Письмо CXCVIII: Marcus Cornelius Fronto — Lucius Verus

Lucius had either to take new citizens by a levy for the Parthian war, or out of the reserve legionaries, demoralized by dull and lax service, choose the stoutest men. For after the Emperor Trajan's time the armies were almost destitute of military training, Hadrian being energetic enough in mobilizing his friends and eloquently addressing his armies and generally in the appliances of war. Moreover he preferred to give up,⁸ rather than to hold with an army, the provinces which Trajan had taken in various wars, and which now required to be organized. Records of his progresses one can see set up in many a city of Asia and Europe, as well tombs⁹ built of stone as many others.

He made his way not only into frozen lands, but also into others of a southern situation, to the advantage of those provinces which, lying beyond the Euphrates and the Danube, Trajan had annexed to the Roman Empire with the hope that he could add them to Moesia and the province of Asia. These entire provinces, Dacia and the parts lost by the Parthians, Hadrian voluntarily restored. His armies in Asia he amused with "sallies" in the camp instead of with swords and shields: a general the like of him the army never afterwards saw.

The same devotion to peace is said to have withheld him from action absolutely justified, so that in his freedom from empty ambition he is clearly comparable in all the line of Roman Emperors to Numa alone.

Peace that the state should . . . . . . . . . . . . be governed by him . . . . . . . . . . . . nor being enamoured of a new war against the Parthians, so by long unfamiliarity with fighting the Roman soldier was reduced to a cowardly condition. For as to all the arts of life, so especially to the business of war, is sloth fatal. It is of the greatest importance also for soldiers to experience the ups and downs of fortune, and to take strenuous exercise in the open.

The most demoralized of all, however, were the Syrian soldiers, mutinous, disobedient, seldom with their units, straying in front of their prescribed posts, roving about like scouts, tipsy from noon one day to the next, unused even to carrying their arms, and, as from dislike of toil they left off one arm after another, like skirmishers and slingers half naked. Apart from scandals of this kind, they had been so cowed by unsuccessful battles as to turn their backs at the first sight of the Parthians and to listen for the trumpet as the signal for flight.

This great decay in military discipline Lucius took in hand as the case demanded, setting up his own energy in the service as a pattern.¹⁰ Marching in person at the head of his troops, he tired himself with trudging on foot quite as often as he rode on horseback; he made no more of the blazing sun than of a bright day; the choking dust he put up with like a mist; sweating under arms he minded as little as sweating at athletics; he left his head exposed to sun and shower and hail and snow, and unprotected even against missiles; he was careful to inspect the soldiers in the field, and go the round of the sick; he visited the soldiers' quarters with no unobservant eye; cast a casual but keen glance at the Syrians' dandy ways and the gaucheries of the Pannonians; from each man's manner of life he divined his character. After all his business done,¹¹ he took a belated bath himself: his table plain, his food the common camp-fare; his drink the wine of the locality, the water of the season; he keeps the first watch easily, for the last he is awake long beforehand and waiting; work is more to his taste than leisure, and his leisure he misuses for work: time not required for military duties he devotes to civil business. In a sudden emergency he has utilized boughs on occasion or leaves by way of bedding, stretching himself at times on the turf as his couch. The sleep he took was earned by toil, not wooed with silence. The more serious misdemeanours only did he punish severely, the more trifling ones he knew how not to see: he left room for repentance. For many a man corrects his own faults, while he thinks them unperceived; when he sees that they are known, he brazens them out¹² . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . through so many provinces, so many open dangers of sieges, battles, citadels, ports, and fortresses stormed, he lavished care and counsels, not luxuries, though he showered upon them a thousand spoils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lucius in the skilfulness of his measures far superior .... knew that the mail-clad troops were like finny monsters, that diving headlong in the deep sea they escape . . . . to prance about on the wide champaign. Horses without firm footing on the slippery ground, hands numbed with cold, bows limp with the rain . . . . A few days before Lucius of his own accord had sent a letter to Vologaesus to put an end to the war by agreement, if he would; but the barbarian, while he spurned the offer of peace, paid dearly for it.

This fact shews clearly how much Lucius had the lives of his soldiers at heart, ready as he was to purchase a bloodless peace at the price of his own glory. With Trajan, as many judge from the rest of his ambitions, his own glory was likely to have been dearer than the blood of his soldiers, for he often sent back disappointed the ambassadors of the Parthian king when they prayed for peace.

The reputation, too, of Lucius for justice and clemency¹³ was unblemished among the barbarians. Trajan was not equally cleared in the eyes of all. No one had reason to repent having trusted his kingdom and fortunes to the good faith of Lucius: it is not easy to absolve Trajan from the murder of a suppliant king Parthamasirius.¹⁴ For though by being the first to appeal to violence, he brought his fate upon himself in the outbreak that ensued, yet it would have been better for the good name of the Romans had a suppliant departed unharmed than been punished even justly; for in such deeds the reason of the act lies hid, the act itself is before the eyes, and it is far better to pass by an injury and have public opinion on your side than to avenge one and have it against you.

In either Parthian war a man of consular rank, in either case commanding an army, was put to the sword: Severianus¹⁵ while Lucius had at the time not even left the city; Appius,¹⁶ however, while Trajan was present in the East making more stringent the ferry dues for camels and horses on the Euphrates and Tigris, was slain by Arbaces¹⁷ in rear of the Emperor.

