The story contained in the ‘Life,’ that he endeavoured to save Theramenes when condemned by the Thirty, has no other authority but the Pseudo-Plutarch. It appears from Plato’s _Phaedrus_[182] that he was intimate with Socrates, that Socrates had a high opinion of him, and considered that the young man might distinguish himself either in oratory or in philosophy. Tradition names the Sophists Prodicus, Protagoras, and Gorgias among his early teachers. He is believed to have visited Gorgias in Thessaly. Plutarch asserts that Isocrates at one time opened a school of rhetoric, with nine pupils, in Chios; and that while there he interfered in politics and helped to institute a democracy.[183] The story may be accepted with reservations. Isocrates himself never refers to it, and in _Ep._ vi. § 2 (to the children of Jason) excuses himself from visiting Thessaly on the ground that people would comment unfavourably on a man who had ‘kept quiet’ all his life if he began travelling in his old age.[184] Jebb assumes a short stay in Chios in 404-403 B.C. Between 403 and 393 B.C. Isocrates composed a certain number of speeches for the law-courts, in which, however, he never appeared as a pleader, for natural disabilities—lack of voice and nervousness, to which he refers with regret—made him unfitted for such work. About 392 B.C. he opened a school at Athens, and in 391 B.C. published, in the discourse _Against the Sophists_, his views on education. His pupils were mostly Athenians, many of them afterwards being men of distinction.[185] It was probably between 378 and 376 B.C. that Isocrates went on several voyages with Conon’s son, Timotheus, who was engaged in organizing the new maritime league. From this time down to 351 B.C. he had many distinguished pupils from far countries—Sicily and Pontus as well as all parts of Greece—and amassed, as he tells us, a reasonable competence, though not a large fortune. In the year 351 B.C., when a great contest of eloquence was held by Artemisia, widow of Mausolus of Caria, in honour of her husband, it is reported that all the competitors were pupils of Isocrates.