Selected Letters of Marcus Aurelius

The correspondence between Marcus Aurelius and his teacher Marcus Cornelius Fronto is one of the most intimate and revealing sources for the inner life of the future emperor. Here Marcus appears not only as a philosopher, but as a young student, a friend, a son, and a man of unusual sensitivity, literary ambition, and moral seriousness.

These letters are especially valuable because they allow us to see Marcus Aurelius before the Meditations — not yet as the author of austere Stoic self-exhortations, but as a living human being within the world of friendship, rhetorical education, illness, study, longing, and Roman daily life. In them one may already perceive his love of language, his sternness toward himself, and the inward tension that would later become the basis of his philosophy.

Below are selected letters from that correspondence.

On Words, Precision, and the Discipline of Expression

3. Fronto to Marcus Aurelius as Caesar

? 139 A.D.

Fronto to my Lord

1

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.

Yet 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 pretence¹ 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 unskilful, and that he can distinguish neither their propriety nor their force.

2

Wherefore few indeed of our old writers have surrendered themselves to that toil, pursuit, and hazard of seeking out words with especial diligence. M. Porcius alone of the orators of all time, and his constant imitator C. Sallustius, are among these; of poets Plautus especially, and most especially Q. Ennius and his zealous rival L. Coelius, not to omit Naevius and Lucretius, Accius, too, and Caecilius, also Laberius.

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, Sisenna in erotics, Lucilius in the technical language of each art and business.

3

At this point, perhaps, you will have long been asking in what category I should place M. Tullius, who is hight 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 perusal 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 often-times also exquisite ones: and 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 the 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 shew in digging deep for your word and fitting it to your meaning. But, as I said at first, there lies a great danger in the enterprize 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.

4

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 ardour 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 a word and testifies to the taste or knowledge of the speaker. I 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 it and thought it of no great consequence. I should be loth, therefore, for you not to know the immense difference made by one syllable.

I should say os colluere², but in balneis pavimentum pelluere³, not colluere; I should, however, say lacrimis genas lavere⁴, not pelluere or colluere; but vestimenta lavare⁵, not lavere; again, sudorem et pulverem abluere⁶, not lavare; but it is more elegant to say maculam 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 elavere⁷. Then there are besides mulsum diluere⁸, fauces proluere⁹, unguium iumento subluere¹⁰.

5

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 stake daubed with bird-lime.

6

Someone maybe will ask, Who, pray, is to prevent me saying vestimenta lavere rather than lavare, sudorem 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; we, however, who have dedicated ourselves in dutiful service to the ears of the cultured must needs with the utmost care study these nice distinctions and minutiae.

Some absolutely work at their words with crowbar and maul as if they were flints; others, however, grave them with burin and mallet as though they were little gems. For you it will be better, for greater deftness 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.

7

Finally, you seemed even to have thought it a work of supererogation when I changed your order of a word, so that the epithet three-headed should come before the name Geryon. Bear this, too, in mind: it frequently happens that words in a speech, by a change in 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 danger¹¹ of anyone thinking that by three-decker was meant a litter, a landau, or a lute.

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 suspended¹² 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 boldly¹³ in the metaphorical use of a word, for I agree with Ennius his opinion that “an orator should be bold.” By 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 be radiated away, it can be given a passage, it can be diverted, it can be ventilated out—it can be almost anything, in fact, rather than be suspended, a word which means that a thing is held up from above, not drawn away through wide passages.

8

After that I advised you as to the preparatory studies necessary for the writing of history¹⁴, 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.

4. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto

? 140–143 A.D.

Hail, my best of masters

1

I knew that on everyone’s birthday his friends undertake vows for him whose birthday it is. I, however, since I love you as myself, wish to offer up on this day, which is your birthday, hearty prayers for myself.

I call, therefore, with my vows to hear me each one of all the Gods, who anywhere in the world provide present and prompt help for men; who anywhere give their aid and shew their power in dreams or mysteries, or healing, or oracles; and I place myself according to the nature of each vow in that spot where the god who is invested with that power may the more readily hear.

2

Therefore I now first climb the citadel of the God of Pergamum and beseech Aesculapius¹⁵ to bless my master’s health and mightily protect it. Thence I pass on to Athens and, clasping Minerva by her knees, I entreat and pray that, if ever I know aught of letters, this knowledge may find its way into my breast from the lips of none other than Fronto.¹⁶

Now I return to Rome and implore with vows the gods that guard the roads and patrol the seas that in every journey of mine you may be with me, and I be not worn out with so constant, so consuming a desire for you.

