Marcus Aurelius' Letters to Fronto

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1:05Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

1:44Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. It may surprise you, but Marcus Reulis did more than just write meditations. He didn't write any other books. We don't have any of his speeches. We don't have even that many of his remarks. But we do have a collection of letters between him and his tutor. Now, this isn't Rusticus, his philosophy teacher. This is Fronto, his rhetoric teacher, who was deeply beloved by Marcus. And I think you can pick up from the letters that sometimes Franto was jealous of Rusticus, jealous of Marcus Aurelius' dedication to philosophy. He was the much more practical of Marcus's teachers.

2:24He was the one that was preparing him for political life, for speaking to and on behalf of the empire. So it's this fascinating series of letters. And you can tell there's this profound connection and love between these two men. And Franto basically plays this crucial role in the intellectual and personal development of one of the great men of history. And these letters are a fascinating way to get up close and personal. It was edited and translated for the first time in English by C.R. Haynes. And I want to share a couple of my favorite letters with you today. So I'll just get into that. But if you're listening to this on a Sunday, just go for a walk, enjoy your drive, and just listen to Marcus Aurelius go back and forth.

3:08someone he deeply admired and cared about and was influential in making him the person that he was.

3:17The Correspondence of M. Cornelius Fronto. Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar, 139 AD. Fronto to my Lord. In all arts, I take it, total inexperience and ignorance are preferable to a semi-experience and a half-knowledge. For he who is conscious that he knows nothing of an art aims at less, and consequently comes less to grief. In fact, diffidence excludes presumption. But when anyone parades a superficial knowledge as mastery of a subject, through false confidence he makes manifold slips. They say, too, that it is better to have kept wholly clear of the teachings of philosophy than to have tasted them superficially, and, as the saying goes, with the tips of the lips, and that those turn out the most knavish who, going about the precincts of an art, turn aside or ever they have entered its portals.

4:22Yet in other arts it is possible sometimes to escape exposure, and for a man to be deemed, for a period, proficient in that wherein he is an ignoramus. But in the choice and arrangement of words, he is detected instantly. Nor can anyone make a pretense with words for long, without himself betraying that he is ignorant of them, that his judgment of them is incorrect, his estimate of them haphazard, his handling of them unskillful, and that he can distinguish neither their propriety nor their force. Wherefore, few indeed of our old writers have surrendered themselves to that toil, pursuit, and hazard of seeking out words with a special diligence.

5:08M. Porcius alone of the orators of all time, and his constant imitator C. Seleustius, are among these. Of poets Platus especially, and most especially Q. Aeneas, and his zealous rival L. Coelius, not to omit Navius and Lucretius, Axius too, and Caecilius, also Liberius. Besides these, certain other writers are noticeable for choiceness in special spheres, as Novius, Pomponius, and their like in rustic and jocular and comic words, Atta in women's talk, Sisena in erotics, Lucilius in the technical language of each art and business. At this point, perhaps, you will have long been asking in what category I should place M.

5:58Tullius, who is height, the head and source of Roman eloquence. I consider him on all occasions to have used the most beautiful words, and to have been magnificent above all other orators in embellishing the subject which he wished to set out. But he seems to me to have been far from disposed to search out words with especial care, whether from greatness of mind or to escape toil, or from the assurance that what others can scarcely find with careful search would be his at call without the need of searching. And so, from a most attentive pursual of all his writings, I think I have ascertained that he has, with the utmost copiousness and opulence, handled all other kinds of words, words literal and figurative, simple and compound, and, what are conspicuous everywhere in his writings, noble words, and oftentimes also exquisite ones.

6:59And yet, in all his speeches, you will find very few words indeed that are unexpected and unlooked for, such as are not to be hunted out, save with study and care and watchfulness, and the treasuring up of old poems in memory. By an unexpected and unlooked-for word, I mean one which is brought out when the hearer or reader is not expecting it or thinking of it, yet so that if you withdrew it and asked the reader himself to think of a substitute, he would be able to find either no other at all, or one not so fitted to express the intended meaning. Wherefore, I commend you greatly for the care and diligence you shoo in digging deep for your word and fitting it to your meaning.

