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

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Persons likely to escape detection are those whose personal and moral or mental character is opposite (this is the ‘opposition’ of ‘contrariety’, the extremes under the same genus, as black and white in colour, bitter and sweet in taste, hot and cold in touch or feeling, and such like) to that which the charge necessarily implies; as when a man of feeble bodily frame is charged with ‘assault and battery’, or a poor and ugly man with adultery.

The ἀσθενής charged with αἰκία was a stock example of the τόπος of τὸ εἰκός in the early rhetorical treatises. This τόπος was the staple of Corax's τέχνη, Rhet. II 24. 11; and the case of the ‘weak man’ is quoted by Aristotle as one of the examples there used. The application of the argument of ‘probability’ to the treatment of it, shewing how Rhetoric τἀναντία συλλογίζεται, is there illustrated. It appears again in Rhet. ad Alex. 36 (37). 6, and Pl. Phaedrus 273 B, as an extract from Tisias' τέχνη, where the τόπος of τὸ εἰκός is represented as somewhat differently treated. Victorius cites Quint. V 10. 26, speaking of the same mode of inference; the probability namely of the conformity of a man's actions to his bodily condition and ordinary character. These are ‘personal’ topics of argument, argumenta a persona, § 23, inferences from personal conditions, qualities, habits, employed to determine the probability of a certain action, as proceeding from him: one of these is, habitus corporis: ducitur enim frequenter in argumentum species libidinis, robur petulantiae; his contraria in diversum—the two cases given by Aristotle.

ὁ πένης καὶ ὁ αἰσχρός, the definite article marking the genus, the member of a certain class. See note on I 7. 13 εἰ μὴ ἦν ὁ πράξων, p. 130. In this and the next topic there is a change from persons to things, which are resumed as the objects of analysis in § 32.

καὶ τὰ λίαν ἐν φανερῷ] ‘And things, i. e. acts, that are excessively conspicuous, open to observation and under people's eyes’. τὰ ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς, ‘things in sight’, qui sautent aux yeux. Polit. VII (VI) 4, 1319 b 18, ὀλίγον μὲν γὰρ πονηρὸν παρορᾶται, πολὺ δὲ γινόμενον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς μᾶλλόν ἐστιν. Such glaring acts are not guarded against (ἀφύλακτα here occurs in a different sense to ἀφύλακτοι φίλοι in § 4: that is ‘unguarded’, from φυλάττεσθαι, the direct passive; this is ‘not guarded against’, the passive of (the middle) φυλάττεσθαί τι ‘to guard oneself against anything’, comp. §§ 6 and 21), no precautions are taken to prevent them, ‘because no one would suppose that any one was likely to attempt them’. Supply to complete the sense τιν᾽ ἂν ποιῆσαι αὐτά, or ἐπιχειρῆσαι αὐτοῖς. This is a return to the original topic of ἃ δύνανται πράττειν ‘possible actions’. τὰ λίαν ἐν φανερῷ are therefore acts which are likely ‘to be carried into effect’—not, ‘to escape detection’, λαθητικά from the preceding clause, which is in some sort parenthetical.