The things mentioned in this and the following section all of them designate what is considered good because men like to do it. τὰ εὐκατέργαστα] ‘things easily effected, or easy achievements’, are considered as good, because they are possible, by the rule §§ 26, 27; they belong to the second class of things ‘possible’, such as are ‘easy’. κατώρθωσαν] aor. ‘ever succeeded in’; or indicating the notion of ‘habit’ which the verb ὀρθοῦν and its compounds acquire. The secondary and metaphorical signification of safety and success, from the notion of going through a career, as a race, erect and in an upright position, without stumble or fall, is well illustrated by the following passages of Sophocles, Electr. 741, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους πάντας ἀσφαλεῖς δρόμους ὠρθοῦθ᾽ ὁ τλήμων ὀρθὸς ἐξ ὀρθῶν δίφρων. Oed. Col. 394, Ismene, νῦν γὰρ θεοί σ᾽ ὀρθοῦσι, προσθε δ̓ ὤλυσαν. Oed. γέροντα δ᾽ ὀρθοῦν φλαῦρον ὃς νέος πέσῃ. ἃ χαριοῦνται τοῖς φίλοις] ‘anything by which one will oblige one's friends’. ἃ cognate accus. for ἃς χάριτας. In obliging a friend you may be said to oblige yourself, a true friend being ἕτερος αὐτός: Eth. N. IX 9, sub init. Ib. 1170 b 7. Ib. c. 4, 1166 a 31, προς δὲ τὸν φίλον ἔχειν ὥσπερ πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ἔστι γὰρ ὁ φίλος ἄλλος αὐτός. ἃ ἀπεχθήσονται τοῖς ἐχθροῖς] ‘or by which one may shew one's hostility to (offend or annoy) one's enemy’. As before, ἃς ἀπεχθείας ἀπεχθ. τ. ἐχθροῖς. ἀπχεθάνεσθαι πρός τινα, or τινί, is ‘to make oneself odious or hostile to’, ‘to quarrel with’, or ‘to disoblige, offend, annoy’. Compare διαβάλλεσθαι πρός, in Plato, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Aristotle, to have a hostile feeling towards one, to be set against him, to quarrel with him (from διαβάλλειν, to set two people at variance, to engender animosity and ill feeling between them, and hence to give one an ill opinion of the other, and so, finally, to calumniate). Both of these, men think good and right, and proper objects of pursuit. θαυμάζειν, ‘to look up to, respect, reverence, admire’. Valck. ad Hippol. 106. Ar. Rhet. II 6. 15, 16, 24. Aristoph. Nub. 180, 428, ἡμᾶς τιμῶν καὶ θαυμάζων. Ran. 1008, alibi. Isocr. Areop. ter &c. εὐφυεῖς] ‘clever’, § 15, note on p. 105. Comp. c. II 28, Probl. XVIII 6, there quoted. ἔμπειροι] those who have acquired skill by practice and experience, distinguished from the naturally clever and dexterous. Success, the attainment of one's object, in any practice or occupation for which any one has either a natural talent or an acquired aptitude, is regarded as a good, because it is more easily attained, § 27; ‘more easily’, either than by others who are not so skilful, or than in other pursuits and practices. ἃ μηδεὶς φαῦλος] (οὐδείς, no definite particular person; μηδείς, no indefinite person, no man whatever); sub. πραξεῖεν ἄν. ‘Hinc ducto argumento, apud Euripidem quidam divitias non se movere dixit, quas etiam saepe improbissimi homines facillime consecuti sunt: Fragm. Aeol. 14 (5, Dind.) μὴ πλοῦτον εἴπῃς: οὐχὶ θαυμάζω θεὸν ὃν χὠ κάκιστος ῥᾳδίως ἐκτήσατο’. Victorius. ἀλλὰ καὶ βέλτιον] All objects of desire are supposed to be good, all αἱρετά, and ὧν ἐφίενται, § 2. The desire of a thing therefore implies not only that the satisfaction of it will give you pleasure, but also that you suppose it (φαίνεται) to be good.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.