single 
 exception of Apuleius. It is true that nothing remains of 
 his speeches, and it was on his speeches that his chief title 
 to distinction rested. In this respect he is at a disad- 
 vantage as compared with another but later writer who 
 happens to be included in the same palimpsest with himself, 
 the famous supporter of Paganism in its last days, the 
 object of the Christian poet Prudentius' attack, the episto- 
 lographer and orator Symmachus, of whose oratory at least 
 some fragments survive. This is the more regrettable as 
 Fronto is selected by no less a critic than Macrobius
 
 (Sat v. i) in the passage where he describes the four styles 
 of oratory, the copious, the concise, the colourless, the 
 florid, as the best type of the colourless or dry style 
 (siccus), and is contrasted -with the younger Pliny and 
 Syminachus, who represented the fourth or florid genus. 
 
 M. Cornelius Pronto was born in the Berber town Cirta 
 (modern Constantine), it is not known in what year, but 
 perhaps, as Monceaux thinks, in the principate of Nerva or 
 the first years of Trajan. Nor are we informed when he 
 left his native country for Rome, where, seemingly under 
 the training of the philosopher Athenodotus and the 
 rhetorician Dionysius, he gave himself to the study of 
 eloquence and rose under Hadrian (109-138 A.D.) to be the 
 first orator of his time. As such he is mentioned by Dion 
 Cassius among the chief ornaments of Hadrian's reign (Ixix. 
 18). Hadrian himself he never liked and seems to have 
 avoided close contact with him; 'I approached him,' he 
 confesses in a letter to M. Aurelius, p. 25 N., ' as a kind of 
 Mars Gradivus, or Dis Pater, whom I wished to soothe 
 rather than loved,' This was not inconsistent with fre- 
 quent laudation of Hadrian in the senate ; and these 
 orations were, Fronto tells us, in every one's hands. 
 
 An Algerian inscription, Renier 2717, gives a list of the 
 offices he held before his appointment to the Consulship : 
 triumvir capitalis, quaestor of the province of Sicily, 
 plebeian aedile, praetor. It was not till the sixth year of 
 Antoninus Pius, 143 A.D., that he was made consul suffectus 
 for the months of July and August. Before this he had 
 been appointed tutor in rhetoric to the young M. Aurelius, 
 and later to L. Verus, the future joint-rulers of the Roman 
 Empire, whom Antoninus Pius had adopted, in conformity 
 with the wish of Hadrian, as the condition of his own 
 succession to the principate (Feb. 25, A.D. 138). 
 
 From this time to the end of his life Fronto continued 
 in high favour with the reigning emperors, his reputation 
 increasing steadily with his years. He was offered the pro- 
 consulate of Asia, but declined it on grounds of health. 
 ' I had made every preparation for starting, and had even.
 
 arranged with a Mauritanian soldier-friend of tried ex- 
 perience to provide means for hunting out and coercing 
 the banditti. It was my hope by spare diet and drinking 
 water to alleviate, if not keep off, the malady from which 
 I Buffer. But an attack supervened of such violence as to 
 convince me that all hope of accepting the post was impos- 
 sible' (p. 169). He remained at Rome, too confirmed an 
 invalid to be very happy, too much courted and caressed 
 to be quite miserable. Capitolinus tells us (M. Aurel. 2), 
 that M. Aurelius had a statue erected to him, and he was 
 doubtless included in the series of golden effigies which the 
 Emperor placed in his Lararium in honour of his various 
 preceptors (ib. 3). Though he affected no state, he was rich ; 
 owned villas in different parts of Italy, was proprietor of 
 the famous horti Maecenatiani (p. 23), and is introduced by 
 A. Gellius (xix. 10) as surrounded by architects who ex- 
 hibited to him plans of costly baths, one requiring an 
 outlay of 350,000 sesterces. It is not wonderful therefore 
 that he is mentioned in the inscription above quoted as 
 patronus of the African town of Calama, and seems to have 
 been solicited to assume the same function in his native 
 Cirta (p. 200). 
 
 In the loss of all Fronto's orations, it will suffice to 
 mention the titles of those by which he gained most 
 applause. The Panegyrist Eumenius (Pan. Constantii XIV), 
 from whom I have cited the words Fronto Romanae elo- 
 quentiae non secundum sed alterum decus, quotes a passage 
 from the eulogium which he addressed to Antoninus Pius on 
 his successful consummation, though not personally present, 
 of the war in Britain. Another famous display was his 
 invective against Herodes Atticus, his rival in oratory and 
 the instructor of M. Aurelius in Greek, as Fronto in Latin, 
 rhetoric. On this occasion M. Aurelius interceded with 
 Fronto in behalf of Herodes ; and the orator seems to have 
 modified the violence of his invective, at the same time 
 that he maintained a stern and dignified attitude towards 
 an undoubted offender. In his speech de hereditate 
 Matidiae he supported M. Aurelius and his wife Faustina
 
 against Matidia's legatees. But the crowning effort of 
 his oratory was his speech against Pelops, probably, as 
 Niebuhr suggested, the celebrated physician mentioned by 
 Aelius Aristides and Galen ; in this he surpassed himself, 
 as we are expressly told by Apollinaris Sidonius (Epp. 
 vii. 10). 
 
 Deplorable as is the loss of even one specimen of Fronto's 
 oratory instructive as it would have been to compare 
 him with his great rival, Cicero, or his senior contem- 
 porary, Pliny, particularly where both had to deal with 
 the same materials, the laudation of really great and 
 admirable emperors we have enough left us in the 
 palimpsest remains discovered by Mai to form an adequate 
 idea not only of the man but of the epoch in which he 
 lived and which was moulded considerably by him. A 
 circumstance there is which heightens or even doubles the 
 attractiveness of Fronto's correspondence. The letters 
 with their replies are addressed to and answered by a 
 youth who became later one of the greatest and certainly 
 one of the best men of the Koman world. When the 
 correspondence with his tutor began, M. Aurelius was quite 
 young, audax puerulus, as he calls himself (p. 41), perhaps, 
 as Naber thought, nineteen years old. Such indeed is 
 the tone of these letters between master and pupil as to 
 suggest an even earlier age. They may fairly be said to over- 
 flow with affection, and this a reciprocal passion in which 
 the fondness of the master is more than equalled by the 
 ardour of the pupil. It may well be that the feeling of 
 fondness which Fronto would naturally conceive for Marcus 
 as a young boy extended itself to his adolescence and even 
 to his mature youth ; in fact he tells us so in one of the 
 first passages of the letters (p. 102). ' Schoolmasters, as 
 we know, have more affection for their pupils while they 
 are still learning the tasks of boyhood and paying their 
 fee. Speaking for myself, the moment I entered upon the 
 work of tending and cultivating your intellect, my hopes 
 anticipated that you would be what you are : I strained 
 the eyes of my affection to reach into this your reign.
 
