The same faults that were generated in the schools were intensified in after-life. In the law courts the same smart epigrams, the same meretricious style were required. No true method had been taught, with the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that 'our orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72] Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education reacted on one another.[73] Further, just as the young poet had to his great detriment been encouraged to recite at school, so he had to recite if he was to win fame for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry written primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a rhetorical age the result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of cases the poet of the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great as were the facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name, not by the gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but by declaiming before public or private audiences. The practice of gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the recitations of a poet is said first to have been instituted by Asinius Pollio, the patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the poets of the Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice gradually increased and became a nuisance to all save the few who had the courage to stand aloof from these mutual admiration societies. Indiscriminate praise was lavished on good and bad work alike. Even Pliny the younger, whose cultivation and literary taste place him high above the average literary level of his day, approves of the increase of this melancholy harvest of minor poetry declaimed by uninspired bards.[75] The effect was lamentable. All the faults of the _suasoria_ and _controversia_ made their appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had continually to be performing acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or epigram, now of learning, or again in the description of blood-curdling horrors, monstrous deaths and prodigious sorceries. Each work was overloaded with _sententiae_ and purple patches.[77] So only could the author keep the attention of his audience. The results were disastrous for literature and not too satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves, as the following curious passage from Tacitus (_Dial._ 9) shows: