Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/313

 Cephisia, attended by young men from every quarter, who travelled to Athens from a desire to hear his oratory.

Wishing to make trial whether Marcus was angry with him owing to what had occurred at the trial, he sent him a letter not containing excuses but a complaint, for he said that "he wondered for what reason Marcus no longer wrote to him, though in times past he wrote so often that on one occasion three letter-carriers reached him on a single day, one treading on the heels of another."

And the Emperor at greater length and on greater subjects, and putting a wonderful amount of character into the letter, sent an answer to Herodes, from which I will extract what bears upon my present subject and quote it. The letter opened with the words "Hail, my dear Herodes"; and after speaking of his winter quarters after the war, in which he was at the time, and lamenting the wife whom he had lately lost, and saying something also about his bodily weakness, he went on as follows: "But for you I pray that you may have good health, and may think of me as your well-wisher and not consider yourself wronged because, detecting some of your household in wrong-doings, I punished them in the mildest way possible. Be not angry with me on this account, but, if I have done you, or am doing you, any injury, ask satisfaction of me in the temple of Athena-in-the-City during the Mysteries. For I 297