 Your boyhood was already bright with native excellence, 
 your adolescence still brighter ; yet only with the dawning 
 and imperfect light of a day without cloud. Now at last 
 the brilliant orb of your perfect excellence has risen and 
 dispersed its rays over the world ; and yet you would 
 recall ine to the ancient measure of a love still in its dawn, 
 and would have the dim light of morning shine at midday.' 
 Again (p. 51), 'In receiving the letters you sent me every 
 day, I felt all the pangs of a lover who sees his love hurry- 
 ing to him along a rugged and perilous road. His joy at 
 meeting again alternates with his alarm at the danger.' 
 Again (p. 74), ' If, when slumber's chain has bound me, to 
 speak with the poet, I see you in my sleep, I never fail to 
 embrace and kiss you ; then, according as each sleep varies 
 its scene, I either weep profusely or feel my heart beat 
 with an ineffable joy.' Again (p. 155), * I confess and it is 
 a fact that I tell you that one thing, and one only, can 
 occur to make my love for you halt to any considerable 
 degree your neglecting oratory.' 
 
 On his side Marcus was equally warm (p. 26). 
 
 ' To my dear Fronto. I give in, you have conquered ; all 
 lovers that ever were you have conquered in loving. Take 
 the crown : and besides this let the herald declare openly 
 in front of your tribunal this your victory. Marcus Cor- 
 nelius Fronton Consul a la victoire ; il revolt la couronne 
 des grandes luttes d'amour. For my part, defeated as 
 I am, I am not likely to withdraw from my devotion or 
 prove untrue. Leaving it then to yourself to love me more 
 than man ever loved man, I, who own an inferior power in 
 loving, shall love you more than any human being loves 
 you, nay more than you love yourself. Henceforth Gratia 
 and I are rivals : and yet I feel I shall not be able to go 
 beyond her. For her passion, as Plautus says, is a rain 
 whose large drops have not only drenched her robe, but 
 actually course through her vitals.' Again (p. 56), ' What 
 do you think are my feelings, when I reflect how long it is 
 since I have seen you, and why it is I have not seen you ? 
 Possibly indeed I may not see you during the few days 
 
 B3
 
 10 
 
 which you are compelled to take for recovering your 
 strength. So as long as you lie by, my own spirits must 
 droop ; when with heaven's help you stand on your feet again, 
 my own spirits will resume their composure : at this moment 
 they burn with the intensest longing to see you. Farewell, 
 thou soul of thy own Caesar, thy friend, thy pupil.' And in 
 another letter he even more closely anticipates the language 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets (p. 4) : ' Where my mind has be- 
 taken itself, I do not know, except that I know this, it is 
 on its way to that unknown somewhere, you. ... If you 
 think of any waters as a cure, write and restore to my 
 breast its soul.' 
 
 Similar, but perhaps a little less high-flown,' is the ex- 
 pression of Fronto's feeling for his younger pupil, Lucius 
 Verus. ' How often,' he writes (p. 1 36), ' have you supported 
 me in your hands, raised me when I had difficulty in 
 standing up, or almost carried me when bodily weakness 
 made it difficult to move ! With what a joyous and benign 
 look did you always greet me : how gladly converse and 
 how long 1 how unwillingly break off the conversation ! ' 
 
 The infirmities of which Fronto here speaks extended to 
 every part of his body and fill his whole correspondence. 
 He was a perpetual sufferer from gout, and is called ' Fronto 
 the gouty ' by Artemidorus (de Somniis, iv. 24), and twice 
 described by Gellius (ii. 26, xix. 10) as pedibus aeger, and 
 pedes tune grauiter aeger. He describes himself as suffer- 
 ing successively in the arm, the elbow, the knee, the neck, 
 the groin, the left foot, the sole, the stomach, the right 
 hand, the chest, the windpipe, the shoulders, the peritoneum 
 (if Klussmann's conjecture is right, p. 72), the eyes. The 
 whole of the fifth book of the correspondence with Aurelius 
 is an alternation of Fronto's varying ailments and Marcus' 
 sympathizing replies : a fact, I believe, without any other 
 example in Greek or Roman literature. But he knew how 
 to turn his pains to good purpose ; they excused his at- 
 tendance at court, and gave him a real plea for absenting 
 himself from visits of ceremony which to a man so much 
 employed as a pleader must too often have been a waste of
 
 11 
 
 time. Nor does it seem that such absences were resented 
 or that they caused any coldness between the Caesar and 
 his master. 
 
 As might be expected from the intimacy of their relations, 
 the letters of Fronto and Marcus range over a wide list of 
 subjects and admit us to many different phases of Italian 
 life in the second century A. D. The most prominent place 
 must be given to literature, under which I include oratory 
 and the study of words. At that time Rome was filled 
 with grammarians, and most of them acknowledged a leader 
 in Fronto. The Attic Nights of A. Gellius are perhaps the 
 most faithful exhibition of the literary tendencies of the 
 epoch, Gellius introduces us no less than five times to scenes 
 in which Fronto is the central figure. Once it is a discus- 
 sion with Favorinus on colours and the words which express 
 them (ii. 26) ; then a defence of Claudius Quadrigarius' 
 cum multis mortalibus against a caviller who could feel no 
 difference between this and cum multis hominibus (xiii. 29) ; 
 in a third (xix. 8) the question is asked, Have harena, 
 triticum, caelum plurals 1 has quadrigae a singular. ? and 
 Fronto quotes the Dictator Caesar's de Analogia and a 
 passage of Ennius : in a fourth praeter propter, alleged 
 to be a low word used by artisans, is defended and shown 
 to be good Latin (xix. 10) : in the fifth a grammatical 
 quartett, Gellius, Apollinaris Sulpicius, Festus Postumius, 
 and Fronto, canvass in the vestibule of the Palace the 
 respective claims of nanus and pumilio ; and Fronto's dis- 
 paraging opinion of 'nanus is shown by Apollinaris to be 
 inconsistent with its being genuine Greek, and by Postumius 
 with its authorization by a poet as learned and famous as 
 Helvius Cinna. 
 
 This side of Fronto's activity is well represented in the 
 letters. He has the most pronounced judgements on Roman 
 oratory, and it is clear that with him oratory depended for 
 its success almost wholly on the choice of words. ' Few 
 writers,' he says (p. 62), ' have addressed themselves to the 
 laborious and hazardous study of carefully looking for words. 
 Among orators Cato above all others and his constant 
 
 B 4
 
 12 
 
 imitator Sallust ; among poets Plautus especially, and most 
 especially Ennius with his studious imitator L. Caelius : again, 
 Naevius, Lucretius, Accius, Caecilius, and Laberius. Reserv- 
 ing these, there are some writers whom you may observe to 
 be choice in special lines ; Novius, Pomponius,and their com- 
 peers, in words of country life or of jesting and farce : Atta 
 in words used by women, Sisenna in love-scenes, Lucilius in 
 the words appropriate to each profession or business. You 
 may perhaps ask impatiently where I place Cicero, the 
 so-called fount and spring-head of Roman eloquence. I 
 consider him to have used invariably the finest words and 
 to have excelled all other orators in the splendour with 
 which he adorns everything he wished to set off with dis- 
 tinction. I hold him, however, to have been far removed 
 from any minute search for language, either because he was 
 too high-minded or shunned the labour, or felt assured 
 that without any search he would find ready to his hand 
 words which would hardly occur to others with it. And 
 so I believe I have made out for I have been a careful 
 reader of everything he wrote that while he has handled 
 all other classes of words with rare fullness and richness, 
 words proper or metaphorical, simple or compound, in- 
 cluding those choice, and often quite beautiful dictions 
 which shed a lustre over all his writings still throughout 
 his speeches any one of those sudden surprises of language 
 which only study, attention, vigilance and extensive 
 memory of old poetry are able to discover, is very rare in- 
 deed. By sudden surprises of language I mean what comes 
 upon the hearer or reader unexpectedly and unawares, 
 such that if it is withdrawn and the reader is ordered to 
 search himself for the right word, he will either find none 
 at all or no other as well fitted to indicate the meaning.' 
 
