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

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‘An example of the simile is’ (lit. Similes are a thing like that simile which), ‘that which Androtion (directed, discharged) against Idrieus, that he was like the curs when they are let loose (untied); for they fly at you and bite, and so Idrieus was vicious (or savage) when he was freed from his chains’.

Androtion was an Athenian orator, whose name occurs coupled with many opprobrious epithets not only in the speech delivered against him (Or. 22), but also in that against Timocrates in which he is very frequently mentioned. He was sent on an embassy with Melanopus and Glaucetes, Dem. c. Timocr. §§ 12, 13, alibi, to Mausolus prince of Caria 377—351 B. C. Idrieus was his brother, and Androtion may have met him at his court, and there had the encounter with him which ended in the discharge of his simile. The Scholiast on Isocr. p. 4 b 27 (ap. Sauppe, Ind. Nom. ad Or. Att.) tells us that he was a pupil of Isocrates, and the writer of the ‘Atthis’, “a work on the history of Attica”, Biographical Dictionary—which settles the question raised in that Dictionary about the identity of the orator and author—and the Scholiast adds that he was also the defendant in Demosthenes' speech contra Androtionem.

Idrieus was a prince of Caria who succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother Mausolus in 351 B.C. See Mr Bunbury's Art. in Biogr. Dict. He is mentioned by Isocrates, Philippus § 103, as εὐπορώτατον τῶν νῦν περὶ τὴν ἤπειρον. This speech was published in 346 B.C. (Clinton), and therefore subsequent to his accession. It may be presumed that the imprisonment with which Androtion taunts him was due to his brother, and of course prior to his accession to the throne. He is referred to again without his name by Demosth. in the speech de Pace, § 25,— this was also delivered in 346 B.C. (Clinton F.H. II 360)—as ‘the Carian’, who had been permitted to take possession of the islands of Chios, Cos, and Rhodes. [A. Schaefer, Dem. u. s. Zeit, I 351, 440.]

‘And Theodamas' comparison of Archidamus to Euxenus—minus his geometry, by proportion: for Euxenus also will be Archidamus plus geometry’ (a geometrical Archidamus). Nothing is known of the three persons here mentioned. Theodamas compares Archidamus to Euxenus without his geometry; and so—by the rule of proportion, i. e. in the same proportion—will Euxenus be to Archidamus with geometry: i. e. equal, both being alike rascals. The proportion is that of equality. With ἐν τῷ ἀνάλογον supply λόγῳ, ‘in the ratio, or relation, of proportion’. In this we are referred to the ‘proportional metaphor’, the last and most approved of the four kinds described in Poet. XXI 7—16. Comp. Rhet. III 10. 7, where the proportional met. is illustrated at length. Victorius, who agrees in this explanation, supplies a parallel case from Diogenes Laertius, Polemo, IV 3.7, ἔλεγεν οὖν τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον ἐπικὸν εἶναι Σοφοκλέα, τὸν δὲ Σοφοκλέα Ὅμηρον τραγικόν. Theodamas has taken this common mode of comparison and applied it to the equal worthlessness of Archidamus and Euxenus. It was probably a standing joke at Athens. The case may have been something of this kind:—Two contemptible fellows, one of them priding himself upon a little knowledge of geometry, are comparing or disputing their respective merits: “you needn't say any more about the matter,” says Theodamas, a bystander, who was listening much amused to the discussion, “you are both equal, Arcades ambo, a pair of fools, only Euxenus is a geometrical Archidamus, Archidamus an ungeometrical Euxenus.”

‘And that in Plato's Republic (V 469 D), that “the spoilers of the dead are like curs (κυνιδίοις, contemptuous, diminutive: an improvement on Plato, who merely says κυνῶν), which bite the stones (thrown at them) without attacking, setting upon, the thrower”’. Aristotle, like Bacon, quoting from memory, and assuming a knowledge of the original in his readers, has left out the explanatory part of the illustration which is supplied by Plato. Victorius cites Pacuvius, ap. Nonium, in Armorum Iudicio, Nam canis, quando est percussa lapide, non tam illum appetit, Qui se icit, quam illum eum lapidem, qui ipsa icta est, petit.

καὶ ἡ εἰς τὸν δῆμον] This, which originally stood in MSS Q, Y^{b}, Z^{b}, and the early editions, καὶ ὡς ὁ Δημοσθένης εἰς τὸν δῆμον, was first corrected by Victorius from MS A^{c}.

‘And that (simile, understand εἰκών,) (directed) against democracy, that it is like a ship-owner (or ship's captain) strong but slightly deaf’. This again is a mere allusion to or reminder of, ‘what every one must surely remember’, Plato's celebrated illustration (Rep. VI 488 A) of the evils of democracy by the comparison of it to the undisciplined, untrained, turbulent, anarchical, crew of a ship; each of them, though utterly without qualification for the charge, ready to dispute with the captain the direction and control of the vessel. The passage is referred to by Cicero, de Off. I 25. The words quoted by Ar., few as they are, are not correct: he makes the ναύκληρος the representative of the δῆμος, the whole state; in Plato the ναύκληρος—the ship-owner, who in this case is captain, and steers his own vessel—is the governor, or governors, of the unruly mob of citizens.

