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We now possess parts of his correspondence with Antoninus Pius,

with M. Aurelius, with L. Verus, and with certain of his friends,

and also several rhetorical and historical fragments. Though none

of the more ambitious works of Fronto have survived, there are

enough to give proof of his powers. Never was a great literary

reputation less deserved. It would be hard to conceive of

anything more vapid than the style and conception of these

letters; clearly the man was a pedant without imagination or

taste. Such indeed was the age he lived in, and it is no marvel

that he was like to his age. But there must have been more in him

than mere pedantry; there was indeed a heart in the man, which

Marcus found, and he found also a tongue which could speak the

truth. Fronto's letters are by no means free from exaggeration

and laudation, but they do not show that loathsome flattery which

filled the Roman court.