That it perverted schooling, as Tacitus complains, was partly due to its inevitable tendency to turn the school into an auditorium. The rhetor remained, indeed, a teacher; but even in teaching he offered himself as a model.[39] The transition was easy to offering himself to the public as an orator in the latest style of oratory. While this was one of the few ways left under the Empire for appeal to a large audience, it was also one of his chief means of publicity. What the rhetor was thus to become throughout the Roman Empire may be clearly forecast from Pliny’s account of Isæus. (3) _Pliny on Isæus_ Great as is the reputation that had prepared me for Isæus, I found him greater. He has in the highest degree mastery, abundance, fertility. He speaks always extempore, but as if he had long written. The diction is Greek, nay Attic; the prelude, neat, simple, winsome, or grave and lofty. He asks for several _controversiæ_, and lets the audience choose, often even the side. He rises; his robe is right; he begins. Instantly everything is ready, and ready almost equally. Deep thoughts respond at once and words, but what words! chosen and refined. From his impromptus gleam much reading and much writing. He introduces aptly, states the case lucidly, argues keenly, sums up strongly, in style is superb. In a word, he instructs, charms, moves;[40] and which he does best you hardly know. The enthymemes are frequent, and so are the terse and finished syllogisms, an achievement difficult even for writing. His memory is incredible. He resumes what he has spoken extempore, and does not slip on a single word. Such control he has attained by study and practise; for day and night he does nothing else, hears nothing else, says nothing else. Past his sixtieth year, he is still only a schoolman; and nothing is more ingenuous than that sort of man, or more unsophisticated, or better. We who are crowded at the bar and in real cases learn, even against our will, much cunning. The school and the auditorium, with their made-up cases, are inoffensive and innocuous—and none the less happy, for old men especially. For what is happier in old age than what is pleasantest in youth? Therefore I account Isæus not only most eloquent, but also most blest; and if you have no desire to know him, you are made of stone and iron. So come, if not for other reasons, if not on my account, at least to hear him. Have you ever read of the man of Gades who was so stirred by the name and fame of Livy that he came from the ends of the earth to see him and, once having seen him, forthwith went his way? ’Tis crass, uncultured, stupid, almost base, to think no more highly of an experience than which nothing is pleasanter, or prettier, or more refined. You will say, “I can read no less eloquent orators here.” Yes;