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

---

---

‘Events should generally be recited as past and gone—except those which by being acted’ (represented as actually done, passing before the eyes, πρὸ ὀμμάτων, note on III 11. 2,) ‘may afford an opportunity for exciting either commiseration or indignation’. δείνωσις, and ἔλεος, οἶκτος, σχετλιασμός, are two ordinary ‘common topics’, (subordinate varieties of αὔξησις and μείωσις,) of appeals to the feelings in use amongst rhetoricians. See notes on II 21. 10, and 24. 4. Of Thrasymachus, and his use of these in his Rhetoric, Pl. Phaedr. 267 C, D, and of the early rhetoricians in general, Ib. 272 A, where βραχυλογία is joined with the other two.

‘An example of this is “the story of Alcinous,” (it is an example) because it is told (πεποίηται, composed, written) to Penelope in sixty verses’, i. e. the long story of Ulysses' wanderings, which occupies in the narration of it to the Phaeacians four whole books of the Odyssey, IX— XII, is condensed by Ulysses, when he repeats it to Penelope, Od. ψ́ [XXIII] 264—284, 310—343, into a summary of 55 verses—which here (with the characteristic inaccuracy of the ancient writers in calculations and descriptions of all kinds) are called in round numbers sixty—and thus furnishes a good example of the summary treatment required in an ordinary narrative. Vater, who explains all this in his note, understates the actual number by two. “Hi versus quinquaginta et tres numero rotundo recte (correctly enough for the occasion, I suppose) ἑξήκοντα ἔπη nominantur.”

‘And as Phayllus reduced (condensed: ἐποίησε, I suppose, must be understood from πεποίηται, ‘composed’) the Epic cycle: and Euripides' prologue to the Oeneus’. These three cases are appealed to as wellknown instances of concise summaries. The Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογος, in its original form, when given at length with all its details, became proverbial for “a long story.” Erasmus Chil. Ἀπόλογος Ἀλκίνου ἐπὶ τῶν φλυαρούντων καὶ μακρὸν ἀποτεινόντων λόγον, Suidas s.v. Plato, Rep. X 614 B, uses it in the same proverbial application. See Ast and Stallbaum ad locum. The Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογος appears in Aelian's list of ῥαψῳδίαι into which the Homeric poems were divided for recitation (Var. Hist. XIII 13, π. Ὁμήρον ἐπῶν καὶ ποιήσεως, quoted by Paley, Pref. to Hom. Il. p. xlvii). It is quoted again to supply an instance of ἀναγνώρισις, Poet. XVI.

Of Phayllus nothing whatever is known. It seems that this is the only place in which his name occurs; neither is it to be found in Smith's Biogr. Dict. We gather from the notice of him here, that whether poet or rhapsodist, he attempted to reduce the whole of the Epic Cycle into a brief summary. F. A. Wolf is so staggered by the overwhelming labour of such a task that he prefers to read Κύκλωπα, from a correction in one of the MSS; overlooking the fact that τὸν Κύκλωπα is not in point here; τὸν κύκλον, which gives a second instance of a summary, is.

The third example is the prologue to Euripides' Oeneus. Four lines and a half of this are to be found in Wagner's collection, Fragm. Eurip. p. 290, Oen. Fr. 1. and Dindorf, Eur. Fr. Oeneus. They are written with Euripidean compactness, and seem to justify their citation for this purpose.