h separates
them--"as superstitious people watch for the star, at the rising of
which they may break their fast." To one of the writers, to Aurelius,
the correspondence was sincerely of value. We see him once reading his
letters with genuine delight on going to rest. Fronto seeks to deter
his pupil from writing in Greek.--Why buy, at great cost, a foreign
wine, inferior to that from one's own vineyard? Aurelius, on the other
hand, with an extraordinary innate susceptibility to words--la parole
pour la parole, as the French say--despairs, in presence of Fronto's
rhetorical perfection.

Like the modern visitor to the Capitoline and some other museums,
Fronto had been struck, pleasantly struck, by the family likeness [225]
among the Antonines; and it was part of his friendship to make much of
it, in the case of the children of Faustina. "Well! I have seen the
little ones," he writes to Aurelius, then, apparently, absent from
them: "I have seen the little ones--the pleasantest sight of my life;
for they are as like yourself as could possibly be. It has well repaid
me for my journey over that slippery road, and up those steep rocks;
for I beheld you, not simply face to face before me, but, more
generously, whichever way I turned, to my right and my left. For the
rest, I found them, Heaven be thanked! with healthy cheeks and lusty
voices. One was holding a slice of white bread, like a king's son; the
other a crust of brown bread, as becomes the offspring of a
philosopher. I pray the gods to have both the sower and the seed in
their keeping; to watch over this field wherein the ears of corn are so
kindly alike. Ah! I heard too their pretty voices, so sweet that in
the childish prattle of one and the other I seemed somehow to be
listening--yes! in that chirping of your pretty chickens--to the
limpid+ and harmonious notes of your own oratory. Take care! you will
find me growing independent, having those I could love in your
place:--love, on the surety of my eyes and ears."

"Magistro meo salutem!" replies the Emperor, "I too have seen my little
ones in your sight of them; as, also, I saw yourself in reading your
[226] letter. It is that charming letter forces me to write thus:"
with reiterations of affection, that is, which are continual in these
letters, on both sides, and which may strike a modern reader perhaps as
fulsome; or, again, as having something in common with the old Judaic
unction of friendship. They