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Updated: May 25, 2025
The bronze age of Ennius and Cato had been succeeded, in a broad and stately development, by the Golden and Silver periods. Under this fresh attack the Latin of the Silver Age breaks up and goes to pieces, and the failure of Fronto and his contemporaries to create a new language opens the age of the base metals.
Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation, to declare, that, unless his brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome.
He had promised that they should be fed and cared for in the desert even though they took no care for themselves, and they had believed him. So each monk took a few olives in his pouch and a double-pronged hoe to dig and plant corn with, and followed Fronto into the desert.
One of these teachers, Fronto, has come down to us, his portrait well etched on history's tablets, because he saved all the letters written him by Marcus Aurelius; and his grandchildren published them in order to show the excellence of true scientific teaching. That old Fronto was a dear old dear, these letters do fully attest.
How any man of sense can tolerate such stuff, I do not know. Here is another point quite worth mention. This writer has such a passion for unadulterated Attic, and for refining speech to the last degree of purity, that he metamorphoses the Latin names and translates them into Greek; Saturninus figures as Cronius, Fronto must be Phrontis, Titianus Titanius, with queerer transmogrifications yet.
For instance, can anyone conceive anything more perfectly beautiful than the death of Flavian, and all that youthful companionship, and Marius' admiration for his friend's poetry?... that delightful language of the third century a new Latin, a season of dependency, an Indian summer full of strange and varied cadences, so different from the monotonous sing-song of the Augustan age; the school of which Fronto was the head.
Next time the Senate sat, long discourses against the luxury of the city were made by Quintus Haterius, a consular, and by Octavius Fronto, formerly Praetor; and a law was passed "against using table-plate of solid gold, and against men debasing themselves with gorgeous and effeminate silks."
For the frivolities of society Marcus had no use his hours were filled with useful work or application to his books. His father and Fronto we find were both constantly urging him to get out more in the sunshine and meet more people, and not bother too much about the books. How best to curtail over-application, I am told, is a problem that seldom faces a teacher.
And again the monks were very much ashamed, and went back to Fronto to beg his forgiveness, promising never again to be faint-hearted nor to lose faith. The next morning they made ready to send back the camels to Alexandria. For they knew Glaucus would be anxious to hear how his ships of the desert had fared on their errand.
It was Fronto who had induced them to leave the pleasant monastery at Nitria, where the rest of their brethren were living in peace and plenty. It was Fronto who had led them into this miserable desert to serve God in solitude, as holy men loved to do in the early days of Christendom. Fronto was a holy man, full of faith and courage.
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