There he was, walking across the stage.  He was an old man, said to be about seventy years of age, his legs were half-paralyzed, and they nevertheless moved with a series of incessant and rapid but unvoluntary jerks under his heavy bowed body, and he was supported on either hand by a tall young fellow.  His nobly-formed head, must have been in his youth, of extraordinary beauty.  Now his head was covered by a wig of long brown hair, his eyebrows and lashes were darkly dyed, his cheeks daubed with red and white paint, which gave his countenance a fixed expression, as if he had been stricken in the very act of smiling.  On his curls he wore a wreath of rare flowers in long racemes.  An abundance of red and white roses stuck out from the front folds of his ample toga, and were held in their place by gold brooches, sparkling with precious stones of large size.  The hems of his mantle were all edged with rose-buds, and each was fastened in with an emerald that shone like some bright insect.  The young men who supported him seemed like a portion of himself; he took no more heed of them than if they had been crutches, and they needed not command to tell them where he wished to go, where to stand still, and where to rest.

At a distance his face was like that of a youth, but seen close it looked like a painted plaster mask, with regular features and large movable eyes.

Favorinus, the sophist, had said of him that one might cry over his handsome locomotive corpse, if one were not obliged to laugh at it, and it was said that he had himself declared that he would force his faithless youth to remain with him.  The Alexandrians called him the Adonis with six legs, on account of the lads who supported him, and without whom no one ever saw him and who always accompanied him when he went out.  The first time he heard this nickname he remarked:  “They had better have called me sixhanded;” and in fact he had a thoroughly good heart, he was liberal and benevolent, took fatherly care of his work-people, treated his slaves well, enriched those whom he set free, and from time to time distributed large sums among the people in money and in grain.

Arsinoe looked compassionately on the poor old man who could not buy back his youth with all his money and all his art.

In the supercilious man who at once came up to Plutarch she recognized the art-dealer Gabinius to whom her father had shown the door, on account of the mosaic picture in their sitting-room, but their conversation was interrupted, for the distribution of the women’s part for the group of Alexander’s entry into Babylon, was now about to take place; about fifty girls and young women were sent away from the stage and went down into the orchestra.  The Exegetes, the highest official in the town, now came forward and took a new list out of the hand of Papias the sculptor.  After rapidly casting an eye on this, he handed it to a herald who followed him, who proclaimed to all the assembly: