From all this it is plain what sort of men those are at whose misfortunes, [15] distresses, or failures we ought to feel pleased, or at least not pained: by considering the facts described we see at once what their contraries are. If therefore our speech puts the judges in such a frame of mind as that indicated and shows that those who claim pity on certain definite grounds do not deserve to secure pity but do deserve not to secure it, it will be impossible for the judges to feel pity. [20]

10 · To take envy next: we can see on what grounds, against what persons, and in what states of mind we feel it. Envy is pain at the sight of such good fortune as consists of the good things already mentioned; we feel it towards our equals; not with the idea of getting something for ourselves, but because the other people have it. We shall feel it if we have, or think we have, equals; and by ‘equals’ I mean equals [25] in birth, relationship, age, disposition, distinction, or wealth. We feel envy also if we fall but a little short of having everything; which is why people in high place and prosperity feel it—they think everyone else is taking what belongs to themselves. Also if we are exceptionally distinguished for some particular thing, and especially [30] if that thing is wisdom or good fortune. Ambitious men are more envious than those who are not. So also those who profess wisdom; they are ambitious to be thought wise. Indeed, generally, those who aim at a reputation for anything are envious on this particular point. And small-minded men are envious, for everything seems great to them. The good things which excite envy have already been mentioned. The deeds or possessions which arouse the love of reputation and honour and the desire [1388a1] for fame, and the various gifts of fortune, are almost all subject to envy; and particularly if we desire the thing ourselves, or think we are entitled to it, or if possession of it puts us a little above others, or a little below them. It is clear also what kind of people we envy; that was included in what has been said already; we [5] envy those who are near us in time, place, age, or reputation. [[Hence the line:

Ay, kin can even be jealous of their kin.]]16

Also our fellow-competitors, who are indeed the people just mentioned—we do not compete with men who lived a hundred centuries ago, or those not yet born, or those [10] who dwell near the Pillars of Hercules, or those whom, in our opinion or that of others, we take to be far below us or far above us. So too we compete with those who follow the same ends as ourselves: we compete with our rivals in sport or in love, and generally with those who are after the same things; and it is therefore these whom [15] we are bound to envy beyond all others. Hence the saying, Potter against potter. We also envy those whose possession of or success in a thing is a reproach to us: these are our neighbours and equals; for it is clear that it is our own fault we have missed the good thing in question; this annoys us, and excites envy in us. We also envy those who have what we ought to have, or have got what we did have once. Hence old men [20] envy younger men, and those who have spent much envy those who have spent little on the same thing. And men who have not got a thing, or not got it yet, envy those who have got it quickly. We can also see what things and what persons give pleasure to envious people, and in what states of mind they feel it: the states of mind in which [25] they feel pain are those under which they will feel pleasure in the contrary things. If therefore we ourselves with whom the decision rests are put into an envious state of mind, and those for whom our pity, or the award of something desirable, is claimed are such as have been described, it is obvious that they will win no pity from us.

11 · We will next consider emulation, showing in what follows its causes [30] and objects, and the state of mind in which it is felt. Emulation is pain caused by seeing the presence, in persons whose nature is like our own, of good things that are highly valued and are possible for ourselves to acquire; but it is felt not because others have these goods, but because we have not got them ourselves. It is therefore a good feeling felt by good persons, whereas envy is a bad feeling felt by bad [35] persons. Emulation makes us take steps to secure the good things in question, envy makes us take steps to stop our neighbour having them. Emulation must therefore [1388b1] tend to be felt by persons who believe themselves to deserve certain good things that they have not got. [[For no one aspires to things which appear impossible.]]17 It is accordingly felt by the young and by persons of lofty disposition. Also by those who possess such good things as are deserved by men held in honour—these are wealth, [5] abundance of friends, public office, and the like; on the assumption that they ought to be good men, they are emulous to gain such goods as ought, in their belief, to belong to men whose state of mind is good. Also by those whom all others think deserving. We also feel it about anything for which our ancestors, relatives, personal friends, race, or country are specially honoured, looking upon that thing as really [10] our own, and therefore feeling that we deserve to have it. Further, since all good things that are highly honoured are objects of emulation, excellence in its various forms must be such an object, and also all those good things that are useful and serviceable to others: for men honour those who are good, and also those who do them service. So with those good things our possession of which can give enjoyment to our neighbours—wealth and beauty rather than health. We can see, too, what [15] persons are the objects of the feeling. They are those who have these and similar things—those already mentioned, as courage, wisdom, public office. Holders of public office—generals, orators, and all who possess such powers—can do many people a good turn. Also those whom many people wish to be like; those who have [20] many acquaintances or friends; those whom many admire, or whom we ourselves admire; and those who have been praised and eulogized by poets or prose-writers. Persons of the contrary sort are objects of contempt: for the feeling and notion of contempt are opposite to those of emulation. Those who are such as to emulate or be [25] emulated by others are inevitably disposed to be contemptuous of all such persons as are subject to those bad things which are contrary to the good things that are the objects of emulation, despising them for just that reason. Hence we often despise the fortunate, when luck comes to them without their having those good things which are held in honour.

This completes our discussion of the means by which the several emotions may be produced or dissipated, and upon which depend the persuasive arguments [30] connected with the emotions.

12 · Let us now consider the various types of human character, in relation to the emotions, states of character, ages and fortunes. By emotions I mean anger, desire, and the like; these we have discussed already. By states of character I mean [35] excellences and vices; these also have been discussed already, as well as the various things that various types of men tend to choose and to do. By ages I mean youth, the prime of life, and old age. By fortune I mean birth, wealth, power, and their [1389a1] opposites—in fact, good fortune and ill fortune.

To begin with the youthful type of character. Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of [5] self-control. They are changeable and fickle in their desires, which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep-rooted, and are like sick people’s attacks of hunger and thirst. They are hot-tempered and quicktempered, and apt to give way to their anger; bad temper often gets the better of [10] them, for owing to their love of honour they cannot bear being slighted, and are indignant if they imagine themselves unfairly treated. While they love honour, they love victory still more; for youth is eager for superiority over others, and victory is one form of this. They love both more than they love money, which indeed they love very little, not having yet learnt what it means to be without it—this is the point of [15] Pittacus’ remark about Amphiaraus. They look at the good side rather than the bad, not having yet witnessed many instances of wickedness. They trust others readily, because they have not yet often been cheated. They are sanguine; nature warms their blood as though with excess of wine; and besides that, they have as yet met [20] with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward. They are easily cheated, [25] owing to the sanguine disposition just mentioned. Their hot tempers and hopeful dispositions make them more courageous than older men are; the hot temper prevents fear, and the hopeful disposition creates confidence; we cannot feel fear so long as we are feeling angry, and any expectation of good makes us confident. They are shy, accepting the rules of society in which they have been trained, and not yet believing in any other standard of honour. They have exalted notions, because they [30] have not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by their character than by reasoning; and [35] whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, excellence leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet [1389b1] come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and [5] hate too much, and the same with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it; this, in fact, is why they overdo everything. If they do wrong to others, it is because they mean to insult them, not to do them actual harm. They are ready to pity others, because they think everyone an honest man, or anyhow better than he is: they judge their neighbour by their own harmless [10] natures, and so cannot think he deserves to be treated in that way. They are fond of fun and therefore witty, wit being well-bred insolence.

13 · Such, then, is the character of the young. The character of elderly men—men who are past their prime—may be said to be formed for the most part of [15] elements that are the contrary of all these. They have lived many years; they have often been taken in, and often made mistakes; and life on the whole is a bad business. The result is that they are sure about nothing and under-do everything. They ‘think’, but they never ‘know’; and because of their hesitation they always add a ‘possibly’ or a ‘perhaps’, putting everything this way and nothing positively. They [20] are cynical; that is, they tend to put the worse construction on everything. Further, their experience makes them distrustful and therefore suspicious of evil. Consequently they neither love warmly nor hate bitterly, but following the hint of Bias they love as though they will some day hate and hate as though they will some day [25] love. They are small-minded, because they have been humbled by life: their desires are set upon nothing more exalted or unusual than what will help them to keep alive. They are not generous, because money is one of the things they must have, and at the same time their experience has taught them how hard it is to get and how easy to lose. They are cowardly, and are always anticipating danger; unlike that of the [30] young, who are warm-blooded, their temperament is chilly; old age has paved the way for cowardice; fear is, in fact, a form of chill. They love life; and all the more when their last day has come, because the object of all desire is something we have not got, and also because we desire most strongly that which we need most urgently. [35] They are too fond of themselves; this is one form that small-mindedness takes. Because of this, they guide their lives too much by considerations of what is useful [1390a1] and too little by what is noble—for the useful is what is good for oneself, and the noble what is good absolutely. They are not shy, but shameless rather; caring less for what is noble than for what is useful, they feel contempt for what people may think of them. They lack confidence in the future; partly through experience—for [5] most things go wrong, or anyhow turn out worse than one expects; and partly because of their cowardice. They live by memory rather than by hope; for what is left to them of life is but little as compared with the long past; and hope is of the future, memory of the past. This, again, is the cause of their loquacity; they are [10] continually talking of the past, because they enjoy remembering it. Their fits of anger are sudden but feeble. Their sensual passions have either altogether gone or have lost their vigour: consequently they do not feel their passions much, and their actions are inspired less by what they do feel than by the love of gain. Hence men at this time of life are often supposed to have a self-controlled character; the fact is [15] that their passions have slackened, and they are slaves to the love of gain. They guide their lives by reasoning more than by character; reasoning being directed to utility and character to excellence. If they wrong others, they mean to injure them, not to insult them. Old men may feel pity, as well as young men, but not for the same reason. Young men feel it out of kindness; old men out of weakness, imagining [20] that anything that befalls anyone else might easily happen to them, which, as we saw, is a thought that excites pity. Hence they are querulous, and not disposed to jesting or laughter—the love of laughter being the very opposite of querulousness.

Such are the characters of young men and elderly men. People always think well of speeches adapted to, and reflecting, their own character: and we can now see [25] how to compose our speeches so as to adapt both them and ourselves to our audiences.

14 · As for men in their prime, clearly we shall find that they have a character between that of the young and that of the old, free from the extremes of [30] either. They have neither that excess of confidence which amounts to rashness, nor too much timidity, but the right amount of each. They neither trust everybody nor distrust everybody, but judge people correctly. Their lives will be guided not by the sole consideration either of what is noble or of what is useful, but by both; neither by [1390b1] parsimony nor by prodigality, but by what is fit and proper. So, too, in regard to anger and desire; they will be brave as well as temperate, and temperate as well as brave; these virtues are divided between the young and the old; the young are brave [5] but intemperate, the old temperate but cowardly. To put it generally, all the valuable qualities that youth and age divide between them are united in the prime of life, while all their excesses or defects are replaced by moderation and fitness. The body is in its prime from thirty to thirty-five; the mind about forty-nine. [10]

15 · So much for the types of character that distinguish youth, old age, and the prime of life. We will now turn to those gifts of fortune by which human [15] character is affected. First let us consider good birth. Its effect on character is to make those who have it more ambitious; it is the way of all men who have something to start with to add to the pile, and good birth implies ancestral distinction. The well-born man will look down even on those who are as good as his own ancestors, [20] because any far-off distinction is greater than the same thing close to us, and better to boast about. Being well-born, which means coming of a fine stock, must be distinguished from nobility, which means being true to the family nature—a quality not usually found in the well-born, most of whom are poor creatures. In the generations of men as in the fruits of the earth, there is a varying yield; now and [25] then, where the stock is good, exceptional men are produced for a while, and then decadence sets in. A clever stock will degenerate towards the insane type of [30] character, like the descendants of Alcibiades or of the elder Dionysius; a steady stock towards the fatuous and torpid type, like the descendants of Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates.

16 · The type of character produced by wealth lies on the surface for all to see. Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their [1391a1] understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy. They are luxurious and ostentatious; luxurious, because of the luxury in which they live and the prosperity which they display; ostentatious and [5] vulgar, because, like other people’s, their minds are regularly occupied with the object of their love and admiration, and also because they think that other people’s idea of happiness is the same as their own. It is indeed quite natural that they should be affected thus; for if you have money, there are always plenty of people who come begging from you. Hence the saying of Simonides about wise men and rich men, in [10] answer to Hiero’s wife, who asked him whether it was better to grow rich or wise. ‘Why, rich’, he said; ‘for I see the wise men spending their days at the rich men’s doors’. Rich men also consider themselves worthy to hold public office; for they consider they already have the things that give a claim to office. In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool. There is indeed one [15] difference between the type of the newly-enriched and those who have long been rich: the newly-enriched have all the bad qualities mentioned in an exaggerated and worse form—to be newly-enriched means, so to speak, no education in riches. The wrongs they do others are not meant to injure their victims, but spring from insolence or self-indulgence, e.g. those that end in assault or in adultery.

[20] 17 · As to power, here too it may fairly be said that the type of character it produces is mostly obvious enough. Some elements in this type it shares with the wealthy type, others are better. Those in power are more ambitious and more manly in character than the wealthy, because they aspire to do the great deeds that their [25] power permits them to do. Responsibility makes them more serious: they have to keep paying attention to the duties their position involves. They are dignified rather than arrogant, for the respect in which they are held inspires them with dignity and therefore with moderation—dignity being a mild and becoming form of arrogance. If they wrong others, they wrong them not on a small but on a great scale.

[30] Good fortune in certain of its branches produces the types of character belonging to the conditions just described, since these conditions are in fact more or less the kinds of good fortune that are regarded as most important. It may be added that good fortune leads us to gain all we can in the way of family happiness and [1391b1] bodily advantages. It does indeed make men more supercilious and more reckless; but there is one excellent quality that goes with it—piety, and respect for the divine power, in which they believe because of events which are really the result of chance.

This account of the types of character that correspond to differences of age or fortune may end here; for to arrive at the opposite types to those described, namely, [5] those of the poor, the unfortunate, and the powerless, we have only to ask what the opposite qualities are.

18 · [[The use of persuasive speech is to lead to decisions. (When we know a thing, and have decided about it, there is no further use in speaking about it.) This is so even if one is addressing a single person and urging him to do or not to do [10] something, as when we advise a man about his conduct or try to change his views: the single person is as much your judge as if he were one of many; we may say, without qualification, that anyone is your judge whom you have to persuade. Nor does it matter whether we are arguing against an actual opponent or against a mere proposition; in the latter case we still have to use speech and overthrow the opposing arguments, and we attack these as we should attack an actual opponent. Our [15] principle holds good of epideictic speeches also; the audience for whom such a speech is put together is treated as the judge of it. Nevertheless, the only sort of person who can strictly be called a judge is the man who decides the issue in some matter of public controversy; for the issue concerns the facts under dispute or subject to deliberation.]]18 In the section on political oratory an account has already [20] been given of the types of character that mark the different constitutions.

The manner and means of investing speeches with moral character may now be regarded as fully set forth.

Each of the main divisions of oratory has, we have seen, its own distinct goal. With regard to each division, we have noted the accepted views and propositions upon which we may base our arguments—for deliberative, for epideictic, and for [25] forensic speaking. We have further determined completely by what means speeches may be invested with the required character. We are now to proceed to discuss the arguments common to all oratory. All orators are bound to use the topic of the possible and impossible; and to try to show that a thing has happened, or will happen [30] in the future. Again, the topic of size is common to all oratory; all of us have to argue that things are bigger or smaller than they seem, whether we are making deliberative speeches, speeches of eulogy or attack, or prosecuting or defending in [1392a1] the law-courts. Having analysed these subjects, we will try to say what we can about the general principles of arguing by enthymeme and example, by the addition of which we may hope to complete the project with which we set out. Of the above-mentioned commonplaces, that concerned with amplification is—as has been [5] already said—most appropriate to epideictic speeches; that concerned with the past, to forensic speeches, where the required decision is always about the past; that concerned with possibility and the future, to deliberative speeches.

19 · Let us first speak of the possible and impossible. It would seem to be the case that if it is possible for one of a pair of contraries to be or happen, then it is possible for the other: e.g. if a man can be cured, he can also fall ill; for any two [10] contraries are equally possible, in so far as they are contraries. That if of two similar things one is possible, so is the other. That if the harder of two things is possible, so is the easier. That if a thing can come into existence in a good and beautiful form, then [15] it can come into existence generally; thus a house can exist more easily than a beautiful house. That if the beginning of a thing can occur, so can the end; for nothing impossible occurs or begins to occur; thus the commensurability of the diagonal of a square with its side neither occurs nor can begin to occur. That if the [20] end is possible, so is the beginning; for all things that occur have a beginning. That if that which is posterior in essence or in order of generation can come into being, so can that which is prior: thus if a man can come into being, so can a boy, since the boy comes first in order of generation; and if a boy can, so can a man, for the man also is first. That those things are possible of which the love or desire is natural; for [25] no one, as a rule, loves or desires impossibilities. That things which are the object of any kind of science or art are possible and exist or come into existence. That anything is possible the first step in whose production depends on men or things which we can compel or persuade to produce it, by our greater strength, our control of them, or our friendship with them. That where the parts are possible, the whole is [30] possible; and where the whole is possible, the parts are usually possible. For if the slit in front, the toe-piece, and the upper leather can be made, then shoes can be made; and if shoes, then also the front slit and the toe-piece. That if a whole genus is [1392b1] a thing that can occur, so can the species; and if the species can occur, so can the genus: thus, if a sailing vessel can be made, so also can a trireme; and if a trireme, then a sailing vessel also. That if one of two things whose existence depends on each [5] other is possible, so is the other; for instance, if double, then half, and if half, then double. That if a thing can be produced without art or preparation, it can be produced still more certainly by the careful application of art to it. Hence Agathon has said:

To some things we by art must needs attain,

Others by destiny or luck we gain.19

[10] That if anything is possible to inferior, weaker, and stupider people, it is more so for their opposites; thus Isocrates said that it would be a strange thing if he could not discover a thing that Euthynus had found out. As for impossibility, we can clearly get what we want by taking the contraries of the arguments stated above.

