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It follows from this that of the three universal kinds of persuasion αὔξησις, or amplificatio, is most appropriate to the epideictic branch of Rhetoric (and the opposite μείωσις, vituperatio, to the censorious critical extenuatory kind of it1): for in this the actions are taken for granted (as admitted), and therefore all that remains to be done is to invest them with magnitude (importance) and honour (dignity, glory). To the deliberative orator examples are most serviceable; because people are apt to draw inferences, to form a judgment or decision upon the future from the past by a sort of presentiment or anticipation. The enthymeme, direct logical argument, is most to the purpose in judicial oratory: in that there is most room for the application of direct proof, the tracing of cause and effect, and demonstration by deductive process, in clearing up the obscurity of ‘past facts’, which are the objects of forensic oratory, c. 3. 2. The substance of this is repeated in III 17. 3—5.

τῶν κοινῶν εἰδῶν] This seems to be a division, for the nonce, of rhetorical πίστεις as a γένος, into three εἴδη or species, each specially adapted to one of the three branches of Rhetoric. The division has no pretension to a regular scientific character: αὔξησις is not a logical kind of argument at all, and the three members of the division are not coordinate.

καταμαντευόμενοι] μαντεύεσθαι and ἀπομαντεύεσθαι, both of them not unusual in Plato and Aristotle, are the usual terms by which this kind of ‘divination’, the foreboding presentiment, dark undefined anticipation of the future is expressed. It occurs again (in the simple form) I 13. 2, III 17. 10, Eth. N. I 3, 1095 b 26, of a suspicion, or hypothesis, Ib. VI 13, 1144 b 25. Examples are to be found in Stallbaum's note on Rep. I 349 A, and many more in Ast's Lex. sub vv.—καταμαντεύεσθαι, besides this place [the only passage where it is used by Aristotle], is found in pseudo-Dem. ἐπιτάφ. p. 1400. 2, Polyb. II 22. 7, in Longinus and Athenaeus.

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