The Roman portrait from the era of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161 A. D.), with its meticulous curly hairstyle, recalls the much earlier appearance of Greek poets and philosophers. Greek teachers, who were conveyors of science and Greek knowledge, enjoyed great esteem among the Roman high class. The cultivated Emperor Marcus Aurelius admired Greek culture and wrote aphorisms in Greek. This man could be one of the conceited teachers of rhetoric at whom Lucian of Samosata used to scoff.