[15] Questions of past fact may be looked at in the following ways. First, that if the less likely of two things has occurred, the more likely must have occurred also. That if one thing that usually follows another has happened, then that other thing has happened; that, for instance, if a man has forgotten a thing, he has also once learnt it. That if a man had the power and the wish to do a thing, he has done it; for every [20] one does do whatever he wants to do whenever he can do it, there being nothing to stop him. That, further, he has done the thing in question either if he intended it and nothing external prevented him; or if he had the power to do it and was angry at the time; or if he had the power to do it and his heart was set upon it—for people, as a rule do what they long to do, if they can; bad people through lack of self-control; good people, because their hearts are set upon good things. Again, that if a thing was going to happen, it has happened; if a man was going to do something, he has [25] done it, for it is likely that the intention was carried out. That if one thing has happened which naturally happens before another or with a view to it, the other has happened; for instance, if it has lightened, it has also thundered; and if an action has been attempted, it has been done. That if one thing has happened which naturally happens after another, or with a view to which that other happens, then that other (that which happens first, or happens with a view to this thing) has also happened; thus, if it has thundered it has also lightened, and if an action has been done it has [30] been attempted. Of all these sequences some are inevitable and some merely usual. The arguments for the non-occurrence of anything can obviously be found by considering the opposites of those that have been mentioned.

How questions of future fact should be argued is clear from the same [1393a1] considerations: that a thing will be done if there is both the power and the wish to do it; or if along with the power to do it there is a craving for the result, or anger, or calculation, prompting it. That the thing will be done, in these cases,20 if the man is actually setting about it, or even if he means to do it later—for usually what we mean to do happens rather than what we do not mean to do. That a thing will [5] happen if another thing which naturally happens before it has already happened; thus, if it is clouding over, it is likely to rain. That if the means to an end have occurred, then the end is likely to occur; thus, if there is a foundation, there will be a house.

For arguments about the greatness and smallness of things, the greater and the lesser, and generally great things and small, what we have already said will show [10] the line to take. In discussing deliberative oratory we have spoken about the relative greatness of various goods, and about the greater and lesser in general. Since therefore in each type of oratory the object under discussion is some kind of good—whether it is utility, nobleness, or justice—it is clear that every orator must obtain the materials of amplification through these channels. To go further than [15] this, and try to establish abstract laws of greatness and superiority, is to argue without an object; in practical life, particular facts count more than generalizations.

Enough has now been said about these questions of possibility and the reverse, of past or future fact, and of the relative greatness or smallness of things. [20]

20 · The special forms of oratorical argument having now been discussed, we have next to treat of those which are common to all kinds of oratory. These are of two main kinds, example and enthymeme; for a maxim is part of an enthymeme. [25]

We will first treat of argument by example, for it has the nature of induction, which is the foundation of reasoning. This form of argument has two varieties; one consisting in the mention of actual past facts, the other in the invention of facts by the speaker. Of the latter, again, there are two varieties, the illustrative parallel and [30] the fable (e.g. the fables of Aesop, or those from Libya). As an instance of the mention of actual facts, take the following. The speaker may argue thus: ‘We must prepare for war against the king of Persia and not let him subdue Egypt. For Darius of old did not cross the Aegean until he had seized Egypt; but once he had seized it, he did cross. And Xerxes, again, did not attack us until he had seized Egypt; but [1393b1] once he had seized it, he did cross. If therefore the present king seizes Egypt, he also will cross, and therefore we must not let him’.

The illustrative parallel is the sort of argument Socrates used: e.g. ‘Public [5] officials ought not to be selected by lot. That is like using the lot to select athletes, instead of choosing those who are fit for the contest; or using the lot to select a steersman from among a ship’s crew, as if we ought to take the man on whom the lot falls, and not the man who knows most about it’.

Instances of the fable are that of Stesichorus about Phalaris, and that of Aesop [10] in defence of the popular leader. When the people of Himera had made Phalaris military dictator, and were going to give him a bodyguard, Stesichorus wound up a long talk by telling them the fable of the horse who had a field all to himself. Presently there came a stag and began to spoil his pasturage. The horse, wishing to [15] revenge himself on the stag, asked a man if he could help him to do so. The man said, ‘Yes, if you will let me bridle you and get on to your back with javelins in my hand’. The horse agreed, and the man mounted; but instead of getting his revenge on the stag, the horse found himself the slave of the man. ‘You too’, said [20] Stesichorus, ‘take care lest, in your desire for revenge on your enemies, you meet the same fate as the horse. By making Phalaris military dictator, you have already let yourselves be bridled. If you let him get on to your backs by giving him a bodyguard, from that moment you will be his slaves’.

Aesop, defending before the assembly at Samos a popular leader who was being tried for his life, told this story: A fox, in crossing a river, was swept into a hole [25] in the rocks; and, not being able to get out, suffered miseries for a long time through the swarms of fleas that fastened on her. A hedgehog, while roaming around, noticed the fox; and feeling sorry for her asked if he might remove the fleas. But the fox declined the offer; and when the hedgehog asked why, she replied, ‘These fleas [30] are by this time full of me and not sucking much blood; if you take them away, others will come with fresh appetites and drink up all the blood I have left’. ‘So, men of Samos’, said Aesop, ‘my client will do you no further harm; he is wealthy already. [1394a1] But if you put him to death, others will come along who are not rich, and their peculations will empty your treasury completely’.

Fables are suitable for addresses to popular assemblies; and they have one advantage—they are comparatively easy to invent, whereas it is hard to find parallels among actual past events. You will in fact frame them just as you frame [5] illustrative parallels: all you require is the power of thinking out your analogy, a power developed by intellectual training. But while it is easier to supply parallels by inventing fables, it is more valuable for the political speaker to supply them by quoting what has actually happened, since in most respects the future will be like what the past has been.

Where we are unable to argue by enthymeme, we must try to demonstrate our [10] point by this method of example, and to convince our hearers thereby. If we can argue by enthymeme, we should use our examples as subsequent supplementary evidence. They should not precede the enthymemes: that will give the argument an inductive air, which only rarely suits the conditions of speech-making. If they follow the enthymemes, they have the effect of witnesses giving evidence, and this always tells. For the same reason, if you put your examples first you must give a large [15] number of them; if you put them last, a single one is sufficient; even a single witness will serve if he is a good one. It has now been stated how many varieties of argument by example there are, and how and when they are to be employed.

21 · We now turn to the use of maxims, in order to see upon what subjects and occasions, and for what kind of speaker, they will appropriately form part of a [20] speech. This will appear most clearly when we have defined a maxim. It is a statement; not about a particular fact, such as the character of Iphicrates, but of a general kind; nor is it about any and every subject—e.g. ‘straight is the contrary of curved’ is not a maxim—but only about questions of practical conduct, courses of [25] conduct to be chosen or avoided. Now an enthymeme is a deduction dealing with such practical subjects. It is therefore roughly true that the premisses or conclusions of enthymemes, considered apart from the rest of the argument, are maxims: e.g.

Never should any man whose wits are sound

Have his sons taught more wisdom than their fellows. [30]

Here we have a maxim; add the reason or explanation, and the whole thing is an enthymeme; thus—

It makes them idle; and therewith they earn

III-will and jealousy throughout the city.21

Again, [1394b1]

There is no man in all things prosperous,22

and

There is no man among us all is free,

are maxims; but the latter, taken with what follows it, is an enthymeme— [5]

For all are slaves of money or of chance.23

From this definition of a maxim it follows that there are four kinds of maxims. In the first place, the maxim may or may not have a supplement. Proof is needed where the statement is paradoxical or disputable; no supplement is wanted where the [10] statement contains nothing paradoxical, either because the view expressed is already a known truth, e.g.

Chiefest of blessings is health for a man, as it seemeth to me,24

this being the general opinion; or because, as soon as the view is stated, it is clear at [15] a glance, e.g.

No love is true save that which loves for ever.25

Of the maxims that do have a supplement attached, some are part of an enthymeme, e.g.

Never should any man whose wits are sound,

Others have the essential character of enthymemes, but are not stated as parts of enthymemes; these latter are reckoned the best; they are those in which the reason [20] for the view expressed is simply implied, e.g.

O mortal man, nurse not immortal wrath.26

To say ‘it is not right to nurse immortal wrath’ is a maxim; the added words ‘O mortal man’ give the reason. Similarly, with the words

[25] Mortal creatures ought to cherish mortal, not immortal thoughts.27

What has been said has shown us how many kinds of maxim there are, and to what subjects the various kinds are appropriate. They must not be given without supplement if they express disputed or paradoxical views: we must, in that case, either put the supplement first and make a maxim of the conclusion, e.g. you might [30] say, ‘For my part, since both unpopularity and idleness are undesirable, I hold that it is better not to be educated’; or you may say this first, and then add the previous clause. Where a statement, without being paradoxical, is not obviously true, the reason should be added as concisely as possible. In such cases both laconic and [1395a1] enigmatic sayings are suitable: thus one might say what Stesichorus said to the Locrians, ‘Insolence is better avoided, lest the cicadas chirp on the ground’.

The use of maxims is appropriate only to elderly men, and in handling subjects in which the speaker is experienced. For a young man to use them is—like telling [5] stories—unbecoming; to use them in handling things in which one has no experience is silly and ill-bred: a fact sufficiently proved by the special fondness of country fellows for coining maxims, and their readiness to air them.

To declare a thing to be universally true when it is not is most appropriate when working up feelings of horror and indignation in our hearers; especially by [10] way of preface, or after the facts have been proved. Even hackneyed and commonplace maxims are to be used, if they suit one’s purpose: just because they are commonplace, everyone seems to agree with them, and therefore they are taken for truth. Thus, anyone who is calling on his men to risk an engagement without obtaining favourable omens may quote:

One omen of all is best, that we fight for our fatherland.28

Or, if he is calling on them to attack a stronger force—

The War-God showeth no favour.29 [15]

Or, if he is urging people to destroy the innocent children of their enemies—

Fool, who slayeth the father and leaveth his sons to avenge him.

Some proverbs are also maxims, e.g. ‘An Attic neighbour.’ You are not to avoid uttering maxims that contradict such sayings as have become public property (I mean such sayings as ‘know thyself and ‘nothing in excess’), if doing so will raise [20] your hearers’ opinion of your character, or convey an effect of strong emotion—e.g. an angry speaker might well say, ‘It is not true that we ought to know ourselves: anyhow, if this man had known himself, he would never have thought himself fit for an army command.’ It will raise people’s opinion of our character to say, for [25] instance, ‘We ought not to follow the saying that bids us treat our friends as future enemies: much better to treat our enemies as future friends.’ Our choice should be implied partly by the very wording of our maxim. Failing this, we should add our reason: e.g. having said ‘We should treat our friends, not as the saying advises, but as if they were going to be our friends always’, we should add ‘for the other behaviour is that of a traitor’: or we might put it, ‘I disapprove of that saying. A true [30] friend will treat his friend as if he were going to be his friend for ever’; and again, ‘Nor do I approve of the saying “nothing in excess”: we are bound to hate bad men excessively’.

One great advantage of maxims to a speaker is due to the want of intelligence [1395b1] in his hearers, who love to hear him succeed in expressing as a universal truth the opinions which they hold themselves about particular cases. I will explain what I mean by this, indicating at the same time how we are to hunt down the maxims required. The maxim, as has been already said, is a general statement, and people [5] love to hear stated in general terms what they already believe in some particular connexion: e.g. if a man happens to have bad neighbours or bad children, he will agree with any one who tells him, ‘Nothing is more annoying than having neighbours’, or ‘Nothing is more foolish than to be the parent of children’. The orator has therefore to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views [10] already, and what those views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using maxims. There is another which is more important—it invests a speech with character. There is character in every speech in which the choice is conspicuous; and maxims always [15] produce this effect, because the utterance of them amounts to a general declaration of what should be chosen; so that, if the maxims are sound, they display the speaker as a man of sound character. So much for the maxim—its nature, varieties, proper use, and advantages.

[20] 22 · We now come to the enthymemes, and will begin the subject with some general consideration of the proper way of looking for them, and then proceed to what is a distinct question, the commonplaces to be embodied in them. It has already been pointed out that the enthymeme is a deduction, and in what sense it is so. We have also noted the differences between it and the deduction of dialectic. [25] Thus we must not carry its reasoning too far back, or the length of our argument will cause obscurity; nor must we put in all the steps that lead to our conclusion, or we shall waste words in saying what is manifest. It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences—makes them, as the poets30 tell us, ‘charm the crowd’s ears more finely’. [30] Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions. We must not, therefore, start from any and every opinion, but only from those of definite groups of people—our judges or those whose authority they recognize; and there must, moreover, be no [1396a1] doubt in the minds of most, if not all, of our judges that the opinions put forward really are of this sort. We should also base our arguments upon what happens for the most part as well as upon what necessarily happens.

The first thing we have to remember is this. Whether our argument is made in [5] a political gathering or in one of any other sort, we must know some, if not all, of the facts about the subject on which we are to speak and argue. Otherwise we can have no materials out of which to construct arguments. I mean, for instance, how could we advise the Athenians whether they should go to war or not, if we did not know [10] their strength, whether it was naval or military or both, and how great it is; what their revenues amount to; who their friends and enemies are; what wars, too, they have waged, and with what success; and so on? Or how could we eulogize them if we knew nothing about the sea-fight at Salamis, or the battle of Marathon, or what they did for the Heracleidae, or any other facts like that? All eulogy is based upon [15] the noble deeds—real or imaginary—that stand to the credit of those eulogized. On the same principle, invectives are based on facts of the opposite kind: the orator looks to see what base deeds—real or imaginary—stand to the discredit of those he is attacking, such as treachery to the cause of Hellenic freedom, or the enslavement [20] of their gallant allies against the barbarians (Aegina, Potidaea), or any other misdeeds of this kind that are recorded against them. So, too, in a court of law: whether we are prosecuting or defending, we must pay attention to the existing facts of the case. It makes no difference whether the subject is the Lacedaemonians or the [25] Athenians, a man or a god; we must do the same thing. Suppose it to be Achilles whom we are to advise, to praise or blame, to accuse or defend; here too we must take the facts, real or imaginary; these must be our material, whether we are to praise or blame him for the noble or base deeds he has done, to accuse or defend him for his just or unjust treatment of others, or to advise him about what is or is not to [30] his interest. The same thing applies to any subject whatever. Thus, in handling the question whether justice is or is not a good, we must start with the real facts about justice and goodness. We see, then, that this is the only way in which any one ever proves anything, whether his arguments are strictly cogent or not: not all facts can [1396b1] form his basis, but only those that bear on the matter in hand: nor, plainly, can proof be effected otherwise by means of the speech. Consequently, as appears in the Topics, we must first of all have by us a selection of arguments about questions that may arise and are suitable for us to handle; and then we must try to think out [5] arguments of the same type for special needs as they emerge; not vaguely and indefinitely, but by keeping our eyes on the actual facts of the subject we have to speak on, and gathering in as many of them as we can that bear closely upon it; for the more actual facts we have at our command, the more easily we prove our case; [10] and the more closely they bear on the subject, the more they will seem to belong to that speech only instead of being common. By ‘common’ I mean, for example, eulogy of Achilles because he is a human being or a demi-god, or because he joined the expedition against Troy: these things are true of many others, so that this kind of eulogy applies no better to Achilles than to Diomede. The special facts are those [15] that are true of Achilles alone; such facts as that he slew Hector, the bravest of the Trojans, and Cycnus the invulnerable, who prevented all the Greeks from landing, and again that he was the youngest man who joined the expedition, and was not bound by oath to join it, and so on.

Here, then, we have our first principle of selection of enthymemes—that which [20] refers to the commonplaces. We will now consider the elements of enthymemes. (By an element of an enthymeme I mean the same thing as a commonplace.) We will begin, as we must begin, by observing that there are two kinds of enthymemes. One kind proves some affirmative or negative proposition; the other kind disproves one. [25] The difference between the two kinds is the same as that between refutation and deduction in dialectic. The probative enthymeme makes an inference from what is accepted, the refutative makes an inference to what is unaccepted.

