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On the general connexion of this chapter with its context, on the two rhetorical uses of the study of Politics, and the various classifications of Constitutions by Aristotle in other works, by Plato and Polybius, see Introduction, p. 181—3, and Append. A, p. 208. ‘The subject, which is most important and effectual (is of the highest authority, carries most weight, κυριώτατον) of all in conferring the power and cultivating the faculty of persuasion and good counsel, includes the exact (analytical διελεῖν) knowledge of all the existing varieties of constitutions, together with the habits (i. e. the habits and manners which they severally engender in those who live under them), institutions, and interests (συμφέροντα) which respectively belong to them’. Ad consilium autem de republica dandum caput est nosse rempublicam; ad dicendum vero probabiliter nosse mores civitatis, qui quia crebro mutantur, genus quoque orationis est saepe mutandum. Cic. de Orat. II 82. 337.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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