perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in effect, one mode of
comeliness in things--as it were music, or a kind of artistic order,
in life. And he did this earnestly, with an outlay of all his
science of mind, and that eloquence of which he was known to be a
master. 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,