‘And that (sc. εἰκών, as before) applied to the poet's measures, that they are like the bloom of youth without beauty (actual beauty of features): for they, when their bloom has faded (worn off, when they have lost it), and the other (the poet's measures) when they are broken up, seem utterly unlike (their former selves)’. This also comes from Rep. X 601 B, ἔοικε (τὰ τῶν ποιητῶν) τοῖς τῶν ὡραίων προσώποις, καλῶν δὲ μὴ, οἷα γίγνεται ἰδεῖν ὅταν αὐτὰ τὸ ἄνθος προλίπῃ. All poetry is imitation of natural objects, which are invested with certain ‘colours’ by the poetical art, in which the entire interest and beauty of poetry lie. These colours resemble the bloom on a youthful face, which is merely superficial, when there is nothing corresponding underneath, no beauty of feature or solid attraction. The imitation of the objects themselves may be bad and incorrect, as the face itself may be plain; so that when the bloom, the poetical colours, the graces and ornaments, and especially the numbers, are removed, there remains only a substratum, which may be worthless, of the direct imitation. Horace, Sat. I 4.60, has pronounced, as is wellknown, a directly contrary opinion, at least in respect of the better kind of poetry. After applying to Lucilius' verses much the same criticism as Plato does to poetry in general, he adds, Non, ut si solvas ‘postquam discordia tetra Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit,’ Invenias etiam disiecti membra po<*>tae: from Ennius. Compare Isocr. Evag. § 11, ἢν γάρ τις τῶν ποιημάτων τῶν εὐδοκιμούντων τὰ μὲν ὀνόματα καὶ τὰς διανοίας καταλίπῃ, τὸ δὲ μέτρον διαλύσῃ, φανήσεται πολὺ καταδεέστερα τῆς δόξης ἧς νῦν ἔχομεν περὶ αὐτῶν. Also Rhet. III 1. 9.

With the expression comp. Eth. N. X 4, 1174 b ult. οἷον τοῖς ἀκμαίοις ἡ ὥρα, pleasure is like the bloom on the ἐνέργεια, the realized, active energy: illustrated by Zell's note ad loc., from Valerius Paterculus [II 29. 2], of Pompeius, forma excellens, non ea qua flos commendatur aetatis, sed ex dignitate constanti. Youthful bloom, distinct from, and independent of, personal beauty.

‘And that of Pericles against the Samians, that they are like babies (παιδίοις, ‘little children’) which cry whilst they take the morsel (or sop) offered them’. ψῶμος recurs, under the form ψώμισμα, in the third simile following, where it is explained. The comparison made here by Pericles of the Samians to babies, which take their food, but cry while they take it, refers to their conduct after the final reduction of the island by Pericles in 440 B. C., Thuc. I 115—117, after an eight months' contest, ἐξεπολιορκήθησαν ἐνάτῳ μηνί. The sop, i.e. the nourishment, benefits, favours, they had received—from the Athenian point of view—consisted, thinks Schrader, in their freedom, and liberation from the yoke of the Persians and the oligarchs. They nevertheless, though they accepted them, most ungratefully and unreasonably grumbled. Buhle refers to Diodor. XII 27.

‘And (of Pericles again) against the Boeotians; that they are like their own holm-oaks: for as these are cut down (knocked about or down) by themselves’ (dashed one against another by the wind; so Victorius; or ‘cut down’, split by wedges and mallets made of their own wood, like the “struck eagle” of Aeschylus, Waller, and Byron), ‘so are the Boeotians, by their civil (or domestic) contentions’.

‘And Demosthenes compared the people’ (of the Athenian, or some other, democracy: understand εἴκασεν, which is expressed in the next example) ‘to the sea-sick passengers in the vessels at sea’. Their squeamishness, fastidiousness, nausea with the existing state of things, constant desire of change, is produced by the perpetual agitation, fluctuation of their political condition and circumstances, the tumultuous waves of the stormy sea of civil commotion: they are sick of the present, and long for change. The Demosthenes here mentioned is, by general consent, not the Orator; more probably the Athenian general of the Peloponnesian war in Thucydides [sine causa, says Spengel].

The very remarkable fact that the name of the great Orator is in all probability only once mentioned by Aristotle—II 24. 8, where Demades' condemnation of his policy is quoted—though the pair were living together for many years in the same city—is parallel to a similar silence of Bacon as to his great contemporary Shakespeare; but still more remarkable in the former case, from the constant occasion offered to the writer on Rhetoric of illustrating his rules and topics from the practice of the first of speakers. It has been already noticed in the Introduction, pp. 45, 46, and notes, where the cases of supposed mention of or allusion to Demosthenes are collected and examined. And this omission will appear still more remarkable when it is contrasted with the nine closely printed columns of references and citations in Spengel's Index Auctorum ad Rhetores Graecos III 312, seq.