 He illustrates what I have here translated by the various 
 uses of luere and its compounds. To rinse the mouth is 
 os colluere, to scour a pavement is pelluere, to wash off 
 sweat abluere, to wash out a stain eluere, to mix a draught 
 of mulse diluere, to rinse the throat proluere, to bathe an 
 animal's hoof sulluere. To wash a dress is lauare, to
 
 13 
 
 drench the cheeks with tears is lauere, to scour away dirt 
 that clings is elauere, a word affected by Plautus. 
 
 A similar characterization of Roman orators and historians 
 is found (p. 113). 'Among poets, as every one knows, Lucilius 
 is a type of the meagre, Albucius of the lifeless style, 
 Lucretius is lofty, Pacuvius neither high nor low, Accius 
 unequal, Ennius various. Again, history has been written 
 by Sallust in a set periodic style, by Pictor roughly, by 
 Antias with sprightliness, by Sisenna tediously, by Cato with 
 words in long teams, by Caelius in single words. Again, 
 in public harangues Cato is fierce, Gracchus noisy, Cicero 
 copious : in judicial speeches Cato is furious, Cicero exultant, 
 Gracchus vehement, Calvus quarrelsome.' Nor must we 
 suppose that Fronto contented himself with merely lauding 
 these antiquated worthies ; he got copies to be made of 
 them and dispatched them to his imperial pupil ; the Sota 
 of Ennius, we learn from Marcus himself, was thus sent 
 off to him written on cleaner paper, in a more attractive 
 volume and finer writing ; whether it was read, or if read 
 thought much of, we are not told ; but the next sentence 
 informs us that a speech or speeches of Gracchus which 
 Pronto wished also to send, might as well wait, as there 
 was no hurry. It would seem that the great literary epoch 
 of Domitian and Trajan, the epoch of Statius, Juvenal, 
 Martial, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny, was too recent in men's 
 memories to give way without a struggle to a new creed 
 which reversed their pretensions and returned by preference 
 to the older, mostly pre-Ciceronian models, now long out of 
 date and only to be revived by an effort. Fronto, however, 
 was too wise to attack these great names ; his scoffs are 
 aimed at an earlier generation, the writers of Nero's reign, 
 specially the younger Seneca and Lucan. 
 
 This is his verdict on Seneca (p. 156) : 'I well know the 
 fellow to be copious and exuberant in philosophic aphorisms 
 (sententiis) ; but I observe that his trotting sentences no- 
 where hold on at a quick galloping pace, nowhere join issue, 
 nowhere aim at a grandiose effect ; he is like Laberius, full 
 of witty sallies, or perhaps I should say witticisms, rather
 
 14 
 
 than of smartly turned dicta. Do you really think 
 you will find weightier judgements, I mean on the same 
 matter, in your Seneca than in Sergius ? But then 
 Sergius' sentences are not so well modulated ; true ; nor so 
 lively in movement ; no : nor so resonant : granted. Well, 
 suppose the same breakfast served up to both, one of the 
 two fingering the olives set before him, putting them to his 
 mouth, chewing them in the authorized manner of mastica- 
 tion ; the other tossing his olives into the air, opening his 
 mouth to catch them, displaying them when caught at the 
 tip of his lips as a conjurer does with counters. By this 
 he would certainly secure the vivas of boys, and the amuse- 
 ment of the guests ; but the one would be taking his meal 
 decorously, the other using his lips to play the harlequin.' 
 The criticism is severe, but has at least elements of truth ; 
 even more decidedly damning is what he says of the 
 Neronian affectation of repeating the same idea in many 
 different forms. 
 
 ' The first vice in that kind of speaking is a very vile one, 
 I mean repeating the same idea a thousand times over in 
 a different dress. As actors dancing in a mantle use the 
 same mantle to express a swan's tail, the hair of Venus, the 
 lash of a Fury ; just so this school of writers present the 
 same one sentiment in many forms, air it, change and turn 
 it about, rub up the same one idea continually. 
 
 ' Has something to be said about Fortune ? You shall 
 find there every single aspect of the Goddess : the Fortune 
 of Antium, the Fortune of Praeneste, Fortune looking back- 
 wards, even the Fortune of the bath, all alike with wings, 
 wheels, and rudders. 
 
 1 As an instance I will mention one poetical prelude, by 
 a poet of the same time and the same name : he was him- 
 self an Annaeus. At the beginning of his epic he has 
 illustrated in the first seven lines one single idea a more 
 than civil war. Now count up how many varieties he 
 uses to unfold the idea.' Here he proceeds to draw out 
 Lucan's famous proem clause by clause, adding at the 
 end, ' Annaeus, where will you finish ? Or if limit and
 
 15 
 
 measure must not be observed, why not add Et similes 
 lituos ; concluding with et carmina nota tubarum 1 
 Indeed you may as well go on to coats of mail, helmet- 
 plumes, swords, belts, and the whole equipage of war.' 
 With this Neronian verbiage he rightly contrasts the 
 condensation of Apollonius Rhodius, who in the four 
 hexameters with which his Argonautica open 
 
 cre'o, 4>oT/3e, ira\ai-yevfa>i> /cAe'a 
 ot HOVTOIO Kara orojua Kat 86a 
 Kvaveas f3a(ri.\f}o$ f(f>r]{j.ocrvvri HeAiao 
 Xpv<r(i.ov jixera Kwas fv^vyov TyAacrai; 'Apyco. 
 sums up five separate circumstances, the heroes who sailed, 
 the course they took, the king who commanded the voyage, 
 the purpose of the voyage, the ship which carried the 
 Argonauts. 
 
