Isocrates seems to have been thorough in all things; himself a hard worker who took extraordinary care over his compositions, he expected his pupils to work hard. He was not content, like some Sophists, with making them learn his own ‘fair copies’ by heart; they must do the work for themselves. He scoffs at those teachers who claim to ‘finish’ their pupils in a year; his pretensions are more modest, but even so he requires a course of three or four years. He believed in individual attention rather than class-teaching, if we may regard an anecdote of the Pseudo-Plutarch, who recounts that three pupils once came to him together, but he admitted only two, telling the third to come next day. He endeavoured to impart to his students something of that broadness of view, so prominent in his own speeches, which enabled him to look beyond the trials of the law-courts, beyond the interests of party or even of individual state, and lift his eyes to a conception of national unity; and something of that loftiness of spirit which, in an age of selfish and scurrilous orators, enabled him to pursue his course towards the truth, unbiased by personal considerations, and never descending to invective or abuse. § 4. _Patriotism_ Isocrates was no less a patriot than Demosthenes, though he differed very widely in his political views from the later orator. What these views were may be gathered from a series of speeches on national subjects extending over a period of more than forty years. The _Panegyricus_, the first of these, was probably composed for publication at one of the great national assemblies, perhaps the Olympic festival, about 380 B.C. This was certainly a time when the long-continued dissensions of the city-states had brought the affairs of Greece to a crisis. There seemed to Isocrates to be no solution of the difficulties, no chance of established peace or contentment, unless some enterprise could be found which should unite the sympathies of the rival cities, induce them to put their own quarrels aside, and throw them whole-heartedly into a cause which concerned Hellas as a nation. The only motive which had ever been able to unite the Greeks, even temporarily, was hatred of the barbarians, and Isocrates works upon this feeling. He draws a vivid picture of the miserable state to which the Greek world has been reduced by civil war, and shows how the influence of Persia, besides keeping this war alive, has in other ways worked towards the ruin of Greece. Having discussed with outspoken candour the claims of Sparta and Athens to leadership, he suggests that they should agree by a compromise, and urges that they and all other States should unite in a racial war against the Persians.