We may now be said to have in our hands the commonplaces for the various special subjects that it is useful or necessary to handle, having selected the [30] propositions suitable in various cases. We have, in fact, already ascertained the commonplaces applicable to enthymemes about good and evil, the noble and the base, justice and injustice, and also to those about types of character, emotions, and states of mind. Let us now lay hold of certain facts about the whole subject, [1397a1] considered from a different and more general point of view. In the course of our discussion we will take note of refutative and demonstrative commonplaces, and also of those used in what seem to be enthymemes, but are not, since they are not deductions at all. Having made all this clear, we will proceed to classify objections and refutations, showing how they can be brought to bear upon enthymemes. [5]

23 · One probative commonplace is based upon consideration of the opposite of the thing in question. Observe whether that opposite has the opposite quality. If it has not, you refute the original proposition; if it has, you establish it. E.g. [10] ‘Temperance is beneficial; for licentiousness is hurtful’. Or, as in the Messenian speech, ‘If war is the cause of our present troubles, peace is what we need to put things right again’.31 Or—

For if not even evil-doers should

Anger us if they meant not what they did,

[15] Then can we owe no gratitude to such

As were constrained to do the good they did us.32

Or—

Since in this world liars may win belief,

Be sure of the opposite likewise—that this world

Hears many a true word and believes it not.33

[20] Another commonplace is got by considering some modification of the key-word, and arguing that what can or cannot be said of the one, can or cannot be said of the other: e.g. ‘just’ does not always means ‘beneficial’, or ‘justly’ would always mean ‘beneficially’, whereas it is not desirable to be justly put to death.

Another is based upon correlative ideas. If it is true that one man gave noble or just treatment to another, you argue that the other must have received noble or just [25] treatment; or that where it is right to command obedience, it must have been right to obey the command. Thus Diomedon, the tax-farmer, said of the taxes: ‘If it is no disgrace for you to sell them, it is no disgrace for us to buy them’. Further, if ’well’ or ‘justly’ is true of the person to whom a thing is done, you argue that it is true of the doer. But it is possible to draw a false conclusion here. It may be just that he [30] should be treated in a certain way, and yet not just that he should be so treated by you. Hence you must ask yourself two distinct questions: Is it right that he should be [1397b1] thus treated? Is it right that you should thus treat him? and apply your results in whichever way is suitable. Sometimes in such a case the two answers differ: you may quite easily have a position like that in the Alcmaeon of Theodectes:

And was there none to loathe thy mother’s crime?

to which question Alcmaeon in reply says,

[5] Why, there are two things to examine here.

And when Alphesiboea asks what he means, he rejoins:

They judged her fit to die, not me to slay her.

[[Again there is the lawsuit about Demosthenes and the men who killed Nicanor; as

they were judged to have killed him justly, it was thought that he was killed justly. And in the case of the man who was killed at Thebes, the judges were requested to [10] decide whether it was unjust that he should be killed, since if it was not, it was argued that it could not have been unjust to kill him.]]34

Another is the a fortiori. Thus it may be argued that if even the gods are not omniscient, certainly human beings are not. The principle here is that, if a quality does not in fact exist where it is more likely to exist, it clearly does not exist where it is less likely. Again, the argument that a man who strikes his father also strikes his [15] neighbours follows from the principle that, if the less likely thing is true, the more likely thing is true also; for a man is less likely to strike his father than to strike his neighbours. The argument, then, may run thus. Or it may be urged that, if a thing is not true where it is more likely, or if it is true where it is less likely, etc.—according as we have to show that a thing is or is not true. This argument might also be used in a case of parity, as in the lines:

Thou hast pity for thy sire, who has lost his sons:

Hast none for Oeneus, whose brave son is dead?35 [20]

And, again, ‘if Theseus did no wrong, neither did Paris’; or ‘if the sons of Tyndareus did no wrong, neither did Paris’; or ‘if Hector did well to slay Patroclus, Paris did well to slay Achilles’. And ‘if other followers of an art are not bad men, neither are philosophers’. And ‘if generals are not bad men because it often happens that they are condemned to death, neither are sophists’. And the remark that ‘if each [25] individual among you ought to think of his own city’s reputation, you ought all to think of the reputation of Greece as a whole’.

Another is based on considerations of time. Thus Iphicrates, in the case against Harmodius, said, ‘if before doing the deed I had bargained that, if I did it, I should have a statue, you would have given me one. Will you not give me one now that I have done the deed? You must not make promises when you are expecting a thing to [30] be done for you, and refuse to fulfil them when the thing has been done’. And, again, to induce the Thebans to let Philip pass through their territory into Attica, it was [1398a1] argued that ‘if he had insisted on this before he helped them against the Phocians, they would have promised to do it. It is monstrous, therefore, that just because he threw away his advantage then, and trusted their honour, they should not let him pass through now’.

Another line is to apply to the other speaker what he has said against yourself. It is an excellent turn to give to a debate, as may be seen in the Teucer. It was employed by Iphicrates in his reply to Aristophon. ‘Would you’, he asked, ‘take a [5] bribe to betray the fleet?’ ‘No’, said Aristophon; and Iphicrates replied, ‘Very good: if you, who are Aristophon, would not betray the fleet, would I, who am Iphicrates?’ Only, it must be recognized beforehand that the other man is more likely than you are to commit the crime in question. Otherwise you will make yourself ridiculous; if [10] it is Aristeides who is prosecuting, you cannot say that sort of thing to him. The purpose is to discredit the prosecutor, who as a rule would have it appear that his character is better than that of the defendant, a pretension which it is desirable to upset. But the use of such an argument is in all cases ridiculous if you are attacking others for what you do or would do yourself, or are urging others to do what you neither do nor would do yourself.

[15] Another is secured by defining your terms. Thus, ‘What is the supernatural? Surely it is either a god or the work of a god. Well, anyone who believes that the work of a god exists, cannot help also believing that gods exist’. Or take the argument of Iphicrates, ‘Goodness is true nobility; neither Harmodius nor Aristogeiton [20] had any nobility before they did a noble deed’. He also argued that he himself was more akin to Harmodius and Aristogeiton than his opponent was. ‘At any rate, my deeds are more akin to those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton than yours are’. Another example may be found in the Alexander. ‘Everyone will agree that by incontinent people we mean those who are not satisfied with the enjoyment of one body’. A further example is to be found in the reason given by Socrates for [25] not going to the court of Archelaus. He said that ‘one is insulted by being unable to requite benefits, as well as by being unable to requite injuries’. All the persons mentioned define their term and get at its essential meaning, and then use the result when reasoning on the point at issue.

Another is founded upon the various senses of a word. Such a word is ‘sharp’, as has been explained in the Topics.36

Another line is based upon logical division. Thus, ‘All men do wrong from one [30] of three motives, A, B, or C: in my case A and B are out of the question, and even the accusers do not allege C.

Another line is based upon induction. Thus from the case of the woman of Peparethus it might be argued that women everywhere can settle correctly the facts [1398b1] about their children. Another example of this occurred at Athens in the case between the orator Mantias and his son, when the boy’s mother revealed the true facts: and yet another at Thebes, in the case between Ismenias and Stilbon, when Dodonis proved that it was Ismenias who was the father of her son Thettaliscus, and he was in consequence always regarded as being so. A further instance of induction [5] may be taken from the Law of Theodectes: ‘If we do not hand over our horses to the care of men who have mishandled other people’s horses, nor ships to those who have wrecked other people’s ships, and if this is true of everything else alike, then men who have failed to secure other people’s safety are not to be employed to secure our [10] own’. Another instance is the argument of Alcidamas: ‘Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus [15] gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day.’ [[The Athenians became prosperous under Solon’s laws and the Lacedaemonians under those of Lycurgus, while at Thebes no sooner did the leading men become philosophers than the country began to prosper.]]37

Another is founded upon some decision already pronounced, whether on the same subject or on one like it or contrary to it. Such a proof is most effective if everyone has always decided thus; but if not everyone, then at any rate most people; [20] or if all, or most, wise or good men have thus decided, or the actual judges of the present question, or those whose authority they accept, or anyone whose decision they cannot contradict because he has complete control over them, or those whom it is not seemly to contradict, as the gods, or one’s father, or one’s teachers. Thus [25] Autocles said, when attacking Mixidemides, that it was a strange thing that the Dread Goddesses could without loss of dignity submit to the judgement of the Areopagus, and yet Mixidemides could not. Or as Sappho said, ‘Death is an evil thing; the gods have so judged it, or they would die’. Or again as Aristippus said in reply to Plato when he spoke somewhat too dogmatically, as Aristippus thought: [30] ‘Well, anyhow, our friend’, meaning Socrates, ‘never spoke like that’. And Hegesippus, having previously consulted Zeus at Olympia, asked Apollo at Delphi ‘whether his opinion was the same as his father’s’, implying that it would be [1399a1] shameful for him to contradict his father. Thus too Isocrates argued that Helen must have been a good woman, because Theseus decided that she was; and Paris a good man, because the goddesses chose him before all others; and Evagoras also, says Isocrates, was good, since when Conon met with his misfortune he betook [5] himself to Evagoras without trying anyone else on the way.

Another consists in taking separately the parts of a subject. Such is that given in the Topics:38 ‘What sort of motion is the soul? for it must be this or that’. The Socrates of Theodectes provides an example: ‘What temple has he profaned? What gods recognized by the state has he not honoured?’ [10]

Again, since it happens that any given thing usually has both good and bad consequences, another line of argument consists in using those consequences as a reason for urging that a thing should or should not be done, for prosecuting or defending anyone, for eulogy or censure. E.g. education leads both to unpopularity, which is bad, and to wisdom, which is good. Hence you either argue, ‘It is therefore not well to be educated, since it is not well to be unpopular,’ or you answer, ‘No, it is well to be educated, since it is well to be wise’. The Art of Rhetoric of Callippus is [15] made up of this commonplace, with the addition of those of possibility and the others of that kind already described.

Another is used when we have to urge or discourage a course of action that may be done in either of two opposite ways, and have to apply the method just mentioned to both. The difference between this one and the last is that, whereas in the last any two things are contrasted, here the things contrasted are opposites. For [20] instance, the priestess enjoined upon her son not to take to public speaking: ‘For’, she said, ‘if you say what is right, men will hate you; if you say what is wrong, the gods will hate you’. The reply might be, ‘On the contrary, you ought to take to public speaking: for if you say what is right, the gods will love you; if you say what is [25] wrong, men will love you’. This amounts to the proverbial ‘buying the marsh with the salt’. And this is ‘bending back’—when each of two opposites has both a good and a bad consequence opposite respectively to each other.

Another is this: the things people approve of openly are not those which they [30] approve of secretly: openly, their chief praise is given to justice and nobleness; but in their hearts they prefer their own advantage. Try, in face of this, to establish the point of view which your opponent has not adopted. This is the most effective of the forms of argument that contradict common opinion.

Another line is that of rational correspondence. E.g. Iphicrates, when they were trying to compel his son, a youth under the prescribed age, to perform one of the state duties because he was tall, said ‘If you count tall boys men, you will next be [1399b1] voting short men boys’. And Theodectes in his Law said, ‘You make citizens of such mercenaries as Strabax and Charidemus, as a reward of their merits; will you not make exiles of such citizens as those who have done irreparable harm among the [5] mercenaries?’

Another line is the argument that if two results are the same their antecedents are also the same. For instance, it was a saying of Xenophanes that to assert that the gods had birth is as impious as to say that they die; the consequence of both statements is that there is a time when the gods do not exist. This line of proof assumes generally that the result of any given thing is always the same: e.g. ‘you are [10] going to decide not about Isocrates, but about the value of the whole profession of philosophy’. Or, ‘to give earth and water’ means slavery; or, ‘to share in the Common Peace’ means obeying orders. We are to make either such assumptions or their opposite, as suits us best.

Another is based on the fact that men do not always make the same choice on a [15] later as on an earlier occasion, but reverse their previous choice. E.g. the following enthymeme: ‘When we were exiles, we fought in order to return; now we have returned, it would be strange to choose exile in order not to have to fight’. On one occasion, that is, they chose to be true to their homes at the cost of fighting, and on the other to avoid fighting at the cost of deserting their homes.

[20] Another is the assertion that some possible motive for an event or state of things is the real one: e.g. that a gift was given in order to cause pain by its withdrawal. This notion underlies the lines:

God gives to many great prosperity,

Not of good will towards them, but to make

The ruin of them more conspicuous.39

[25] Or take the passage from the Meleager of Antiphon:

To slay no boar, but to be witnesses

Of Meleager’s prowess unto Greece.40

Or the argument in the Ajax of Theodectes, that Diomede chose out Odysseus not to do him honour, but in order that his companion might be a lesser man than himself—such a motive for doing so is quite possible. [30]

Another is common to forensic and deliberative oratory, namely, to consider inducements and deterrents, and the motives people have for doing or avoiding the actions in question. These are the conditions which make us bound to act if they are for us, and to refrain from action if they are against us: that is, we are bound to act if the action is possible, easy, and useful to ourselves or our friends or hurtful to our [35] enemies; this is true even if the action entails loss, provided the loss is outweighed by the solid advantage. These same arguments also form the materials for accusation [1400a1] or defence—the deterrents being pointed out by the defence, and the inducements by the prosecution. This topic forms the whole Art of Rhetoric both of Pamphilus and of Callippus.

Another refers to things which are supposed to happen and yet seem [5] incredible. We may argue that people could not have believed them, if they had not been true or nearly true. And that they are the more likely to be true because they are incredible; for the things which men believe are either facts or probabilities: if, therefore, a thing that is believed is improbable and incredible, it must be true, since it is certainly not believed because it is at all probable or credible. An example is what Androcles of the deme Pitthus said in his arraignment of the law. The audience tried to shout him down when he observed that the laws required a law to [10] set them right. ‘Why’, he went on, ‘fish need salt’, improbable and incredible as this might seem for creatures reared in salt water; ‘and olive-cakes need oil’, incredible as it is that what produces oil should need it.

Another line is to refute our opponent’s case by noting any disagreements: [15] first, in the case of our opponent [[if there is any disagreement among all his dates, sections, and statements]],41 e.g. ‘He says he is devoted to you, yet he conspired with the Thirty’; secondly, bearing on our own conduct, e.g. ‘He says I am litigious, and yet he cannot prove that I have been engaged in a single lawsuit’; thirdly, referring to both of us together, e.g. ‘He has never even lent anyone a penny, but I have [20] ransomed quite a number of you’.

Another line that is useful for men and causes that have been really or seemingly slandered, is to show why the facts are not as supposed; pointing out that there is a reason for the false impression given. Thus a woman, who had palmed off her son on another woman, was thought to be the lad’s mistress because she [25] embraced him; but when her action was explained the charge was shown to be groundless. Another example is from the Ajax of Theodectes, where Odysseus tells Ajax the reason why, though he is really braver than Ajax, he is not thought so.

Another is to show that if the cause is present, the effect is present, and if absent, absent. For cause and effect go together, and nothing can exist without a [30] cause. Thus Thrasybulus accused Leodamas of having had his name recorded as a criminal on the slab in the Acropolis, and of erasing the record in the time of the Thirty Tyrants: to which Leodamas replied, ‘Impossible: for the Thirty would have [35] trusted me all the more if my quarrel with the commons had been inscribed on the slab’.

Another line is to consider whether the accused person can take or could have taken a better course than that which he is recommending or taking, or has taken. If [1400b1] so, it is clear that he is not guilty, since no one voluntarily and knowingly chooses what is bad. This argument is, however, fallacious, for it often becomes clear after the event how the action could have been done better, though before the event this was far from clear.

Another line is, when a contemplated action is inconsistent with any past [5] action, to examine them both together. Thus, when the people of Elea asked Xenophanes if they should or should not sacrifice to Leucothea and mourn for her, he advised them not to mourn for her if they thought her a goddess, and not to sacrifice to her if they thought her a mortal woman.

Another line is to make previous mistakes the grounds of accusation or [10] defence. Thus, in the Medea of Carcinus the accusers allege that Medea has slain her children; ‘at all events’, they say, ‘they are not to be seen’—Medea having made the mistake of sending her children away. In defence she argues that it is not her children, but Jason, whom she would have slain; for it would have been a mistake on [15] her part not to do this if she had done the other. This enthymematic commonplace and type forms the whole of the Art of Rhetoric in use before Theodorus.

Another line is to draw meanings from names. Sophocles, for instance, says,

O steel in heart as thou art steel in name.42

This is common in praises of the gods. Thus, too, Conon called Thrasybulus rash in [20] counsel. And Herodicus said of Thrasymachus, ‘You are always bold in battle’; of Polus, ‘you are always a colt; and of the legislator Draco that his laws were those not of a human being but of a dragon, so savage were they. And, in Euripides, Hecuba says of Aphrodite,

Her name and Folly’s rightly begin alike,43

and Chaeremon writes:

[25] Pentheus—a name foreshadowing grief to come.44

The refutative enthymeme has a greater reputation than the demonstrative, because within a small space it works out two opposing arguments, and arguments put side by side are clearer to the audience. But of all deductions, whether refutative [30] or demonstrative, those are most applauded of which we foresee the conclusions from the beginning, so long as they are not obvious at first sight—for part of the pleasure we feel is at our own intelligent anticipation; or those which we follow well enough to see the point of them as soon as the last word has been uttered.

24 · Besides genuine deductions there may be deductions that look genuine but are not; and since an enthymeme is a deduction of a particular kind, it follows [35] that, besides genuine enthymemes, there may be those that look genuine but are not.

Among the commonplaces that form the spurious enthymeme the first is that [1401a1] which arises from the particular words employed. One variety of this is when—as in dialectic, without having gone through any reasoning process, we make a final statement as if it were the conclusion of such a process, ‘Therefore so-and-so is not true’, ‘Therefore also so-and-so must be true’—so too in enthymemes a compact and antithetical utterance passes for an enthymeme, such language being the proper [5] province of enthymeme, so that it is seemingly the form of wording here that causes the illusion mentioned. In order to produce the effect of genuine reasoning by our form of wording it is useful to summarize the results of a number of previous reasonings: as ‘some he saved—others he avenged—the Greeks he freed’. Each of [10] these statements has been previously proved from other facts; but the collocation of them gives the impression of establishing some fresh conclusion.

