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Marcus Aurelius in Love By Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Cornelius Fronto

In 1815 a manuscript containing one of the long-lost treasures of antiquity was discovered—the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been one of the greatest Roman orators. But this find disappointed many nineteenth-century readers, who had hoped for the letters to convey all of the political drama of Cicero’s. That the collection included passionate love letters between Fronto and the future emperor Marcus Aurelius was politely ignored—or concealed. And for almost two hundred years these letters have lain hidden in plain sight.

Marcus Aurelius in Love rescues these letters from obscurity and returns them to the public eye. The story of Marcus and Fronto began in 139 CE when Fronto was selected to instruct Marcus in rhetoric. Marcus was eighteen then and by all appearances the pupil and teacher fell in love. Spanning the years in which the relationship flowered and died, these are the only love letters to survive from antiquity—homoerotic or otherwise. With a translation that reproduces the effusive, slangy style of the young prince and the rhetorical flourishes of his master, the letters between Marcus and Fronto will rightfully be reconsidered as key documents in the study of the history of sexuality and classics.

(20060724)

Summary: More interesting than anything else

Rating: 4

As I understand it, the discovery of Marcus Fronto's collected letters caused a great disappointment among classical scholars as they seemed to resemble the quality his ancient reputation suggested far less than was imagined, and his part in this correspondance is no less disappointing for its generally boring quality than it is irritating for its pedantry. Though Marcus' role in the relationship granted him greater freedom of expression, the quality of Fronto's writing is uniformly dismal, whereas the fourth of the Good Emperors is energetic and interesting, definitely giving some tilt to his halo, as Amy Richlin puts it.

That said, the book is no less than what it claims to be, a focused collection of the romantically suggestive correspondence between Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto, and it can only be truly criticized as a volume for any objectionable qualities of the translation. In this case, I find Richlin's idiosyncracies as a translator detract somewhat from the reading. In this, and her other translations, text is replaced and modernized and, at least in Marcus Aurelius in Love, Greek quotes are translated into French, and classic quotes are replaced with Shakesperean. Although she justifies this as making the text more readable, I find it comes off rather more ridiculous than innovative. If one wanted to read a modern exchanged one would have pursued a book constructed under such auspices, but in this case the subject seems to lose some of its value as a self-conscious artifact as a result of her liberties, becoming somewhat contrived.

In any event, the volume is enjoyable for Marcus Aurelius' entertaining letters if nothing else, but its only distinct value above the Loeb editions of his writings would seem to be its focus on the nature of his relationship with Fronto, which unfortunately is only elaborated upon in the introduction. Although her introduction gives a reader sufficient background to judge for oneself the case for and against a romantic relationship between the two men, I would have personally prefered more rigorous scholarship in illuminating the question, though in all fairness, this may have been beyond the scope of Richlin's conception.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123