African origin. Fronto was born at Cirta in Numidia (modern Constantine in Algeria), the chief city of Roman Africa in its inland, Numidian part. Cirta had been colonised by veterans of Caesar's campaigns (the so-called Cirtenses Sittiani) and by the second century had become the centre of a flourishing African Latin culture. From the same provincial milieu came Apuleius (born at Madauros and, on one reconstruction, a pupil of Fronto at Carthage). Ancient authors occasionally mention an "Africanism" in Fronto's Latin — a certain peculiarity of vocabulary and tone associated with the province; this motif, mostly late (Macrobius), modern criticism handles with caution, refusing any hard verdict that "African Latin" was a recognised stylistic norm.

Equestrian background and senatorial career. Fronto came from the equestrian order and rose into the senate through a pedagogical career — a model typical of second-century provincial intelligentsia (compare Suetonius's path a generation earlier, or Apollonius of Tyana as a type). The peaks of his career:

• Suffect consul of July–August 142 — a high office for a homo novus from the provinces; the ordinary consulate remained out of reach, but a suffectship under Antoninus Pius is a substantial recognition.
• The proconsulate of Asia — offered by Antoninus Pius (approximately in the second half of the 150s), but Fronto declined on grounds of health and personal bereavement; the famous letter setting out the refusal survives in the correspondence Ad Antoninum Pium (the exact location in van den Hout's numbering is not given here — should be verified against the edition). The refusal of a proconsulate of Asia — normally a coveted position — defines Fronto as a man who chose the metropolitan rhetorical and pedagogical career over a provincial governorship.

Appointment as tutor of Marcus and Lucius Verus. Around 139, after Marcus's adoption by Antoninus Pius in 138, Antoninus Pius appointed Fronto principal tutor of both heirs — Marcus and Lucius Verus — in Latin rhetoric. The simultaneous instructor in Greek rhetoric was Herodes Atticus (see below on the bilingual programme of instruction). Fronto's tutelage was long: it lasted for at least fifteen intensive years, and the correspondence with Marcus — now emperor — continues until Fronto's death.

The correspondence and its discovery. The correspondence of Fronto with Marcus and Lucius Verus is the principal contemporary source for Marcus's youth and the unique surviving witness to his pre-philosophical period. The story of its discovery is itself significant. Before 1815 Fronto as a man of letters was known only from indirect testimonies (Aulus Gellius and late authors). In 1815 Cardinal Angelo Mai discovered a palimpsest in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan: beneath the upper text lay the erased layer of Fronto's letters. A second, partly overlapping palimpsest was later found in the Vatican. Mai published the editio princeps in Milan in 1815 and an expanded edition in Rome in 1823. The standard modern text is M. P. J. van den Hout, M. Cornelii Frontonis Epistulae (1st edn. Brill, Leiden 1954; 2nd edn. Teubner, Leipzig 1988). The English Loeb is C. R. Haines, The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, 2 vols., Heinemann/Harvard 1919–1920. The discovery of 1815 was a philological sensation — for the first time the direct letters of Marcus as an adolescent came to light, fragments of his rhetorical school-exercises, his everyday correspondence with his teacher.

The archaising programme: elocutio novella. Stylistically Fronto is the head of the archaising movement in Latin prose. The programme: return to pre-Ciceronian models — Cato the Elder, Ennius, Plautus, Sallust — against the smooth Ciceronian period and against the "Asianic" rhetorical excesses of his contemporaries. Fronto's own formula is the search for insperata atque inopinata verba ("unexpected and unforeseen words"), the active cultivation of rare and forgotten vocabulary, the deliberate use of an archaic idiom. This programme is part of the wider aesthetic of the Second Sophistic and of Antonine antiquarianism (parallels: the Latin antiquarianism of Aulus Gellius, the Greek Atticism of Herodes Atticus, the school practice of imitatio veterum).

Illnesses and personal losses. The surviving correspondence is also the most intimate contemporary medical and family document from the second century. Fronto suffered from chronic gouty arthritis (morbus articularis, podagra), of which he wrote in nearly every letter of his later years; the reader of the correspondence is steadily admitted into the life of a man coping for years with severe chronic pain. A succession of family bereavements — several children, a grandson, finally his wife Cratia — is recorded in several piercing letters (especially De nepote amisso — "On the loss of a grandson"), in which Fronto refuses Stoic ἀπάθεια and insists on the legitimate right to grief — a position directly opposed to the Stoic discipline of natural affection without passion.

The cooling with Marcus and the turn to philosophy. By the early 140s a new motif appears in the correspondence: Marcus is drawn toward philosophy, and Fronto jealously defends rhetoric. The programmatic document is the series of letters Ad M. Antoninum De Eloquentia (1–5), in which Fronto sets out an extended apology for eloquence against philosophical asceticism. Especially characteristic is De Eloquentia 4: Fronto quotes Marcus's admiration for Ariston of Chios (a Stoic of rigorist tendency) and tries to break the attraction with a demonstration of rhetorical power. Marcus in his replies remains affectively attached, but gradually inclines toward sparer, less rhetorical writing; in the mature Meditations there are few traces of Frontonian rhetoric — it is overwritten by the Greek Stoic clarity of Epictetus transmitted by Rusticus. There was no complete rupture: the correspondence continues until Fronto's death, and the last letters preserve a warm attachment; but the centre of philosophical gravity for Marcus had, by the mid-140s, shifted definitively.

• 01-11 — the only direct mention of Fronto by name in the Meditations; the characteristic revaluation: gratitude not for rhetoric but for a moral observation on tyranny and the patricians.
• 01-17 — the thanksgiving to the gods for "having received good teachers"; Fronto implicitly among them.

• Fronto, Epistulae — the primary source. Standard text: M. P. J. van den Hout, M. Cornelii Frontonis Epistulae (1st edn. Brill, Leiden 1954; 2nd edn. Teubner, Leipzig 1988). English Loeb: C. R. Haines, The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, 2 vols., Heinemann/Harvard 1919–1920.
• van den Hout, M. P. J., A Commentary on the Letters of M. Cornelius Fronto, Mnemosyne Suppl. 190, Brill, Leiden 1999 — the standard modern commentary.
• Champlin, E., Fronto and Antonine Rome, Harvard UP, Cambridge MA 1980 — the principal modern monograph: prosopography, rhetorical programme, relations with Marcus.
• SHA Marcus (Vita Marci), chs. 2–3 — Marcus's education and Fronto's appointment as his teacher. (Precise sub-sections should be verified against Hohl's edition.)
• SHA Verus (Vita Veri), chapters on education — Fronto also as teacher of L. Verus.
• Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae — several generic scenes at Fronto's; in particular 2.26 on colour vocabulary (including the Latin tradition fulvus, flavus, rubidus). Gellius is a direct pupil of Fronto, and his scenes of visits to the teacher are a valuable external source.
• A. Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, rev. ed., Routledge, 2000 — biographical sections on Marcus's education and on the Fronto relationship (consult the index).
• A. S. L. Farquharson, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, Oxford 1944, vol. II, ad 1.11 — the standard philological commentary.
• R. Hard, Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, OWC, Oxford 2011, notes ad 1.11.
• P. Hadot, The Inner Citadel, tr. M. Chase, Harvard 1998 — sections on Marcus's rhetorical education and on its gradual displacement by philosophy (consult the index s.v. "Fronto").