Another variety is based on homonymy; e.g. the argument that the mouse must be a noble creature, since it gives its name to the most august of all religious rites—for such the Mysteries are. Or one may introduce, into a eulogy of the dog, [15] the dog-star; or Pan, because Pindar said:

O thou blessed one!

Thou whom they of Olympus call

The hound of manifold shape

That follows the Mother of Heaven;45

or we may argue that, because there is much disgrace in there not being a dog about, there is honour in being a dog. Or that Hermes is readier than any other god [20] to go shares, since we never say ‘shares all round’ except of him. Or that speech is a very excellent thing, since good men are not said to be worth money but to be worthy of esteem—the phrase ‘worthy of esteem’ also having the meaning of ‘worth speech’.

Another line is to assert of the whole what is true of the parts, or of the parts what is true of the whole. A whole and its parts are supposed to be identical, though [25] often they are not. You have therefore to adopt whichever of these two lines better suits your purpose. That is how Euthydemus argues; e.g. that anyone knows that there is a trireme in the Peiraeus, since he knows the separate details that make up this statement. There is also the argument that one who knows the letters knows the whole word, since the word is the same thing as the letters which compose it; or that, if a double portion of a certain thing is harmful to health, then a single portion must not [30] be called wholesome, since it is absurd that two good things should make one bad thing. Put thus, the enthymeme is refutative; put as follows, demonstrative: ‘For one good thing cannot be made up of two bad things’. The whole commonplace is fallacious. Again, there is Polycrates’ saying that Thrasybulus put down thirty [35] tyrants, where the speaker adds them up one by one. Or the argument in the Orestes of Theodectes, where the argument is from part to whole:

’Tis right that she who slays her lord should die.

‘It is right, too, that the son should avenge his father. Very good: these two things [1401b1] are what Orestes has done’. Still, perhaps the two things, once they are put together, do not form a right act. The fallacy might also be said to be due to omission, since the speaker fails to say by whose hand a husband-slayer should die.

Another commonplace is the use of indignant language, whether to support your own case or to overthrow your opponent’s. We do this when we paint a [5] highly-coloured picture of the situation without having proved the facts of it: if the defendant does so, he produces an impression of his innocence; and if the prosecutor does,46 he produces an impression of the defendant’s guilt. Here there is no genuine enthymeme: the hearer infers guilt or innocence, but no proof is given, and the inference is fallacious accordingly.

[10] Another line is to use a sign, which, again, yields no deduction. Thus, it might be said that lovers are useful to their countries, since the love of Harmodius and Aristogeiton caused the downfall of the tyrant Hipparchus. Or, again, that Dionysius is a thief, since he is a vicious man—there is, of course, no deduction here; not every vicious man is a thief, though every thief is a vicious man.

[15] Another line relies on the accidental. An instance is what Polycrates says of the mice, that they came to the rescue because they gnawed through the bowstrings. Or it might be maintained that an invitation to dinner is a great honour, for it was because he was not invited that Achilles was angered with the Greeks at Tenedos. In fact, what angered him was the insult involved; it was a mere accident that this was the particular form that the insult took.

[20] Another is the argument from consequence. In the Alexander, for instance, it is argued that Paris must have had a lofty disposition, since he despised society and lived by himself on Mount Ida: because lofty people do this kind of thing, therefore Paris too, we are to suppose, had a lofty soul. Or, if a man dresses fashionably and roams around at night, he is a rake, since that is the way rakes behave. Another [25] similar argument points out that beggars sing and dance in temples, and that exiles can live wherever they please, and that such privileges are at the disposal of those we account happy; and therefore every one might be regarded as happy if only he has those privileges. What matters, however, is the circumstances under which the privileges are enjoyed. Hence this line too falls under the head of fallacies by omission.

[30] Another line consists in representing as causes things which are not causes, on the ground that they happened along with or before the event in question. They assume that, because B happens after A, it happens because of A. Politicians are especially fond of taking this line. Thus Demades said that the policy of Demosthenes was the cause of all the mischief, for after it the war occurred.

Another line consists in leaving out any mention of time and circumstances. [35] E.g. the argument that Paris was justified in taking Helen, since her father left her free to choose: here the freedom was presumably not perpetual; it could only refer to her first choice, beyond which her father’s authority could not go. Or again, one might say that to strike a free man is an act of wanton outrage; but it is not so in [1402a1] every case—only when it is unprovoked.

Again, a spurious deduction may, as in eristical discussions, be based on the confusion of the absolute with that which is not absolute. As, in dialectic, for instance, it may be argued that what-is-not is on the ground that what-is-not is [5] what-is-not; or that the unknown can be known, on the ground that it can be known to be unknown: so also in rhetoric a spurious enthymeme may be based on the confusion of some particular probability with absolute probability. Now no particular probability is universally probable: as Agathon says,

One might perchance say this was probable— [10]

That things improbable oft will hap to men.47

For what is improbable does happen, and therefore it is probable that improbable things will happen. Granted this, one might argue that what is improbable is probable. But this is not true absolutely. As, in eristic, the imposture comes from not adding any clause specifying relationship or reference or manner; so here it arises [15] because the probability in question is not general but specific. It is of this commonplace that Corax’s Art of Rhetoric is composed. If the accused is not open to the charge—for instance if a weakling is tried for violent assault—the defence is that he was not likely to do such a thing. But if he is open to the charge—i.e. if he is a strong man—the defence is still that he was not likely to do such a thing, since he [20] could be sure that people would think he was likely to do it. And so with any other charge: the accused must be either open or not open to it: both seem probable, but one is probable and the other not so absolutely but only in the way we have described. This sort of argument illustrates what is meant by making the worse argument seem the better. Hence people were right in objecting to the training [25] Protagoras undertook to give them. It was a fraud; the probability it handled was not genuine but spurious, and has a place in no art except Rhetoric and Eristic.

25 · Enthymemes, genuine and apparent, have now been described; the next [30] subject is their refutation.

An argument may be refuted either by a counter-deduction or by bringing an objection. It is clear that counter-deductions can be built up from the same commonplaces; for the materials of deductions are reputable opinions, and such opinions often contradict each other. Objections, as appears in the Topics.48 may be [35] raised in four ways—either by directly attacking your opponent’s own statement, or by putting forward another statement like it, or by putting forward a statement contrary to it, or by quoting previous decisions.

By ‘attacking your opponent’s own statement’ I mean, for instance, this: if his enthymeme should assert that love is always good, the objection can be brought in two ways, either by making the general statement that all want is an evil, or by making the particular one that there would be no talk of Caunian love if there were not evil loves as well as good ones.

An objection from a contrary statement is raised when, for instance, the [5] opponent’s enthymeme having concluded that a good man does good to all his friends, you object, ‘But a bad man does not do evil to all his friends’.

An example of an objection from a like statement is, the enthymeme having shown that ill-used men always hate their ill-users, to reply, ‘But well-used men do not always love those who used them well’.

The decisions mentioned are those proceeding from well-known men; for instance, if the enthymeme employed has concluded that some allowance ought to [10] be made for drunken offenders, since they did not know what they were doing, the objection will be, ‘Pittacus, then, deserves no approval, or he would not have prescribed specially severe penalties for offences due to drunkenness’.

Enthymemes are based upon one or other of four things: probabilities, examples, evidences, signs. Enthymemes based upon probabilities are those which [15] argue from what is, or is supposed to be, usually true. Enthymemes based upon example are those which proceed from one or more similar cases, arrive at a general proposition, and then argue deductively to a particular inference. Enthymemes based upon evidences are those which argue from the inevitable and invariable. [20] Enthymemes based upon signs are those which argue from some universal or particular proposition, true or false.

Now as a probability is that which happens usually but not always, enthymemes founded upon probabilities can, it is clear, always be refuted by raising some objection. The refutation is not genuine but spurious; for it consists in showing not that your opponent’s premiss is not probable, but only in showing that it is not [25] inevitably true. Hence it is always in defence rather than in accusation that it is possible to gain an advantage by using this fallacy. For the accuser uses probabilities to prove his case: and to refute a conclusion as improbable is not the same thing as to refute it as not inevitable. Any argument based upon what usually happens is always open to objection: otherwise it would not happen usually and be a [30] probability but hold always and be necessary. But the judges think, if the refutation takes this form, either that the accuser’s case is not probable or that they must not decide it; which, as we said, is a false piece of reasoning. For they ought to decide by considering not merely what must be true but also what is likely to be true: this is, indeed, the meaning of ‘giving a verdict in accordance with one’s honest opinion’. Therefore it is not enough for the defendant to refute the accusation by proving that [35] the charge is not bound to be true: he must do so by showing that it is not likely to be true. For this purpose his objection must state what is more usually true than the statement attacked. It may do so in either of two ways: either in respect of time or in [1403a1] respect of the facts. It will be most convincing if it does so in both respects; for if the thing in question happens oftener thus, the probability is greater.

Signs, and enthymemes based upon them, can be refuted even if the facts are correct, as was said at the outset. For we have shown in the Analytics49 that every [5] sign is non-deductive.

Enthymemes depending on examples may be refuted in the same way as probabilities. If we have a single negative instance, the argument is refuted, in so far as it is proved not inevitable, even though the positive examples are more similar and more frequent. Otherwise, we must contend that the present case is dissimilar, or that its conditions are dissimilar, or that it is different in some way or other. [10]

It will be impossible to refute evidences and enthymemes resting on them, by showing in any way that they are non-deductive: this, too, we see from the Analytics.50 All we can do is to show that the fact alleged does not exist. If there is no doubt that it does, and that it is an evidence, refutation now becomes impossible; [15] for this is equivalent to a demonstration which is clear in every respect.

26 · Amplification and depreciation are not an element of enthymeme. By an element I mean the same thing as a commonplace; for an element is a commonplace embracing a large number of particular kinds of enthymeme. Amplification and depreciation are used to show that a thing is great or small; just [20] as there are other kinds used to show that a thing is good or bad, just or unjust, and anything else of the sort. All these things are the subject-matter of deductions and enthymemes; none of these is a commonplace for an enthymeme; no more, therefore, are amplification and depreciation.

Nor are refutative enthymemes a species. For it is clear that refutation consists [25] either in offering proof or in raising an objection, and that we prove the opposite of our adversary’s statements. Thus, if he shows that a thing has happened, we show that it has not; if he shows that it has not happened, we show that it has. This, then, could not be the distinction, since the same means are employed by both parties, [30] enthymemes being adduced to show that the fact is or is not so-and-so. An objection, on the other hand, is not an enthymeme at all, but as was said in the Topics.51 it consists in stating some opinion from which it will be clear that our opponent has not reasoned correctly or has made a false assumption.

Three points must be studied in making a speech; and we have now completed the account of examples, maxims, enthymemes, and in general the thought-element—the way to invent and refute arguments. We have next to discuss [1403b1] language and arrangement.

BOOK III

1 · In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of [5] producing persuasion; second, the language; third, the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech. We have already specified the sources of persuasion. We [10] have shown that these are three in number; what they are; and why there are only these three; for persuasion is in every case effected either by working on the emotions of the judges themselves, by giving them the right impression of the speakers’ character, or by proving the truth of the statements made.

Enthymemes also have been described, and the sources from which they should be derived; there being both special lines of argument for enthymemes and commonplaces.

[15] Our next subject will be language. For it is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also say it as we ought; much help is thus afforded towards producing the right impression of a speech. The first question to receive attention was naturally the one that comes first naturally—how persuasion can be produced [20] from the facts themselves. The second is how to set these facts out in language. A third would be the proper method of delivery; this is a thing that affects the success of a speech greatly; but hitherto the subject has been neglected. Indeed, it was long before it found a way into the arts of tragic drama and epic recitation: at first poets acted their tragedies themselves. It is plain that delivery has just as much to do with [25] oratory as with poetry. (In connexion with poetry, it has been studied by Glaucon of Teos among others.) It is, essentially, a matter of the right management of the voice to express the various emotions—of speaking loudly, softly, or between the two; of [30] high, low, or intermediate pitch; of the various rhythms that suit various subjects. These are the three things—volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm— that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our [35] political institutions. No systematic treatise upon the rules of delivery has yet been composed; indeed, even the study of language made no progress till late in the day. [1404a1] Besides, delivery is—very properly—not regarded as an elevated subject of inquiry. Still, the whole business of rhetoric being concerned with appearances, we must pay attention to the subject of delivery, unworthy though it is, because we cannot do without it. The right thing in speaking really is that we should be satisfied not to [5] annoy our hearers, without trying to delight them: we ought in fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts; nothing, therefore, should matter except the proof of those facts. Still, as has been already said, other things affect the result considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers. The arts of language cannot help [10] having a small but real importance, whatever it is we have to expound to others: the way in which a thing is said does affect its intelligibility. Not, however, so much importance as people think. All such arts are fanciful and meant to charm the hearer. Nobody uses fine language when teaching geometry.

When the principles of delivery have been worked out, they will produce the same effect as on the stage. But only very slight attempts to deal with them have been made and by a few people, as by Thrasymachus in his ‘Appeals to Pity’. [15] Dramatic ability is a natural gift, and can hardly be systematically taught. The principles of language can be so taught, and therefore we have men of ability in this direction too, who win prizes in their turn, as well as those speakers who excel in delivery—speeches of the written kind owe more of their effect to their language than to their thought.

It was naturally the poets who first set the movement going; for words [20] represent things, and they had also the human voice at their disposal, which of all our organs can best represent other things. Thus the arts of recitation and acting were formed, and others as well. Now it was because poets seemed to win fame through their fine language when their thoughts were simple enough, that language [25] at first took a poetical colour, e.g. that of Gorgias. Even now most uneducated people think that poetical language makes the finest discourses. That is not true: the language of prose is distinct from that of poetry. This is shown by the state of things to-day, when even the language of tragedy has altered its character. Just as iambics [30] were adopted, instead of tetrameters, because they are the most prose-like of all metres, so tragedy has given up all those words, not used in ordinary talk, which decorated the early drama and are still used by the writers of hexameter poems. It is [35] therefore ridiculous to imitate a poetical manner which the poets themselves have dropped; and it is now plain that we have not to treat in detail the whole question of language, but may confine ourselves to that part of it which concerns our present subject, rhetoric. The other part of it has been discussed in the treatise on the Art of Poetry.

2 · We may, then, start from the observations there made, and the stipulation [1404b1] that language to be good must be clear, as is proved by the fact that speech which fails to convey a plain meaning will fail to do just what speech has to do. It must also be appropriate, avoiding both meanness and undue evaluation; poetical language is certainly free from meanness, but it is not appropriate to prose. Clearness is secured by [5] using the words (nouns and verbs alike) that are current and ordinary. Freedom from meanness, and positive adornment too, are secured by using the other words mentioned in the Art of Poetry. Such variation makes the language appear more stately. People do not feel towards strangers as they do towards their own countrymen, and the same thing is true of their feeling for language. It is therefore well to give to everyday speech [10] an unfamiliar air: people like what strikes them, and are struck by what is out of the way. In verse such effects are common, and there they are fitting: the persons and things there spoken of are comparatively remote from ordinary life; for even in poetry, it is not quite appropriate that fine language should be used by a slave or a very young man, or about very trivial subjects: even in poetry the style, to be appropriate, must [15] sometimes be toned down, though at other times heightened. All the more so in prose, where the subject-matter is less exalted. We can now see that a writer must disguise his art and give the impression of speaking naturally and not artificially. Naturalness is persuasive, artificiality is the contrary; for our hearers are prejudiced and think we have some design against them, as if we were mixing their wines for them. It is like the [20] difference between the quality of Theodorus’ voice and the voices of all other actors: his really seems to be that of the character who is speaking, theirs do not. We can hide our purpose successfully by taking the single words of our composition from [25] the speech of ordinary life. This is done in poetry by Euripides, who was the first to show the way to his successors.

Language is composed of nouns and verbs. Nouns are of the various kinds considered in the treatise on poetry. Strange words, compound words, and invented [30] words must be used sparingly and on few occasions: on what occasions we shall state later. The reason for this restriction has been already indicated: they depart from what is suitable, in the direction of excess. In the language of prose, besides the regular and proper terms for things, metaphorical terms only can be used with advantage. This we gather from the fact that these two classes of terms, the proper [35] or regular and the metaphorical—these and no others—are used by everybody in conversation. We can now see that a good writer can produce a style that is distinguished without being obtrusive, and is at the same time clear, thus satisfying our definition of good oratorical prose. Words of ambiguous meaning are chiefly useful to enable the sophist to mislead his hearers. Synonyms are useful to the poet, [1405a1] by which I mean words whose ordinary meaning is the same, e.g. πoρεῦεσθαι (advancing) and βαδἱζειν (proceeding); these two are ordinary words and have the same meaning.

