The inscription reads: "True friendship can only subsist between those who were animated by the strictest principles of honor and virtue." -- Cicero
Underneath the ceiling is a "friendship circle" that by tradition no one treads on, as I learned to my regret!

An alumnus of Cranbrook, who saw some of the images in this gallery, wrote me that Cranbrook "was a wonderful place of learning. While some played
with Barbies and grew up with Sesame Street, we played Socrates and Aristophanes and read Keats and Shelley the way some read comic books.
We never knew a different way. It seemed rather natural to learn thespian Shakespeare in an amphitheatre."