Does the mind sink into languor, the body moves reluctantly.  Is the man softened into effeminacy, you see it in his gait.  Is he quick and eager, he walks with alacrity.  The powers of the understanding are affected in the same manner.  Having laid this down as his principle, Seneca proceeds to describe the soft delicacy of Maecenas, and he finds the same vice in his phraseology.  He cites a number of the lady-like terms, which the great patron of letters considered as exquisite beauties.  In all this, says he, we see the man who walked the streets of Rome in his open and flowing robe. Nonne statim, cum haec legis, occurrit hunc esse, qui solutis tunicis in urbe semper incesserit? Seneca, epist. cxiv.  What he has said of Maecenas is perfectly just.  The fopperies of that celebrated minister are in this Dialogue called CALAMISTRI; an allusion borrowed from Cicero, who praises the beautiful simplicity of Caesar’s Commentaries, and says there were men of a vicious taste, who wanted to apply the curling-iron, that is, to introduce the glitter of conceit and antithesis in the place of truth and nature. Commentarios quosdam scripsit rerum suarum, valde quidem probandos:  nudi enim sunt, et recti, et venusti, omni ornatu orationis, tanquam veste, detracto.  Ineptis gratum fortasse fecit, qui volunt illa CALAMISTRIS inurere. Cicero De Claris Orat. s. 262.

[d] Who Gallio was, is not clearly settled by the commentators.  Quintilian, lib. iii. cap. 1, makes mention of Gallio, who wrote a treatise of eloquence; and in the Annals, b. xv. s. 73, we find Junius Gallio, the brother of Seneca; but whether either of them is the person here intended, remains uncertain.  Whoever he was, his eloquence was a tinkling cymbal.  Quintilian says of such orators, who are all inflated, tumid, corrupt, and jingling, that their malady does not proceed from a full and rich constitution, but from mere infirmity; for,

     As in bodies, thus in souls we find,
     What wants in blood and spirits, swell’d with wind.

Nam tumidos, et corruptos, et tinnulos, et quocumque alio cacozeliae genere peccantes, certum habeo, non virium, sed infirmitatis vitio laborare:  ut corpora non robore, sed valetudine inflantur. Quintil. lib. ii. cap. 3.

[e] Pliny declares, without ceremony, that he was ashamed of the corrupt effeminate style that disgraced the courts of justice, and made him think of withdrawing from the forum.  He calls it sing-song, and says that nothing but musical instruments could be added. Pudet referre, quae quam fracta pronunciatione dicantur; quibus quam teneris clamoribus excipiantur.  Plausus tantum, ac sola cymbala et tympana, illis canticis desunt. Pliny, lib. ii. epist. 14.  The chief aim of Persius in his first satire is levelled against the bad poets of his time, and also the spurious orators, who enervated their eloquence by antithesis, far-fetched metaphors, and points of wit, delivered with the softest tone of voice, and ridiculous airs of affectation.