Starting with the Sophist’s advertisements of oratorical skill (one of their primary marketing tools), he created political set speeches designed to put forward his positions and arouse political action. The written versions of these public lectures would later become the basis for Hellenistic and then Western literature. Ironically, Isocrates had to use the written form because a weak voice and stage fright prevented him from becoming the orator he would have preferred to have been.
His school was designed to teach practical knowledge rather than the idealism of Plato. Isocrates remarked, “I either produce teachers like me or great debaters,” and he did both in volume. These were not the sons of aristocrats necessarily; they were also the average young men of Athens.