by Aristotle
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 d
o 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’.
**TEXT: R. Kassel, Berlin, 1976
1Excised by Kassel.
2See Topics 101a30.
3Kassel regards this passage as a later addition to the text by Aristotle himself.
4Topics I 12.
5See Prior Analytics I 8; 12–14; 27.
6‘Evidence’ renders τεκμἡριoν which Aristotle connects, via τέκμαρ, with τέρας and πεπερασμένoς (‘completed’).
7Prior Analytics II 27.
8Kassel marks a lacuna.
9Excised by Kassel.
10Reading τoὑτω for τoὑτoν.
11Homer,Iliad I 255.
12Iliad II 160.
13Iliad II 298.
14Excised by Kassel.
15Pindar, Olympian I 1.
16Kassel marks this as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
17See Iliad IX 592–4.
18Odyssey XXII 347.
19ἀριστoκρατἰα from ἄριστoς (‘best’).
20Excised by Kassel.
21Excised by Kassel.
22See Plato, Menexenus 235D.
23Kassel marks this and the following paragraph as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
24Excised by Kassel.
25Excised by Kassel.
26Excised by Kassel.
27The text of this sentence is uncertain.
28Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
29Excised by Kassel.
30Evenus, frag. 8 West.
31Excised by Kassel.
32Kassel marks this passage as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
33Euripides, frag. 133 Nauck.
34Odyssey XV 400.
35Iliad XVIII 109.
36Iliad XXIII 108; Odyssey IV 183.
37Euripides, Orestes 234.
38Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
39Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
40Deleting the full stop after εἶναι.
41Euripides, frag. 183 Nauck.
42Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
43Antigone 456–7.
44Frag. 135 Diels-Kranz.
45The sense of this clause is obscure.
46Antigone 456, 458.
47Frag. 22a West.
1Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
2Iliad XVIII 109.
3Iliad I 356; IX 648.
4Iliad II 196; I 82.
5Excised by Kassel.
6Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
7Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
8Odyssev IX 504.
9lliad XXIV 54.
10Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
11Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
12Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
13Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
14Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
15See Iliad XI 542.
16Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself. The quoted line is Aeschylus, frag. 305 Nauck.
17Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
18Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
19Frag. 8 Nauck.
20The text is uncertain.
21Euripides, Medea 294–7.
22id., frag. 661 Nauck.
23id., Hecuba 864–5.
24Epicharmus, frag. 19 Diels-Kranz.
25Euripides, Troades 1051.
26Frag. adesp. 79 Nauck.
27Epicharmus, frag. 20 Diels-Kranz.
28Iliad XII 243.
29Iliad XVIII 309.
30Cf. Euripides, Hippolytus 989.
31Alcidamas, frag. 2.
32Frag, adesp. 80 Nauck.
33Euripides, frag. 396 Nauck.
34Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
35Frag, adesp. 81 Nauck.
36See Topics 106a13, etc.
37Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
38See Topics 111b5.
39Frag, adesp. 82 Nauck.
40Frag. 2 Nauck.
41Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
42Frag. 597 Nauck.
43Troades 990.
44Frag. 4 Nauck.
45Frag. 96 Snell.
46Omitting ὄρση.
47Frag. 9 Nauck.
48See Topics VIII 10.
49Prior Analytics II 27.
50Prior Analytics II 27.
51Topics I 10.
1Frag. 705 Nauck.
2Cleobulina, frag. 1 West.
3Euripides, Orestes 1587–8.
4Excised by Kassel.
5CF Iliad XX 164.
6Republic 469E, 488A, 601B.
7Frag, adesp. 83 Nauck.
8Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 727.
9Herodotus I i.
10Euripides, frag. 515 Nauck.
11This and the following quotations are from Isocrates’ Panegyricus.
12Aristophanes, frag. 649 Kock.
13Iliad IX 526.
14Frag. 20a Diels-Kranz.
15Odyssey XIV 213.
16Isocrates, Philippus 73.
17Isocrates, Philippus 10, 127
18Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 80.
19Odyssey XI 598; Iliad XIII 587; IV 126; XI 574; XV 542.
20Iliad XIII 799.
21Text uncertain.
22liiad IX 385, 388–90.
23Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
24Excised by Kassel.
25Iliad II 671–3.
26Text uncertain.
27Iliad I 1; Odyssey I 1.
28Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
29Sophocles, Antigone 223; Euripides, Iphigenia at Tauris 1162. Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
30Odyssey VI 327.
31Euripides, Hippolytus 612.
32Kassel marks a lacuna.
33II 30.
34Sophocles, Antigone 911–2.
35Odyssey XIX 361.
36Marked by Kassel as a later addition by Aristotle himself.
37Odyssey IV 204.
38“Euripides, Troades 969–71.
39Frag. 122 West.
40Frag. 19 West.
41Plato, Apology 27C.
RHETORIC TO ALEXANDER**
E. S. Forster
[1420a5] 1[Aristotle to Alexander. Salutation.
You write that you have often sent persons to me to urge upon me the project of noting down for you t
he principles of public speaking. It is not through indifference that I have put off doing so all this time, but because I was seeking how to write on [10] this subject with more exactitude than any one else who has concerned himself therewith. It was only natural that I should have such an intention; for just as you are desirous to have more splendid raiment than other men, so you ought to strive to attain to a more glorious skill in speech than other men possess. For it is far more [15] honourable and kingly to have the mind well ordered than to see the bodily form well arrayed. For it is absurd that one who in deeds excels all men should in words manifestly fall short of ordinary mortals, especially when he knows full well that, whereas among those whose political constitution is democracy the final appeal on [20] all matters is to the law, among those who are under kingly rule the appeal is to reason. Just as their public law always directs self-governing communities along the best path, so might reason, as embodied in you, guide along the path of their [25] advantage those who are subject to your rule. For law can be simply described as reason defined by the common consent of the community, regulating action of every kind. Furthermore, I think that you are well aware that we praise as good men and true those who employ reason and prefer always to act under its guidance, while we [1420b5] abhor as savage and brutish those who act in any matter without reason. It is for this reason too that we punish wicked men when they show their wickedness and admire the good when they display their excellence. Thus we have discovered a means of preventing possible wickedness, while we enjoy the benefits of existing goodness. In [10] this way we escape annoyances which threaten us and secure advantages which we did not previously possess. Just as a life free from pain is an object of desire, so is wise reason an object of contentment.
Again, you must realize that the model set before most men is either the law or else your life and your reason. In order therefore that you may excel all Greeks and [15] barbarians, you must exert yourself to the utmost, so that those who spend their lives in these pursuits, using the elements of excellence in them to produce a beauteous copy of the model thus set before them, may not direct themselves towards ignoble ends but make it their desire to partake in the same excellence.
Moreover, deliberation is the most divine of human activities. Therefore you [20] must not waste your energies on subordinate and worthless pursuits, but desire to drink at the very fountain-head of good counsel. For what man of sense could doubt that, while it is a sign of foolishness to act without deliberation, it is the mark of true [25] culture to accomplish under the guidance of reason anything that reason commands? It is plain to see that all the greatest politicians of Greece resort to reason first and then to deeds, and further that those who have won the highest repute among the barbarians have employed reason before action, knowing full well that the consideration of expediency by the light of reason is a very citadel of [1421a1] salvation. It is reason which we must regard as an impregnable citadel, and not look on any fortress built by man as a sure safeguard.