In the Art of Poetry, as we have already said, will be found definitions of these [5] kinds of words; a classification of metaphors; and mention of the fact that metaphor is of great value both in poetry and in prose. Prose-writers must, however, pay specially careful attention to metaphor, because their other resources are scantier than those of poets. Metaphor, moreover, gives style clearness, charm, and distinction as nothing else can: and it is not a thing whose use can be taught by one [10] man to another. Metaphors, like epithets, must be fitting, which means that they must fairly correspond to the thing signified: failing this, their inappropriateness will be conspicuous: the want of harmony between two things is emphasized by their being placed side by side. It is like having to ask ourselves what dress will suit an old man; certainly not the crimson cloak that suits a young man. And if you wish to pay [15] a compliment, you must take your metaphor from something better in the same line; if to disparage, from something worse. To illustrate my meaning: since opposites are in the same class, you do what I have suggested if you say that a man who begs prays, and a man who prays begs; for praying and begging are both varieties of [20] asking. So Iphicrates called Callias a mendicant priest instead of a torch-bearer, and Callias replied that Iphicrates must be uninitiated or he would have called him not a mendicant priest but a torch-bearer. Both are religious titles, but one is honourable and the other is not. Again, somebody calls actors hangers-on of Dionysus, but they call themselves artists: each of these terms is a metaphor, the one [25] intended to throw dirt at the actor, the other to dignify him. And pirates now call themselves purveyors. We can thus call a crime a mistake, or a mistake a crime. We can say that a thief took a thing, or that he plundered his victim. An expression like that of Euripides’ Telephus,

[30] King of the oar, on Mysia’s coast he landed,1

is inappropriate; the word ‘king’ goes beyond the dignity of the subject, and so the art is not concealed. A metaphor may be amiss because the very syllables of the words conveying it fail to indicate sweetness of vocal utterance. Thus Dionysius the Brazen in his elegies calls poetry ‘Calliope’s screech’. Poetry and screeching are both, to be sure, vocal utterances. But the metaphor is bad, because the sounds of screeching, unlike those of poetry, are discordant and unmeaning. Further, in using [35] metaphors to give names to nameless things, we must draw them not from remote but from kindred and similar things, so that the kinship is clearly perceived as soon as the words are said. Thus in the celebrated riddle

I marked how a man glued bronze with fire to another man’s body,2 [1405b1]

the process is nameless; but both it and gluing are a kind of application, and that is why the application of the cupping-glass is here called a ‘gluing’. Good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors; for metaphors imply riddles, and [5] therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor. Further, the materials of metaphors must be beautiful; and the beauty, like the ugliness, of all words may, as Licymnius says, lie in their sound or in their meaning. Further, there is a third consideration—one that upsets the fallacious argument of the sophist Bryson, that there is no such thing as foul language, because in whatever words you put a given [10] thing your meaning is the same. This is untrue. One term may describe a thing more truly than another, may be more like it, and set it more intimately before our eyes. Besides, two different words will represent a thing in two different lights; so on this ground also one term must be held fairer or fouler than another. For both of two [15] terms will indicate what is fair, or what is foul, but not simply their fairness or their foulness, or if so, at any rate not in an equal degree. The materials of metaphor must be beautiful to the ear, to the understanding, to the eye or some other physical sense. It is better, for instance, to say ‘rosy-fingered morn’, than ‘crimson-fingered’ or, [20] worse still, ‘red-fingered morn’. The epithets that we apply, too, may have a bad and ugly aspect, as when Orestes is called a mother-slayer; or a better one, as when he is called his father’s avenger.3 Simonides, when the victor in the mule-race offered him a small fee, refused to write him an ode, because, he said, it was so unpleasant [25] to write odes to half-asses; but on receiving an adequate fee, he wrote

Hail to you, daughters of storm-footed steeds,

though of course they were daughters of asses too. The same effect is attained by the use of diminutives, which make a bad thing less bad and a good thing less good. Take, for instance, the banter of Aristophanes in the Babylonians where he uses [30] ‘goldlet’ for ‘gold’, ‘cloaklet’ for ‘cloak’, ‘scofflet’ for ‘scoff’, and ‘plaguelet’. But alike in using epithets and in using diminutives we must be wary and must observe the mean.

3 · Frigidities in language may take any of four forms:—The misuse of compound words. Lycophron, for instance, talks of the ‘many-visaged heaven’ [35] above the ‘giant-crested earth’, and again the ‘strait-pathed shore’; and Gorgias of [1406a1] the ‘pauper-poet flatterer’ and ‘oath-breaking and ever-oath-keeping’. Alcidamas uses such expressions as ‘the soul filling with rage and face becoming flameflushed’, and ‘he thought their enthusiasm would be issue-fraught’ and ‘issue-fraught [5] he made the persuasion of his words’, and ‘sombre-hued is the floor of the sea’. The way all these words are compounded makes them, we feel, fit for verse only. This, then, is one form in which bad taste is shown.

Another is the employment of strange words. For instance, Lycophron talks of ‘the towering Xerxes’ and ‘spoliative Sciron’, Alcidamas of ‘a toy for poetry’ and [10] ‘the witlessness of nature’, and says ‘whetted with the unmitigated temper of his spirit’.

A third form is the use of long, unseasonable, or frequent epithets. It is appropriate enough for a poet to talk of ‘white milk’, but in prose such epithets are sometimes lacking in appropriateness or, when spread too thickly, plainly reveal the author turning his prose into poetry. Of course we must use some epithets, since [15] they lift our style above the usual level and give it an air of distinction. But we must aim at the due mean, or the result will be worse than if we took no trouble at all; we shall get something actually bad instead of something merely not good. That is why the epithets of Alcidamas seem so frigid; he does not use them as the seasoning of [20] the meat, but as the meat itself, so numerous and swollen and obtrusive are they. For instance, he does not say ‘sweat’, but ‘the moist sweat’; not ‘to the Isthmian games’, but ‘to the world-concourse of the Isthmian games’; not ‘laws’, but ‘the laws that are monarchs of states’; not ‘at a run’, but ‘his heart impelling him to speed of foot’; not ‘a school of the Muses’, but ‘Nature’s school of the Muses had he [25] inherited’; and so ‘frowning care of heart’, and ‘achiever’ not of ‘popularity’ but of ‘universal popularity’, and ‘dispenser of pleasure to his audience’, and ‘he concealed it’ not ‘with boughs’ but ‘with boughs of the forest trees’, and ‘he clothed’ not ‘his [30] body’ but ‘his body’s nakedness’, and ‘his soul’s desire was counter-imitative’ (this at one and the same time a compound and an epithet, so that it seems a poet’s effort), and ‘so extravagant the excess of his wickedness’. We thus see how the inappropriateness of such poetical language imports absurdity and frigidity into speeches, as well as the obscurity that comes from all this verbosity—for when the [35] sense is plain, you only obscure and spoil its clearness by piling up words.

The ordinary use of compound words is where there is no term for a thing and some compound can be easily formed, like ‘pastime’ (χρoνoτριβεῖν); but if this is [1406b1] much done, the prose character disappears entirely. We now see why the language of compounds is just the thing for writers of dithyrambs, who love sonorous noises; strange words for writers of epic poetry, which is a proud and stately affair; [and metaphor for iambic verse, the metre which (as has been already said) is widely used to-day.]4

[5] There remains the fourth region in which frigidity may be shown, metaphor. Metaphors like other things may be inappropriate. Some are so because they are ridiculous; they are indeed used by comic as well as tragic poets. Others are too grand and theatrical; and these, if they are far-fetched, may also be obscure. For instance, Gorgias talks of ‘events that are green and full of sap’, and says ‘foul was the deed you sowed and evil the harvest you reaped’. That is too much like poetry. [10] Alcidamas, again, called philosophy ‘a bulwark of the laws’, and the Odyssey ‘a goodly looking-glass of human life’, and talked about ‘offering no such toy to poetry’: all these explanations fail, for the reasons given, to carry the hearer with them. The address of Gorgias to the swallow, when she had let her droppings fall on [15] him as she flew overhead, is in the best tragic manner. He said, ‘Nay, shame, O Philomela’. Considering her as a bird, you could not call her act shameful; considering her as a girl, you could; and so it was a good gibe to address her as what she was once and not as what she is.

4 · The simile also is a metaphor; the difference is but slight. When the poet [20] says:

He leapt on the foe as a lion,5

this is a simile; when he says of him ‘the lion leapt’, it is a metaphor—here, since both are courageous, he has transferred to Achilles the name of ‘lion’. Similes are useful in prose as well as in verse; but not often, since they are of the nature of [25] poetry. They are to be employed just as metaphors are employed, since they are really the same thing except for the difference mentioned.

The following are examples of similes. Androtion said of Idrieus that he was like a terrier let off the chain, that flies at you and bites you—Idrieus too was savage now that he was let out of his chains. Theodamas compared Archidamus to [30] a Euxenus who could not do geometry—a proportional simile, implying that Euxenus is an Archidamus who can do geometry. In Plato’s Republic those who strip the dead are compared to curs which bite the stones thrown at them but do not touch the thrower; and there is the simile about the Athenian people, who are compared to a ship’s captain who is strong but a little deaf; and the one about poets’ [35] verses, which are likened to persons who lack beauty but possess youthful freshness—when the freshness has faded the charm perishes, and so with verses when broken up into prose.6 Pericles compared the Samians to children who take [1407a1] their pap but go on crying; and the Boeotians to holm-oaks, because they were ruining one another by civil wars just as one oak causes another oak’s fall. Demosthenes said that the Athenian people were like sea-sick men on board ship. [5] Again, Democrates compared the political orators to nurses who swallow the bit of food themselves and then smear the children’s lips with the spittle. Antisthenes compared the lean Cephisodotus to frankincense, because it was his consumption that gave one pleasure. All these ideas may be expressed either as similes or as [10] metaphors; those which succeed as metaphors will obviously do well also as similes, and similes, with the explanation omitted, will appear as metaphors. But the [15] proportional metaphor must always apply reciprocally to either of its co-ordinate terms. For instance, if a drinking bowl is the shield of Dionysus, a shield may fittingly be called the drinking-bowl of Ares.

5 · Such, then, are the ingredients of which speech is composed. The [20] foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under five heads. First, the proper use of connecting words, and the arrangement of them in the natural sequence which some of them require. For instance, the connective μέν (e.g. ἐγὠ μέν) requires the correlative δέ (e.g. ό δέ). The answering word must be brought in before the first has been forgotten, and not be widely separated from it; nor, [25] except in the few cases where this is appropriate, is another connective to be introduced before the one required. Consider the sentence, ‘But I, as soon as he told me (for Cleon had come begging and praying), took them along and set out’. In this sentence many connecting words are inserted in front of the one required to [30] complete the sense; and if there is a long interval, the result is obscurity. One merit, then, of good style lies in the right use of connecting words. The second lies in calling things by their own special names and not by vague general ones. The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something. Such [35] people are apt to put that sort of thing into verse. Empedocles, for instance, by his long circumlocutions imposes on his hearers; these are affected in the same way as most people are when they listen to diviners, whose ambiguous utterances are received with nods of acquiescence—

Croesus by crossing the Halys will ruin a mighty realm.

[1407b1] Diviners use these vague generalities about the matter in hand because their predictions are thus, as a rule, less likely to be falsified. We are more likely to be right, in the game of ‘odd and even’, if we simply guess ‘even’ or ‘odd’ than if we guess at the actual number; and the oracle-monger is more likely to be right if he simply says that a thing will happen than if he says when it will happen, and [5] therefore he refuses to add a definite date. All these ambiguities have the same sort of effect, and are to be avoided unless we have some such object as that mentioned. A fourth rule is to observe Protagoras’ classification of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter; for these distinctions also must be correctly given. ‘Upon her arrival she said her say and departed (ἡ δ’ ἐλθoῦσα καἰ διαλεχθεἰσα ᾤχετo)’. A fifth [10] rule is to express the singular and the plural by the correct wording, e.g. ‘Having come, they struck me (oἱ δ’ ἐλθὀντες ἔτυπτόν με)’.

It is a general rule that a written composition should be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver. This cannot be so where there are many connecting words or clauses, or where punctuation is hard, as in the writings of Heracleitus. To [15] punctuate Heracleitus is no easy task, because we often cannot tell whether a particular word belongs to what precedes or what follows it. Thus, at the outset of his treatise he says, ‘Though this truth is always men understand it not’, where it is not clear to which of the two clauses the word ‘always’ belongs. Further, solecism will result if you annex to two terms a third which does not suit them both. Thus if you are talking of sound and colour ‘perceive’ will apply to both, ‘see’ will not. [20] Obscurity is also caused if, when you intend to insert a number of details, you do not first make your meaning clear; for instance, if you say, ‘I meant, after telling him this, that, and the other thing, to set out’, rather than something of this ‘I meant to set out after telling him; then this, that, and the other thing occurred’. [25]

6 · The following suggestions will help to give your language impressiveness. Describe a thing instead of naming it: do not say ‘circle’, but ‘that surface which extends equally from the middle every way’. To achieve conciseness, do the opposite—put the name instead of the description. When mentioning anything ugly or unseemly, use its name if it is the description that is ugly, and describe it if it is [30] the name that is ugly. Represent things with the help of metaphors and epithets, being careful to avoid poetical effects. Use plural for singular, as in poetry, where one finds

Unto havens Achaean,7

though only one haven is meant, and

Here are my letter’s many-leaved folds.8 [35]

Do not bracket two words under one article, but put one article with each; e.g. τῆς γυναικὀς τῆς ἡμετέρας. The reverse to secure conciseness; e.g. τῆς ἡμετέρας γυναικὀς. Use plenty of connecting words; conversely, to secure conciseness, dispense with connectives, while still preserving connexion; e.g. ‘having gone and spoken’, and [1408a1] ‘having gone, I spoke’, respectively. And the practice of Antimachus, too, is useful—to describe a thing by mentioning attributes it does not possess; as he does in talking of Teumessus—

There is a little wind-swept knoll. . .

A subject can be developed indefinitely along these lines. You may apply this method of treatment by negation either to good or to bad qualities, according to [5] which your subject requires. It is from this source that the poets draw expressions such as the ‘stringless’ or ‘lyreless’ melody, thus forming epithets out of negations. This device is popular in proportional metaphors, as when the trumpet’s note is called ‘a lyreless melody’.

7 · Your language will be appropriate if it expresses emotion and character, [10] and if it corresponds to its subject. ‘Correspondence to subject’ means that we must neither speak casually about weighty matters, nor solemnly about trivial ones; nor must we add ornamental epithets to commonplace nouns, or the effect will be comic, as in the works of Cleophon, who can use phrases as absurd as ‘queenly [15] fig-tree’. To express emotion, you will employ the language of anger in speaking of outrage; the language of disgust and discreet reluctance to utter a word when speaking of impiety or foulness; the language of exultation for a tale of glory, and that of humiliation for a tale of pity; and so in all other cases.

[20] This aptness of language is one thing that makes people believe in the truth of your story: their minds draw the false conclusion that you are to be trusted from the fact that others behave as you do when things are as you describe them; and therefore they take your story to be true, whether it is so or not. Besides, an emotional speaker always makes his audience feel with him, even when there is [25] nothing in his arguments; which is why many speakers try to overwhelm their audience by mere noise.

Furthermore, this way of proving your story by displaying these signs of its genuineness expresses your personal character. Each class of men, each type of disposition, will have its own appropriate way of letting the truth appear. Under ‘class’ I include differences of age, as boy, man, or old man; of sex, as man or woman; of nationality, as Spartan or Thessalian. By ‘dispositions’ I here mean those [30] dispositions only which determine the character of a man’s life, for it is not every disposition that does this. If, then, a speaker uses the very words which are in keeping with a particular disposition, he will reproduce the corresponding character; for a rustic and an educated man will not say the same things nor speak in the same way. Again, some impression is made upon an audience by a device which speech-writers employ to nauseous excess, when they say ‘Who does not know this?’ [35] or ‘It is known to everybody’. The hearer is ashamed of his ignorance, and agrees with the speaker, so as to have a share of the knowledge that everybody else possesses.

All the variations of oratorical style are capable of being used in season or out [1408b1] of season. The best way to counteract any exaggeration is the well-worn device by which the speaker puts in some criticism of himself; for then people feel it must be all right for him to talk thus, since he certainly knows what he is doing. Further, it is better not to have everything always just corresponding to everything else—your [5] purpose will thus be hidden. I mean for instance, if your words are harsh, you should not extend this harshness to your voice and your countenance and have everything else in keeping. If you do, the artificial character of each detail becomes apparent; whereas if you adopt one device and not another, you are using art all the same and yet nobody notices it. (To be sure, if mild sentiments are expressed in harsh tones [10] and harsh sentiments in mild tones, you become comparatively unconvincing.) Compound words, fairly plentiful epithets, and strange words best suit an emotional speech. We forgive an angry man for talking about a wrong as ‘heaven-high’ or ‘colossal’; and we excuse such language when the speaker has his hearers already in [15] his hands and has stirred them deeply either by praise or blame or anger or affection, as Isocrates, for instance, does at the end of his Panegyric, with his ‘name and fame’ and ‘in that they brooked’. Men do speak in this strain when they are deeply stirred, and so, once the audience is in a like state of feeling, approval of course follows. This is why such language is fitting in poetry, which is an inspired thing. This language, then, should be used either under stress of emotion, or ironically, after the manner of Gorgias and of the passages in the Phaedrus. [20]

8 · The form of a prose composition should be neither metrical nor destitute of rhythm. The metrical form destroys the hearer’s trust by its artificial appearance, and at the same time it diverts his attention, making him watch for metrical recurrences, just as children catch up the herald’s question, ‘Whom does the [25] freedman choose as his advocate?’, with the answer ‘Cleon!’ On the other hand, unrhythmical language is too unlimited; we do not want the limitations of metre, but some limitation we must have, or the effect will be vague and unsatisfactory. Now it is number that limits all things; and it is the numerical limitation of the form of a composition that constitutes rhythm, of which metres are definite sections.

