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What breadth of feeling they contain, what choice expressions, how graceful they are, how musical, how exact! I thought I was holding in my hands Callimachus or Herodes, or even a greater poet than these, if greater there be, yet neither of these two poets attempted or excelled in both these forms of verse. Is it possible for a Roman to write such Greek?
And Rome will never for him be one whit juster. However, your father will be delighted to have you make such a friend a man of thirty whose idea of a debauch is to make a syllogism, who is a favourite student of great teachers and can introduce you to Herodes Atticus and to all the best life of Athens. Nor, indeed, do I marvel at Aurelius for trusting him.
Among a crowd of these private benefactors, we may select Herodes Atticus, an Athenian citizen, who lived in the age of the Antonines. Whatever might be the motive of his conduct, his magnificence would have been worthy of the greatest kings. The family of Herod, at least after it had been favored by fortune, was lineally descended from Cimon and Miltiades, Theseus and Cecrops, Æacus and Jupiter.
And imperceptibly, like the year in an invisible rotation, the circle turned, and stopped at the Feast of the Holy Innocents, where there flourished out, like a flower from a slaughter-house, on a shoot culled from a soil irrigated by the blood of lambs, this sequence, red, and smelling of roses, the "Salvate Flores Martyrum" of Prudentius; the crown moved again, and the hymn of the Epiphany, the "Crudelis Herodes" of Sedudius, appeared in its turn.
Herodes was a Greek rhetorician who had a school at Rome, and Marcus Aurelius was among his pupils. Both Marcus and the Emperor Antoninus had a high opinion of Herodes; and all we know goes to prove he was a man of high character and princely generosity.
At least I prefer to write unwisely rather than to be silent unkindly. 1 Ad M. Caes ii., 2. Fronto replied, thanking the prince for his advice, and promising that he will confine himself to the facts of the case. But he points out that the charges brought against Herodes were such, that they can hardly be made agreeable; amongst them being spoliation, violence, and murder.
He obtained of Caesar, when in power, the Roman citizenship for Cratippus, the Peripatetic, and got the court of Areopagus, by public decree, to request his stay at Athens, for the instruction of their youth, and the honor of their city. There are letters extant from Cicero to Herodes, and others to his son, in which he recommends the study of philosophy under Cratippus.
Had he been a Gentile, and lived, the world might have heard of him as the rival of Herodes Atticus: as it was, he perished at sea some ten years before this second period of our story, in the prime of life, and lamented everywhere in Judea. We are already acquainted with two members of his family his widow and son; the only other was a daughter she whom we have seen singing to her brother.
Herodes Atticus, that remarkable figure who traced his descent to the very beginnings of Athenian history and the semi-mythical Aeacidae of Aegina, and who was consul of Rome under Antoninus Pius, had taken up his permanent residence in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to the architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a munificent patronage of letters.
But if, as in Syria and Egypt, it bore a fruit that is the most pleasant to the eyes of anything in the world, and the sweetest to the taste, then I must confess nothing could compare with it. This discourse of Herodes seemed to give occasion for a query about Nicolaus, which would be as pleasant as the former.
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