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ἐκ τίνων...ταῦτ᾽ ἐστίν] This is a confusion of two constructions: the grammar requires either ἐκ τίνων εἴρηται (or something similar), or else ἐξ ὧν ταῦτ᾽ ἐστί. The ποῖαι in the second clause shews that the first of the two was the one predominant in the writer's mind, which is carelessly varied at the end. δόξαι καὶ προτάσεις] These two are in fact the same. The current popular opinions are converted by the artist into premisses of rhetorical enthymemes. They are united again, c. 18 § 2, comp. Topic. A 10, 104 a 12, εἰσὶ δὲ προτάσεις διαλεκτικαὶ καὶ τὰ τοῖς ἐνδόξοις ὅμοια...καὶ ὅσαι δόξαι κατὰ τέχνας εἰσὶ τὰς εὑρημένας. And c. 14, init. τὰς μὲν προτάσεις ἐκλεκτέον...καὶ ὅσαι δόξαι κατὰ τέχνας εἰσίν. ‘Now the sources from which we must derive our arguments in exhorting and dissuading, in panegyric and censure, in accusation and defence, and the sort of opinions and premisses that are serviceable for (rhetorical) proof in them, are these: for these are the materials and sources of our enthymemes, specially, so to say, in each kind of speeches’; i.e. using a special treatment according to the kind of speech on which we are engaged. If the text is right here, ἑς περὶ ἕκαστον εἰπεῖν ἰδίᾳ τὸ γένος τῶν λόγων—Bekker retains it unaltered, and Spengel1 accepts it in his last edition, though he formerly proposed εἴπομεν—this must be the translation of it. ὡς εἰπεῖν ‘so to speak’, (ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, ὡς τῷ ποδὶ τεκμῄρασθαι, Plat. Phaedr. 230 B, et sim.).
1 In his treatise on the Rhetoric in Trans. Bav. Acad. 1851, p.39, note, he translates the passage thus: wie man jedes genus der reden für sich behandeln soll: understanding ὡς εἰπεῖν, if I do not mistake him, in the sense of ὡς δεῖ εἰπεῖν (?) ‘according as we have to speak’, which seems to me to be hardly allowable. ὡς εἰπεῖν can, I think, in conformity with ordinary Greek usage, have no other sense than that which I have attributed to it. See, for illustrations of ὡς thus used with an infinitive, Matth. Gr. Gr. § 545.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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