‘And Democrates' comparison of the “orators” to the nurses who themselves swallow the morsel (which they have previously chewed and softened for the baby), and smear (or slobber over) the babies with the spittle (that they have used in the process)’. This is the case of the lawyer and the oyster in the caricature; the legal practitioner swallows the savoury contents, and presents the rival claimants with a shell apiece; so the public speakers swallow the substantial profit themselves, and besmear the audience with their unctuous flattery. Comp. Ar. Eq. 715, (Κλέων) ἐπίσταμαι γὰρ αὐτὸν (τὸν δῆμον, represented as a toothless old man that must be fed like a baby) οἷς ψωμίζεται: (Ἀλλαντοπώλης) κᾆθ᾽ ὥσπερ αἱ τιτθαί γε σιτίζεις κακῶς: μασώμενος γὰρ τῷ μὲν ὀλίγον ἐντίθης, αὐτὸς δ̓ ἐκείνου τριπλάσιον κατέσπακας. Democrates, the author of this saying, seems, from a passage of Plutarch (in Vict.), Pol. Praec. 803 D, to have been notorious for biting and offensive sayings, τὸ λυποῦν ἀκαίρως τοὺς ἀκούοντας: two of them are quoted. Two persons of this name are mentioned by the Orators. One, son of Sophilus, of the deme of Phlya, in a list of the ambassadors sent to Philip in 347 B.C., after the fall of Olynthus (in the spurious ψήφισμα, Demosth. de Cor. § 29, see Dissen), and again in another questionable ψήφισμα, Dem. de Cor. § 187, purporting to be Demosthenes' decree for the appointment of ambassadors to Thebes and the other Greek states, to negotiate an alliance, and arrest the progress of Philip, June, B. C. 338, Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, sub anno. The other, of Aphidna, Isaeus, περὶ τοῦ Φιλοκτήμονος κλήρου, § 22, and Aesch. de F. L. § 17. Nothing more seems to be known of either of them. The two are confounded in the article of Smith's Biographical Dictionary, Democrates No. 1; and the saying here quoted is styled “a fragment of one of his orations.”

‘And Antisthenes' comparison of Cephisodotus the thin (slight, lean) to frankincense, because he gives pleasure by wasting away’. ὁ λεπτός seems to have been a sobriquet of Cephisodotus; and may also indicate a second point of resemblance between him and frankincense, namely his slight, vaporous, unsubstantial nature. Buhle quotes in illustration the German proverb, die Juden nehmen sich nirgend besser aus als am Galgen. Ὅτι ἀπολλύμενος εὐφραίνει means that that was the only enjoyment that was to be got out of him: all the rest of him, his properties, qualities, character, was anything but enjoyable, bad and vicious. On λεπτός contrasted with παχύς, and men distinguished by this personal peculiarity, Athenaeus has three chapters, XII 75—77, p. 551, seq.

Antisthenes is most likely the Cynic philosopher, who outlived the battle of Leuctra, 371 B. C., Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, sub anno 365, and was therefore contemporary with Cephisodotus. He, like his successor, Diogenes, had a habit of bitter sarcasm, of which the saying here quoted is a fair specimen. It is truly a bitter jest. See the account of him in Cotton's art. in Smith's Biogr. Dict. Vol. I, p. 208 a. A long list of his sayings is given by Diog. Laert. in his life, VI I, some of which are caustic enough. Mr. Grote, in his account of Antisthenes, Plato, III, p. 504, seq., has not specified this cynical feature in his character. [Blass, die Attische Beredsamkeit, II 304—316.]

Cephisodotus, ἐκ Κεραμέων. Distinguished by Sauppe (Ind. Nom. ad Or. Att. III, p. 77) from the general of that name, mentioned by Demosth. c. Aristocr. §§ 153, 156, 163, 167, as sent (about 359 B. C.) to cooperate with Charidemus in the Hellespont and Chersonese, and elsewhere; by Aesch. c. Ctes. § 51, seq.; by Suidas and Harpocration. Cephis. ἐκ Κεραμέων, the orator, is referred to in Dem. c. Lept. § 146, together with Leodamas, Aristophon, and Deinias, as one of the best speakers of the time; and again, § 150, οὗτός ἐστιν οὐδενὸς ἧττον τῶν λεγόντων δεινὸς εἰπεῖν. The Cephisodotus who was sent (with Callias, see note on III 2. 10) to the congress at Sparta in B. C. 371, Xen. Hellen. VI 3. 2, VII 1. 12, seems more likely to have been the orator than the general; and so Schneider pronounces, ad Xen. l. c. Three more bons mots of the same are quoted, infra III 10. 7. In Mr Elder's art. Cephisodotus No. 2, Biog. Dict., the two are identified. [Arnold Schaefer distinguishes them, Dem. u. s. Zeit III 2. 155—6.]

‘For all these may be expressed either as similes or as metaphors: and therefore, plainly, all those that are popular when expressed as metaphors, will be also (if required) similes, and similes metaphors without the descriptive details (the detailed explanation)’. “A simile is a metaphor writ large, with the details filled in; this is λόγος.” Introd. p. 290.