Rhetoric and philosophy both constituted the main elements of literary education in the Greco-Roman world of the second century A.D. The present study deals with the relationship between both disciplines in Second Sophistic literature: Did there still exist a conflict between rhetors and philosophers in this time, or had the famous debate that originated from Plato's attack on the sophists ceased already for centuries? The author of this study tries to give an answer to this question: first examining the literary evidence of second century literature in general, then focussing on Fronto and Marcus Aurelius as the two most distinct participants in the debate, he proves that in the second century A. D. rhetoric and philosophy were totally in harmony with each other and that consequently Marc Aurelius never abandoned rhetoric for philosophy.