FRONTO, MARCUS CORNELIUS (c. A.D. Roman grammarian, rhetorician and advocate, was born of an Italian family at Cirta in Numidia. He came to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and soon won fame as an advocate, and amassed a large fortune. Antoninus Pius appointed him tutor to his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. In 143 he was consul for two months, but declined the proconsulship of Asia on the ground of ill-health. His talents were greatly admired by his contempo raries, a number of whom formed themselves into a school called after him Frontoniani, whose avowed object it was to restore the ancient vigour of the Latin language. The authors recommended include Ennius, Plautus and Sallust. Till 1815 the only extant works ascribed (erroneously) to Fronto were two grammatical treatises, De nominum verborumque differentiis and Exempla elocutionum (the last being really by Arusianus Messius). In that year, however, Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian library at Milan a palimpsest manuscript from St. Columba at Bobbio (and, later, some additional sheets of it in the Vatican), on which had been originally written some of Fronto's letters to his royal pupils and their replies. These were published at Rome in 1823. The correspondence with Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, shows their character in a very favourable light. The col lection also contains letters of recommendation to friends, trea tises on eloquence, some historical fragments, and literary trifles on such subjects as the praise of smoke and dust, of negligence, and a dissertation on Arion. Fronto's style is "a laborious mixture of archaisms, a motley cento," the forerunner of the Latin of Apuleius.
The best edition of his works is by S. A. Naber (1867), with an account of the palimpsest ; see also G. Boissier, "Marc-Aurele et les lettres de F.," in Revue des deux mondes (April i868) ; R. Ellis, in Journal of Philology (1868) and Correspondence of Fronto and M. Aurelius (1904) ; and the full bibliography in the article by Brzoska in the new edition of Pauly's Realencyklopadie der classischen Alter tumswissenschaft, iv. pt. i. (i9oo) . Edition with English translation by Haines (Loeb series, 1919) ; see also M. D. Brock, Studies in Fronto and his Age (Girton Coll. Studies V.) (1911) —a more favourable view of Fronto's style.