7:47But, as I said at first, there lies a greater danger in the enterprise, lest the word be applied unsuitably, or with a want of clearness, or a lack of refinement, as by a man of half-knowledge. For it is much better to use common and everyday words than unusual and far-fetched ones, if there is little difference in real meaning. I hardly know whether it is advisable to shew how great is the difficulty, what scrupulous and anxious care must be taken in weighing words, for fear the knowledge should check the ardor of the young and weaken their hopes of success. The transposition or subtraction or alteration of a single letter in many cases changes the force and beauty of the word and testifies to the taste or knowledge of the speaker.

8:40I may say I have noticed when you were reading over to me what you had written, and I altered a syllable in a word that you paid no attention to and thought it of no great consequence. I should be loathed, therefore, or for you not to know the immense difference made by one syllable. I should say, os colluere, but in balnis pavimentum peluere, not colluere. I should, however, say lacrimis genas lavere, not peluere, or colluere, but vestimenta lavare, not lavere. Again, sudorum ets pulverum abluere, not lavare. but it is more elegant to say maculum eluere than abluere. If, however, the stain had soaked in and could not be taken out without some damage, I should use the plautine word elevere.

9:37Then there are besides musum deluere, fosis proluere, ungulum iumento subluere. So many are the examples of one and the same word, with the change of a syllable or letter being used in various ways and meanings. Just as by Hercules, I should speak with a nicer accuracy of a face painted with rouge, a body splashed with mud, a cup smeared with honey, a sword point dipped in poison, a steak daubed with bird lime. time. Someone maybe will ask, Who, pray, is to prevent me saying, Vestimenta lavere, rather than lavare, sudorum lavare, rather than abluere? As for you, indeed, no one will have any right to interfere with or prescribe for you in that matter, as you are a free man, born of free parents, and have more than a knight's income, and are asked your opinion in the Senate.

10:42We, however, who have dedicated ourselves in dutiful service to the ears of the cultured, needs with the utmost care study these nice distinctions in minutia. Some absolutely work at their words with crowbar and maul, as if they were flints. Others, however, grave them with burren and mallet, as though they were little gems. For you it will be better, for greater deafness in searching out words, to take it to heart when corrected, than to demur or flag when detected in a fault. For if you give up searching, you will never find. If you go on searching, you will find. Finally, you seemed even to have thought it a work of super-irrigation when I changed your order of a word, so that the epithet, three-headed, should come before the name Jirion.

11:36Bear this too in mind. It frequently happens that words in a speech, by a change of their order, become essential or superfluous. I should be right in speaking of a ship with three decks, but ship would be a superfluous addition to three-decker, for there is no danger of anyone thinking that by three-decker was meant a litter, a landau, or a loot. Then, again, when you were pointing out why the Parthians wore loose, wide sleeves, you wrote, I think, to this effect, that the heat was suspended by the openings in the robe. Can you tell me, pray, how the heat is suspended? Not that I find fault with you for pushing out somewhat boldly, in the metaphorical use of a word, for I agree with Ennius, his opinion that an orator should be bold.

12:32By all means let him be bold, as Ennius lays down, but let him in no case deviate from the meaning which he would express. So I greatly approved and applauded your intention when you set about seeking for a word. What I found fault with was the want of care shewn in selecting a word which made nonsense. For by openings in sleeves, which we occasionally see to be loose and flowing, Heat cannot be suspended. Heat can be dispelled through the openings of a robe. It can be thrown off. It can radiate away. It can be given a passage. It can be diverted. It can be ventilated out. Be almost anything, in fact, rather than be suspended.

