This practice is, of course, provided in the school of Isokrates; for his school was, in fact, a debating or deliberating society, in which the pupils wrote and recited carefully composed speeches on given themes, or listened to the harangues of their master. Sometimes they discussed events of the day and matters of general interest[541] at the moment; at another time their topic was some constitutional or historical question, or the comparative merits of different nations and governments.[542] At another time, as may be seen from the example of Isokrates’ own orations, they dealt with those mythical characters who were historical realities as well as sacred personages to the average Hellene, Theseus and Helen and Bousiris: this in their eyes was almost equivalent to religious instruction and they were virtually writing theological essays. No doubt also the pupils wrote and recited those “commonplaces” or short essays on general topics, composed in a most elaborate style, which ancient orators kept in stock, ready to be inserted in a speech when a suitable opening presented itself. Isokrates’ own works are particularly full of these highly finished little essays:[543] so it is at least extremely probable that he insisted upon their composition in his school. Before his pupils, too, Isokrates would recite those fine sermons of his, like the _Demonikos_; and effective pieces of moral exhortation they must have been. Thus the Isocratean school claimed to be, and was, a school of morals: it was also a school of good style and composition. The boys’ essays had to be written in a particular style, grandiloquent and ornate, to suit their themes. “For it is absurd to suppose that the matter and manner of ordinary conversation or of forensic oratory are suitable to Pan-Hellenic themes; on the contrary, in this kind of speech the thoughts must be more original and more lofty, the style more striking, and the diction more poetical and elaborate.”[544] Style, diction, and matter must, in fact, be that which Isokrates worked out in his own speeches. That style[545] I do not mean to discuss here. The fact that he wrote in a study and never spoke in public, has made him exaggerate the merits of the artistic prose-style of which he was the first really great exponent; but of its popularity with an Hellenic audience there can be no question. The pupils of Isokrates became the most eminent politicians and the most eminent prose-writers of the time; his house, as Cicero puts it, was the school of Hellas and the manufactory of eloquence.