 For Sallust Fronto had an undisguised admiration, and 
 is fond of coupling him with Cato, whom Sallust imitated, 
 and as such is called sectator Catonis (p. 62). When con- 
 gratulating Marcus on the success with which he had 
 expressed some sententia, he tells him 'it might be put 
 into a work of Sallust's, without any difference or in- 
 feriority being noticeable,' and he urges him to perfect his 
 style by reading daily some part of the Jugurtha or Catiline. 
 It is amusing to find that this admiration was not equally 
 shared by Marcus : he begs off reading Sallust, excusing 
 himself by his undivided devotion to Cato (p. 36). The 
 letter, indeed, in which he says so is only half serious, and 
 it is probable that in his maturer years the great philosopher 
 became equally indifferent to both Sallust and Cato. It was 
 no part of the Stoic training to think much of rhetoric 
 or busy oneself with questions of style : so the Emperor 
 himself confesses in his Reflexions (i. 7) : and Sallust is 
 nothing if not a stylist. Style indeed is implied in the 
 very adverb by which Fronto describes Sallust, structe, 
 i.e. with a studious attention to periodic arrangement. 
 Such aiming at effect, we may believe, however much in 
 unison with his preceptor's teaching, would become less 
 and less acceptable to M. Aurelius as he grew older, more
 
 16 
 
 reflective, and more conscious of the seriousness of his 
 position as master of the world. 
 
 Besides the Jugurtlia and Catiline we find Fronto 
 quoting from Sallust's Histories, the letters sent by 
 Mithridates to Arsaces asking for aid in war, and the 
 letter of On. Pompeius to the Senate (p. 1 26). 
 
 Of Plautus Fronto seems to have been so great an admirer 
 as to satisfy the exacting requirements even of a Ritschl or 
 the eminent band of German critics who have revived the 
 study of his comedies during the past half-century. A well- 
 known passage from the Mostellaria we have cited already ; 
 from the Rudens he quotes piscatu ha/niatili et saocatili 
 (p. 225), from the Bacchides maculosa maculosioraque quam 
 nutricis pallium, from the lost Colax (p. 33) the lines 
 Qui data fide firmata fidentem fefellerint 
 Subdoli subsentatores, regi qui sunt proximi, 
 Qui aliter regi dictis dicunt, aliter in ammo habent : 
 from an unknown passage, perhaps Poen. i. i. 49 or iii. 3. 
 43, where however our MSS. give liberum, the combination 
 lubricum locum =uoluptarium ; taking occasion by the way 
 to comment jocularly on the Plautine facere animo uolup, 
 which he calls halving words, to assure Marcus that he 
 (Marcus) at any rate was beyond any such suspicion, and 
 was far more likely to admit to his society a vulpine than 
 a voluptuous friend (p. 225). Even in a short business letter 
 he can stop to draw an illustration from Plautus. Recom- 
 mending to Avidius Cassius one Junius Maximus, he writes, 
 ' No Plautine braggart could speak more loftily of his own 
 achievements than Junius of yours ; the only difference is 
 that Plautus commends wittily, Junius as the most faithful 
 of attached friends.' In another passage, which it is as 
 difficult for us now, as it must have been for the Romans of 
 that time, to read without a smile, he imagines Marcus in 
 his holiday retreat at Alsiurn alternately taking a polish 
 from Plautus, sating his spirit with Accius, tranquillizing it 
 with Lucretius, rousing it to a glow with Ennius. 
 
 Certainly the days of reaction had set in ; Horace, that 
 notable (memorabilis] poet whom Fronto once condescends
 
 17 
 
 to quote as endeared to him by his friendship to Maecenas 
 and Maecenas' gardens which he was then occupying (p. 23), 
 is as completely set aside as Pope by Wordsworth, Boileau 
 by Keats, the music of the eighteenth century by Wagner. 
 
 But there is a time for everything, and Fronto's was the 
 time when the Romans, tired with the artificiality of their 
 latest literature, turned again to the forgotten writers of the 
 Republic, and in spite of Horace began an organized study 
 of works which had long been laid on the shelf. Plautus 
 and Terence, it is true, could never be old-fashioned ; but the 
 revival extended much beyond these, and gave once more a 
 temporary vogue to such works as the Bellum Punicum of 
 Naevius, the Annals and Tragedies of Ennius, the dramas 
 of Pacuvius, Afranius, Accius, the Satires of Lucilius, and 
 even the prose histories of Quadrigarius, Caelius Antipater, 
 and Sisenna. This new study was greatly assisted by its 
 close connexion with every form of antiquarian research, 
 particularly with the examination of archaic words, archaic 
 forms and inflexions, archaic deviations from the recog- 
 nized rules of classical construction and prosody. With 
 the study of grammar, the study of rhetoric advanced pari 
 passu. Eloquence, according to Fronto, largely consisted in 
 choosing the best language ; it is easy to see how this 
 Aet#T7pta worked into cognate subjects, and tended to 
 develop lexicography and minute examination of words. As 
 might be expected there were many teachers of rhetoric, 
 many grammarians, many writers on antiquities. Suetonius, 
 who belonged to the beginning of the second century, was 
 both a writer on antiquities and a lexicographer. Under 
 Hadrian Terentius Scaurus, whom Charisius and Diomedes 
 often cite, besides grammatical treatises, wrote a commentary 
 on Plautus ; Sulpicius Apollinaris, Arruntius Celsus, 
 A. Gellius were contemporaries of Fronto. One of the 
 greatest of Greek grammarians, Herod ian, dedicated a work 
 to M. Aurelius. 
 
 In Fronto's letters we are able to trace these tendencies 
 of the age not indistinctly. They abound with peculiar, 
 often archaic words and constructions of words. From
 
 18 
 
 Naber's Index I select the following : admurmurari, con- 
 garrire, deliberamentum, reui'mentum, samentum, dicta- 
 bolarium, disconcinnus, genum for genu, inluculascere, 
 inplicisci, inuiare, liniteus for linteus, pedetemptius com- 
 parative of pedetemptim, perfrictriuncula, poetare, pro- 
 dormire, rogatarius, sirbenus, spernari, superuacaneo 
 adverb, tolutiloquentia, uolentia, uoluptatiuus, claudere = 
 claudicare, expergitus for experrectus, exradicitus (Plautine), 
 fuat and abfuat for sit absit, horribHiter extraordinarily, our 
 ' awfully,' ipsus for ipse, modificari with dat. = modum 
 Jacere, nullum nearly = nihil, octauidus for octauo idus, 
 praeditus for praepositus, querella of a bodily complaint, 
 symbolus masc.for symbolum, tarn for tamen, tutari passive: 
 and the following constructions, alienus with dative, anim- 
 aduertere with accusative = punire, carere with accus., 
 curare with dative, fauere with abl., gaudere with ace., 
 meus as a vocative, mode&tus, sanus followed by a genitive, 
 perfungi with accus., studere with accus., decere with dative. 
 Very peculiar are the constructions of the gerundive, 
 p. 1 20 iis rebus laetandis in the rejoicings for those events, 
 p. in sine Tnora intercedenda. An affectation adopted 
 from Cato is the excessive use of otque as Marcus tells us 
 himself, p. 36 uni M. Porcio me dedicaui atque despondi 
 atque delegaui. Hoc etiam ipsum ATQVE unde putas ? ex 
 ipso furore. 
 