This is also brought as a charge against both equally, that they sent for actors¹⁸ from Rome into Syria. But assuredly as we see the tallest trees shaken the more violently by the winds, so envy attacks the greatest merits the more vindictively. For the rest, whether Trajan is to be accounted more illustrious in war or peace for my part I leave undecided, only pointing out that even Spartacus and Viriathus had considerable ability in war, whereas for the arts of peace scarcely anyone has excelled if indeed anyone has equalled Trajan in popularity with the people. These very things .... are they not in the highest degree torches to these detractions? They seem to be based on the loftiest principles of political wisdom, that the Emperor did not neglect even actors and the other performers of the stage, the circus, or the amphitheatre, knowing as he did that the Roman People are held fast by two things above all, the corn-dole and the shows,¹⁹ that the success of a government depends on amusements as much as more serious things; neglect of serious matters entails the greater loss, neglect of amusements the greater discontent; food-largess is a weaker incentive than shows; by largesses of food only the proletariat on the corn-register are conciliated singly and individually, whereas by the shows the whole populace is kept in good humour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . than conciliated by games and the customary pageantry of the shows. Therefore processions and couches and sacred chariots and spoils dedicated by our ancestors, elephants, urochs²⁰ . . . . the Roman People has made use of shows . . . . the buzzing and predictions of many tongues. These things have been mentioned by me to refute detractors.

. . . . Lucius, however, himself, wherever anything had been done, wrote to the Senate despatches expressly composed to describe the state of affairs, as one who had the rehabilitation of eloquence deeply at heart . . . . . . . . If any one reads the accounts side by side, as to whether the great-grandfather or the great-grandson shall appear to be first in merit, however the question of superiority be decided, the difference will only be a family matter.

Marcus Antoninus to Fronto

165 A.D.

To my master.

. . . . Sallust . . .: In fact their natural gifts, however rich, would have been of no avail had they not concerned themselves with the writing of their splendid achievements, and likewise were not their talents as writers on a par with the greatness of the deeds . . . . . . . . The labours of Hercules famous, if not as facts also, (yet) by way of teaching . . . .

Indeed for speech and action alike the reputation of Porcius Cato stands far the highest of all . . . . Nature the mother of invention: in the equipment of ships God (supplied) the wings of a bird, for man to imitate them by having an eye on nature; the oar therefore is copied from nature . . . .

So the acute Cato, worthy of being honoured with statues in every city, gives the Agrigentines ploughs. He shed light on the earliest history of man and the races of the Italian name and the origins of the Italian cities and the childhood of the first inhabitants . . . . . . . . This Xenophon served campaigns as a volunteer under Cyrus . . . . All the leisure left to him from his campaigns he devoted to hunting . . . . . . . .

. . . .The Empire of the Roman People was advanced beyond the hostile rivers¹ by the Emperor Trajan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To the lover silence is free and carries no blame. For all other mortals tell present-day lies, but the lies of writers deserve a reprobation as everlasting as their memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . The power of the Macedonians swelling like a torrent with mighty force in a brief day fell away to nothing: and their empire was extinguished in the lifetime of a single generation. For those portions which were held by the companions and friends of Alexander deserve the name of satrapies rather than of kingdoms . . . .

Not one of them anywhere has a town or permanent dwelling or settled home: they owe their freedom to their poverty, for he who goes about to subjugate the poor gets but a barren return for his labour . . . . wandering, roving, with no fixed goal of their march, the end of which depends not on locality but on nightfall . . . .

. . . . (those nations whose) plundering raids have caused disasters I class as brigands rather than as enemies. The Parthians alone of mankind have sustained against the Roman People the role of enemy in a fashion never to be despised, as is sufficiently shewn, not only by the disaster to Crassus,² and the shameful flight of Antonius,³ but by the slaughter of a general⁴ with his army, under the leadership even of Trajan, the stoutest of Emperors, and by the retreat, by no means unharassed or without loss, of that emperor as he retired to celebrate his triumph.

I will proceed then to compare with one another, in respect to the forces of either leader and either occasion, the two most memorable wars against the Parthians fought with like success in our time, not forgetting withal that the doughty deeds of the living are listened to in a more grudging, of the dead in a more generous, spirit; that the past are regarded with partiality, the present with envy. For as long as a man lives snarling envy is ever at his side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As soon as ever the state called for a great leader, that is to say a man who was equal to the task before him, there appeared one who was more war-like than all the leaders reared in the needy homes of Arpinum⁵ or the hardy ways of Nursia⁶ . . . . Parthians stained with Roman blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an enemy of old, resolved and dangerous, and prepared to meet the Romans, trained in wars verily from ambush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . when he was hurried headlong into daring any wicked deed, no crime more outrageous being now left for him to dare.

Then besides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . He set out for the war with tried soldiers who held the Parthian enemy in contempt, making light of the impact of their arrows compared with the gaping wounds inflicted by the scythes of the Dacians. Numbers of his soldiers would the emperor⁷ call each by his own name, aye, and by any humorous nickname of the camp. Those who hung back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . with a helmet decoration or bronze or partly . . . . by military custom payments proudly gained from spoils of the enemy such as, though victorious and celebrating triumphs, he had often grudged brave men, his generals (who had served him well).