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POLITICAL WRITINGS OF ISOCRATES 345 Soon after opening the school he probably wrote the two slight displays in the style of Gorgias, which have come down to us — the paradoxical Praise of Busiris, in which he champions the Socratics, and the fine Helene, in which he speaks sharply of all philosophers. The passage (54-58) of the Helene on Beauty and Chastity is almost Platonic, as profound as it is eloquent. The Panegyricus, an address written for the ' Panegyris/ or General Gathering of all Hellas at the hundredth Olympiad, 380 B.C., is Isocrates's masterpiece. Quite apart from its dignity of form, it shows the author as a publicist of the highest power. It combines a clear review of the recent history and present condition of Greece with an admirable justification of Athens, and an appeal to the sympathies of Greece in favour of renewing the Sea P'ederation. It is not, indeed, quite impartially pan - Hellenic. The comparison of the Spartan and Athenian rule was inevitable, and the tone of §§ 122-132 cannot have pleased the Peloponnese ; but in maritime Greece the appeal was irresistible. Two years afterwards, his own Chios leading the way, seventy cities joined the Athenian alliance, and Isocrates accompanied the general Timotheus on a two years' commission to organise the terms of the federation in the different islands and coast towns. It was probably at this time that he formed his friendship with Euagoras, king of Salamis, in Cyprus, who had been fighting almost single - handed against Persia for eight years. Cyprus was the frontier where Greek and Oriental met. Every step gained by Euagoras was an advance of culture and humanity ; every step lost meant the re- establishment of barbarous laws and bloody supersti- tions. The sight kindled a lasting fervour in Isocrates.