 I will now attempt to give some idea of the lighter style 
 of the correspondence, much of which has nothing to do 
 with eloquence or literature. The following describes one 
 of Fronto's attacks of ill-health (p. 87): 'I have had 
 a serious choleraic attack, so bad that I lost my voice, hic- 
 cuped, sighed to suffocation, had no pulse left, and in the 
 absence of pulsation felt miserable ; it ended with my 
 household giving me up for lost. For a considerable time 
 I lost all consciousness ; the doctors had no time or oppor- 
 tunity to use even a bath or cold water or food for 
 fomenting or restoring me. All I could do was when 
 evening set in to swallow a very small quantity of crumbs 
 mixed with wine and poured into my throat. In this way
 
 19 
 
 I was completely restored. Afterwards three whole days 
 passed without my recovering my voice. Now, however, 
 by heaven's kind help, I am in the best of health, walk 
 more easily, shout more audibly, to conclude, am proposing, 
 with heaven's help, to take a drive in a carriage to-morrow. 
 If I bear the flint pavement without difficulty, I shall hurry 
 with all possible speed to you. I shall live again when I see 
 you and not before.' 
 
 A similar account of his master's health called the 
 following letter from Marcus (p. 93) : '/ be studying, when 
 you are in pain ? what is more, in pain on my account ? 
 Should I not rather vex myself deliberately with every 
 kind of uneasiness ? Certainly I should have good reason. 
 Who was it that brought on your pain in the knee, which 
 you write to say became worse last night, if not, I will not 
 say, myself, but your stay at Centumcellae ? What then am 
 I to do, when I cannot see you and am tormented by your 
 agonizing condition ? Besides, even if I were in the mood 
 for study, the law-courts forbid it, causing as they do the 
 loss of whole days, for so say those who know. Still 
 I have sent you to-day's sentewtia, and a ro'iros completed 
 three days ago. Yesterday I spent the whole time in 
 travelling : to-day it is a difficult task to get anything done 
 except a sententia drawn up after dark. You will say, Do 
 you spend so very long a night in sleeping 1 ? Sleep indeed 
 I can, for I naturally require a great deal ; but my bed- 
 room is so chilly that I can scarcely put my hand out in 
 the cold. The real thing, however, which had most effect 
 in diverting me from study was that, owing to my over- 
 fondness for literature, I gave you some trouble over a 
 passage of Cato, as circumstances prove. Good-bye then to 
 all the Catos and Ciceros and Sallusts, provided only that 
 you are well and that I may see you in strong health, even 
 at the cost of giving up my books. Farewell, my chiefest 
 of joys, my dearest master.' 
 
 The same playful tone is to be found in many other 
 letters of the young Emperor. He thus describes a youthful 
 escapade, in which, to use Christian language, the shepherds
 
 20 
 
 were smitten and the sheep scattered, not metaphorically, 
 but literally. 
 
 ' As soon as my father had returned home from the vine- 
 yards, I mounted my horse as is my custom, started for the 
 road and advanced some little way. Thereupon I found 
 a quantity of sheep standing huddled together on the road, 
 as the loneliness of the place made natural. They had four 
 dogs and two shepherds with them, but nothing besides. 
 Upon this one of the shepherds seeing a number of horse- 
 men said to the other, " Look there at those horsemen ; 
 such fellows are like to be great robbers." Hearing this 
 I put spurs to my horse, and galloped him upon the sheep. 
 They scattered in dismay ; straying some here, some there, 
 bleating and beating about in all directions. A shepherd 
 flung his crook upon us, it fell upon the rider behind me. 
 I escaped by flight. In this way fearing to lose his sheep, 
 he lost nothing but his crook. Do you think this an 
 invention? it is a real fact.' 
 
 In two other letters to Fronto he describes a day in the 
 country as follows (p. 68) : 
 
 'To-day I studied from three in the morning to eight, 
 arranging meals with care. From eight to nine I put on 
 sandals and had a delightful walk in front of my chamber. 
 After this in boots and my military cloak, for I had 
 received orders to attend in this costume, I went off to pay 
 my respects to my imperial master. We started for a 
 hunt, did prodigies of valour, and are told that some 
 boars were taken ; see them we did not. However we 
 climbed a very high cliff, and then returned home in the 
 afternoon. I hastened to my books : pulling off my boots 
 and taking off my clothes, I remained on my sofa for two 
 hours. I read Gate's speech on the property of Pulchra, 
 and another in which he indicts a tribune. I suppose you 
 will shout to your slave, "Go as quick as you can, fetch 
 me those speeches from the library of Apollo." It is no 
 good for you to send : the books have already followed me. 
 . . . However after reading through these orations, I did 
 a little writing in a miserable way, only fit to be consigned
 
 21 
 
 to the water or the flames: wretched as anything could be 
 was what I wrote to-day, a school-boy's exercise such as 
 any hunter or vintager might produce (at this moment 
 they are making my chamber ring with their jodels), 
 and quite as tiresome and nauseous as any lawyer's 
 pleadings. What can I mean by saying this ? I mean 
 what I say ; for my instructor is a true orator. I fancy 
 I have taken a chill ; whether because I walked in sandals 
 early in the day or because I wrote without success, I 
 cannot say. At any rate full as I generally am of phlegmatic 
 humour, to-day I find myself a much greater sniveller than 
 usual. I shall therefore steep my head in oil and go to 
 sleep, for I do not intend to replenish my lamp all day 
 with one single drop of oil : so thoroughly worn out am 
 I with riding and sneezing.' 
 
 P. 69 : 
 
 ' I have slept on far into the day on account of a slight 
 chill, which, seems now to have subsided. Consequently 
 from five in the morning till nine I spent part of the time 
 in reading extracts from Cato's Agriculture, partly in 
 writing, not so badly, I may tell you, as yesterday. After 
 that I wished my father good morning, and then, by 
 sipping water mixed with honey till it reached the gullet 
 and then spitting it out again, rinsed my throat, for I prefer 
 saying rinsed to gargled, a word, I believe, to be found 
 in Novius and elsewhere. However after attending to my 
 throat I went off to my father and stood by him as he 
 performed sacrifice. Then to our midday meal. What do 
 you think I ate ? A mere morsel of bread, whilst others 
 were gormandizing before my very eyes on beans, onions, 
 and sprats full of roe. After this we gave ourselves to 
 grape-picking, covered our bodies with sweat, jodelled, and 
 as some poet says, left a few high hangers as the last 
 remnant of the vintage. At twelve we returned home ; 
 I read a little and that to no great purpose. After this I 
 had a long chat with my dear mother seated on a sofa. 
 My talk was to this effect : " What should you think dear 
 Pronto is doing now 3 " She : " What should you think
 
