Petronius looked at him with the satisfied eye of an artist.
When Vinicius had finished and yielded himself in turn to the epilatores, a lector came in with a bronze tube at his breast and rolls of paper in the tube.
"Dost wish to listen ?" asked Petronius.
"If it is thy creation, gladly!" answered the young tribune; "if not, I prefer conversation.

Poets seize people at present on every street corner." "Of course they do.

Thou wilt not pass any basilica, bath, library, or book-shop without seeing a poet gesticulating like a monkey.

Agrippa, on coming here from the East, mistook them for madmen.

And it is just such a time now.