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Top. VIII. ἐκ τοῦ ποσαχῶς] Between the topics of definition and division (§ 10) is introduced this topic of ambiguous terms, or words that are susceptible of many and various senses, such as good (Top. A 15, 106 a 4 [Grote's Ar. I p. 402]); which must be carefully examined to see whether or no they are all of them applicable to the argument. It is treated at great length in Top. A 15, and again B 3; and is inserted here (between definition and division) because it is equally applicable to both (Brandis). The exhaustive treatment bestowed upon it in the Topics supersedes the necessity of dwelling on it here; and we are accordingly referred to that treatise for illustration of it. Brandis, u.s., p. 19, objects to περὶ τοῦ ὀρθῶς, “that there is nothing in the Topics which throws any light upon the enigmatical ὀρθῶς;” and proposes περὶ τοῦ εἰ ὀρθῶς ‘upon the right use of the terms’, i. e. whether it can be applied properly in any one of its various senses or not. But surely the reading of the text may be interpreted as it stands in precisely the same meaning: οἷον ἐν τοπικοῖς (λέλεκται, or διώρισται) περὶ τοῦ ὀρθῶς (χρῆσθαι αὐτῷ), ‘as in the Topics (we have treated) of the right use of the terms’. Muretus has omitted the words in his transl. as a gloss: and Victorius, followed by Schrader and Buhle, understands it as a reference, not directly to the Topics, but to the ‘dialectical art’, as elsewhere, II 22. 10, for instance— see Schrader's note on II 25. 3. “Disciplina Topica intelligenda est.” Buhle. It seems to me to be a direct and explicit reference to the passages of the Topics above mentioned, in which the right way of dealing with these ambiguous terms is described.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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