Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/289

 When we were thus listening to all this that Fronto said, as was natural, not only with approbation but with admiration, he added:

"Take care, however, not to think that multi mortales should be used always and on every occasion for multi homines, that the Greek proverb from Varro's Satire, myrrh-oil on a dish of lentils, may not be actually exemplified."

This criticism of Fronto's, though concerned with trifling and unimportant locutions, I thought worthy to be recorded, that we should not fail, perchance, through neglect or inadvertence to apply a nice discrimination to words of this kind.

After 143 A.D.

1. that Julius Celsinus Numida and I once went to call on Cornelius Fronto who was at the time suffering from gout. When we were admitted, we found him lying on a pallet-bed of Grecian pattern with many persons eminent for learning, birth or fortune sitting round him. Several architects, called in for the construction of a new bath, were in attendance, and they were exhibiting various sketches of baths drawn upon little scrolls of parchment. When he had chosen one 273 VOL. II.