But, possessing all the advantages of a commercial centre, Athens was free from the disadvantages. The clamour and vulgarity of trade were confined to the Peiraieus: in the gymnasia or the streets or the colonnades of Athens the philosopher and the thinker could teach and meditate in peace, in an atmosphere ennobled by her treasures of architecture and art and sculpture, which subdued the most blatant visitor, amid the literary circles which her dramatic contests attracted and encouraged. Here was an ideal spot for the meeting-place of the best minds in Hellas and the growth of a great educational system. The city was an education in itself. Perikles had called Athens the school of Hellas; the name was now to be justified in its most literal sense. Early in the fourth century there arose established secondary schools in Athens. Plato began to teach Logic and Philosophy, Isokrates Rhetoric, not for a few weeks at a time, but permanently: their courses lasted three or four years. Characteristically, there was no State organisation or interference; Isokrates taught in his own house, near the Lukeion, Plato in his garden near Kolonos and in the Akademeia. Their pupils came from all parts of the civilised world, staying in Athens during their course of study. Plato imposed a preliminary examination in mathematics upon his pupils; Isokrates only commended a knowledge of such subjects. The students of these two schools became recognised features of Athenian life. Plato led his pupils towards intellectual research and a life of retirement; the tendency of the school was markedly aristocratic, and several of the lads became tyrants in after life. Isokrates inculcated the practical life: his teaching was meant as a preparation for success in society and politics. But as his school naturally was only for the comparatively wealthy and leisured classes, it also tended to be aristocratic; however, it produced some of the leading democratic statesmen of the day. Besides these two great schools others grew up. It is hard to distinguish exactly between the boys who went to Isokrates in order to learn political speaking and those who went to a “logographos” like Lusias or Demosthenes to learn forensic oratory. The “logographoi” do not seem to have claimed to impart culture, but only technical instruction: they are thus on the boundary line of education. But Demosthenes went to the “logographos” Isaios to get precisely the instruction which Isokrates had refused him: so it is hard to make a clear distinction. I shall therefore give a short sketch of the “logographoi” also.[529]