Prose, then, is to be rhythmical, but not metrical, or it will become not prose [30] but verse. It should not even have too precise a prose rhythm, and therefore should only be rhythmical to a certain extent.

Of the various rhythms, the heroic has dignity, but lacks the tones of the spoken language. The iambic is the very language of ordinary people, so that in common talk iambic lines occur oftener than any others: but in a speech we need [35] dignity and the power of taking the hearer out of his ordinary self. The trochee is too much akin to wild dancing: we can see this in tetrameter verse, which is one of the [1409a1] trochaic rhythms.

There remains the paean, which speakers began to use in the time of Thrasymachus, though they had then no name to give it. The paean is a third class of rhythm, closely akin to both the two already mentioned; it has in it the ratio of three to two, whereas the other two kinds have the ratio of one to one, and two to one [5] respectively. Between the two last ratios comes the ratio of one-and-a-half to one, which is that of the paean.

Now the other two kinds of rhythm must be rejected in writing prose, partly for the reasons given, and partly because they are too metrical; and the paean must be adopted, since from this alone of the rhythms mentioned no definite metre arises, and therefore it is the least obtrusive of them. At present the same form of paean is [10] employed at the beginning as at the end of sentences, whereas the end should differ from the beginning. There are two opposite kinds of paean, one of which is suitable to the beginning of a sentence, where it is indeed actually used; this is the kind that begins with a long syllable and ends with three short ones, as

and

[15]

The other paean begins, conversely, with three short syllables and ends with a long one, as

This kind of paean makes a real close: a short syllable can give no effect of finality, and therefore makes the rhythm appear truncated. A sentence should break off [20] with the long syllable: the fact that it is over should be indicated not by the scribe, or by his full stop, but by the rhythm itself.

We have now seen that our language must be rhythmical and not destitute of rhythm, and what rhythms, in what particular shape, make it so.

9 · The language of prose must be either free-running, with its parts united [25] by nothing except the connecting words, like the preludes in dithyrambs; or compact and antithetical, like the strophes of the old poets. The free-running style is the ancient one, e.g. ‘Herein is set forth the inquiry of Herodotus the Thurian’.9 Every one used this method formerly; not many do so now. By ‘free-running’ style I [30] mean the kind that has no natural stopping-places, and comes to a stop only because there is no more to say of that subject. This style is unsatisfying just because it goes on indefinitely—one always likes to sight a stopping-place in front of one: it is only at the goal that men in a race faint and collapse; while they see the end of the course before them, they can keep going. Such, then, is the free-running kind of style; the [35] compact is that which is in periods. By a period I mean a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at [1409b1] a glance. Language of this kind is satisfying and easy to follow. It is satisfying, because it is just the reverse of indefinite; and moreover, the hearer always feels that he is grasping something and has reached some definite conclusion; whereas it is unsatisfactory to see nothing in front of you and get nowhere. It is easy to follow, [5] because it can easily be remembered; and this because language when in periodic form can be numbered, and number is the easiest of all things to remember. That is why verse, which is measured, is always more easily remembered than prose, which is not: the measures of verse can be numbered. The period must, further, not be completed until the sense is complete: it must not be capable of breaking off abruptly, as may happen with the following iambic lines

[10] Calydon’s soil is this; of Pelops’ land10

By a wrong division of the words the hearer may take the meaning to be the reverse of what it is: for instance, in the passage quoted, one might imagine that Calydon is in the Peloponnesus.

A period may be either divided into several members or simple. The period of several members is a portion of speech complete in itself, divided into parts, and [15] easily delivered at a single breath—as a whole, that is; not by fresh breath being taken at the division. A member is one of the two parts of such a period. By a ‘simple’ period, I mean that which has only one member. The members, and the whole periods, should be neither curt nor long. A member which is too short often [20] makes the listener stumble; he is still expecting the rhythm to go on to the limit his mind has fixed for it; and if meanwhile he is pulled back by the speaker’s stopping, the shock is bound to make him, so to speak, stumble. If, on the other hand, you go on too long, you make him feel left behind, like people who pass beyond the boundary before turning back. So too if a period is too long you turn it into a speech, [25] or something like a dithyrambic prelude. The result is much like the preludes that Democritus of Chios jeered at Melanippides for writing instead of antistrophic stanzas—

He that sets traps for another man’s feet

Is like to fall into them first;

And long-winded preludes do harm to us all,

But the preluder catches it worst.

Which applies likewise to long-membered orators. Periods whose members are [30] altogether too short are not periods at all; and the result is to bring the hearer down with a crash.

The periodic style which is divided into members is of two kinds. It is either simply divided, as in ‘I have often wondered at the conveners of national gatherings and the founders of athletic contests’;11 or it is antithetical, where, in each of the two [35] members, one of one pair of opposites is put along with one of another pair, or the same word is used to bracket two opposites, as ‘They aided both parties—not only [1410a1] those who stayed behind but those who accompanied them: for the latter they acquired new territory larger than that at home, and to the former they left territory at home that was large enough’. Here the contrasted words are ‘staying behind’ and ‘accompanying’, ‘enough’ and ‘larger’. So in the example, ‘Both to those who want [5] to acquire property and to those who desire to enjoy it’, where ‘enjoyment’ is contrasted with ‘acquisition’. Again, ‘it often happens in such enterprises that the wise men fail and the fools succeed’; ‘they were awarded the prize of valour immediately, and won the command of the sea not long afterwards’; ‘to sail through [10] the mainland and march through the sea, by bridging the Hellespont and cutting through Athos’; ‘nature gave them their country and law took it away again’; ‘some of them perished in misery, others were saved in disgrace’; ‘Athenian citizens keep foreigners in their houses as servants, while the city of Athens allows her allies by [15] thousands to live as the foreigner’s slaves’; and ‘to possess in life or to bequeath at death’. There is also what some one said about Peitholaus and Lycophron in a lawcourt, ‘These men used to sell you when they were at home, and now they have come to you here and bought you’. All these passages have the structure described above. Such a form of speech is satisfying, because the significance of contrasted [20] ideas is easily felt, especially when they are thus put side by side, and also because it has the effect of a logical argument; it is by putting two opposing conclusions side by side that you prove one of them false.

Such, then, is the nature of antithesis. Parisosis is making the two members of a period equal in length. Paromoeosis is making the extreme words of both members like each other. This must happen either at the beginning or at the end of [25] each member. If at the beginning, the resemblance must always be between whole words; at the end, between final syllables or inflexions of the same word or the same word repeated. Thus, at the beginning

ἀγρὀν γἀρ ἔλαβεν ἀργὀν παρ’ αὐτoῦ12

and

δωρητoί τ’ ἐπέλoντo παρἁρρητoἱ τ’ ἐπέεσσιν.13

At the end

[30] ᾠἡθης ἄν αὐτὀν oὐ παιδἱoν τετoκέναι, ἀλλ’ αὐτὀν παιδἱoν γεγoνέναι,

and

ἐν πλεἱσταις δἐ φρoντἰσι καἰ ἐν ἐλαχἱσταις ἐλπἱσιν

An example of inflexions of the same word is

ἄξιoς δἐ σταθῆναι χαλκoῦς, oὐκ ἄξιoς ὤν χαλκoῦ;

Of the same word repeated,

[35] σὐ δ’ αὐτὀν καἰ ζῶντα ἔλεγες κακῶς καἰ νῦν γρἁφεις κακῶς.

Of one syllable,

τἱ ἂν ἔπαθες δεινόν, εἰ ἄνδρ’ εἶδες ἀργόν;

[1410b1] It is possible for the same sentence to have all these features together—antitheses, parison, and homoeoteleuton. (The possible beginnings of periods have been pretty fully enumerated in the Theodectea.) There are also spurious antitheses, like that of Epicharmus—

[5] There one time I as their guest did stay,

And they were my hosts on another day.14

10 · We may now consider the above points settled, and pass on to say something about the way to devise lively and taking sayings. Their actual invention can only come through natural talent or long practice; but this treatise may indicate the way it is done. We may deal with them by enumerating the different kinds of them. We will begin by remarking that we all naturally find it agreeable to get hold [10] of new ideas easily: words express ideas, and therefore those words are the most agreeable that enable us to get hold of new ideas. Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh. When the poet calls old age ‘a withered stalk’,15 he conveys a new idea, a new fact, to us by means of the general notion of ‘lost bloom’, which is common to both things. The similes of the poets do the same, [15] and therefore, if they are good similes, give an effect of brilliance. The simile, as has been said before, is a metaphor, differing from it only in the way it is put; and just because it is longer it is less attractive. Besides, it does not say outright that ‘this’ is ‘that’, and therefore the hearer is less interested in the idea. We see, then, that both speech and reasoning are lively in proportion as they make us seize a new idea [20] promptly. For this reason people are not much taken either by obvious arguments (using the word ‘obvious’ to mean what is plain to everybody and needs no investigation), nor by those which puzzle us when we hear them stated, but only by those which convey their information to us as soon as we hear them, provided we had not the information already; or which the mind only just fails to keep up with. [25] These two kinds do convey to us a sort of information: but the obvious and the obscure kinds convey nothing, either at once or later on. It is these qualities, then, that, so far as the meaning of what is said is concerned, make an argument acceptable. So far as the language is concerned, it is the antithetical form that appeals to us, e.g. ‘judging that the peace common to all the rest was a war upon [30] their own private interests’,16 where there is an antithesis between war and peace. It is also good to use metaphorical words; but the metaphors must not be far-fetched, or they will be difficult to grasp, nor obvious, or they will have no effect. The words, too, ought to set the scene before our eyes; for events ought to be seen in progress rather than in prospect. So we must aim at these three points: antithesis, metaphor, [35] and actuality.

Of the four kinds of metaphor the most taking is the proportional kind. Thus [1411a1] Pericles, for instance, said that the vanishing from their country of the young men who had fallen in the war was ‘as if the spring were taken out of the year’. Leptines, speaking of the Lacedaemonians, said that he would not have the Athenians let Greece ‘lose one of her two eyes’. When Chares was pressing for leave to be [5] examined upon his share in the Olynthiac war, Cephisodotus was indignant, saying that he wanted his examination to take place ‘while he had his fingers upon the people’s throat’. The same speaker once urged the Athenians to march to Euboea, ‘with Miltiades’ decree as their rations’. Iphicrates, indignant at the truce made by [10] the Athenians with Epidaurus and the neighbouring sea-board, said that they had stripped themselves of their travelling-money for the journey of war. Peitholaus called the state-galley ‘the people’s big stick’, and Sestos ‘the corn-bin of the Peiraeus’. Pericles bade his countrymen remove Aegina, ‘that eyesore of the Peiraeus’. And Moerocles said he was no more a rascal than was a certain [15] respectable citizen he named, ‘whose rascality was worth over thirty per cent per annum to him, instead of a mere ten like his own’. There is also the iambic line of Anaxandrides about the way his daughters put off marrying—

My daughters’ marriage-bonds are overdue. [20]

Polyeuctus said of a paralytic man named Speusippus that he could not keep quiet, ‘though fortune had fastened him in the pillory of disease’. Cephisodotus called warships ‘painted millstones’. Diogenes the Dog called taverns ‘the mess-rooms of [25] Attica’. Aesion said that the Athenians had ‘emptied’ their town into Sicily: this is a graphic metaphor. ‘Till all Hellas shouted aloud’ may be regarded as a metaphor, and a graphic one again. Cephisodotus bade the Athenians take care not to hold too [30] many ‘parades’. Isocrates used the same word of those who ‘parade’ at the national festivals. Another example occurs in the Funeral Speech: ‘It is fitting that Greece should cut off her hair beside the tomb of those who fell at Salamis, since her freedom and their valour are buried in the same grave’. Even if the speaker here had only said that it was right to weep when valour was being buried in their grave, it would have been a metaphor, and a graphic one; but the coupling of ‘their valour’ [1411b1] and ‘her freedom’ presents a kind of antithesis as well. ‘The course of my words’, said Iphicrates, ‘lies straight through the middle of Chares’ deeds’: this is a proportional metaphor, and the phrase ‘straight through the middle’ makes it [5] graphic. The expression ‘to call in one danger to rescue us from another’ is a graphic metaphor. Lycoleon said, defending Chabrias, ‘They did not respect even that bronze statue of his that intercedes for him yonder’. This was a metaphor for the moment, though it would not always apply; a vivid metaphor, however; Chabrias is [10] in danger, and his statue intercedes for him—that lifeless yet living thing which records his services to his country. ‘Practising in every way littleness of mind’ is metaphorical, for practising a quality implies increasing it. So is ‘God kindled our [15] reason to be a lamp within our souls’, for both reason and light reveal things. So is ‘we are not putting an end to our wars, but only postponing them’, for both literal postponement and the making of such a peace as this apply to future action. So is such a saying as ‘This treaty is a far nobler trophy than those we set up on fields of battle; they celebrate small gains and single successes; it celebrates our triumph in the war as a whole’; for both trophy and treaty are signs of victory. So is ‘A country [20] pays a heavy reckoning in being condemned by the judgement of mankind’, for a reckoning is damage deservedly incurred.

11 · It has already been mentioned that liveliness is got by using the [25] proportional type of metaphor and by making our hearers see things. We have still to explain what we mean by their ‘seeing things’, and what must be done to effect this. By ‘making them see things’ I mean using expressions that represent things as in a state of activity. Thus, to say that a good man is ‘four-square’ is certainly a metaphor; both the good man and the square are perfect; but the metaphor does not suggest activity. On the other hand, in the expression ‘with his vigour in full bloom’ there is a notion of activity; and so in ‘But you must roam as free as a sacred victim’;17 and in

[30] Thereat up sprang the Hellenes to their feet,18

where ‘up sprang’ gives us activity as well as metaphor, for it at once suggests swiftness. So with Homer’s common practice of giving metaphorical life to lifeless things: all such passages are distinguished by the effect of activity they convey. Thus,

Downward anon to the valley rebounded the boulder remorseless;

and

The arrow flew;

and

Flying on eagerly;

and

Stuck in the earth, still panting to feed on the flesh of the heroes; [1412a1]

and

And the point of the spear in its fury drove full through his breastbone.19

In all these examples the things have the effect of being active because they are made into living beings; shameless behaviour and fury and so on are all forms of activity. And the poet has attached these ideas to the things by means of proportional metaphors: as the stone is to Sisyphus, so is the shameless man to his [5] victim. In his famous similes, too, he treats inanimate things in the same way:

Curving and crested with white, host following host without ceasing.20

Here he represents everything as moving and living; and activity is movement.

Metaphors must be drawn, as has been said already, from things that are [10] related to the original thing, and yet not obviously so related—just as in philosophy also an acute mind will perceive resemblances even in things far apart. Thus Archytas said that an arbitrator and an altar were the same, since the injured fly to both for refuge. Or you might say that an anchor and an overhead hook were the same, since both are in a way the same, only the one secures things from below and [15] the other from above. And to speak of states as ‘levelled’ is to identify two widely different things, the equality of a physical surface and the equality of political powers.

Liveliness is specially conveyed by metaphor, and by the further power of surprising the hearer; because the hearer expected something different, his acquisition of the new idea impresses him all the more. His mind seems to say, ‘Yes, [20] to be sure; I never thought of that’. The liveliness of epigrammatic remarks is due to the meaning not being just what the words say: as in the saying of Stesichorus that ‘the cicadas will chirp to themselves on the ground’. Well-constructed riddles are attractive for the same reason; a new idea is conveyed, and there is metaphorical [25] expression. So with the ‘novelties’ of Theodorus. In these the thought is startling, and, as Theodorus puts it, does not fit in with the ideas you already have. They are like the burlesque words that one finds in the comic writers. The effect is produced even by jokes depending upon changes of the letters of a word; this too is a surprise. You find this in verse as well as in prose. The word which comes is not what the hearer imagined: thus

[30] Onward he came, and his feet were shod with his—chilblains,

where one imagined the word would be ‘sandals’. But the point should be clear the moment the words are uttered. Jokes made by altering the letters of a word consist in meaning, not just what you say, but something that gives a twist to the word used; e.g. the remark of Theodorus about Nicon the harpist, θρἁττει σε. where he pretends to mean θρἁττει σε.21 and surprises us when we find he means something else. So you [1412b1] enjoy the point when you see it, though the remark will fall flat unless you are aware that Nicon is a Thracian. Or again: βoὑλει αὐτὀν πέρσαι. In both these cases the saying must fit the facts. This is also true of such lively remarks as the one to the effect that to the Athenians their empire (ἀρχἡ) of the sea was not the beginning [5] (ἀρχἡ) of their troubles, since they gained by it. Or the opposite one of Isocrates, that their empire (ἀρχἡ) was the beginning (ἀρχἡ) of their troubles. Either way, the speaker says something unexpected, the soundness of which is thereupon recognized. There would be nothing clever in saying empire is empire. Isocrates means more than that, and uses the word with a new meaning. So too with the former [10] saying, which denies that ἀρχἡ in one sense was ἀρχἡ in another sense. In all these jokes, whether a word is used in a second sense or metaphorically, the joke is good if it fits the facts. For instance, ’Aνἁσχετoς (proper name) oὐκ ἀνασχετός: where you say that what is so-and-so in one sense is not so-and-so in another; well, if the man is unpleasant, the joke fits the facts. Again, ‘You should not be more a stranger than a [15] stranger’—or more than you should be. That is the same as: ‘The stranger should not always be a stranger’. Here again is the use of one word in different senses. Of the same kind also is the much-praised verse of Anaxandrides:

Death is most fit before you do

Deeds that would make death fit for you.

