Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/127

 should be handled as honourably as possible. I trust my advice will commend itself to you, for my goodwill you must commend. At any rate, I would rather fail in judgment by writing than fail in friendship by keeping silence. Farewell, my Fronto, most beloved and most loving of friends.

? 140–143 A.D. to my Lord Caesar.

Rightly have I devoted myself to you, rightly invested in you and your father all the gains of my life. What could be more friendly, what more delightful, what more true ? But I beseech you, away with your forward boys and rash counsellors! There is danger, forsooth, of anything you suggest being childishly conceived or ill-advised! Believe me, if you will—if not, I will for my part believe myself—that in good sense you leave your elders far behind. In fact, in this affair, I realise that your counsel is weighty and worthy of a greybeard, while mine is childish. For what is the good of providing a spectacle for friends and foes? If your Herodes be an honourable and moral man, it is not right that such a man should be assailed with invectives by me; if he is wicked and worthless, my fight with him is not on equal terms, nor do we stand to lose the same. For any contact with what is unclean 63