These polemics of Aristotle were begun during his first residence at Athens, prior to 347 B.C., the year of Plato's decease, and at the time when he was still accounted a member of the Platonic school. They exemplify the rivalry between that school and the Isokratean, which were then the two competing places of education at Athens: and we learn that Aristotle, at that time only a half-fledged Platonist, opened on his own account not a new philosophical school in competition with Plato, as some state, but a new rhetorical school in opposition to Isokrates.[63] But the case was different at the latter epoch, 335 B.C., when Aristotle came to reside at Athens for the second time. Isokrates was then dead, leaving no successor, so that his rhetorical school expired with him. Aristotle preferred philosophy to rhetoric: he was no longer trammelled by the living presence and authority of Plato. The Platonic school at the Academy stood at that time alone, under Xenokrates, who, though an earnest and dignified philosopher, was deficient in grace and in persuasiveness, and had been criticized for this defect even by Plato himself. Aristotle possessed those gifts in large measure, as we know from the testimony of Antipater. By these circumstances, coupled with his own established reputation and well-grounded self-esteem, he was encouraged to commence a new philosophical school; a school, in which philosophy formed the express subject of the morning lecture, while rhetoric was included as one among the subjects of more varied and popular instruction given in the afternoon.[64] During the twelve ensuing years, Aristotle's rivalry was mainly against the Platonists or Xenokrateans at the Academy; embittered on both sides by acrimonious feelings, which these expressed by complaining of his ingratitude and unfairness towards the common master, Plato. [Footnote 64: That Aristotle had a school at Athens before the death of Plato we may see by what Strabo (xiii. 610) says about Hermeias: [Greek: geno/menos d' A)thê/nê|sin ê)kroa/sato kai\ Pla/tônos kai\ A)ristote/lous]. Compare Cicero, Orator. 46; also Michelet, Essai sur la Métaphys. d'Aristote, p. 227. The statement that Aristotle during Plato's lifetime tried to set up a rival school against him, is repeated by all the biographers, who do not however believe it to be true, though they cite Aristoxenus as its warrant. I conceive that they have mistaken what Aristoxenus said; and that they have confounded the school which Aristotle first set up as a rhetor, against Isokrates, with that which he afterwards set up as a philosopher, against Xenokrates.] [Footnote 65: Aulus Gellius, N. A. xx. 5. Quintilian (see note on p. 35) puts the rhetorical "pomeridianæ scholæ" within the lifetime of Isokrates; but Aristotle did not then lecture on philosophy in the morning.]