For Stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing.
Received at court, it had largely decorated itself: it was grown persuasive and insinuating, and sought not only to convince men's intelligence but to allure their souls.

Associated with the beautiful old age of the great rhetorician, and his winning voice, it was almost Epicurean.

And the old man was at his best on the occasion; the last on which he ever appeared in this way.

To-day was his own birthday.
Early in the morning the imperial letter of congratulation had reached him; and all the pleasant animation it had caused was in his face, when assisted by his daughter Gratia he took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the Athenaeum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful grace the philosophic pall,--in reality neither more nor less than the loose woollen cloak of the common soldier, but fastened [5] on his right shoulder with a magnificent clasp, the emperor's birthday gift.
It was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoric was but one result of a general susceptibility--an age not merely taking pleasure in words, but experiencing a great moral power in them.
Fronto's quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and also assisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as sometimes happened, the recommendation of an object of charity.

As it was, arranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, these amateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open for careful record of felicitous word or phrase, were ready to give themselves wholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them, applauding, blowing loud kisses through the air sometimes, at the speaker's triumphant exit from one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences; while the younger of them meant to imitate everything about him, down to the inflections of his voice and the very folds of his mantle.