It was completely silent. Rhetoric is now all but dead. To command an audience by the power of speech was considered an accomplishment equal to the power of argument or the power of the pen. Now oratory is an old-fashioned word and rhetorical is a term of abuse. Few people distinguish between a speech and the reading of text.
Few people can write text that reads well in public.
Even fewer can read it. Yet we have not stopped giving speeches. Speech-making is a raging epidemic, a plague enveloping the social and business life of the nation, impervious to the howls of audiences, the pleading of spouses and the clatter of the Internet. I must hear a dozen speeches each week, bombarding me from lunch and dinner, lecture, reception and presentation. Most are dreadful.