The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  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 puttin
g 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.