Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/213

 which you prefer, and I will follow your directions. I am ready to fall in with any suggestions as long as my exploits are set in a bright light by you. Of course you will not overlook my speeches to the Senate and harangues to the army. I will send you also my parleys with the enemy. These will be of great assistance to you.

One thing I wish not indeed to point out to you—the pupil to his master—but to offer for your consideration, that you should dwell at length on the causes and early stages of the war, and especially our ill success in my absence. Do not be in a hurry to come to my share. Further, I think it essential to make quite clear the great superiority of the Parthians before my arrival, that the magnitude of my achievements may be manifest. Whether, then, you should give only a sketch of all this, as Thucydides did in his Narrative of the Fifty Years War, or go a little more deeply into the subject without however expatiating upon it, as you would upon mine in the sequel, it is for you to decide.

In short, my achievements, whatsoever their character, are no greater, of course, than they actually are, but they can be made to seem as great as you would have them seem.

165 A.D.

To my Lord Antoninus Augustus.

and to the great exploits 197

