The composition of Isokrates was extremely elegant: his structure of sentences was elaborate even to excess, his arrangement of words rhythmical, his phrases nicely balanced in antithetical equipoise, like those of his master Gorgias; the recital of his discourses proved highly captivating to the ear.[58] Moreover, he had composed a book of rhetorical precepts known and esteemed by Cicero and Quintilian. Besides such technical excellence, Isokrates strove to attain, and to a certain extent actually attained, a higher order of merit. He familiarized his pupils with thoughts and arguments of lofty bearing and comprehensive interest; not assisting them to gain victory either in any real issue tried before the Dikasts, or in any express motion about to be voted on by the public assembly, but predisposing their minds to prize above all things the great Pan-hellenic aggregate--its independence in regard to external force, and internal harmony among its constituent cities, with a reasonable recognition of presidential authority, equitably divided between Athens and Sparta, and exercised with moderation by both. He inculcated sober habits and deference to legal authority on the part of the democrats of Athens; he impressed upon princes, like Philip and Nikokles, the importance of just and mild bearing towards subjects.[59] Such is the general strain of the discourses which we now possess from Isokrates; though he appears to have adopted it only in middle life, having begun at first in the more usual track of the logographer--composing speeches to be delivered before the Dikastery by actual plaintiffs or defendants,[60] and acquiring thus both reputation and profit. His reputation as a teacher was not only maintained but even increased when he altered his style; and he made himself peculiarly attractive to foreign pupils who desired to acquire a command of graceful expressions, without special reference to the Athenian Assembly and Dikastery. But his new style being midway between Demosthenes and Plato--between the practical advocate and politician on one side, and the generalizing or speculative philosopher on the other--he incurred as a semi-philosopher, professing to have discovered the _juste milieu_, more or less of disparagement from both extremes;[61] and Aristotle, while yet a young man in the Platonic school, raised an ardent controversy against his works, on the ground both of composition and teaching. Though the whole controversy is now lost, there is good ground for believing that Aristotle must have displayed no small acrimony. He appears to have impugned the Isokratean discourses, partly as containing improper dogmas, partly as specimens of mere unimpressive elegance, intended for show, pomp, and immediate admiration from the hearer--_ad implendas aures_--but destitute both of comprehensive theory and of applicability to any useful purpose.[62] Kephisodôrus, an intimate friend and pupil of Isokrates, defended him in an express