13:21A word which means that a thing is held up from above, not drawn away through wide passages. After that, I advised you as to the preparatory studies necessary for the writing of history, since that was your desire. As that subject would require a somewhat lengthy discussion, I make an end, that I overstep not the bounds of a letter. If you wish to be written to on that subject too, you must remind me again and again. Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar, 139 A.D. To my Lord, Gratia came home last night, but to me it has been as good as having Gratia that you have turned your maxims so brilliantly, the one which I receive today almost faultlessly, so that it could be put in a book of solace without jarring or shooing any inferiority.

14:22I am happy, merry, hail. In a word, become young again when you make such progress. It is no light thing that I shall require, but what I remember to have been of service to myself, I cannot but require of you also. You must turn the same maxim twice or thrice, just as you have done with that little one. And so turn longer ones, two or three times, diligently, boldly. Whatever you venture on, such are your abilities, you will accomplish. But, indeed, with toil have you coveted a task that is truly toilsome, but fair and honorable, and attained by few. You have got it perfectly out. This exercise will be the greatest help to you in speech-making, undoubtedly, too, the exerting of some sentences from the Ugorta or the Catiline.

15:25If the gods are kind, on your return from Rome, I will exact again from your daily quota of verses. Greet my lady, your mother. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto, 139 A.D. To my Master, I have received two letters from you at once. In one of these you scolded me, and pointed out that I had written a sentence carelessly. In the other, however, you strove to encourage my efforts with praise. Yet I protest to you by my health, by my mother's and yours, that it was the former letter which gave me the greater pleasure, and that, as I read it, I cried out again and again, Oh, happy that I am. Are you then so happy, someone will say, for having a teacher to show you how to write a maxim more deftly, more clearly, more lursely, more elegantly?

16:29No, that is not my reason for calling myself happy. What then is it? It is that I learn from you to speak the truth. That matter of speaking the truth is precisely what is so hard for gods and men. In fact, there is no oracle so truth-telling as not to contain within itself something ambiguous or crooked or intricate, whereby the unwary may be caught and, interpreting the answer in the light of their own wishes, realize its fallaciousness only when the time has passed and the business done. But the thing is profitable, and clearly it is the custom to excuse such things merely as pious fraud and delusion.

17:19On the other hand, your fault findings or your guiding reins, whichever they be, shoo me the way at once without guile and feigned words. And so I ought to be grateful to you for this, that you teach me before all to speak the truth at the same time and to hear the truth. A double return then would be due, and this you will strive to put it beyond my power to pay. If you will have no return made, how can I requite you, like with like, if not by obedience? Disloyal, however, to myself, I preferred that you moved by excess of care. Since I had those days free, I had the chance of doing some good work and making many extracts.

18:11Farewell, my good master, my best of masters. I rejoice, best of orators, that you have so become my friend. My lady greets you.

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20:03Marcus Aurelius, Tafronto, 139 AD Hail, my best of masters. If any sleep comes back to you after the wakeful nights of which you complain, I beseech you write to me, and, above all, I beseech you take care of your health. Then hide somewhere, and bury that axe of tenedos, which you hold over us, and do not, whatever you do, give up your intention of pleading cases, or, along with yours, let all lips be dumb. You say that you have composed something in Greek, which pleases you more than almost anything you have written. Are you not he who gave me such a castigation for writing in Greek? However, I must now, more than ever, write in Greek.

20:55Do you ask why? I wish to make trial whether what I have not learnt may not more readily come to my aid, since what I have learnt leaves me in the lurch. But, and you really loved me, you would have sent me that new peace you are so pleased with. However, I read you here in spite of yourself, and, indeed, that alone is my life and stay. It is a sanguinary theme you have sent me. I have not yet read the extracts of Coleus, which you sent, nor shall I read it until I, on my part, have hunted up my wits. But my Caesar speech grips me with its hooked talons. Now, if never before, I find what a task it is to round and shape three or five lines and to take time over writing.

