A Professor of Public Speaking (11)

If you turn to the other road, you will find many people, and among them a wholly clever and wholly handsome gentleman with a mincing gait, a thin neck, a languishing eye, and a honeyed voice, who distils perfume, scratches his head with the tip of his finger,[*] and carefully dresses his hair, which is scanty now, but curly and raven-black—an utter] delicate Sardanapalus, a Cinyras, a very Agathon (that charming writer of tragedies, don’t you know?). I am thus explicit that you may recognize him by these tokens, and may not overlook a creature so marvellous, and so dear to Aphrodite and the Graces. But what am I talking about? Even if you had your eyes shut, and he should come and speak to you, unsealing those Hymettus lips and releasing upon the air those wonted intonations, you would

If, then, you go to him and put yourself in his hands, you will at once, without effort, become an orator, the observed of all, and, as he himself calls it, king of the platform, driving the horses of eloquence four-in-hand. For on taking you in charge, he will teach you first of all—but let him address you himself.