FRONTO, Marcus Cornelius, a Roman grammarian, rhetorician, and advocate, was born of an Italian family at Cirta in Numidia, a Libyan of the Libyans, as he calls himself, Λ,iβυ<i τωv R ∣ βυωv. The date of his birth is unknown, but as he was quaestor in 138, it must have been before 113, and not improbably between 100 and 110. He came to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and soon gained such renown as an advocate and orator as to be reckoned inferior only to Cicero. Antoninus Pius, hearing of his fame, appointed him tutor to his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus; and Fronto, as appears from his surviving letters, completely gained the confidence and affection of both these pupils. He was proconsul of Asia for a few months in 143, and five years later he was offered the same post, but declined acceptance on the plea of bad health. He preferred to remain at Rome, where, by the practice of his profession, he amassed a very large fortune, which enabled him to purchase the famous gardens of Maecenas, besides sumptuous villas in various parts of Italy. In his old age, when confined to his house by the gout, he used to receive the leading literary men, who flocked to hear his unrivalled conversation. This exhibited the same qualities as his more formal orations, which were so much admired that a school of rhetoricians called itself after his name, having for its object the restoration to the Latin language of its ancient purity and simplicity. Fronto died at an advanced age, but the exact date of his death is not known, and it is even uncertain whether he survived or predeceased the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Till 1815 the only work of Fronto’s believed to exist was some disjointed fragments of his essay De Differentia Vocabulorum, and even this is more ...