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

---

---

‘But in all these cases, the merit (τὸ εὖ) consists in the proper application of the term (i. e. the appropriateness of it to the thing described), whether by (expressed in) ambiguity (the play on words) or metaphor’. ἐνέγκῃ, sc. ὁ λέγων: and comp. III 4. 2, οἰστέαι...αἱ μεταφοραί.

‘For instance “Intolerable Tolerable”—the contradiction lies only in the ambiguity; but this is appropriate if the owner of the name is a bore (or naisance)’. Read with Bekker and Spengel Ἀνάσχετος οὐκ ἀνάσχετος [not ἄσχετος, with Bekker's Oxford ed. of 1837]. The first is a proper name; as ‘Tolerable’ must be supposed to be in the English version. ὁμωνυμίαν ἀπέφησεν ‘the speaker contradicts the ambiguous word only’; not the thing itself: the application, not the fact. These contradictory, or privative, epithets of proper names—comp. the privative epithets of metaphors, III 6. 7 and note—may be exemplified in our own language by ruthless Ruth, helpless Helps, fearless Phear, inconstant Constance, unpleasant Pleasance, ignoble Noble, Hotspur cold-spur, and the like. Significant Greek names are to be found in II 23. 29, III 15. 8; Latin in Quint. VI 3. 55. Others are Ἄνεκτος (which is precisely parallel to Ἀνάσχετος in our text) and Νικήτης, Eustath. ad Hom. Il. A p. 156—but in fact most Greek proper names are significant in themselves, though they may have lost the appropriateness of their personal application.

‘And, “never make thyself as a stranger, more of a stranger than is required of thee”, “not more than thou art bound to do”; the same thing (in different words)’. As the words are not different, but the same, Vahlen¹ very reasonably proposes to omit σε δεῖ in the Iambic verse, οὐκ ἂν γένοιο μᾶλλον ἢ ξένος ξένος ‘more strange than a stranger’; so that οὐ μᾶλλον ἤ σε δεῖ is now differently expressed, and becomes what it is said to be, an explanation; or the expression of the same thing in different words. Victorius thinks that one of the two may mean ‘host’ or ‘guest’; but as ξένος is not repeated in the alternative, Vahlen's explanation seems more probable. ‘And, (in a third way) “a stranger must not be always a stranger” (or, strange): for that too is again of a different kind, or form’, (foreign, alien, to the two others: ἀλλότριον belonging to something or somebody else; opposed to οἰκεῖον).

‘Of the same kind is also that so highly praised verse of Anaxandrides, “A noble thing it is to die ere doing aught worthy of death”: for this is the same as saying, “It is worthy to die when one is not worthy to die”, or “it is a worthy thing to die when one does not deserve death”, or “doing nothing worthy of death”’. Anaxandrides is quoted III 10. 7 (see note) and infra 12. 3.