Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/309

 Where the great Marcus Cato the Censor? Where all the discipline of our ancestors? Marcus Antoninus philosophizes and enquires about first principles and about the soul and about what is honourable and just, and has no thought for the State You have heard of the praefectus praetorio of our philosopher, who was a beggarly pauper three days before he was appointed, but has suddenly become rich—whence, pray, if not from the vitals of the State and the property of the provincials? Well, let them be rich, let them be opulent: they will serve to fill the public treasury." By a commonplace of the rhetorical schools Cassius in another passage is made to liken himself to Catiline and Marcus to the dialogista (Cicero).

However there are some touches in the correspondence which are true to character, such as the words attributed to Lucius, "I do not hate the man," which are in keeping with his well-known bonitas, and the "Perish my children" of Marcus, which he might well have said. But he is not likely to have quoted Suetonius or Horace, to the latter of whom he took a dislike in his younger days. The fabricator of the letters was perhaps Aemilius Parthenianus, a writer of the third or fourth century.

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