H ow great and long-standing is the intimacy which subsisted between me and Gavius Clarus is well known, I think, my Lord, to you. So often have I spoken of him from the fulness of my heart before you. Nor does it seem to me amiss to remind you of this, well as you remember it.
From his earliest years Gavius Clarus devoted himself to me as a personal friend, not only in those good offices with which a senator, lesser in age and rank, rightly honours and deserves well of another senator, higher in rank and older than himself. But gradually our friendship reached such a stage that, without dislike on his part or shame on mine, he could pay me the deference of a client, the respect that is shewn by faithful and diligent freedmen: this not from any arrogance on my part or servility on his, but our mutual affection and genuine love did away with any reluctance for either of us in the regulation of our duties. What need for me to mention his attention to my affairs in the forum, the least equally with the greatest; or at home, when I wished anything anywhere duly closed or sealed or attended to or completed, how I entrusted and confided it to him alone.
But, though my foster child would hardly shew such complaisance, he always devoted such attention to my health, was so unsparing, too, at all times of himself, that when I was sick he even sat up with me, and when rheumatism deprived me of the use of my hands he was wont to put the food to my mouth with his own hand. Lastly, I commissioned him to see to it that my body had its due rites, if in the absence of Victorinus and my good brother anything happened to me such as must to all men. Even if they should be on the spot, I wished my body to be handled by him rather than by any other, that my brother and my son-in-law might be spared the pain of touching my body.
These are the terms on which Gavius Clarus and I stand. Now, if my means were more ample, I would help him to the utmost of my power to enable him to discharge the duties of a senator in comfort, nor should I ever allow him to cross the sea on his present errand. As it is, both the moderate nature of my means1 and his straitened circumstances have forced me to banish him against his will into Syria to secure the legacies which have come to him under the will of a very dear friend.
This want of means has been the lot of my friend Clarus from no fault of his own*, for he received no benefit from either his father's or his mother's estate; the only result of his being his father's heir was that he found difficulty in paying his father's creditors. But by economy and attention to duty and frugality he discharged all his obligations as quaestor, aedile, and praetor, and whereas your deified father paid out from your privy purse2 the expenses of his praetorship in his absence, as soon as ever Clarus recovered his health and came back to Rome he paid in the whole amount to the imperial treasury.
Nothing can be more conscientious than the man, nothing more reasonable, nothing more unassuming; generous also, if I am any authority, and considering the slenderness of his resources as open-handed as his means permit. His characteristics, simplicity, continence, truthfulness, an honour plainly Roman, a warmth of affection,3 however, possibly not Roman, for there is nothing of which my whole life through I have seen less at Rome than a man unfeignedly φιλόστοργος. The reason why there is not even a word for this virtue in our language must, I imagine, be, that in reality no one at Rome has any warm affection.
This is the man, my Lord, whom I commend to you with the strongest appeal possible. If ever you have loved me, or wish ever to love me, I beg that you will befriend him whom I commit to your trust and protection. Perhaps you will ask what I wish you to do for him . . . .
Marcus Antoninus to Fronto
163 A.D.
To my master, greeting.