[14]
As for epithets, they may be applied from what
is vile or disgraceful, for instance, “the matricide,” or
from what is more honorable, for instance, “the avenger of his
father.”1
When the winner in a mule-race offered Simonides a small sum, he refused to
write an ode, as if he thought it beneath him to write on half-asses; but when
he gave him a sufficient amount, he wrote, “
Hail, daughters of storm-footed steeds!2
” and yet they were also the daughters of asses. Further, the use of
diminutives amounts to the same.
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1 Eur. Orest. 1588. In the preceding line Menelaus accuses Orestes as a matricide and ready to heap murder on murder, to which Orestes replies, you should rather call me the avenger of my father Agamemnon, who had been murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra, the mother of Orestes. “Matricide” and “avenger of his father” show the good and bad sides of the deed of Orestes.
2 Frag. 7 （P.L.G. 3, p. 39O）. The winner of the mule race was Anaxilaus of Rhegium.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Aristotle. Cambridge and London. Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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