Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/42

 despised, though he admitted that it inspired great thoughts, which it was for eloquence to clothe. Philosophy and rhetoric contended for the soul of Marcus in the persons of the austere Rusticus, the domestic chaplain of Marcus in the Stoic creed, and the courtly Fronto. But the result was a foregone conclusion. Marcus before he was twelve had already made his choice; and though he tried loyally to please his master and learn all the tricks of rhetoric, yet his heart was always far from the wind-flowers of eloquence. He aroused his master's ire by asserting that, when he had said something more than usually brilliant, he felt pleased, and therefore shunned eloquence. Fronto pertinently rejoined, "You feel pleasure, when eloquent; then, chastise yourself, why chastise eloquence?" Again when Marcus in his ultra-conscientiousness avows a distaste for the obliquities and insincerities of oratory, Fronto is clearly nettled, and counters smartly with a reference to the irony of Socrates.

In spite of all Fronto's efforts Marcus in his twenty-fourth year finally declared his decision. He could no longer consent to argue on both sides of a question, as the art of oratory would have him do. There is no doubt that his master was bitterly xxxiv