Lastly, I ask all the tutelary deities of all the nations, and the very grove, whose rustling fills the Capitoline Hill, to grant us this, that I may keep with you this day, on which you were born for me, with you in good health and spirits.

Farewell, my sweetest and dearest of masters. I beseech you, take care of yourself, that when I come I may see you. My Lady greets you.

5. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto

? 144–145 A.D.

Hail, my sweetest of masters

1

We are well. I slept somewhat late owing to my slight cold, which seems now to have subsided. So from five a.m. till nine I spent the time partly in reading some of Cato’s Agriculture and partly in writing not quite such wretched stuff, by heavens, as yesterday.

Then, after paying my respects to my father, I relieved my throat, I will not say by gargling—though the word gargarisso is, I believe, found in Novius and elsewhere—but by swallowing honey water as far as the gullet and ejecting it again. After easing my throat I went off to my father and attended him at a sacrifice.¹⁷

Then we went to luncheon. What do you think I ate? A wee bit of bread, though I saw others devouring beans, onions, and herrings full of roe. We then worked hard at grape-gathering,¹⁸ and had a good sweat, and were merry and, as the poet says, still left some clusters hanging high as gleanings of the vintage.¹⁹ After six o’clock we came home.

2

I did but little work and that to no purpose. Then I had a long chat with my little mother as she sat on the bed. My talk was this:

What do you think my Fronto is now doing?
Then she: And what do you think my Gratia is doing?
Then I: And what do you think our little sparrow, the wee Gratia,²⁰ is doing?

Whilst we were chattering in this way and disputing which of us two loved the one or other of you two the better, the gong sounded, an intimation that my father had gone to his bath. So we had supper after we had bathed in the oil-press room; I do not mean bathed in the oil-press room, but when we had bathed, had supper there, and we enjoyed hearing the yokels chaffing one another.

After coming back, before I turn over and snore, I get my task done and give my dearest of masters an account of the day’s doings, and if I could miss him more, I would not grudge wasting away a little more.

Farewell, my Fronto, wherever you are, most honey-sweet, my love, my delight. How is it between you and me? I love you and you are away.

6. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto

? 144–145 A.D.

Hail, most reverend master

1

We are well. By a satisfactory arrangement of meals I worked from three o’clock a.m. till eight. For the next hour I paced about in slippers most contentedly before my bedroom. Then putting on my boots and donning my cloak—for we had been told to come in that dress—I went off to pay my respects to my Lord.

2

We set out for the chase²¹ and did doughty deeds. We did hear say that boars had been bagged, for we were not lucky enough to see any. However, we climbed quite a steep hill; then in the afternoon we came home.

I to my books: so taking off my boots and doffing my dress I passed nearly two hours on my couch, reading Cato’s speech On the Property of Pulchra²² and another in which he impeached a tribune. “Ho, you cry to your boy, go as fast as you can and fetch me those speeches from the libraries of Apollo!”²³ It is no use your sending, for those volumes, among others, have followed me here. So you must get round the librarian of Tiberius’s library:²⁴ a little douceur will be necessary, in which he and I can go shares when I come back to town.

Well, these speeches read, I wrote a little wretched stuff, fit to be dedicated to the deities of water and fire: truly to-day I have been unlucky in my writing, the lucubration of a sportsman or a vintager, such as those whose catches²⁵ ring through my bedroom, a noise every whit as hateful and wearisome as that of the law-courts. What is this I have said? Nay, ‘tis true, for my master is an orator.

3

I think I must have taken a chill, whether from walking about in slippers in the early morning, or from writing badly, I know not. I only know that, rheumy enough at all times, I seem to be more drivelling than ever to-day. So I will pour the oil on my head and go off to sleep, for not a drop of it do I intend to pour into my lamp to-day, so tired am I with riding and sneezing.

Farewell for my sake, dearest and sweetest of masters, whom I would make bold to say I long to see more than Rome itself.

7. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto

? 144–145 A.D.

To my master, greeting

Your brother but now brought me the good news of your arrival. Heaven knows I long for you to be able to come, if only your health will allow of it, for I hope that the sight of you may do something for my health also. Sweet ‘tis to look into a friend’s kind eyes, as Euripides,²⁶ I take it, says.

My present condition you can easily gauge by the shakiness of my handwriting. As far as my strength is concerned, it is certainly beginning to come back. The pain in my chest, too, is quite gone; but the ulcer … the trachea. I am under treatment and taking every care that nothing militates against its success. For I feel that my protracted illness can be made more bearable only by a consciousness of unfailing care and strict obedience²⁷ to the doctors’ orders.

