Of these, Dion Chrysostom is not merely the earliest in date, but, on the whole, the most important to literature. He [Sidenote: _Dion Chrysostom._] appears to have been a distinguished and rather fortunate example of a “gentleman of the press” (as we should now say) before the press existed. He travelled over a great part of the Roman Empire in the pursuit of his profession as Lecturer—that perhaps comes nearest to it—and would appear to have been well rewarded. The description of his morning’s employment, which begins his study of the three Poets' plays on _Philoctetes_,[147] is one of the most interesting passages in the later and less-known classics, and so is worth giving here, though it exists in at least one unlearned language: “I rose about the first hour of the day, both because I was poorly, and because the air was cooler at dawn, and more like autumn, though it was midsummer. I made my toilette, said my prayers, and then getting into my curricle, went several times round the Hippodrome, driving as easily and quietly as possible. Then I took a walk, rested shortly, bathed and anointed myself, and after eating a slight breakfast, took up some tragedies.” The careful “study of the body,” the quiet affluence of a well-to-do professional man, and the attention to professional work without any hurry or discomfort, are all well touched off here; and what follows gives us, as it happens, the closest approach to our subject proper to be found in the considerable collection of Dion’s Orations, or, as they have been much more properly called, Essays. There are, however, others which are more characteristic of this division of literature, and we may deal with these first. Footnote 147: _Dion Chrys. Op._, ed. Reiske (Leipsic, 1784), ii. 266. M. Egger (p. 441 _sq._) has translated the whole Oration (p. 11), but by no means literally.