A crowd of high-bred youths idled around, or on the steps before the doors, with the marvellous toilets Marius had noticed in the Via Nova; in attendance, as usual, to learn by observation the minute points of senatorial procedure.

Marius had already some acquaintance with them, and passing on found himself suddenly in the presence of what was still the most august assembly the world had seen.

Under Aurelius, ever full of veneration for this ancient traditional guardian of public religion, the Senate had recovered all its old dignity and independence.

Among its members many [199] hundreds in number, visibly the most distinguished of them all, Marius noted the great sophists or rhetoricians of the day, in all their magnificence.

The antique character of their attire, and the ancient mode of wearing it, still surviving with them, added to the imposing character of their persons, while they sat, with their staves of ivory in their hands, on their curule chairs--almost the exact pattern of the chair still in use in the Roman church when a Bishop pontificates at the divine offices--"tranquil and unmoved, with a majesty that seemed divine," as Marius thought, like the old Gaul of the Invasion.