This amounts to saying ‘it is a fit thing to die when you are not fit to die’, or ‘it is a fit thing to die when death is not fit for you’, i.e. when death is not the fit return for [20] what you are doing. The type of language employed is the same in all these examples; but the more briefly and antithetically such sayings can be expressed, the more taking they are, for antithesis impresses the new idea more firmly and brevity more quickly. They should always have either some personal application or some [25] merit of expression, if they are to be true without being common-place—two requirements not always satisfied simultaneously. Thus ‘a man should die having done no wrong’ is true but dull: ‘the right man should marry the right woman’ is also true but dull. No, there must be both good qualities together, as in ‘it is fitting to die when you are not fit for death’. The more a saying has these qualities, the livelier it [30] appears: if, for instance, its wording is metaphorical, metaphorical in the right way, antithetical, and balanced, and at the same time it gives an idea of activity.

Successful similes also, as has been said above, are in a sense metaphors, since they always involve two relations like the proportional metaphor. Thus: a shield, we say, is the ‘drinking-bowl of Ares’, and a bow is the ‘chordless lyre’. This way of [1413a1] putting a metaphor is not ‘simple’, as it would be if we called the bow a lyre or the shield a drinking-bowl. There are ‘simple’ similes also: we may say that a flute-player is like a monkey, or that a short-sighted man’s eyes are like a lamp-flame with water dropping on it, since both eyes and flame keep winking. A simile succeeds best when it is a converted metaphor, for it is possible to say that a [5] shield is like the drinking-bowl of Ares, or that a ruin is like a house in rags, and to say that Niceratus is like a Philoctetes stung by Pratys—the simile made by Thrasymachus when he saw Niceratus, who had been beaten by Pratys in a recitation competition, still going about unkempt and unwashed. It is in these respects that poets fail worst when they fail, and succeed best when they [10] succeed,

Those legs of his curl just like parsley leaves;

and

Just like Philammon struggling with his punch-ball.

These are all similes; and that similes are metaphors has been stated often already.

Proverbs, again, are metaphors from one species to another. Suppose, for [15] instance, a man to start some undertaking in hope of gain and then to lose by it later on, ‘Here we have once more the man of Carpathus and his hare’, says he. For both alike went through the said experience.

It has now been explained fairly completely how liveliness is secured and why it has the effect it has. Successful hyperboles are also metaphors, e.g. the one about [20] the man with a black eye, ‘you would have thought he was a basket of mulberries’; here the ‘black eye’ is compared to a mulberry because of its colour, the exaggeration lying in the quantity of mulberries suggested. The phrase ‘like so-and-so’ may introduce a hyperbole under the form of a simile. Thus

Just like Philammon struggling with his punch-ball

is equivalent to ‘you would have thought he was Philammon struggling with his [25] punch-ball’; and

Those legs of his curl just like parsley leaves

is equivalent to ‘his legs are so curly that you would have thought they were not legs but parsley leaves’. Hyperboles are for young men to use; they show vehemence of character; [[and this is why angry people use them more than other people. [30]

Not though he gave me as much as the dust or the sands of the sea . . .

But her, the daughter of Atreus’ son, I never will marry,

Nay, not though she were fairer than Aphrodite the Golden,

Defter of hand than Athene . . .22]]23

[1413b1] [The Attic orators are particularly fond of this method of speech.]24 Consequently it does not suit an elderly speaker.

12 · It should be observed that each kind of rhetoric has its own appropriate style. The style of written prose is not that of spoken oratory, nor are those of [5] political and forensic speaking the same. Both written and spoken have to be known. To know the latter is to know how to speak good Greek. To know the former means that you are not obliged, as otherwise you are, to hold your tongue when you wish to communicate something to the general public.

The written style is the more finished: the spoken better admits of dramatic [10] delivery—alike the kind of oratory that reflects character and the kind that reflects emotion. Hence actors look out for plays written in the latter style, and poets for actors competent to act in such plays. Yet poets whose plays are meant to be read are read and circulated. Chaeremon, for instance, who is as finished as a professional speech-writer; and Licymnius among the dithyrambic poets. Compared [15] with those of others, the speeches of professional writers sound thin in actual contests. Those of the orators, on the other hand, look amateurish enough when they pass into the hands of a reader. This is just because they are so well suited for an actual tussle, and therefore contain many dramatic touches, which, being robbed of all dramatic rendering, fail to do their own proper work, and consequently look silly. Thus strings of unconnected words, and constant repetitions of words and phrases, [20] are very properly condemned in written speeches: but not in spoken speeches—speakers use them freely, for they have a dramatic effect. In this repetition there must be variety of tone, paving the way, as it were, to dramatic effect; e.g. ‘This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you [25] completely’. This is the sort of thing that Philemon the actor used to do in the Old Men‘s Madness of Anaxandrides, whenever he spoke the words ‘Rhadamanthus and Palamedes’, and also in the prologue to the Saints whenever he pronounced the pronoun ‘I’. If one does not deliver such things cleverly, it becomes a case of ‘the man who swallowed a poker’. So too with strings of unconnected words, e.g. ‘I came [30] to him; I met him; I besought him’. Such passages must be acted, not delivered with the same quality and pitch of voice, as though they had only one idea in them. They have the further peculiarity of suggesting that a number of separate statements have been made in the time usually occupied by one. Just as the use of conjunctions makes many statements into a single one, so the omission of conjunctions acts in the reverse way and makes a single one into many. It thus makes everything more important: e.g. ‘I came to him; I talked to him; I entreated him’—what a lot of facts! [1414a1] the hearer thinks—‘he paid no attention to anything I said’. This is the effect which Homer seeks when he writes, ‘Nireus likewise from Syme, Nireus, the son of Aglaia, Nireus, the comeliest man’.25 If many things are said about a man, his name must be mentioned many times; and therefore people think that, if his name is mentioned many times, many things have been said about him. So that Homer, by [5] means of this illusion, has made a great deal of Nireus, though he has mentioned him only in this one passage, and has preserved his memory, though he nowhere says a word about him afterwards.

Now the style of oratory addressed to public assemblies is really just like scene-painting. The bigger the throng, the more distant is the point of view: so that, in the one and the other, high finish in detail is superfluous and looks bad. The [10] forensic style is more highly finished; still more so is the style of language addressed to a single judge, with whom there is very little room for rhetorical artifices, since he can take the whole thing in better, and judge of what is to the point and what is not; the struggle is less intense and so the judgement is undisturbed. This is why the same speakers do not distinguish themselves in all these branches at once; high finish is wanted least where dramatic delivery is wanted most, and here the speaker [15] must have a good voice, and above all, a strong one. It is epideictic oratory that is most literary, for it is meant to be read; and next to it forensic oratory.

To analyse style still further, and add that it must be agreeable or magnificent, is useless; for why should it have these traits any more than restraint, liberality, or [20] any other excellence of character? Obviously agreeableness will be produced by the qualities already mentioned, if our definition of excellence of style has been correct. For what other reason should style be clear, and not mean but appropriate? If it is prolix, it is not clear; nor yet if it is curt. Plainly the middle way suits best. Again, [25] style will be made agreeable by the elements mentioned, namely by a good blending of ordinary and unusual words, by the rhythm, and by the persuasiveness that springs from appropriateness.

This concludes our discussion of style, both in its general aspects and in its special applications to the various branches of rhetoric. We have now to deal with arrangement.

13 · A speech has two parts. You must state your case, and you must prove [30] it. You cannot either state your case and omit to prove it, or prove it without having first stated it; since any proof must be a proof of something, and the only use of a preliminary statement is the proof that follows it. Of these two parts the first part is called the statement of the case, the second part the argument, just as we [35] distinguish between problem and demonstration. The current division is absurd. For narration surely is part of a forensic speech only: how in a political speech or a speech of display can there be narration in the technical sense? or a reply to a forensic opponent? or an epilogue in closely-reasoned speeches? Again, introduction, [1414b1] comparison of conflicting arguments, and recapitulation are only found in political speeches when there is a struggle between two policies. They may occur then; so may even accusation and defence, often enough; but they form no essential [5] part of a political speech. Even forensic speeches do not always need epilogues; not, for instance, a short speech, nor one in which the facts are easy to remember, the effect of an epilogue being always a reduction in the apparent length. It follows, then, that the only necessary parts of a speech are the statement and the argument. These are the essential features of a speech; and it cannot in any case have more than introduction, statement, argument, and epilogue. Refutation of the opponent is part of the arguments: so is comparison of the opponent’s case with your own, for [10] that process is a magnifying of your own case and therefore a part of the arguments, since one who does this proves something. The introduction does nothing like this; nor does the epilogue—it merely reminds us of what has been said already. If we make such distinctions we shall end, like Theodorus and his followers, by distinguishing narration proper from ‘post-narration’ and ‘pre-narration’, and [15] refutation from ‘final refutation’. But we ought only to bring in a new name if it indicates a real species with distinct specific qualities; otherwise, the practice is pointless and silly, like the way Licymnius invented names in his Art of Rhetoric— ‘secundation’, ‘divagation’, ‘ramification’.

14 · The introduction is the beginning of a speech, corresponding to the [20] prologue in poetry and the prelude in flute-music; they are all beginnings, paving the way, as it were, for what is to follow. The musical prelude resembles the introduction to speeches of display; as flute-players play first some brilliant passage they know well and then fit it on to the opening notes of the piece itself, so in [25] speeches of display the writer should proceed in the same way; he should begin with what best takes his fancy, and then strike up his theme and lead into it; which is indeed what is always done. (Take as an example the introduction to the Helen of Isocrates—there is nothing in common between the eristics and Helen.) And here, even if you travel far from your subject, it is fitting, rather than that there should be sameness in the entire speech.

[30] The usual subject for the introductions to speeches of display is some piece of praise or censure. Thus Gorgias writes in his Olympic Speech, ‘You deserve widespread admiration, men of Greece’, praising thus those who started the festival gatherings. Isocrates, on the other hand, censures them for awarding distinctions to [35] fine athletes but giving no prize for intellectual ability. Or one may begin with a piece of advice, thus: ‘We ought to honour good men and so I myself am praising Aristeides’ or ‘We ought to honour those who are unpopular but not bad men, men whose good qualities have never been noticed, like Alexander son of Priam’. Here [1415a1] the orator gives advice. Or we may begin as speakers do in the law-courts; that is to say, with appeals to the audience to excuse us if our speech is about something paradoxical, difficult, or hackneyed; like Choerilus in the lines—

But now when allotment of all has been made …

Introductions to speeches of display, then, may be composed of some piece of [5] praise or censure, of advice to do or not to do something, or of appeals to the audience; and you must choose between making these preliminary passages connected or disconnected with the speech itself.

Introductions to forensic speeches, it must be observed, have the same value as the prologues of dramas and the introductions to epic poems; the dithyrambic [10] prelude resembling the introduction to a speech of display, as

For thee, and thy gifts, …26

In prologues, and in epic poetry, a foretaste of the theme is given, intended to inform the hearers of it in advance instead of keeping their minds in suspense. Anything vague puzzles them: so give them a grasp of the beginning, and they can hold fast to [15] it and follow the argument. So we find—

Sing, O goddess of song, of the Wrath …

Tell me, O Muse, of the hero …27

Lead me to tell a new tale, how there came great warfare to Europe

Out of the Asian land …

The tragic poets, too, let us know the pivot of their play; if not at the outset like Euripides, at least somewhere in the prologue like Sophocles; [20]

[[Polybus was my father … ;]]28

and so in comedy. This, then, is the most essential function and distinctive property of the introduction, to show what the aim of the speech is; and therefore no introduction ought to be employed where the subject is not long or intricate.

The other kinds of introduction employed are remedial in purpose, and may be [25] used in any type of speech. They are concerned with the speaker, the hearer, the subject, or the speaker’s opponent. Those concerned with the speaker himself or with his opponent are directed to removing or exciting prejudice. But whereas the defendant will begin by dealing with this sort of thing, the prosecutor will take quite another line and deal with such matters in the closing part of his speech. The reason for this is not far to seek. The defendant, when he is going to bring himself on the [30] stage, must clear away any obstacles, and therefore must begin by removing any prejudice felt against him. But if you are to excite prejudice, you must do so at the close, so that the judges may more easily remember what you have said.

The appeal to the hearer aims at securing his goodwill, and sometimes at [35] gaining his serious attention to the case—for gaining it is not always an advantage, and speakers will often for that reason try to make him laugh.

You may use any means you choose to make your hearer receptive; among others, giving him a good impression of your character, which always helps to [1415b1] secure his attention. He will be ready to attend to anything that touches himself, and to anything that is important, surprising, or agreeable; and you should accordingly convey to him the impression that what you have to say is of this nature. If you wish to distract his attention, you should imply that the subject does not affect him, or is trivial or disagreeable. But observe, all this has nothing to do with [5] the speech itself. It merely has to do with the weak-minded tendency of the hearer to listen to what is beside the point. Where this tendency is absent, no introduction is wanted beyond a summary statement of your subject, to put a sort of head on the main body of your speech. Moreover, calls for attention, when required, may come [10] equally well in any part of a speech; in fact, the beginning of it is just where there is least slackness of interest; it is therefore ridiculous to put this kind of thing at the beginning, when every one is listening with most attention. Choose therefore any point in the speech where such an appeal is needed, and then say ‘Now I beg you to note this point—it concerns you quite as much as myself; or ‘I will tell you that whose like you have never yet heard for terror’—or ‘for wonder’. This is what [15] Prodicus called ‘slipping in a bit of the fifty-drachma show-lecture for the audience whenever they began to nod’. It is plain that such introductions are addressed not to ideal hearers, but to hearers as we find them. The use of introductions to excite prejudice or to dispel misgivings is universal.

[20] [[My lord, I will not say that eagerly …

or

Why all this preface?]]29

Introductions are popular with those whose case is weak, or looks weak; it pays them to dwell on anything rather than the actual facts of it. That is why slaves, instead of answering the questions put to them, make indirect replies with long preambles. [25] The means of exciting in your hearers goodwill and various other feelings of the same kind have already been described. The poet finely says

May I find in Phaeacian hearts, at my coming, goodwill and compassion;30

and these are the two things we should aim at. In speeches of display we must make the hearer feel that the eulogy includes either himself or his family or his way of life [30] or something or other of the kind. For it is true, as Socrates says in the Funeral Speech, that ‘the difficulty is not to praise the Athenians at Athens but at Sparta’.

The introductions of political oratory will be made out of the same materials as those of the forensic kind, though the nature of political oratory makes them very rare. The subject is known already, and therefore the facts of the case need no [35] introduction; but you may have to say something on account of yourself or your opponents; or those present may be inclined to treat the matter either more or less seriously than you wish them to. You may accordingly have to excite or dispel some prejudice, or to make the matter under discussion seem more or less important than before: for either of which purposes you will want an introduction. You may also want one to add elegance to your remarks, feeling that otherwise they will have a casual air, like Gorgias’ eulogy of the Eleans, in which, without any preliminary [1416a1] sparring or fencing, he begins straight off with ‘Happy city of Elis!’

15 · In dealing with prejudice, one class of argument is that whereby you can dispel objectionable suppositions about yourself. It makes no practical [5] difference whether such a supposition has been put into words or not, so that this distinction may be ignored. Another commonplace is to meet any of the issues directly: to deny the alleged fact: or to say that you have done no harm, or none to him, or not as much as he says; or that you have done him no injustice, or not much; or that you have done nothing disgraceful, or nothing disgraceful enough to matter: these are the sort of questions on which the dispute hinges. Thus Iphicrates, [10] replying to Nausicrates, admitted that he had done the deed alleged, and that he had done Nausicrates harm, but not that he had done him wrong. Or you may admit the wrong, but balance it with other facts, and say that, if the deed harmed him, at any rate it was honourable; or that, if it gave him pain, at least it did him good; or something else like that. Another commonplace is to allege that your action was due to mistake, or bad luck, or necessity—as Sophocles said he was not trembling, as his [15] traducer maintained, in order to make people think him an old man, but because he could not help it; he would rather not be eighty years old. You may balance your motive against your actual deed; saying, for instance, that you did not mean to injure him but to do so-and-so; that you did not do what you are falsely charged with doing—the damage was accidental—‘I should indeed be a detestable person if I had deliberately intended this result’. Another way is open when your calumniator, or [20] any of his connexions, is or has been subject to the same grounds for suspicion. Yet another, when others are subject to the same grounds for suspicion but are admitted to be in fact innocent of the charge: e.g. ‘Must I be an adulterer because I am well-groomed? Then so-and-so must be one too’. Another, if other people have been calumniated by the same man or some one else, or, without being calumniated, have been suspected, like yourself now, and yet have been proved innocent. Another way [25] is to return calumny for calumny and say, ‘It is monstrous to trust the man’s statements when you cannot trust the man himself. Another is when the question has been already decided. So with Euripides’ reply to Hygiaenon, who, in the action for an exchange of properties, accused him of impiety in having written a line encouraging perjury— [30]

My tongue hath sworn: no oath is on my soul.31

Euripides said that his opponent himself was guilty in bringing into the law-courts cases whose decision belonged to the Dionysiac contests. ‘If I have not already answered for my words there, I am ready to do so if you choose to prosecute me there’. Another method is to denounce calumny, showing what an enormity it is, [35] and in particular that it raises false issues, and that it means a lack of confidence in the merits of the case. The argument from evidential circumstances is available for [1416b1] both parties: thus in the Teucer Odysseus says that Teucer is closely bound to Priam, since his mother Hesione was Priam’s sister. Teucer replies that Telamon his father was Priam’s enemy, and that he himself did not betray the spies to Priam. Another method, suitable for the calumniator, is to praise some trifling merit at [5] great length, and then attack some important failing concisely; or after mentioning a number of good qualities to attack one bad one that really bears on the question. This is the method of thoroughly skilful and unscrupulous prosecutors. By mixing up the man’s merits with what is bad, they do their best to make use of them to damage him.

