ὅσα εἶναι μᾶλλον κ.τ.λ.] The difference between this and the preceding topic seems to lie in this. That lays down the general rule, and refers to ‘every thing’ that comes under it; and is therefore appealed to, πρὸς ἀλήθειαν γὰρ μᾶλλον, as the warrant and foundation of this. The second is a special variety of the first, ‘what men wish to be’; the qualities, such as virtues, which they desire to possess, or seem to possess. Here again the reality is preferable to the mere credit and external appearance of the virtue. ‘And, therefore, it is a vulgar and popular opinion (φασί, Plat. Rep. II 358 A; and not merely the doctrine of the vulgar, οἱ πολλοί, but maintained also by would-be philosophers, as Thrasymachus and Callicles) that justice is a thing of small value (mean and contemptible), because the appearance of it is preferable to the reality, whereas in the case of health it is the reverse’. Victorius quotes, in exemplification of φασί, two iambic lines from Plutarch de Aud. Poet. p. 18 D, τοῦ μὲν δικαίου τὴν δόκησιν ἄρνυσο, τὰ δ᾽ ἔργα τοῦ πᾶν δρῶντος ἔνθα κερδανεῖς. Eur. Ixion. Fr. I. Dind. Quoted also in Stobaeus p. 30, 8. Another fragment to the same effect is ascribed by Valckenaer (Diatr. in Fragm. Eur. p. 166) to Euripides' Ixion.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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