‘But this angry feeling is much aggravated, if he suspect that this, whatever it may be, on which he prides himself, does not really belong to him, either not at all or in no great force (ἰσχυρῶς), or that if it does, at all events other people don't think so (lit. it does not appear so, μὴ δοκεῖν): for whenever people have a strong conviction that they really possess the assumed advantage’ (supply, ὑπάρχειν αὐτοῖς ἐφ ᾧ φιλοτιμοῦνται from the last §, or ὃ οἴονται ἔχειν, or ὑπάρχειν αὐτοῖς, from οἴωνται ὑπάρχειν) ‘in those particular things (studies, personal qualities, accomplishments, rank and position, before enumerated) at which the taunt is levelled’, (ἐν οἷς ‘in which’, represents the sphere, or circumstances, the ‘locality’ as it were of the joke in which it resides), ‘they care nothing about it’. A very acute observation. F. A. Wolf has a note upon ἐν τούτοις, for which he proposes to substitute ἑαυτοῖς or αὐτοῖς. He insists upon connecting σφόδρα ὑπάρχειν, and pronounces that to be bad Greek or unintelligible. σφόδρα οἴωνται, if it required any justification, would be sufficiently defended by Phaedo 73 A, σφόδρα μέμνημαι. I think that the translation above given shews that the vulg. is correct, and there is no manuscript authority for any alteration. σφόδρα and ἰσχυρῶς (above) are used here in the same sense, ‘in a high degree’. Wolf's conjecture is supported by Brandis' Anonymus, in Schneidewin's Philologus IV i p. 46. ἰσχυρῶς] ‘fortiter’, ‘strongly’, ‘vigorously’, means here ‘in a high degree’. “ἰσχυρῶς, strongly, very much, exceedingly, Herod. IV 108, ἔθνος μέγα καὶ πολλόν, γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς κ.τ.λ. Ib. 183, ἔθνος μέγα ἰσχυρῶς, Xen. Anab. I 7. 17, διῶρυξ ἰσχυρῶς βαθεῖα; ἰσχυρῶς ἥδεσθαι, ἀνιᾶσθαι, φοβεῖσθαι, Ib. Cyr. VIII 3. 44, &c.” Liddell and Scott's Lexicon.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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