Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/163



17. Even Viriathus and even Spartacus were skilled in war and quick to strike. But indeed, if you wish to count up the full tale of all the orators, as many as have existed since the foundation of Rome, including those whom Cicero in his Brutus endowed wholesale with the franchise of eloquence, you will scarcely make up the number of three hundred all told, while from one family of the Fabii there fell fighting for their country in one day three hundred soldiers, the bravest of the brave. Not of races many thousands      to the height of eloquence  where the subject calls for it  or to speak on a matter in a lower key

18. It was surely, Imperator, not the circus or the breastplate that instilled these wise ideas into you from your earliest boyhood, but books and training in letters. When you read many instances of this kind, fruitful of wise suggestion, in histories and speeches, you used eloquence as your mistress in the art of war. 147