The private life of Isokrates was too evenly prosperous to have a history. He is said to have taught his Athenian pupils gratis, and to have taken fees only from foreigners ¹ . However this may be, the wealth derived from his school appears to have excited the envy of his rivals; and he says that they exaggerated it ² . He was one of the 1200 richest citizens ³ who, after the financial reform of 378 B.C., formed the twenty unions (or ‘symmories’) for the assessment of the war-tax; he had thrice been trierarch; and had besides discharged other public services in a liberal manner. On marrying Plathanê, the widow of Hippias of Elis, he adopted Aphareus, one of her three sons,—afterwards a rhetorician and a tragic poet of some mark. It was a somewhat rare distinction for an eminent Athenian to have had only one lawsuit ⁴ ; and in this—a challenge to take the trierarchy, or exchange properties, offered to him in 345 by one Megakleides—Isokrates, who was ill at the time, was represented in court by Aphareus. The verdict seems to have gone against him ⁵ .