Besides, it were shame, indeed, that a disease of the body should outlast a determination of the mind to recover health.

Farewell, my most delightful of masters. My mother greets you.

8. Fronto to Caesar

145–147 A.D.

1

Good heavens! how shocked I was on reading the beginning of your letter! It was written in such a way that I thought some danger to your health was meant. Then, when the danger, which at the beginning of your note I had taken to be yours, was shewn to be your daughter’s, how transformed was my apprehension. Yet not merely transformed, but in some subtle way a little relieved.

You may say, Did my daughter’s danger seem of less account to you than mine? Could it so seem to you, who protest that Faustina is to you as a limpid light, as a gala day, as a near and dear hope, as a wish fulfilled, as an unalloyed delight, as a glory noble and assured? I know, indeed, what came into my mind on reading your letter, but why it came to be so I do not know.

2

Now, since you have quite dispelled all my fear and anxiety by the last part of your letter, in which you announced that Faustina was now somewhat better,²⁸ it seems the very time for a little easy and unconstrained chat with you on my love for you.

3

Whenever with soft slumber’s chains around me, as the poet says, I see you in my dreams, there is never a time but I embrace and kiss you. This is one proof of my love, taken from the Annals,²⁹ a poetical and certainly a dreamy one.

Listen to another. I have occasionally inveighed against you behind your back, when you went about in public gatherings with too serious a face,³⁰ as when you used to read books either in the theatre³¹ or at a banquet; on such occasions, then, I would call you austere and unreasonable. But if anyone else found fault with you in my hearing, I could not listen to him with any patience.

4

I will add the third of my trifles. You know how in all money-changer’s bureaus, booths, bookstalls, eaves, porches, windows, anywhere and everywhere there are likenesses of you exposed to view. Yet at the same time your likeness, however much a caricature, never when I go out meets my eyes without making me part my lips for a smile and dream of you.

5

There is a danger of your daughter being put out in consequence, and when I ask for her hands and feet to kiss, whose tiny hands and plump little feet I shall then kiss, by heaven, with more zest than your royal neck and your honest and merry lips.

9. Marcus Caesar to his master M. Fronto

Signia, ? 144–145 A.D.

1

After getting into the carriage, when I had said good-bye to you, we did not have such a bad journey, though we got a slight wetting from the rain. But before reaching our country house we turned aside to Anagnia, about a mile off the main road. Then we inspected that ancient township, a tiny place, indeed, but containing many antiquities and buildings, and religious ceremonies beyond number.

There was not a corner without its chapel or shrine or temple. Many books too, written on linen,³² and this has a religious significance. Then on the gate, as we came out, we found an inscription twice over to this effect: Flamen sume samentum.³³

I asked one of the townsmen what the last word meant. He said it was Hernican for the pelt of the victim, which the priest draws over his peaked cap on entering the city. Quite a number of other things we learnt which we were glad to know; but the one thing we are not glad of is that it was in your absence: that is our chief concern.

2

Now for yourself, did you, when you left us, go to the Aurelian district³⁴ or into Campania? Mind you tell me, and whether you have begun the vintage, and whether you have brought crowds of books to your country house, yes, and this, too, whether you miss me.

Well, then, if you do miss me and do love me, you will write to me often to console me and cheer me up.³⁵ For I would ten times rather have the run³⁶ of your letters than of all the vineyards of the Massic³⁷ and the Gauran Mount.

When you see the must fermenting in the cask, let it remind you that my longing for you wells up thus and overflows and foams in my breast. Fare ever well.

10. Marcus Aurelius to Fronto

145–147 A.D.

To my master

Gaius Aufidius³⁸ gives himself airs, extols his own judgment to the skies, says that not another man more just than himself ever came from Umbria, for I must not exaggerate, to Rome. What need of more? He would rather win praise as a judge than as an orator. When I smile, he turns up his nose. Anyone, he says, can sit yawning beside a judge, but to be a judge is indeed to do noble work. This is meant for me! However the affair has turned out finely. All is well: I rejoice.

Your coming makes me happy and at the same time uneasy. Why happy, it needs not to enquire: wherefore uneasy I will, ‘fore heaven, avow to you. For with plenty of time on my hands I have not given an atom of it to the task you gave me to write.

Ariston’s³⁹ books just now treat me well and at the same time make me feel ill. When they teach me a better way, then, I need not say, they treat me well; but when they shew me how far short my character comes of this better way, time and time again does your pupil blush and is angry with himself, for that, twenty-five years old as I am,⁴⁰ no draught has my soul yet drunk of noble doctrines and purer principles.