 22 
 
 dear Gratia is about ? " I in my turn : " And what should 
 you think our pet, Gratia the younger, is doing ? " Whilst 
 we were talking and disputing in this way, which of us 
 was fonder of one or other of you, the gong sounded, 
 i. e. we were informed that my father had passed into the 
 bath. We therefore bathed and dined in the press-room : 
 I do not mean that we bathed in the press-room, but had 
 a bath and then dined, listening with amusement to the 
 rustics' banter. Returning after this, before turning on 
 my side to snore, I wind off my day's task and give in an 
 account of the way I spent it to my .dearest preceptor, for 
 whom my love is such that if it were possible to be more 
 fond I should gladly submit to an extra amount of pining.' 
 From two passages of the Octavius of Minucius Felix 
 (ix., xxxi.) we know that Fronto was a declared enemy 
 of Christianity. In one of his speeches he accused the 
 Christians on a charge often alleged against them, incest 
 of an unbridled and abominable kind. Fronto' s pupil, 
 M. Aurelius, was, as is well known, one of the earliest 
 persecutors of Christianity. We should be glad to be able 
 to indicate anything in the letters which could throw addi- 
 tional light on this common point of belief between the 
 master and his pupil. But the extant remains contain 
 nothing of the kind, and the one passage in the Emperor's 
 Reflexions which mentions the Christians (xi. 3) is widely 
 removed from anything like an attack on their morals, 
 and only contrasts slightingly the defiant readiness with 
 which the Christian submitted to the extinction or dispersion 
 of his soul with the reflecting and dignified demeanour of 
 the philosopher in the same situation.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 p. 13. Albucius. 
 
 Professor Minton Warren, of Harvard, U.S., writes as follows (Proceedings 
 of the American Philological Association, vol. xxv. 1894, p. xliii.) : 
 
 ' Who now is the Albucius who is contrasted with Lucilius ? Teuffel 
 ( 141-3), following M. Hertz, is inclined to identify him with the 
 Epicurean T. Albucius, whom Lucilius ridicules for his Graeco-mania. 
 He may have written, surmises Hertz, a didactic Epicurean poem before 
 Lucretius, which died of its aridity. We have, however, no other evidence 
 that this T. Albucius ever wrote poetry at all. It seems to me much more 
 probable that our Albucius is to be identified with the Abuccius mentioned 
 twice by Varro, R. R. 3. 6. 6. and 3. a. 17 item L. Abuccius, ut homo, scitis, 
 adprime doctus, cuius Luciliano charactere sunt libelU. The early editions have 
 here Albucius, but Keil follows the MSS., and the existence of the name 
 Abuccius is abundantly proved from inscriptions. As Fronto's opinion 
 may ultimately go back to Varro, it seems much more plausible, even if 
 we have to emend to Abuccius, that a poet who was a satirist in the 
 manner of Lucilius is contrasted with him, than to suppose that Albucius 
 wrote an Epicurean poem. ' 
 
 ib. Meaning of longinque. 
 
 ' Against Teuffel I am inclined to think that longinque refers to the 
 language rather than the undue length of Sisenna's history. Compare 
 especially Cic. Brutus, 75. 260 " ne a C.Rusio quidem accusatore deterreri potuit 
 quominus inusitatis uerbis uteretur " and " rede loqui putabat esse inusitate loqui." 
 Fronto himself opposes p. 64 Naber remotis et requisites to uolgaribus et usitatis, 
 and longinque may have been chosen as an adverb to neatly express this. 
 Compare Quintilian, 8. 6. 17 a longinqua similitudine ductae.' M. Warren, 
 p. xliv, 
 
 ib. multiiugis verbis. 
 
 'What, finally,. is the meaning of multiiugis uerbis and singulis? Some 
 argument might be made for translating these words "with polysyndeton " 
 "with asyndeton.". . . 
 
 ' It is a well-known fact that polysyndeton is frequent in Cato. Compare 
 Elmer, " The Copulative Conjunctions que, et, atque in the Inscriptions 
 of the Republic, in Terence and in Cato," p. 37. Especially noteworthy is 
 a passage cited by Gellius, VI. 3, from the oration for the Rhodians which 
 it will be remembered was included in the Origines. Scio solere plerisque 
 hominibus rebus secundis atque prolixis atque prosperis animum excellere atque 
 superbiam. atque ferociam augescere atque crescere. Here we have five atques, 
 Two connect three synonymous adjectives, one two synonymous verbs, 
 one two synonymous nouns, and one two clauses. We must not imagine 
 that such a piling up of connectives was not noticed by the ancients as
 
 24 
 
 a mark of style. A curious proof that it was noticed is afforded by the 
 correspondence of Fronto. See p. 36. M. Aurelius writes, " Nam uni M. 
 Porcio me dedicaui atque despondi atque delegaui. Hoc etiam ipsum atque unde 
 putas ? ex ipso furore." The verbatim fragments of Caelius are very few and 
 very short. None of them show any tendency to polysyndeton, and of 
 33 verbatim fragments, ten exhibit asyndeton. ... It will be noted that in 
 the passage already quoted from Cato the polysyndeton is accompanied 
 by an abundant use of synonyms. A writer in the Nation, April 29, 1886, 
 says, " Speaking of the use of synonyms, M. Amiel says (in other language) 
 that it is well one's team of words should be adapted to the subject and 
 the occasion ; a writer should sometimes drive at full speed with a single 
 epithet, sometimes with four magnificently, sometimes h la Russe with 
 three, sometimes even with a tandem, perhaps more safely with the usual 
 two, etc." 
 
 ' In a similar figurative sense, implying the comparison with a team, 
 multiiugis and singulis seem to be used here. Caelius uses the single word, 
 the off-hand stroke ; Cato drives in pairs and threes, sometimes with four 
 magnificently. This is the meaning also attached to the word by Peter, 
 Prolegomena, cxxxxvim. With this use of multiiugis we may compare in 
 Fronto, p. an neque uerba multa geminata superuacanea inferciet. With the 
 use of singulis, Fronto, p. 151 synonymis colligendis, verbis interdum singulari- 
 bus requirendis, and a curious parallel with Amiel is furnished by p. 139. 
 The whole passage beginning with castella uerborum is too long to quote, 
 ' ' quae ratio sit uerba geminandi et interdum trigeminandi, non numquam quadri- 
 plicia taepe quinquies aut eo amplius i,uperlata pcnendi," etc. Numerous 
 passages might be cited from Fronto's works where he insists upon the 
 necessity of choosing one's words carefully, and that Caelius was one of 
 the few early writers who did pay attention to seeking for the right word 
 is attested by Fronto, p. 62.' M. Warren, pp. xliv., xlv. 
 
 EMENDATIONS OF THE TEXT OP THE LETTERS. 
 
 Those marked with an asterisk were published in the first number of 
 the Cambridge Journal of Philology in 1868. The rest will appear in vol. xxix 
 (1904) of the same journal. 
 
 p. 6. Ecce nox praeteriit dies hie est ALIERETVLA exactus est. 
 
 Perhaps alter et uel alter, ' a second and even a third.' 
 
 p. 10. Somnus autem Ulixen ne patriam quidem suam diu agnosceret 
 
 siuit, cuius ical tccurvbv airoOpkaKovTo. vofjffai T H? yairjs Oavttiv iptiptTo. 
 The original (Od. i. 58) has 'liptvos KOI K. d. v. As Marcus Aurelius 
 has omitted 'Itpfvos, there is no construction. It would seem that vofjaat 
 should be vo^oay. 
 
