Isokrates’ great political pamphlets, with their wonderfully polished style and their striking themes, naturally served him as an excellent advertisement, as he naïvely admits in the _Antidosis_. Those who required further information about his educational methods and aims would turn to the prospectus _Against the Sophists_, which he published at the beginning of his career. Owing to these attractions, pupils came to him from all parts of the Hellenic world, from Pontos, Sicily, and Cyprus;[552] he had “more than all the other teachers of philosophy put together.”[553] They were not merely private citizens, but statesmen, generals, kings, and tyrants.[554] Probably the age at which they came varied greatly, but most of his actual pupils would probably be between fifteen and twenty-one. He often speaks of μειράκια [meirakia] as among them. Moreover, he speaks of parents bringing their sons to him,[555] which they certainly would not do if the boys were over eighteen. Public life in the average Hellenic state began at twenty; so boys would wish to be ready for it by that age. The course at Isokrates’ school lasted for three or four years.[556] The Athenian lad was more or less busy with his military duties from eighteen to twenty, so he would probably take the course between fourteen and eighteen; natives of other states would fit it in according to their local customs. The fee for the whole course was 10 mnai, or £40.[557] The story[558] goes that Demosthenes, having only £8, offered to pay that sum for one-fifth of the course. But Isokrates replied that he could not sell his philosophy in slices; the customer must take the whole fish or none at all. Probably, however, the tale is a fiction: Isokrates himself claims not to have made any money out of his countrymen, and only to have charged his foreign pupils.
Since, soon after the opening of his school, he had a hundred pupils, the accounts of his great wealth, which he repudiated so indignantly, cannot have been far wrong, especially as he received 20 talents (nearly £5000) for his panegyric on Euagoras. His own comparison of his wealth with that of Gorgias, who left only £800 at his death, is curious, if the above statements are true.