There is another method open to both calumniator and apologist. Since a given [10] action can be done from many motives, the former must try to disparage it by selecting the worse motive of two, the latter to put the better construction on it. Thus one might argue that Diomedes chose Odysseus as his companion because he supposed Odysseus to be the best man for the purpose; and you might reply to this that it was, on the contrary, because he was the only hero so worthless that [15] Diomedes need not fear his rivalry.

16 · We may now pass from the subject of calumny to that of narration. Narration in epideictic oratory is not continuous but intermittent. There must, of course, be some survey of the actions that form the subject-matter of the speech. The speech is a composition containing two parts. One of these is not provided by the orator’s art, viz. the actions themselves, of which the orator is in no sense author. [20] The other part is provided by his art, namely, the proof (where proof is needed) that the actions were done, the description of their quality or of their extent, or even all these three things together. Now the reason why sometimes it is not desirable to make the whole narrative continuous is that the case thus expounded is hard to keep in mind. Show, therefore, from one set of facts that your hero is, e.g. brave, and from other sets of facts that he is able, just, etc. A speech thus arranged is [25] comparatively simple, instead of being complicated and elaborate. You will have to recall well-known deeds among others; and because they are well-known, the hearer usually needs no narration of them; none, for instance, if your object is the praise of Achilles; we all know the facts of his life—what you have to do is to apply those facts. But if your object is the praise of Critias, you must narrate his deeds, which not many people know of. . .32

[30] Nowadays it is said, absurdly enough, that the narration should be rapid. Remember what the man said to the baker who asked whether he was to make the cake hard or soft: ‘What, can’t you make it right?’ Just so here. We are not to make long narrations, just as we are not to make long introductions or long arguments. [35] Here, again, rightness does not consist either in rapidity or in conciseness, but in the happy mean; that is, in saying just so much as will make the facts plain, or will lead the hearer to believe that the thing has happened, or that the man has caused injury [1417a1] or wrong to some one, or that the facts are really as important as you wish them to be thought: or the opposite facts to establish the opposite arguments.

You may also narrate as you go anything that does credit to yourself, e.g. ‘I kept telling him to do his duty and not abandon his children’; or discredit to your adversary, e.g. ‘But he answered me that, wherever he might find himself, there he [5] would find other children’, the answer Herodotus33 records of the Egyptian mutineers. Slip in anything else that the judges will enjoy.

The defendant will make less of the narration. He has to maintain that the thing has not happened, or did no harm, or was not unjust, or not so bad as is alleged. He must therefore not waste time about what is admitted fact, unless this [10] bears on his own contention; e.g. that the thing was done, but was not wrong. Further, we must speak of events as past and gone, except where they excite pity or indignation by being represented as present. The story told to Alcinous is an example of a brief chronicle, when it is repeated to Penelope in sixty lines. Another instance is the epic cycle as treated by Phayllus, and the prologue to the [15] Oeneus.

The narration should depict character; to which end you must know what makes it do so. One such thing is the indication of choice; the quality of purpose indicated determines the quality of character depicted and is itself determined by the end pursued. Thus it is that mathematical discourses depict no character; they have nothing to do with choice, for they represent nobody as pursuing any end. On [20] the other hand, the Socratic dialogues do depict character. This end will also be gained by describing the manifestations of various types of character, e.g. ‘he kept walking along as he talked’, which shows the man’s recklessness and rough manners. Do not let your words seem inspired so much by intelligence, in the manner now current, as by choice: e.g. ‘I willed this; aye, it was my choice; true, I [25] gained nothing by it, still it is better thus’. For the other way shows good sense, but this shows good character; good sense making us go after what is useful, and good character after what is noble. Where any detail may appear incredible, then add the cause of it; of this Sophocles provides an example in the Antigone, where Antigone says she had cared more for her brother than for husband or children, since if the [30] latter perished they might be replaced,

But since my father and mother in their graves

Lie dead, no brother can be born to me.34

If you have no such cause to suggest, just say that you are aware that no one will believe your words, but the fact remains that such is your nature, however hard the [35] world may find it to believe that a man deliberately does anything except what pays him.

Again, you must make use of the emotions. Relate the familiar manifestations of them, and those that distinguish yourself and your opponent; for instance, ‘he [1414b1] went away scowling at me’. So Aeschines described Cratylus as ‘hissing with fury and shaking his fists’. These details carry conviction: the audience take the truth of what they know as so much evidence for the truth of what they do not. Plenty of such details may be found in Homer:

[5] Thus did she say: but the old woman buried her face in her hands:35

a true touch—people beginning to cry do put their hands over their eyes.

Bring yourself on the stage from the first in the right character, that people may regard you in that light; and the same with your adversary; but do not let them see what you are about. How easily such impressions may be conveyed we can see [10] from the way in which we get some inkling of things we know nothing of by the mere look of the messenger bringing news of them. Have some narrative in many different parts of your speech; and sometimes let there be none at the beginning of it.

In political oratory there is very little opening for narration; nobody can ‘narrate’ what has not yet happened. If there is narration at all, it will be of past events, the recollection of which is to help the hearers to make better plans for the [15] future. [[Or it may be employed to attack someone’s character, or to eulogize him.]]36 Only then you will not be doing what the political speaker, as such, has to do.

If any statement you make is hard to believe, you must guarantee its truth, and at once offer an explanation, and then furnish it with such particulars as will be expected. Thus Carcinus’ Jocasta, in his Oedipus, keeps guaranteeing the truth of her answers to the inquiries of the man who is seeking her son; and so with Haemon [20] in Sophocles.

17 · The duty of the arguments is to attempt demonstrative proofs. These proofs must bear directly upon the question in dispute, which must fall under one of our heads. If you maintain that the act was not committed, your main task in court [25] is to prove this. If you maintain that the act did no harm, prove this. If you maintain that the act was less than is alleged, or justified, prove these facts in the same way. If the dispute is about whether the act took place, do not forget that in this sort of dispute alone is it true that one of the two parties is necessarily a rogue. Here ignorance cannot be pleaded, as it might if the dispute were whether the act was [30] justified or not. This argument must therefore be used in this case only, not in the others.

In epideictic speeches you will develop your case mainly by arguing that what has been done is, e.g., noble and useful. The facts themselves are to be taken on trust; proof of them is only submitted on those rare occasions when they are not easily credible or when they have been set down to some one else.

[35] In political speeches you may maintain that a proposal is impracticable; or that, though practicable, it is unjust, or will do no good, or is not so important as its proposer thinks. Note any falsehoods about irrelevant matters—they will look like proof that his other statements also are false. Argument by example is highly suitable for political oratory, argument by enthymeme better suits forensic. [1418a1] Political oratory deals with future events, of which it can do no more than quote past events as examples. Forensic oratory deals with what is or is not now true, which can better be demonstrated, because not contingent—there is no contingency in what has now already happened. Do not use a continuous succession of enthymemes: [5] intersperse them with other matter, or they will spoil one another’s effect. There are limits to their number—

Friend, you have spoken as much as a sensible man would have spoken37—

‘as much’ says Homer, not ‘as well’. Nor should you try to make enthymemes on every point; if you do, you will be acting just like some students of philosophy, whose [10] conclusions are more familiar and believable than the premisses from which they draw them. And avoid the enthymeme form when you are trying to rouse feeling; for it will either kill the feeling or will itself fall flat: all simultaneous motions tend to cancel each other either completely or partially. Nor should you go after the [15] enthymeme form in a passage where you are depicting character—the process of demonstration can express neither character nor choice. Maxims should be employed in the arguments—and in the narration too—since these do express character: ‘I have given him this, though I am quite aware that one should “Trust no man”’. Or if you are appealing to the emotions: ‘I do not regret it, though I have been wronged; if he has the profit on his side, I have justice on mine’. [20]

Political oratory is a more difficult task than forensic; and naturally so, since it deals with the future, whereas the pleader deals with the past, which, as Epimenides of Crete said, even the diviners already know. (Epimenides did not practise divination about the future; only about the obscurities of the past.) Besides, in [25] forensic oratory you have a basis in the law; and once you have a starting-point, you can prove anything with comparative ease. Then again, political oratory affords few chances for those leisurely digressions in which you may attack your adversary, talk about yourself, or work on your hearers’ emotions; fewer chances, indeed, than any other affords, unless your set purpose is to divert your hearer’s attention. Accordingly, if you find yourself in difficulties, follow the lead of the Athenian speakers, and that of Isocrates, who makes regular attacks upon people in the [30] course of a political speech, e.g. upon the Lacedaemonians in the Panegyricus, and upon Chares in the speech about the allies. In epideictic oratory, intersperse your speech with bits of episodic eulogy, like Isocrates, who is always bringing someone forward for this purpose. And this is what Gorgias meant by saying that he always found something to talk about. For if he speaks of Achilles, he praises Peleus, then [35] Aeacus, then Zeus; and in like manner the virtue of valour, describing its good results, and saying what it is like.

Now if you have proofs to bring forward, bring them forward, and also talk about character; if you have no enthymemes, then fall back on character: after all, it [1418b1] is more fitting for a good man to display himself as an honest fellow than as a subtle reasoner. Refutative enthymemes are more popular than demonstrative ones: their logical cogency is more striking: the facts about two opposites always stand out clearly when the two are put side by side.

[5] The reply to the opponent is not a separate division of the speech but part of the arguments. Both in political speaking and when pleading in court, if you are the first speaker you should put your own arguments forward first, and then meet the arguments on the other side by refuting them and pulling them to pieces beforehand. If, however, the case for the other side contains a great variety of [10] arguments, begin with these, like Callistratus in the Messenian assembly, when he demolished the arguments likely to be used against him before giving his own. If you speak later, you must first, by means of refutation and counter-deduction, attempt some answer to your opponent’s speech, especially if his arguments have [15] been well received. For just as our minds refuse a favourable reception to a person against whom they are prejudiced, so they refuse it to a speech when they have been favourably impressed by the speech on the other side. You should, therefore, make room in the minds of the audience for your coming speech; and this will be done by getting your opponent’s speech out of the way. So attack that first—either the whole of it, or the most important, successful, or vulnerable points in it, and thus [20] inspire confidence in what you have to say yourself—

First, champion will I be of Goddesses. . .

Never, I ween, would Hera. . .38

where the speaker has attacked the silliest argument first. So much for the arguments.

With regard to the element of character: there are assertions which, if made [25] about yourself, may excite dislike, appear tedious, or expose you to the risk of contradiction; and other things which you cannot say about your opponent without seeming abusive or ill-bred. Put such remarks, therefore, into the mouth of some third person. This is what Isocrates does in the Philippus and in the Antidosis, and Archilochus in his satires. The latter represents the father himself as attacking his daughter in the lampoon

Think nought impossible at all,

[30] Nor swear that it shall not befall. . .39

and puts into the mouth of Charon the carpenter the lampoon which begins

Not for the wealth of Gyges. . . .40

So too Sophocles makes Haemon appeal to his father on behalf of Antigone as if it were others who were speaking.

Again, sometimes you should restate your enthymemes in the form of maxims; e.g. ‘Wise men will come to terms in the hour of success; for they will gain most if [35] they do’. Expressed as an enthymeme, this would run, ‘If we ought to come to terms when doing so will enable us to gain the greatest advantage, then we ought to come to terms in the hour of success’.

18 · Next as to interrogation. The best moment to employ this is when your opponent has so answered one question that the putting of just one more lands him [1419a1] in absurdity. Thus Pericles questioned Lampon about the way of celebrating the rites of the Saviour Goddess. Lampon declared that no uninitiated person could be told of them. Pericles then asked, ‘Do you know them yourself?’ ‘Yes’, answered Lampon. ‘Why,’ said Pericles, ‘how can that be, when you are uninitiated?’ [5]

Another good moment is when one premiss of an argument is obviously true, and you can see that your opponent must say ‘yes’ if you ask him whether the other is true. Having first got this answer about the other, do not go on to ask him about the obviously true one, but just state the conclusion yourself. Thus, when Meletus denied that Socrates believed in the existence of gods, Socrates proceeded to ask whether supernatural beings were not either children of the gods or in some way [10] divine? ‘Yes’, said Meletus, ‘Then’, replied Socrates, ‘is there any one who believes in the existence of children of the gods and yet not in the existence of the gods themselves?’41 Another good occasion is when you expect to show that your opponent is contradicting either his own words or what everyone believes. A fourth is when it is impossible for him to meet your question except by an evasive answer. If he answers ‘True, and yet not true’, or ‘Partly true and partly not true’, or ‘True in [15] one sense but not in another’, the audience thinks he is in difficulties, and applauds his discomfiture. In other cases do not attempt interrogation; for if your opponent gets in an objection, you are felt to have been worsted. You cannot ask a series of questions owing to the incapacity of the audience to follow them; and for this reason you should also make your enthymemes as compact as possible.

In replying, you must meet ambiguous questions by drawing reasonable [20] distinctions, not by a curt answer. In meeting questions that seem to involve you in a contradiction, offer the explanation at the outset of your answer, before your opponent asks the next question or draws his conclusion. For it is not difficult to see the drift of his argument in advance. This point, however, as well as the various means of refutation, may be regarded as known to us from the Topics.

When your opponent in drawing his conclusion puts it in the form of a [25] question, you must justify your answer. Thus when Sophocles was asked by Peisander whether he had, like the other members of the Board of Safety, voted for setting up the Four Hundred, he said ‘Yes’. ‘Why, did you not think it wicked?’— ‘Yes’.—‘So you committed this wickedness?’—‘Yes’, said Sophocles, ‘for [30] there was nothing better to do’. Again, the Lacedaemonian, when he was being examined on his conduct as ephor, was asked whether he thought that the other ephors had been justly put to death. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘Well then’, asked his opponent, ‘did not you propose the same measures as they?’—‘Yes’.—‘Well then, would not [35] you too be justly put to death?’—‘Not at all’, said he; ‘they were bribed to do it, and I did it from conviction’. Hence you should not ask any further questions after drawing the conclusion, nor put the conclusion itself in the form of a further [1419b1] question, unless there is a large balance of truth on your side.

As to jests. These are supposed to be of some service in controversy. Gorgias said that you should kill your opponents’ earnestness with jesting and their jesting [5] with earnestness; in which he was right. Jests have been classified in the Poetics. Some are becoming to a gentleman, others are not; see that you choose such as become you. Irony better befits a gentleman than buffoonery; the ironical man jokes to amuse himself, the buffoon to amuse other people.

[10] 19 · The epilogue has four parts. You must make the audience well-disposed towards yourself and ill-disposed towards your opponent, magnify or minimize the leading facts, excite the required state of emotion in your hearers, and refresh their memories.

[15] Having shown your own truthfulness and the untruthfulness of your opponent, the natural thing is to commend yourself, censure him, and hammer home your points. You must aim at one of two objects—you must make yourself out a good man and him a bad one either in yourselves or in relation to your hearers. The commonplaces by which this should be established have been stated.

[20] The facts having been proved, the natural thing to do next is to magnify or minimize their importance. The facts must be admitted before you can discuss how important they are; just as the body cannot grow except from something already present. The proper commonplaces to be used for this purpose of amplification and depreciation have already been set forth.

[25] Next, when the facts and their importance are clearly understood, you must excite your hearers’ emotions. These emotions are pity, indignation, anger, hatred, envy, emulation, pugnacity. The commonplaces to be used for these purposes also have been previously mentioned.

Finally you have to review what you have already said. Here you may properly do what some wrongly recommend doing in the introduction—repeat your points [30] frequently so as to make them easily understood. What you should do in your introduction is to state your subject, in order that the point to be judged may be quite plain; in the epilogue you should summarize the arguments by which your case has been proved. The first step in this reviewing process is to observe that you have done what you undertook to do. You must, then, state what you have said and why you have said it. Your method may be a comparison of your own case with that [35] of your opponent; and you may compare the ways you have both handled the same point or make your comparison direct: ‘My opponent said so-and-so on this point; I [1420a1] said so-and-so, and this is why I said it’. Or with modest irony, e.g. ‘He certainly said so-and-so, but I said so-and-so’. Or ‘How vain he would have been if he had proved all this instead of that!’ Or put it in the form of a question, ‘What has not been proved by me?’ or ‘What has my opponent proved?’ You may proceed, then, either in this way by setting point against point, or by following the natural order of the arguments as spoken, first giving your own, and then separately, if you wish [1420b1] those of your opponent.

For the conclusion, the disconnected style of language is appropriate, and will mark the difference between the oration and the peroration. ‘I have done. You have heard me. The facts are before you. I ask for your judgement’.