 *p. 12. ed. Naber. Illud vero dictum elcgans AVTAVIATW . . . AISNEQo 
 alia omnia quae 'Oivtratlav faciunt. Read haut a via tuum quod ais 
 ' neque alia omnia quae *O5. faciunt.' ' This again is a choice 
 expression of your own, not borrowed from the streets. 1
 
 25 
 
 p. 14. Brakman's conjecture inauditam, if he has correctly reported the 
 
 ? 
 legible letters of the palimpsest . n...itam,' seems very probable. 
 
 Klussmann Emend. Fronton. 1874 suggested antiquam, less near to the 
 original. 
 
 a 
 p. 17. aliter plangit seruus manumissus aliter cliens laudaucatus aliter 
 
 amicus legato honoratus. 
 
 The balance of clauses would be preserved by writing aliter cliens 
 laudatum uocatus invited to pronounce an eulogium. 
 
 *p. 20. Qui orationem spreverit, litteras concupiscet ; qui scripta con- 
 tempserit, scribtorem reverebitur. ut si simiam aut volpem Appelles 
 pinxsit et bestiae . . . pretium adderet. The space in the palimpsest 
 has A . |vi'CVIA\ This looks as if it were either APICVLAM. 01 
 AVICVLAM. In the latter case he probably had in his mind a story 
 told by Strabo (xiv. 2. 4) not of Apelles, but Protogenes. Protogenes 
 had painted a Satyr leaning against a column on the top of which 
 was a partridge ; the people were so much delighted by the partridge 
 that they overlooked the main figure of the picture, the Satyr. [If, 
 as Brakman states, the palimpsest gives BESTIAE . . . REMJ2, this 
 conjecture falls to the ground.] 
 
 *p. 21. Omnibus tune imago patriciis pingebatur insignis. Read in signis. 
 
 *P- 33- Qui aliter regi dictis diciint, aliter in animo habent. Read 
 
 animos, like frequentem in forum, p. 191. 
 *p. 34. Merito ego mi magisterii fraglo. Read magister te. 
 
 ib. Polemonis tui quem meministi, rogo ne Horatii memineris, qui mihi 
 
 cum Polione est emortuus. 
 
 quern is more probably quom or gum than quoniam. So p. 81 animo bene 
 fuit qum te balneo et uino libenter usum cognoui. 
 
 p. 46. Postea ubi re proposita feimaginem scribes, 
 
 This I believe to be an error for ei rei imaginem, a combination elsewhere 
 affected by Fronto. p. 47 de quo deus ei rei praeditus facilius exaudiat. p. 95 
 eique ego rei, sei fieri possit, repuerascere opto. 
 
 *p. 54. Haec mecum anxie volutans inveniebam te multum supra 
 aetatem quantus (afterwards corrected to quantum) est, multum 
 supra tempus quo operam his studiis dedisti ... in eloquentia pro- 
 movisse. Naber reads quanta : perhaps it is better to keep quantus 
 and change est to es, ' much beyond the age to which you have now 
 attained.' [Klussmann conj. quantula est, Studemund qua tu es.] 
 
 *p. 64. Tot exemplis unum atque idem verbum syllabae adque litterae 
 commutatione in varium modum ad censum usurpatur. Read 
 adcensum, dco0V. 
 
 p. 66. Postquam uehiculum inscendi iter non adeo incommodum fnon 
 
 fecimus. 
 This seems to be not nos fecimus, but confecimus.
 
 26 
 
 p. 80. Modo mihi Victorinus indicat Dominam tuam magis maluisse 
 
 quam heri. 
 
 Naber prints cdluisse after Schopen. Possibly in Fronto's time incale- 
 scere was used of having a fever : certainly in would account for the m in 
 maluisse. 
 p. 83. aput censores expostulat. 
 
 A little lower, in the letter following, 
 
 In hac materia diutius laborandum est ut factum credatur, quam 
 
 ut irascatur. 
 
 The absence of a nominative to expostulat and irascatur is noticeable, 
 as the second letter (from M. Aurelius) is an answer to the first. But 
 whereas it is quite in accordance with the shortness of legal Latin to 
 supply a nominative to expostulat, this is not equally true of irascatur. 
 I think Marcus is here following the usage of comedy, which made 
 irascere an active, irasci a passive verb. Nonius, p. 127, quotes from 
 Pomponius noli irascere : then the nominative will be factum, as Novak 
 suggests, comparing Gell. vi. (vii.) 2 delicta non suscensenda. 
 
 ib. Vindemias laetasque quam firmissimo corpore agere te, mi magister, 
 
 opto. 
 Perhaps laetas quamque firmissimo corpore. 
 
 ib. Fronto, writing to M. Aurelius, says : 
 
 Pro Faustina mane cotidie deos appello : scio enim me pro tua 
 
 salute optare ac praecari. 
 Somewhat later, p. 85, Marcus, writing to Fronto, replies : 
 
 Quae pro me praecatus es, scio te praecatum. 
 
 It seems to follow that in the former of the two passages scio should be 
 set's. 
 
 *ib. M. Aurelius to Fronto : 
 
 Ego adeo perscripsi, ut fmitte aliud quod scribam. Naber changed 
 ut to et, Orelli to tu. Perhaps it is a construction not unlike Thuc. iv. 92 
 Stfftu oTi uf itpitt/TOi irpoi TOVS /XT) df^vt'ofj.ft'ovs tirtuVTts KraaQcav. 
 
 *p. 89. Si quo modo integrum redigi, ac pro te tuisque ac liberum 
 tuorum commodis insolutum dependi potest. Mai proposed in 
 solidum ; in solutum would do as well, ' as so much d0bt discharged.' 
 Sen. Benef. vii. 15 ei qui uoluntatem bonam in solutum accepit, 
 eo libentius debes quia dimitteris. Klussmann accepts this view. 
 
 *p. 113. Quid si quis postularet ut Phidias ludicra aut Canachus deum 
 simulacra fingeret ? aut Calamis Turena, aut Polyclefcus Etrusca ? 
 Perhaps Turintina. Polycletus was an Argive. 
 
 *p. 114. An cum labore quidem et studio investigare verba elegantia 
 prohibes, eadem vero si ultro, si iniussu atque invocatu meo 
 venerint, ut Menelaum ad epulas f^uidem recipi iubes? Read 
 tu idem. 
 
 *p. laa. Ornatior videbar daduchis Eleusinae faces gestantibus. Perhaps 
 EUusine, at Eleusis.
 
 27 
 
 p. 126. breues nee ullam rerum gestarum expeditionem continentes. 
 
