F or this old man and, as you style him, your master, good health, a good year, good fortune, everything good, which you write you have prayed of the Gods for me on this my birthday, above all others a red-letter day for you—all these good things are in your keeping and your brother's, O Antoninus, sweetest joy of my heart: whom, since I have known you and given myself up to you, I have ever held sweeter than all things, and will so hold you, although I live again other years as many as I have lived. This one thing, therefore, let all of us with joint prayers ask of the Gods, that you may both pass long lives in health and vigour, exercising your power to the advantage of the state and of your own households. Nor is there aught else I could wish so much to obtain either from the Gods or from Fairy Fortune or from yourselves, as that it may be my lot as long as possible to enjoy your presence, your converse, and your delightful letters; and to that end I am ready, if it were possible, to be a boy again.
This form of paraleipsis is original and, as far as I know, not employed by anyone else. For Cato bids the tablets be read, and what is read he bids be waived aside. You also have shewn originality by beginning your speech with this figure, just as you will, I am sure, do many other original and brilliant things in your speeches, so great is your natural ability.
Fronto to Marcus Antoninus (?)18
162 A.D.
To my Lord.
Otherwise, as far as everything else is concerned, I have had my fill of life. I see you, Antoninus, as excellent an Emperor as I hoped; as just, as blameless as I guaranteed; as dear and as welcome1 to the Roman People as I desired; fond of me to the height of my wishes, and eloquent to the height of your own. For now that you once begin to feel the wish again, to have lost the wish for a time proves to have been no set-back.2 Indeed I see both of you becoming more eloquent every day, and I am elated as if I were still your master. For while I love and cherish all your merits, yet I confess that I derive my chief "and peculiar pleasure from your eloquence. Just as it is with parents, when in their children's faces they discern their own lineaments, so it is with me when in the speeches of either of you I detect marks of my school—and glad in her heart was Latona:3 for I cannot express in my own words the intensity of my joy. And do not feel compunction at the recollection, or be vexed in the least with the consciousness, of not having devoted yourself continuously to eloquence. For the fact is that, if a man endowed with great natural capacity has been from the first brought into and trained in the right way of eloquence, although he have given it the go-by for a time or rested on his oars, as soon as ever he resolves to make a fresh start and set forward, he will get to the end of his journey somewhat less quickly of course, but less successfully not a whit. But believe me when I say that, of all the men whom I have ever known, I have never met with any one gifted with richer ability than yourself: I used, indeed, to affirm this with an oath to the immense disagreement of our dear Victorinus and his immense disgust, when I said that he could not aspire to the charm of your natural gift. Then that friend of mine, the Roman Rusticus,4 who would gladly surrender and sacrifice his life for your little finger, yet on the question of your natural ability gave way against his will and with a frown.
You had, Antoninus, but one danger to fear, and no one of outstanding ability can escape it—that you should limp in respect of copiousness and choiceness of words. For the greater the thoughts, the more difficult it is to clothe them in words, and no small labour is needed to prevent those stately thoughts being ill-clothed or unbecomingly draped or half-naked.
Do you remember that speech of yours,5 which you delivered in the Senate when scarcely more than a boy, in which you made use of that simile of a leathern bottle by way of illustration, and were much concerned lest you had employed an image little suited to the dignity of the place and of a senator? and that first rather long letter6 I wrote to you, in which I drew the inference—and it is a true inference—that it is a mark of great abilities to encounter boldly the difficulties in thoughts of that kind, but that by your own application and some help from me you would attain what was needed therein, the command of luminous expression7 to match such great thoughts. This you see has now come to pass, and although you have not always set every sail in pursuit of eloquence, yet you have held on your course with topsails and with oars, and as soon as ever necessity has forced you to spread all your canvas, you are easily distancing all devotees of eloquence like so many pinnaces and yachts.
