‘The proper (ordinary) name, and the special name of anything’ (οἰκεῖον, the thing's own or right name, its special designation, Victorius), ‘and the metaphor, are alone serviceable for the language of prose. And a sign of this is, that these alone are used by everybody (are of universal application); for everyone makes use of metaphors1, and the common’ (sanctioned by common usage) ‘and appropriate words in his ordinary conversation: and therefore it is clear that good composition will have a foreign air (an air of novelty, something unusual, above the flatness and monotony of ordinary, vulgar, talk: § 3), that (the art employed in it) may escape detection (pass unobserved, § 4), and that it will be clear and perspicuous, (in virtue of the κύρια and οἰκεῖα ὀνόματα). And in these, as we said (ἦν, in §§ 1, 3, 4, 5, 6), consists the excellence of the rhetorical speech2’. With the ‘foreign’, unusual character of good composition, comp. Demetr. περὶ ἑρμηνείας § 77, (Spengel, Rhet. Gr. III 280), τὴν δὲ λέξιν ἐν τῷ χαρακτῆρι τούτῳ περιττὴν εἶναι δεῖ καὶ ἐξηλλαγμένην καὶ ἀσυνήθη μᾶλλον. οὕτω γὰρ ἕξει τὸν ὄγκον, ἡ δὲ κυρία καὶ συνήθης σαφὴς μὲν, λειτὴ δὲ καὶ εὐκαταφρόνητος. κύριον ὄνομα is ὃ χρῶνται ἕκαστοι (Poet. XXI 5), opposed to γλῶττα ᾧ ἕτεροι: the common, usual, established, term, for expressing anything, opposed to the foreign and barbarous, or archaic and obsolete γλῶττα. The word derives its special meaning from the original signification of κύριος, ‘carrying authority’, ‘authoritative’; whence ‘authorised, established, fixed (by authority), settled’, as κύριος νόμος, δόγμα, κυρία ἡμέρα, ἐκκλησία, opposed to the irregular ἐκκλησία σύγκλητος, convoked at uncertain times on special occasions: and hence applied to the established, settled, regular name of a thing. See further on κύριον ὄνομα in note 2, Introd. pp. 282, 3. [On κύριος, compare notes on I 2. 4 and 3. 4.] οἰκεῖον ὄνομα expresses much the same thing by a different metaphor. It is something ‘of one's own’, appropriate, peculiar, characteristic, special. This is the Latin ‘nomen proprium’, of which Cicero says, de Or. III 37, 149, quae propria sunt, et certa (‘definite’) quasi vocabula rerum, paene una nata cum rebus ipsis (naturally belonging to them). From these are distinguished quae transferuntur (all metaphorical words) et quasi alieno in loco collocantur: aut iis quae novamus et facimus ipsi (all foreign innovations on the ordinary language, aliena, Cicero, γλῶτται, διπλᾶ ὀνόματα, πεποιημένα, &c.). Cicero and the Latins do not distinguish κύρια and οἰκεῖα. Yet, as Victorius has pointed out, he uses terms exactly corresponding to those of Aristotle: de Or. III 39, 159, quod omnes translatis et alienis magis quam propriis et suis. For even if we understand here suis of their own language (as I suppose we should), this is immediately followed by nam si res suum nomen et vocabulum proprium non habet; and in pro Caecina, c. 18 § 51, we have, res ut omnes suis certis ac propriis vocabulis nominentur. οἰκεῖος stands for κύριος, Metaph. Δ 29, 1024 a 32, of Antisthenes, εὐηθῶς ᾤετο μηθὲν ἀξιῶν λέγεσθαι πλὴν τῷ οἰκείῳ λόγῳ ἓν ἐφ᾽ ἑνός.
1 Schrader quotes Cic. Orator, c. 24 § 81, Translatione frequentissime sermo omnis utitur, non modo urbanorum, sed etiam rusticorum, siquidem est eorum gemmare vites, sitire agros, laetas esse segetes, luxuriosa frumenta.
2 ‘If the orator confines himself to these, his style may be novel and ornamental, yet without forcing itself unduly upon the attention, and perspicuous.’ Paraphr. in Introd.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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