vix quodcumque vestibulum intratum, et ecce huc sphaeristarum contrastantium paria inter rotatiles catastropharum gyros duplicabantur, huc inter aleatoriarum vocum competitiones frequens crepitantium fritillorum tesserarumque strepitus audiebatur; huc libri adfatim in promptu (videre te crederes aut grammaticales pluteos aut Athenaei cuneos aut armaria exstructa bybliopolarum): sic tamen quod, qui inter matronarum cathedras codices erant, stilus his religiosus inveniebatur, qui vero per subsellia patrumfamilias, hi coturno Latiaris eloquii nobilitabantur; licet quaepiam volumina quorumpiam auctorum servarent in causis disparibus dicendi parilitatem:
Hardly had I entered one vestibule or the other when behold! I found on one side opposing ball-players bending low amid the whirling evolutions of the catastrophae; in another quarter I would hear the clatter of rattling dice-boxes and of dice mingled with the rival shouts of the gamesters; in another part were books in any number ready to hand; you might have imagined yourself looking at the shelves of a professional scholar or at the tiers in the Athenaeum or at the towering presses of the booksellers. The arrangement was such that the manuscripts near the ladies seats were of a devotional type, while those among the gentlemens benches were works distinguished by the grandeur of Latin eloquence; the latter, however, included certain writings of particular authors which preserve a similarity of style though their doctrines are different;
final_alignments\Sidonius_Letters_Book2.json