21:51Farewell, breath of my life. Should I not burn with love of you, who have written to me as you have? What shall I do? I cannot cease. Last year it befell me in this very place, and at this very time, to be consumed with a passionate longing for my mother. This year you inflame that my longing. My Lady greets you. Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar 139 A.D. A Discourse on Love This is the third letter, beloved boy, that I am sending you on the same theme, the first by the hand of Lysias, the son of Cephalos, the second of Plato, the philosopher, and the third, indeed, by the hand of this foreigner, in speech little short of a barbarian, but as regards judgment, as I think, not wholly wanting in sagacity.

22:52And I write now without trenching at all upon those previous writings, and so do not you disregard the discourse as saying what has been already said. But if the present treatise seem to you to be longer than those which were previously sent through Lysias and Plato, let this be a proof to you that I can claim in fair words to be at no loss for words. but you must consider now whether my words are no less true than new. No doubt, oh boy, you will wish to know at the very beginning of my discourse how it is that I, who am not in love, long with such eagerness for the very same thing as lovers. I will tell you, therefore, first of all how this is.

23:42He who is ever so much a lover is, by Zeus, gifted with no keener sight than I, who am no lover. But I can discern your beauty as well as anyone else, a. far more accurately, I might say, even than your lover. But just as we see in the case of fever patients and those who have taken right good exercise in the gymnasium, The same result proceeds from different causes. They are both thirsty, the one from his malady, the other from his exercise. It has been my lot also to suffer some such malady from love. But me you shall not come near to your ruin, nor associate with me to any detriment, but to your every advantage.

24:34For it is rather by non-lovers that beautiful youths are benefited and preserved, just as plants are by water. For neither fountains nor rivers are in love with plants, but by going near them and flowing past them, they make them bloom and thrive. Money given by me you would be right in calling a gift, but given by a lover, acquittance. And the children of prophets say that to gods also is the thank-offering among sacrifices more acceptable than the sin-offering. For the one is offered by the prosperous for the preservation and possession of their goods, the other by the wretched for the averting of ills.

25:20Let this suffice to be said on what is expedient and beneficial both to you and to him. But if it is right that he should receive aid from you, you set this on a firm basis. You framed this love for him and devised Thessalian love charms, owing to his insatiable desire, unless you have manifestly done wrong. And do not ignore the fact that you are yourself wronged and subjected to no small outrage in this, that all men know and speak openly thus of you, that he is your lover. And so, by anticipation, and before being guilty of any such things, you abide the imputation of being guilty. Consequently, the generality of the citizens call you the man's darling, but I shall keep your name unsullied and inviolate.

26:18For as far as I am concerned, you shall be called beautiful, not darling. But if the other use this name as his by right, because his desire is greater, let him know that his desire is not greater, but more importunate. Yet with flies and gnats, the especial reason why we wave them away and brush them off is because they fly at us, most impudently and importunately. It is this, indeed, that makes the wild beast shun the hunter most of all, and the bird the fowler. And, in fact, all animals avoid most those that especially lie in wait for and pursue them. But if anyone thinks that beauty is more glorified and honored by reason of its lovers, he is totally mistaken.

27:10For you, the beautiful ones, through your lovers run the risk of your beauty winning no credence with hearers, but through us non-lovers, you establish your reputation for beauty on a sure basis. At any rate, if anyone who had never seen you were to inquire after your personal appearance, he would put faith in my praises, knowing that I am not in love, but he would disbelieve the other as praising not truthfully but lovingly. As many, then, as are maimed or ugly or deformed, would naturally pray for lovers to be theirs, for they would find no others to court them but those who approach them under the madness and duress of love.

27:59But you, such is your beauty, cannot reap any greater advantage from a lover, for non-lovers have need of you no less than they. And indeed, to those who are really beautiful, lovers are as useless as flatterers to those who deserve praise. It is sailors and steersmen, and captains of warships and merchants, and those that in other ways travel upon it, who give excellence and glory and honor and gain an ornament to the sea. Not, heaven help us, dolphins that can live only in the sea. But for beautiful boys, it is we who cherish and praise them disinterestedly, not lovers, whose life, deprived of their darlings, would be unlivable.

