The preservation and editing of Fronto's letters has been a remarkably complex process that has left him an inaccessible author even to specialists. This new selection of his letters, translated into clear English with useful introductions and notes, in an inexpensive paperback format, makes him an author who can be taught at all levels, and is thus most welcome. Although it suffers from some (largely self-imposed) limitations, it conveys well how much Marcus Aurelius' friend and teacher has to tell us about the political and social history of his times.
The selection consists of 54 letters, numbered by the editors but with full cross-references to the Teubner and Loeb editions, representing a little less than half of the extant corpus. The arrangement, which is one of the selection's strengths, is thematic, but the eight thematic sections are designed so as to fall into rough chronological order relative to one another and give a sense of Fronto's life and career. The sections contain letters dealing with topics as follows: (1) Fronto's pedagogical relationship with Marcus; (2) his quarrel with Herodes Atticus; (3) his consulship; (4) his family life, illnesses and relationship with the mature Marcus; (5) his patronage relationships and the controversy over Censorius' will; (6) his relationship with Marcus and Verus as emperors; (7) the Parthian War of the 160s; (8) his loss of his wife and grandson in old age.
The emphasis is on those letters that illuminate Fronto's political career and family relationships. Omitted letters include most of the more literary efforts, such as the De eloquentia and De oratoribus, the mock-encomia, the Arion and the consolatory De bello Parthico, as well as many of the early pedagogical and erotic exchanges, though a representative sample of these is given. The book has a general introduction dealing mostly with Fronto's biography and the nature of ancient epistolography, and each section has a thematic introduction. Each letter is immediately followed by notes that are quite extensive, roughly equalling the translated text in length. The notes and introduction include ample references to an extensive and up-to-date (through 2012) bibliography of both general and specialist English-language scholarship.
The two young Australian editors are both historians, focusing mainly on politics and prosopography (D.) and social history (M.), and their book's strengths reflect this. The introductions, notes and bibliography are admirably thorough and current on historical topics, a refreshing change from the superficial or dated material that one often finds in classroom translations. The attention to the geographical and archaeological setting for Fronto's letters is a welcome surprise. The various thematic sections function well as teachable units, especially §4 (‘Family Affairs’), §7 (the Parthian war) and §8 (‘Fronto's Grief’). This last in particular does an excellent job of bringing out the rhetorical and gender dynamics at play in the De nepote amisso while still allowing the genuinely touching emotional content to emerge. In general, the editors seem considerably more sympathetic to Fronto than most people who work on him, which is indispensable in a student-oriented text. Those aspects of Fronto that seem most tedious or unattractive to us, the fussiness, affectation, self-absorption and hypochondria, are not ignored or excused, but are generally treated as revealing aspects of cultural difference rather than annoying personality traits. The more bizarre letters, such as Letter 24 (Ad M. Caes. 4.12) on Marcus' sick daughter, are largely allowed to remain bizarre, without undue attempts at explanation. On the question of whether the erotic language of Fronto and Marcus' correspondence is evidence of what we would call a romantic or sexual relationship, the editors are sensibly sceptical and show a sensitivity to rhetorical self-portraiture not always present in their notes. Overall, the historical aspects of the book show an unusual degree of industry and original scholarship.
The translations themselves likewise merit praise, though with qualifications. They are notably clear and utilitarian, very suitable for a student readership without becoming overly colloquial. The editors have made full but not uncritical use of the edition and commentary of M.P.J. van den Hout, as well as the recent work of A. Richlin. Comparing various samples of the English with the Latin, much attention to detail is evident and careless errors are few (in Letter 15.2 [Ad M. Caes 2.11] the phrase nam hunc audio apud Graecos disertissimum natum esse is omitted in the English; the barbaris mentioned in Letter 47.1 [Ad Verum Imp. 1.2/2.3] are surely Parthians rather than Persians). The translations are free but generally accurate at the word and sentence levels, though there is a tendency to over-translate, verging on glossing (e.g. at 17.2, σώϕρονας becomes ‘who behave as becoming a true woman’).
Where problems emerge is at the level of overall rhetorical structure and argument. The editors tend to read the letters as relatively straightforward communications, and they do not always pay enough attention to the larger point Fronto is trying to make and how the various parts contribute to making it. Sometimes sentences are translated in a way that is defensible in isolation but gives a quite false impression in context. In Letter 47, Verus' quidvis enim subire paratus sum, dum a te res nostrae inlustrentur is given as ‘I'm prepared to go along with whatever you want, provided that my accomplishments are highlighted’. But the a te is not superfluous: Verus' aim is to compliment Fronto by desiring praise from him in particular, and omitting that phrase in the English makes Verus seem cynically offhand rather than crassly importunate. More often the English elides or obscures points of logic. Thus in Letter 1.1 (Ad M. Caes 4.3), the antithesis created by in aliis artibus … in verbis vero eligendis conlocandisque (which should amount to ‘in everything else [including philosophy, which Fronto has just discussed], you can bluff, but proper educated speech by its nature cannot be counterfeited’) is missed in the English, and most readers will probably think the translators' ‘other areas of study’ means ‘other than philosophy’, and that it is philosophy that one cannot fake. Many more examples could be cited of passages where close readers of the English will find Fronto awkward and confusing on points where in Latin he is reasonably clear.
This inattention to the rhetorical and literary aspects of the letters can also be seen in the introduction, notes and bibliography. Readers are given relatively little help in following Fronto's reasoning: this makes itself particularly felt in the material that deals with awkward or convoluted situations. In the case of the quarrel with Herodes, for instance, the editors do a creditable job of reconstructing and explaining the overall historical situation, but one gets little sense of how the letters themselves constitute a rhetorical fencing match in which Marcus and Fronto compete to define the issue in line with their different agendas, and the translation does little to bring this aspect out. More generally, the treatment of intellectual history and the cultural importance of grammar and rhetoric is skimpy. Undergraduate readers will have little context for Fronto's preoccupation with correct word usage. The volume only mentions in passing Aulus Gellius' rich portrait of Fronto the literary lion, which has recently received admirable treatment in W. Johnson's Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire (2010, not in the bibliography). Similarly, one is surprised that the bibliography, though understandably selective in its non-English content, does not contain P. Fleury's Lectures de Fronton (2006), the fullest literary study of Fronto in at least 30 years.
These criticisms, it must be stressed, largely address things the book does not claim to do. What it does claim to do is done well, and teachers and students of imperial Roman history can thank the editors for a useful and long overdue new tool.