 This is said of the short letters in Sallust's Histories, Expeditio seems 
 here to mean ' statement ' or ' account ' : much so Herenn. iv. 68 habet 
 paucis comprehensa breuitas multarum rerum expeditionem. Otherwise exposi- 
 tionem might be suggested. 
 
 p. 140. In primis oratori cauendum, ne quod nouum uerbum ut aes 
 adulterinum percutiat, ut unum et id uerbum uetustate noscatur et 
 nouitate delectet. 
 Read unum et id uerum uetustate noscatur. 
 
 p. 144. Places tibi cum facundus: igitur fuerberantem. quid facundia 
 
 uerberas ? 
 
 facundiam was long since conjectured ; for uerberantem Niebuhr's uerbera 
 te is accepted by Naber, but does not seem certain. It might be uerlerandum 
 test. 
 
 ib. illud etiam audisse me memini, pleraque sapientes uiros (id inest 
 scitis mentis atque consultis) habere debere quorum interdum usu 
 abstineant. 
 Nothing is here changed : I only add marks of parenthesis before id 
 
 and after consultis, translating ' this is inherent in mental resolves and 
 
 determinations,' a preliminary clause explaining a statement against 
 
 which objection might be raised. 
 
 *P- I 53- Quod si ita haec verba contra dixisset : quique pene bona patria 
 laceraverit, inedita obscenitas verbis appareret. Inedita, which has 
 been changed by Naber to indita, by C. F. W. Muller to insita, by 
 Buttmann to inaudita, is possibly right. ' The words would bear on 
 their face a coarseness not found in our actual editions.' 
 
 p. 160. E,nnius : Postquam fconstitis fluuius qui omnium princeps. 
 
 Here the palimpsest is variously reported. Naber gives const.ti, Vahlen 
 in his new edition of Ennius consis...se, Brakman read constitis, adding 
 ' ita euidenter codex.' If this is true, Ennius wrote constitit is, and such 
 absence of caesura is quite in the manner of his hexameters. 
 
 *p. 166. Res autem istas qua.s nee [tenere] uoluimus, nee [negare] 
 credimus, et, si dii aequi sunt, ueras et congruentes simplicitati 
 nostrae amicitiae semper adsequamur. Perhaps nee negare e re (or a re) 
 credimus. 
 
 p. 168. Quamobrem tecum quaeso nequid obsit amicitia nobis f<l u i nihil 
 
 profuit. 
 N^ber prints quae. I think it should be quia. Klussmann conj, 
 
 quibus. 
 
 p. 179. Impense istud a te peto. factum enim Aquilae uolo honoris eorum 
 
 causa qui pro eo studiose laborant. 
 
 Naber prints Heindorf's conjecture fautum. I doubt the Tightness of 
 this word, and believe factum to be defensible. 'I wish it to be done in 
 Aquila's behalf as a compliment to those who are using their efforts fop
 
 28 
 
 him.' The indeterminateness of the word is natural in the comparatively 
 free language of epistolary correspondence. 
 
 *p. 197. Hoc quod uocas interim, quanti sperabit ? Si tantisper , 
 
 paulisper sperabit. Read quantisper sperabit ? si tantisper dum spiral, 
 paulisper sperabit. 
 
 p. 216. .uod.. nunc diuinae naturae proprium est nee fumum manu 
 
 prehendere nee solem queas. 
 
 Quodsi Naber : perhaps Quodque. l Besides, which is a property of the 
 divine nature in the matter before us, it is impossible to grasp either 
 smoke or the sun with the hands.' 
 
 ib. nisi delicta facile fintellegas parum clementer findulgeasque. 
 
 Naber gives facile neglegas, in which neglegas appears to me incongruous 
 with facile. Surely the meaning is ' unless you put an easy (lenient) 
 construction on faults.' For indulgeasque perhaps indulgeas quoque. With- 
 out a lenient judgment to start with, there can be no real sympathy with 
 (and therefore indulgence to) the offender. The understanding must 
 anticipate the heart. 
 
 p. 223. magiras facere f to profess the trade of a cook,' ought, I think, to 
 be magiriasf. 
 
 p. 224. aut Ennio incenderes (sc. te) in horam ist.. Musarum propriam 
 
 quintain. 
 
 istius seems the most natural supplement : the hour which properly 
 belongs to his (Ennius') muses, the fifth, in allusion to his praenomen 
 Quintus. 
 
 *p. 337. Agere de finibus duos claros et nobiles vesperum et Luciferum 
 puta ; utrique demonstrationem sui ) quisque limitis ostendunt : 
 horum cognitioni interesse postulat somnus, nam se f quisque adlinem 
 esse negotio et adtingi iniuria alt. 
 
 On the first quisque Naber says : Codicis lectio non satis certa est ; 
 neque est quisque neque quoque neque quaque ; alii videant. Probably it 
 was quoisque, the old form of the genitive, as quoi indicates. The same 
 genitive is obviously required in the second place. Niebuhr conjectured 
 quoique, Orelli quoque. 
 
 *p. 241. (Kftvov pfv OVT<U iraTs, wairtp 'A0T)v$, TOV A5s, ads Si Cfl'NIOC us TTJI 
 "H/)as o "HifatoToy. Read vliuvos. 
 
 *p. 246. *i'A<p 8i oi>x oj TOVTOV firi5(tnt>vvTa>v Op&ffos tiivoias, AAAANAITONTflN 
 viToSiovai, tntftif/a TO itpiv tiriTptyys. Read oux &? rov-ruv tmtitiKyvvTajv 
 Opaffos fvvoias d\\' avqTT6vT<uv VIT& 8iovs, el tirtfof/a TO irplv tTrirpe^jjs, but 
 forgive your friend, if I sent them before, not supposing the slaves to 
 exhibit any confident good will on my part, but imagining them 
 to start to their feet for fear of your displeasure.' 
 
 *p. a.jo. Et yovv airorinrjatts yiyirotvro fip.lv T2MINO ne^if/as TOVS Svo TOVTOWS 
 irafSay, (UKpoTtpav, lyu 5' <5 \a@uv /ttifa TT)V ovaiw anotyavoi/iMi, Nabor 
 reads & piv : av fulv 6 is perhaps better.
 
 29 
 
 *p. 251. fj.aT(vffainJjv SavdKovras vwtjrtca \p<antvos. Read MaifVffal^rjv 8* Av 
 tMvi O.VOTJTCU or dSiavoriTU (Quint, n. 8. 20) xP&pfvos. The last word 
 in the sentence which Mai read irpoafftrjv, Du Rieu irpoarjKojv, may be 
 irpo<rr)Ka.lf*T]v. Cf. p. 248 vo\\a no\.\aKis irapa ir\ii<TT<vv 7T/x7ro/x'O ow 
 irpoorjKaro. 
 
 *p. 258. d\\a Orjpiov Siierjv virb \vmjs (v&vs EIOITO bv KOI (3aiv(tv irpodv/ioTro 
 fiijStv al5ov/jifvos. Read aeiotro, the a having dropped owing to the a 
 
 *p. 259. dXX' ovStv ye ir\fov AnOAAT5EIOAE. Naber reads air6\\vfft, 
 
 I suggest AnOAATSEI. 
 
 'A\\' ttyeayf aot firtStifo}, IIXOT2 irpbs rbv 'l\iaov a^a a/up 
 Naber ci tvdvs, better fl iOvs, which seems to have been confused with 
 
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