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‘Supposing for instance your adversary's major premisses were, “all love is good”, the objection may be opposed in two ways: either (universally) by saying that all want or defect’ (one of Plato's notions of love, Philebus, comp. Rhet. I 11. 11, 12) ‘is bad: or particularly, that, if that were the case, the ‘Caunian love’ would never have passed into a proverb (this is a particular instance; some love), if there had been no form of love bad at all.’ Καύνιος ἔρως] The reading of all MSS but Ac is κάλλιστος ἢ κάκιστος ἔρως. Who could have divined from this, without the aid of that MS, that Καύνιος was what the author had written? asks Spengel, Trans. Bav. Acad. u. s. 1851, p. 50. What A^{c} really does read is Κάννικος according to Bekker, Καύνικος according to Spengel. The saying is proverbial for ‘an illicit, or unfortunate (fatally ending) passion’—in either case πονηρός—such as that of Byblis for her brother Caunus; which was πονηρός in both its senses. Suidas, s. v. ἐπὶ τῶν μὴ κατορθουμένων ἐπιθυμιῶν: Καῦνος γὰρ καὶ Βυβλὶς ἀδελφοὶ ἐδυστύχησαν, Hesychius ἐν Καύνῳ τιμᾶται: (under the next word we have Καυνός...καὶ πόλις Ῥόδου) καὶ ὁ σφοδρός. Erasm. Adag. Amor. No. 1. “De foedo amore dicebatur; aut si quis ea desideraret quae neque fas esset concupiscere neque liceret assequi. Biblis Caunum fratrem impotenter adamavit; a quo cum esset repulsa, sibimet necem conscivit.” Ovid, Met. IX 452—664, who says (662) that she wept herself to death, and was changed into a fountain. Byblis in exemplo est ut ament concessa puellae; Byblis Apollinei correpta cupidine fratris, Non soror ut fratrem, nec qua debebat amavit.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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