Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/277

 you over time even by so much as I have already said, bound as you are I suppose on some business. Go then now, and when you chance to have the time, search whether some orator or poet, belonging at least to the more ancient school, that is, some writer of classic rank and of substance, and not of the common sort, have not used quadriga and arenae."

8. Fronto bade us indeed look out for these words, not, I take it, because he thought they were to be found in any writings of the ancients, but that he might through the search after uncommon words practise us in the habit of reading.

The form, then, which seemed the most uncommon of all we did find, quadriga spoken of in the singular, in the book of Satires by M. Varro entitled Exdemetricus. But for arenae in the plural we looked with less care, because besides Caesar, as far as I remember, no man of learning has banned it.

After 143 A.D.

Conversation of M. Fronto and Favorinus the philosopher on the different kinds of colours and the terms for them in Greek and Latin; and incidentally what sort of colour is spadix.

1. Favorinus the philosopher was on his way to visit Fronto, formerly consul, who had gout, he wished me also to accompany him thither. And then, when there, at Fronto's house, many 261