come down under Xenophon's name, is an aristocratic manifesto against the democracy, which might have appeared in an ancient Quarterly Review. The paper on the Revenues of Athens, belonging to the middle of the fourth century B.C., is a similar article in favour of peace and the commercial interests. Many of the extant pieces of the orator Isocrates, in the fourth century B.C., though couched in the form of speeches, were meant to be read, not spoken, and are in reality highly finished political pamphlets. More, perhaps, than any writer of antiquity, Isocrates resembles a journalist who is deeply impressed with the dignity and responsibility of his calling; who spares no pains to make his work really good; and who has constantly before his mind the feeling that his audience is wider, and his power greater, than if he was actually addressing a public assembly on the same theme. His articles—as we may fitly call them—are usually intended to have a definite effect at a particular moment. He wishes to make Athens and Sparta combine at once in an expedition to Asia. He wishes to strike in with a telling argument for peace at the moment when negotiations are pending between Athens and her allies. He desires to strengthen the hands of the party, at Athens and at Sparta, who refuse to recognise the restoration of Messene by the power of Thebes. In this last case, we know that a pamphlet on the other side was written by the rhetorician Alcidamas. Here then is an example of literary controversy on contemporary public affairs.
