ABSTRACT
Isocrates would not have been able to exert such far-reaching effects with his rhetorical education strategy had broad sections of the fourth-century public, and by no means only in Athens, not been steeped in the written word. This pertained first and foremost to the judicature, administration, commerce, banking, journalism, education and scholarship, but is also apparent from the way more and more people put their pens to paper whenever they felt they had something important to communicate.
