E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

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This quasi-sensation, the φαντασία, is again employed to explain the pleasure we derive from honour and fair fame, the favourable opinion of others. These are pleasant because every one who possesses them always acquires an impression or fancy that he must be such an one as is the good (such as ὁ σπουδαῖος, to whom alone such things are really due), and a φαντασία, being a form of sensation, always carries pleasure with it, § 6; and this pleasure is still greater (the φαντασία becomes still more vivid, and its effect greater) when he believes that those who say so (ὅτι τοιοῦτός ἐστιν οἷος ὁ σπουδαῖος) are likely to be right in what they say. Such (οἱ δοκοῦντες ἀληθεύειν) are near neighbours who know a man better, and are therefore better judges, than those (friends) that live at a distance; intimates (familiar, habitual associates, συνήθεις, note on I 1. 2, 10. 18), and fellow-citizens rather than strangers afar off, (who only know him by report); contemporaries rather than posterity (to whom the same reason applies); wise men rather than fools; many rather than few. This is because (γάρ; i. e. the preference, expressed by the μᾶλλον in each case, is due to the fact that) those (first) mentioned are more likely to arrive at the truth than the opposite; for when a man has a great contempt for any one, as children and beasts, he cares not at all for their respect and good opinion, at least on account of the opinion itself, but, if at all, for something else.

τῶν ἡδίστων] Note on § 4, supra.

τῶν ἄπωθεν] The fact that words (substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns, Διόθεν οὐρανόθεν οἰκόθεν, ἀλλόθεν παντόθεν, ἔντοσθεν ἔξωθεν πρόσωθεν ἔσωθεν, ὅθεν σέθεν ἐμέθεν) with the old genitive termination -θεν, are often substituted for the primitive forms, particularly with the definite article as οἱ αὐτόθεν (see many instances of this idiom in Index to Arnold's Thucyd. s. v.), οἱ ἔξωθεν, οἱ ἄνωθεν, κάτωθεν, οἰκόθεν, ἐκεῖθεν, and such like, in phrases where the termination seems to have entirely lost its force, has been long known and noticed: see examples in Wunder's note, Antig. 519, and Lobeck, Phryn. p. 128: but the explanation of this usage, so far as I know, is still wanting. It is to be found in an observation of Hermann, on Soph. Electr. 888, ἐσχάτης δ᾽ ὁρῷ πυρᾶς νεωρῆ βόστρυχον, and 882, ὁρῶ κολώνης ἐξ ἄκρας νεοῤῥύτους πηγὰς γάλακτος, ‘solent Graeci spatia non a vidente et audiente ad id quod ille videt et audit, sed ab isto ad hunc metiri’: they reverse our order of proceeding; we measure from ourselves to the object, the Greeks from the object to themselves. The application of this simple fact to all the cases resembling those above given solves the whole mystery of the idiom, which, as Lobeck says, olim vel barbatos magistros obstupefecit. (Lobeck is speaking merely of the knowledge of the fact; he himself assigns no reason.) Rhet. I 15. 16, οἱ δ᾽ ἄπωθεν, II 6. 23, τοὺς ἄπωθεν. In Eurip. Ion 585—6 (Dind.) both points of view are taken, οὐ ταὐτὸν εἶδος φαίνεται τῶν πραγμάτων πρόσωθεν ὄντων ἐγγύθεν θ᾽ ὁρωμένων, unless, as is at least equally probable, the interpretation of ἐγγύθεν ὁρωμένων be, ‘seen’ not ‘from a near point’ where we are, but ‘seen’, the sight of them proceeding, from a near point, where they are. Arist. Pol. VII (VI) 4, 1319 a 8, gives an excellent illustration of this difference between the Greek and our point of view: Aristotle is speaking of some restrictions on the occupation of land: ἢ τὸ ὅλως μὴ ἐξεῖναι κεκτῆσθαι πλείω γῆν μέτρου τινὸς ἢ ἀπὸ τινὸς τόπου πρὸς τὸ ἀστὺ καὶ τὴν πόλιν—or, as we say, ‘within a certain distance from the city’. Plat. Theaet. 165 D, ἐγγύθεν ἐπίστασθαι πόῤῥωθεν δὲ μή (not, as in English, at a distance, but from a distance, as seen from a distance), Rep. VII 523 B, τὰ πόῤῥωθεν φαινόμενα, Ib. C, εἴτ᾽ ἐγγύθεν προσπίπτουσα εἴτε πόῤῥωθεν. Ib. 514 B, εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν, φῶς πυρὸς ἄνωθεν καὶ πόῤῥωθεν καόμενον ὄπισθεν αὐτῶν. Soph. Oed. Col. 505, τοὐκεῖθεν ἄλσους, Philoct. 27, δοκῶ γὰρ οἷον εἶπας ἄντρον εἰσορᾶν. Ὀδ. ἄνωθεν, ἢ κατωθεν; οὐ γὰρ ἐννοῶ. Eur. Iph. T. 41, σφάγια δ᾽ ἄλλοισιν ἄῤῥητ̓ ἔσωθεν τῶνδ̓ ἀνακτόρων θεᾶς. Tyrtaeus, Fragm. 8. 38, 9. 12 (Bergk, Fr. Lyr. Gr.), ἐγγύθεν ἱστάμενοι. Examples might be multiplied indefinitely.

As regards ἄπωθεν and ἀπόθεν, the former is condemned as formed on a false analogy from an imaginary ἀπω by Göttling on Ar. Pol. II 1, p. 311.—See Lobeck on Phryn. p. 8—10, who shews that both forms are good. The MSS vary in the prose form, but ἄπωθεν is found in verse (Eurip. and Aristoph.), which guarantees its existence.