R ightly have I devoted myself to you, rightly invested in you and your father all the gains of my life. What could be more friendly, what more delightful, what more true1? But I beseech you, away with your forward boys and rash counsellors! There is danger, forsooth, of anything you suggest being childishly conceived or ill-advised! Believe me, if you will—if not, I will for my part believe myself—that in good sense you leave your elders far behind. In fact, in this affair, I realise that your counsel is weighty and worthy of a greybeard, while mine is childish. For what is the good of providing a spectacle for friends and foes? If your Herodes be an honourable and moral man, it is not right that such a man2 should be assailed3 with invectives by me; if he is wicked and worthless, my fight with him is not on equal terms, nor do we stand to lose the same. For any contact with what is unclean contaminates a man, even though you come off best. But the former supposition is the truer, that he, whom you count worthy of your patronage, is a virtuous man. Had I had an inkling of the fact, may all the gods plague me if I should ever have ventured to say a word against any friend of yours.4 As it is I should wish you for the great love you bear me, wherein I am most blest, to help me with your advice on this point also. I quite admit that I ought not to say anything, which does not bear on the case, to damage H erodes, but those facts which do bear on it—and they are undoubtedly of a most savage character—how am I to deal with them? that is the very thing I am in doubt about, and I ask your advice. I shall have to tell of freemen cruelly beaten and robbed, of one even slain; I shall have to tell of a son unfilial5 and deaf to his father's prayers, cruelty and avarice will have to be denounced; there is one who must in this trial be made out a murderer. But if on those counts, on which the indictment is based, you think I ought to press and assail my opponent with might and main, assure me, best of Lords and sweetest to me, that such is your opinion. If, however, you think that I ought to let him off lightly in these also, I shall consider what you advise to be the best course. You may, indeed, as I said, rest assured of this, that I shall not go outside the case itself to speak of his character and the rest of his life. But if you think I must do the best for my case, I warn you herewith that I shall not even use in a disproportionate manner the opportunity my case gives me, for savage charges are made and must be savagely spoken of. Those in particular which concern the robbing and injuring of freemen shall be so told by me as to smack of gall and spleen: if I chance to call him a greekling and unlearned, it need not mean war to the knife.6
Farewell, Caesar, and love me, as you do, to the utmost. I, indeed, dote on the very characters of your writing: wherefore, whenever you write to me, I would have you write with your own hand.
Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar
? 140–143 A.D.
Hail, my Lord.