What makes Fronto so interesting is the fact that he was himself involved in a homosexual relationship with the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The collection of letters which exposes this relationship suffers from a similar 'unconscious conspiracy' in scholarship to prevent the image of this beloved Emperor to 'suffer' from association with illicit sexuality. As such I think it is very useful for us to use the example of the correspondances between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and Marcus Aurelius as an important parallel for the manner in which traditional scholarship seems incapable of dealing with homosexuality. I would argue that these relatively recently discovered letters provide a powerful example of how there is a tendency in academia to 'sweep under the carpet' important evidence in order to preserve and protect our inherited presuppositions and beliefs about our 'heroes' from antiquity.
Yet there is even more than this at stake here. I think the discussions of Plato and related literature which unfolds in these letters make a powerful argument that it was Fronto who first identified the 'Secret Gospel of Mark' as the 'gay gospel' which was first reported in Theodore's letter to Clement (now lost). In other words, the anti-Christian polemic being developed by Fronto against Christianity (see the last post) was having an effect on Christians outside of Alexandria. At least some of these Christians were buying into the argument that the Church of St. Mark was corrupt and engaged in illicit rituals which besmirched the Christian faith - and we must presume, justified re-establishing the Church in Rome rather than Alexandria.
As Irenaeus writes of the same Carpocratians who eventually become identified as the sordid Christians of Fronto's polemic (see our last post), this Roman father writes "they have been sent forth by Satan to bring dishonour upon the Church, so that, in one way or another, men hearing the things which they speak, and imagining that we all are such as they, may turn away their ears from the preaching of the truth; or, again, seeing the things they practise, may speak evil of us all, who have in fact no fellowship with them, either in doctrine or in morals, or in our daily conduct. But they lead a licentious life, and, to conceal their impious doctrines, they abuse the name [of Christ], as a means of hiding their wickedness; so that 'their condemnation is just,' when they receive from God a recompense suited to their works." [Irenaeus AH 1.25.3]
To this end, I will be reposting Richlin's entire article "Fronto + Marcus: Love, Friendship, Letters" In The Boswell Thesis, ed. Mathew Kuefler: 111-29. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. I think it will finally close the door on any question that the Letter to Theodore perfectly reflects the contemporary environment in Christianity at the end of the second century. We will start from the beginning:
In 1815, Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan a palimpsest containing one of the long-lost treasures of Roman history: the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been the greatest Roman orator after Cicero. But Mai's find disappointed its nineteenth-century readers, who had hoped for a political drama like that played out in Cicero's letters. That the collection included passionate love letters between Fronto and the future emperor Marcus Aurelius was politely ignored, or concealed, and the letters are today very little known. For almost two hundred years they have lain hidden in plain sight.
John Boswell was one of the few people who have had eyes to see them. 1 In a brief reference in CSTH, he gives the letters as an instance of "passionate or 'erotic' friendship between males" (CSTH, 1 34 n. 40). Boswell's status as an outsider to classics enabled him to notice what specialists could not, as his goal of writing gay history prompted him to look for what they would not. Fronto is treated within classics as a rhetorician and a dull one; the only Fronto letters occasionally listed among required graduate readings deal with rhetoric. Moreover, in casting his net as widely as he did in CSTH Boswell was was also bucking the trend in the history of sexuality as it has been produced since the nineteenth century. A tradition going back at least to John Addington Symonds focuses on "Greek love" almost to the exclusion of the Romans; unlike Foucault, whose followers have largely been Hellenists, Boswell did not get pulled into this orbit. CSTH is exemplary in the breadth of its review of primary materials and in the independence of its perspective. The letters of M. Cornelius Fronto and his circle, as edited by CR Haines in 1919-20, take up two Loeb volumes. Most of the letters were written between Fronto and the young man who gradually turned into the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Fronto came from North Africa; he says in one letter that he comes of indigenous stock, though he may not mean this literally. He was certainly wealthy and had an upper-class upbringing and education; in Fronto and Antonine Rome Edward Champlin lays out the evidence on the eminence of Fronto's family. But, eminent or not, Fronto came from the hinterlands and and made it big as an orator and politician in Rome — so much so that he was chosen to instruct the young prince in rhetoric, and, while doing so, attained the glory of a suffect consulship.
It is important to keep in mind the relative ages of Fronto and Marcus as their lives intersected. The letters span the years from Fronto's first appointment as Marcus's tutor, in 139 CE, to the end of Fronto's life, probably in 167. Champlin makes a convincing case for locating Fronto's birth around 95, and Marcus was born in 121, so that when the letters begin, Fronto is forty-four and Marcus is eighteen. The many letters that can be dated to the years 139-45 are pervasively amatory.
In 145, at the age of twenty-four, Marcus got married, in an arranged marriage to his cousin Faustina. They began having children right away; they would eventually have twelve, six of whom lived to adulthood. Shortly after the birth of his first child, in 146, Marcus announces to Fronto that he can no longer in good conscience spend time studying rhetoric, due to his serious involvement in philosophy, especially ethics, and there's a sad little letter from Fronto about this. From here on, a lot of the letters are about ill health, with lists of symptoms. The amatory letters, common before the marriage, now disappear. There's a brief flaring up of ardor (from Fronto) when he mistakenly thinks that Marcus has been at death's door. After this, there is only one major amatory letter, again from Fronto, and it's interspersed with a lot of I-know-how-busy-you-are-I-just-don't-want-to-be-a-burden. The usual outline of Fronto's relationship with Marcus holds that Fronto was cast aside like an old shoe when Marcus got tired of rhetoric. I would submit that it may have been the case that rhetoric was cast aside like an old shoe when Marcus grew tired of Fronto.
My first project here must be just to lay out the letters I claim to be amatory, since I know this claim will be greeted with skepticism. How could it possibly be that this aspect of the letters has attracted so little comment, if it is really there? Most people who have given this any thought at all will come to the letters expecting to find at most a sentimental friendship, possibly some sort of allusion to pederastic romance in literature, and most likely the conventions of a decade given to flowery style. Scholarship on friendship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has readied scholars to read letters as showing deep emotion without implying any genital sexuality. Even Boswell hedged his claim; he mentions the letters in a the letters in a footnote to a section on sentimental friendship in late antiquity, but adds his opinion: “to any modern reader these would seem to be passionate love letters (CSTH, 134n. 40). These texts are so unfamiliar, and so rich and full of surprises, that I think the first step must be to get them out into public view. Their importance reaches beyond classics to precisely the audience Boswell wished to reach: people for whom gay history matters. There seems to be a widespread misconception in popular culture that love between males is Greek, the Romans generally being capable only of crude lust; these letters might go some way toward modifying that view. And even for scholars working on the history of ancient sexuality, it is widely held that first-person statements of of love by the junior partner in a pederastic relationship are almost nonexistent; I said so once myself. In that context, these letters are a sensational addition to the corpus of ancient erotic literature.
