E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

The fallacy here illustrated is the familiar post hoc ergo propter hoc; the assumption of a mere chronological sequence as a true cause: to mistake a mere accidental connexion of the order of time, for one of cause and effect. It is the rhetorical application, and only one variety, of the wider and more general topic of the dialectical treatise (de Soph. El. c. 5, 167 b 21) non-causa pro causa, in dialectical argumentation.

‘Another from the substitution of what is no cause for (the true) cause; for instance (this substitution takes place) by reason of the occurrence of something contemporaneously or subsequently (to that which is presumed to account for it): for it is assumed that what merely follows (in time) is the effect of a cause, and especially by politicians; as Demades, for instance, pronounced Demosthenes' policy to be the cause of all their calamities; because it was after it that the war (with Philip, and the defeat of Chaeronea) occurred’. Victorius refers to a similar charge of Aeschines, c. Ctes. § 134, καὶ ταῦθ᾽ ἡμῖν συμβέβηκεν ἐξ ὅτου Δημοσθένης πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν προσελήλυθεν, compare § 136, army and navy and cities, ἄρδην εἰσὶν ἀνηρπασμέναι ἐκ τῆς τούτου πολιτείας. Dinarch. c. Dem. §§ 12, 13.

This is the only place in which the name of Demosthenes appears in Aristotle's Rhetoric. See on this subject Introd. pp. 45, 6, and note 2. In II 23. 18, a few words of his are quoted, but without the author's name. The Demosthenes mentioned in III 4. 3 is probably not the great Orator.

On Demades and his remains, see Sauppe, Fragm. Orat. LII, Demades, Or. Att. III 312 seq.