‘The angry feeling is aggravated against those who are of no account, no repute at all, if they are guilty of any slight, any contemptuous indifference, to us and our pretensions’. This topic goes a step beyond the preceding. In that the offenders were only relatively contemptible, inferior to ourselves. Here they are absolutely contemptible and worthless, of no repute at all in any one's estimation—‘For anger is assumed to be (referring to the definition, § 1) provoked by the slight against those who have no natural claim (to treat us in this way): the natural duty of inferiors is not to slight (their betters)’. On προσήκειν, and the several kinds of obligation from which the terms expressive of ‘duty’ are derived, δεῖ, χρή, πρέπει, προσήκει, see on μὴ προσηκόντως, II 2. 1, note 2 on p. 11.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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