I have been prompted to write this by your last letter,8 in which you said that you were gradually forgetting all that you had learnt, but to me it seems that now more than ever is blossoming all that you have learnt and growing to maturity. Or do you fail to notice the eagerness, partiality, and pleasure with which the Senate and the Roman People listen to your speeches? And I go bail for it, the oftener they listen the more passionately will they love, so many and so ingratiating are the charms of your genius, your countenance, your voice, and your eloquence. In fact, is there one among former Emperors-—I prefer to compare you with Emperors that I may not compare you with contemporaries—is there one who used these rhetorical figures which the Greeks call σχήματα?9 Not to go further back, even at the last sitting of the Senate, when you spoke of the serious case of the Cyzicenes, you embellished your speech with a figure, which the Greeks call παράλειψις, in such a way that while waiving a point you yet mentioned it, and while mentioning it you yet waived it. In this speech many things at once call for praise: the first, that you most judiciously grasped the fact that the heavy trials of the allies should not be made too prominent by a continuous or direct or lengthy speech upon them, but should at the same time be pointed out with earnestness, so as to seem worthy of the compassion and help of the Senate; then you set forth the whole case so briefly, and yet so forcibly, that all that the subject demanded was summed up in the fewest words; so that not more suddenly or more violently was the city stirred by the earthquake10 than the minds of your hearers by your speech. Do you recognize the Ciceronian turn of the sentence?—so that not more suddenly or more violently was the city stirred by the earthquake than the minds of your hearers by your speech. When a man is deeply in love he kisses even the moles on his beloved's cheek.
But believe me you now hold a most distinguished place in eloquence, and will ere long reach its very summit, and speak thence with us from higher ground, and not so much higher only as the Rostrum is than the Forum and the Comitium,11 but as much as the yards overtop the prow or rather the keel. But above all am I glad that you do not snatch up the first words that occur to you, but seek out the best. For this is the distinction between a first-rate orator and ordinary ones, that the others are readily content with good words, while the first-rate orator is not content with words merely good if better are to be obtained.
But I will either write to you or discuss these matters orally with you more fully at some fixed time and place. As you wished, my Lord, and as my health demanded, I have stayed at home and prayed for you that you might keep many happy returns of your children's birthdays.12 The greater mildness of the weather and his nurse, if he takes more suitable food, will have quieted our little chick's13 cough, for all remedies and all curatives for throat affections in children are centred in milk.14
In your Cyzicus-speech, when invoking the Gods, you added and if it be allowed, I adjure them, a use of the word15 which I do not remember to have read, for it was the people or a jury that used to be adjured or conjured; but perhaps my memory plays me false: do you think over it more carefully yourself.
I, too, am troubled with a cough, and pain in my right hand, not very severe it is true, but enough to prevent my writing so long a letter: therefore I have dictated it.
Since mention has been made of paraleipsis, I must not fail to acquaint you with what I have noticed with regard to this figure in a somewhat careful search. None of the Greek or Roman orators that I have read has used this figure more happily than M. Porcius in that speech which is entitled On his Expenses,16 in which he says as follows:
I ordered the volume to be produced containing my speech on the subject of my having made an agreement with M. Cornelius. The tablets were produced: the services of my ancestors were read out: then was recited what I had done for the state. The reading out of both these being finished, the speech went on as follows: "I have never either scattered my own money or that of the allies broadcast to gain popularity." "Oh, don't, don't, I say, record that: they have no wish to hear it." Then he read on: "Never have I set up officials in the towns of your allies to rob them of their goods, their wives, and the children" "Erase that too; they will not listen: go on reading." "I have never divided booty or spoil taken from the enemy or prize money among my select friends so as to rob those who had won it." "Erase as far as that too: they would rather hear anything than that; there is no need to read it." "I have never granted a pass to travel post, to enable my friends to gain large sums by these warrants." "Be quick, erase as far as that too most 'particularly"17 "I have never shared the money for wine-largess between my retinue and friends, nor emiched them to the detriment of the state." "Marry, erase as far as that down to the wood." Pray mark the pass to which the state has come, when I dare not now mention the very services I have done it, whereby I hoped to gain gratitude, lest it should bring odium upon me. So much has it become the fashion that a man may do ill with impunity, but not with impunity do well.