Aristotle Rhetoric 1.15

John Henry Freese (Translator)

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Rhetoric. Aristotle. John Henry Freese (Translator). London. 1926.

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Current edition Perseus

The "Art" of Rhetoric (English) (Aristotle. The "Art" of Rhetoric. Freese, John Henry, translator. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1926 (printing).)

Editions (1)
Ῥητορική Perseus (Aristotle. Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica. Ross, William David, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1959 (printing).) — 1.15 focus
Translations (1)
Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric (Theodore Alois Buckley) (OCR draft) Experimental (Theodore Alois Buckley's English translation, first published in 1850 and represented from the Henry G. Bohn 1857 printing; corrected against a second OCR of the same printing.) — 1 focus

Notes on the current edition

Rhetoric

1. Although the use of inartificial proofs is almost entirely confined to forensic oratory, they may be used in deliberative oratory.
2. The first line is quoted 1.13.2. The second differs somewhat from Soph. Ant. 458 , where the passage runs, τούτων ἐγὼ οὐκ ἔμελλον, ἀνδρὸς οὐδενὸς φρόνημα δείσασʼ, ἐν θεοῖσι τὴν δίκην δώσειν ( I was not likely, through fear of the pride of any man, to incur the penalty for violating these statutes at the bar of heaven).
3. Which is the administration of real justice, not that which appears to the legislator to be such and is embodied in legal enactments.
4. Cp.14.7 above.
5. Αἴας δ’ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος ἄγεν δυοκαίδεκα νῆας, στῆσε δ’ ἄγων ἵν’ Ἀθηναίων ἵσταντο φάλαγγες, Hom. Il. 2.557-558 . The Lacedaemonians, acting as arbitrators between Athens and Megara, who were fighting for the possession of Salamis , decided in favor of Athens on the strength of the two lines in the Iliad, which were taken to show that Salamis belonged to Athens . It was reported that the second line was the invention of Solon.
6. It is not known to what this refers.
7. (Frag. 22, P.L.G. 2, where the line runs, εἰπέμεναι Κριτίᾳ ξανθότριχι πατρὸς ἀκούειν). The Critias attacked by Cleophon is the well-known oligarch and grandson of the first. Cleophon argued from the phrase bid him listen to his father that his ancestor was a disobedient son and a degenerate. In reality, Solon had a high opinion of the family, and probably meant to praise the father.
8. Hdt. 7.141 .
9. They have not been mentioned before. Spengel would therefore omit εἴρηται, and remove the commas: proverbs are, as it were, evidence.
10. From the Cypria of Stasinus, of the epic cycle.
11. Opponent of Demosthenes. Chares was an Athenian commander, both naval and military. Nothing is known of Archibius. Plato is probably the comic poet.
12. Or, witnesses wholly unconnected with the case.
13. In Attic legal procedure, the challenge ( πρόκλησις) to take an oath on the question at issue was one method of deciding it. One party offered the other something to swear by ( δίδωσι ὅρκον), this being the real meaning of ὅρκος, and the other party either accepted ( λαμβάνει, δέχεται) it or refused it. Both parties, of their own accord, might propose to take the oath.
14. There are three reasons for not tendering the oath: (1) men are always ready to perjure themselves, if they are likely to benefit by doing so; (2) if your adversary takes the oath, he will decline to pay, trusting that he will be acquitted, whereas, if he is not on his oath, he will probably be condemned; (3) there is less risk in leaving the decision to the dicasts, who can be trusted.
15. Born at Colophon in Asia Minor , he migrated to Elea in Italy , where he founded the Eleatic school of philosophy.
16. The defence in such cases is: (1) that the previous oath was taken as a result of fraud or compulsion; (2) that you did not mean what you said.