Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/36

 almost the heyday of Roman Law. Not but that Fronto was, first and foremost, an orator, whose object is not justice but persuasion. It cannot be denied that in the extract from the speech on wills he indulges in fancy pictures and ignores obvious and material facts. Still his presentment of the case is certainly not without point and vigour, though it is over-elaborated and smacks too much of the art of rhetoric.

The letters on Matidia's will and the Falcidian Law are in their mutilated condition too ambiguous to assist us in our enquiry as to Fronto's legal attainments.

Fronto's ideals in oratory were high. The most difficult test of an orator seemed to him to be that he should please without sacrificing the true principles of eloquence. Smooth phrases for tickling the ears of the hearers must not be such as are offensive to good taste, a feebleness in form being preferable to a coarseness of thought. In spite of his insistence on style and the choice of words, Fronto knows well enough and affirms that noble thoughts are the essential thing in oratory, for the want of which no verbal dexterity or artistic taste will compensate. It was his deficiency in "high thought's invention" that forced Fronto to concentrate his attention on the form and eke out the matter with the manner. Needless to say he has at his fingers' ends all the tropes and xxviii