28:52And you will find, if you look into it, that lovers are the cause of the utmost disgrace. But all who are right-minded must shun disgrace, the young most of all, since the evil attaching to them at the beginning of a long life will rest upon them the longer. As then in the case of sacred rites and sacrifices, so also of life, it behooves above all those who are entering upon them to have a care for their good name. For indeed by such adornments lovers do them no honor, but are themselves guilty of affectation and display, and, as it were, vulgarize the mysteries of love. Your lover, too, as they say, composes some amatory writings about you in the hope of enticing you with this bait, if with no other, and attracting you to himself and catching you.

29:52But such things are a disgrace and an insult and a sort of licentious cry, the outcome of stinging lust, such as those of wild beasts and fed cattle. That's from sexual desire bellow or neigh or low or howl. Like to these are the lyrics of lovers. If, therefore, you submit yourself to your lover to enjoy where and when he pleases, awaiting neither time that is fitting, nor leisure, nor privacy, then, like a beast in the frenzy of desire, will he make straight for you, and be eager to go to it, nothing ashamed. I will add but one thing before I conclude my discourse, that we are formed by nature to praise and admire, but not to love.

30:45All the gifts of the gods and their works that have come for the use and delight and benefits of men, those indeed of them, which are holy and in every way divine, I mean the earth and sky and sun and sea, while in the case of some other beautiful things of less worth, informed to fulfill a less comely part, these at once are the subject of envy and love and emulation and desire. And some are in love with wealth, others again with rich viands, and others with wine. In the number and category of such is beauty reckoned by lovers, like wealth and viands, and strong drink. But by us, who admire indeed but love not, like sun and sky and earth and sea, for such things are too good for any love and beyond its reach.

31:40One thing more I will tell you, and if you will pass it on to all other boys, your words will seem convincing. Very likely you have heard from your mother, or from those who brought you up, that among flowers there is one that is indeed in love with the sun, and undergoes the fate of lovers, lifting itself up when the sun rises, following his motions as he runs his course, and when he sets, turning itself about. But it takes no advantage thereby, nor yet, for all its love for the sun, does it find him the kinder, least esteemed at any rate, of plants and flowers. It is utilized neither for festal banquets, nor for garlands of gods or men.

32:30Maybe, oh boy, you would like to see this flower. Well, I will shoo at you if we go for a walk outside the city walls as far as Elyssus. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto, 139 A.D. Hail, my best of masters. Go on, threaten as much as you please and attack me with hosts of arguments. Yet shall you never drive your lover, I mean me, away. Nor shall I the less assert that I love Fronto, or love him the less, because you prove with reason so various and so vehement that those who are less in love must be more helped and indulged. So passionately, by Hercules, am I in love with you, nor am I frightened off by the law you lay down.

33:25And even if you shoo yourself more forward and facile to others who are non-lovers, yet will I love you while I have life and health. For the rest, having regard to the close packing of ideas, the inventive subtitles, and the felicity of your championship of your cause, I hardly like, indeed, to say that you have far outstripped those adicists, so self-satisfied and challenging, and yet I cannot but say so. For I am in love, and this, if nothing else, ought, I think, verily to be allowed to lovers, that they should have greater joy in the triumph of their loved ones. Ours, then, is the triumph.

34:14Ours, I say. Is it preferable to talk philosophy under ceilings rather than under plain trees, within the city bounds than without its walls, scorning delights than with Laís herself, sitting at our side or sharing our home? Nor can I make a cast which to beware of more. the law which an orator of our time has laid down about his lais, or my master's dictum about Plato. This I can without rashness affirm. If that Phaedrus of yours ever really existed, if he was never away from Socrates, Socrates never felt for Phaedrus a more passionate, longing, than I for the sight of you all these days. Days, do I say.

35:06months I mean unless he is straightway seized with love of you farewell my greatest treasure beneath the sky my glory it is enough to have had such a master my lady mother sends you greeting

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