M ost things in your late speech, as far as the thoughts go, I consider were excellent, very few required alteration to the extent of a single word; some parts here and there were not sufficiently marked with novelty of expression.1 I have thought it better to write to you on these points in detail, for so you will the more easily consider them separately and have time to look into them, being as you are busied with the actual discharge and wearied with the past performance of very many duties.
Well then I have written to tell you what I consider excellently said by you in your exordium, and what in my opinion needs alteration. Do not doubt that what I shall further write will be written in the spirit of my love for you. All the first part then is wonderfully fine, packed with many weighty thoughts, in which these stand out . . . . in which kind Cato . . . . if sparingly and with dignity . . . . 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."2 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.
To be sure you would read a book to your philosopher;3 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 them4 too did my master Dionysius the Slender5 indite a quite artistic apologue on a dispute between the Vine and the Holm-oak tree.
The vine vaunted herself above the holm-oak because she bore the most delicious of all fruits for the banquets of men and the altars of Osiris, alike sweet to eat and delightful to quaff. Then, again, she was arrayed with more care than queenly Cleopatra, with more taste than lovely Lais. So fair were her branches that from them were wound the thyrsus-wands for Liber, a garland for Silenus, and chaplets for the Nymphs and Maenads. But the holm-oak was rough, barren, unattractive, and never produced anything of any goodness or beauty except acorns . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Now I purposely end with fictions that, if I have said anything too severe, it may be softened down by being mingled with fictions.
Fronto to Lucius Verus
162 A.D.
To my Lord Verus Augustus.
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