Therefore I do penance, am wroth with myself, am sad, compare myself with others, starve myself. A prey to these thoughts at this time, I have put off each day till the morrow the duty of writing. But now I will think out something, and as a certain Athenian orator once warned an assembly of his countrymen, that the laws must sometimes be allowed to sleep,⁴¹ I will make my peace with Ariston’s works and allow them to lie still awhile, and after reading some of Tully’s minor speeches I will devote myself entirely to your stage poet.⁴²

However, I can only write on one side or the other, for as to my defending both sides of the question, Ariston will, I am sure, never sleep so soundly as to allow me to do that!⁴³

Farewell, best and most honoured of masters. My Lady greets you.

Conclusion

These letters matter not only as historical documents, but as evidence of Marcus Aurelius in the process of becoming himself. In them we already see traits that would later appear in the Meditations: severity toward oneself, attention to the inner life, love of language, a longing for moral improvement, and the habit of turning daily experience into spiritual exercise.

At the same time, the letters preserve something the Meditations rarely show so openly: tenderness, dependence on friendship, literary playfulness, youthful longing, and a deeply human need for closeness. That is what makes the correspondence between Marcus and Fronto so remarkable: it reveals not only the emperor and philosopher, but the living man before the monument.

Notes

Footnotes

1. The Latin expression verba dare alicui literally means “to give words to someone,” that is, to deceive; the wordplay is difficult to reproduce in English. ↩

2. “To rinse the mouth.” ↩

3. “To wash down the tiled floor in the baths.” ↩

4. “To wash the cheeks with tears.” ↩

5. “To wash clothes.” ↩

6. “To wash away sweat and dust.” ↩

7. “To scrape or wipe out with effort.” ↩

8. “To dilute a honey-drink.” ↩

9. “To rinse the throat.” ↩

10. “To clean a horse’s hoof.” ↩

11. As the editor notes, in English such a word might accidentally suggest other meanings. ↩

12. Used in the sense of supprimo — “held back, checked.” ↩

13. Compare below: Ad Caes. II.5; Ad Ant. I.2. ↩

14. Marcus may have had in mind some kind of history of Greeks and Romans; later, however, in the Meditations (I.17, end), he seems almost to renounce historical writing. ↩

15. Aesculapius was the god of healing; Antoninus Pius and Marcus held him in special reverence. ↩

16. These words point to an early stage of the correspondence. ↩

17. According to his biographer, Antoninus Pius usually performed sacrifices himself. ↩

18. The same biographer says that Pius took part in the vintage almost as a private man, simply and among friends. ↩

19. Possibly a quotation from Novius’ Vindemiatores. ↩

20. Probably Fronto’s daughter Gratia. ↩

21. Marcus loved hunting; this is confirmed by biographical sources and coins. ↩

22. Nothing else is known of this speech by Cato. ↩

23. The library of Apollo founded by Augustus. ↩

24. The library in the palace of Tiberius. ↩

25. Lucian speaks of the singing cries of workmen; Marcus may have such rustic calls in mind. ↩

26. Ion 732. ↩

27. Galen suggests that even in later life Marcus was a disciplined and sensible patient. ↩

28. Probably the little Faustina, daughter of Marcus, not his wife. ↩

29. Ennius. ↩

30. Compare Vita Marci IV.8, 10. ↩

31. Compare Vita Marci XV.1; also Meditations VI.46. ↩

32. Possibly Etruscan sacred books written on linen rolls. ↩

33. The inscription may be rendered: “Priest, put on the victim’s hide.” ↩

34. That is, the region through which the Via Aurelia passed. ↩

35. A phrase from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations II.24.59. ↩

36. A play on the double meaning of legere: “to read” and “to gather.” ↩

37. A reference to fine wine. ↩

38. Probably Victorinus, later Fronto’s son-in-law; Dio Cassius mentions his integrity. ↩

39. A Stoic philosopher with Platonic tendencies; as later with Marcus himself, his teaching was centered chiefly on ethics. ↩

40. Therefore the letter must have been written between 26 April 146 and 26 April 147. ↩

41. Compare Plutarch, Agesilaus 30. ↩

42. Some suppose Plautus is meant. ↩

43. Here one can see especially clearly the divergence of paths: philosophy and Rusticus gradually overcome the influence of Fronto and rhetoric. Compare Meditations I.7 and I.17.4. ↩