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‘Amplification and depreciation is not an element of enthymeme: by element I mean the same things as topic: for elements or topics are so many heads under which many enthymemes fall. But amplification and depreciation are enthymemes or inferences to prove that anything is great or little (to exaggerate and exalt, or disparage, depreciate, lower it), just as there are enthymemes to prove that anything is good or bad, or just or unjust, and anything else of the same kind’. Comp. XXII 13. On στοιχεῖον, and how it comes to be convertible with τόπος, see Introd. pp. 127, 8. αὔξειν and μειοῦν are in fact (one or two, under different divisions) of the κοινοὶ τόποι, the loci communissimi, which can be applied to all the three branches of Rhetoric: and they furnish (are, Aristotle says,) enthymemes applicable to all the εἴδη in the three branches, as the good and bad treated in I 6, the greater and lesser good in I 7, fair and foul, right and wrong, in I 9, just and unjust in I 13. Comp. II 18. 4, II 19, on the four κοινοὶ τόποι; § 26, περὶ μεγέθους καὶ μικρότητος, where he refers to the προειρημένα, the chapters of Bk. I already quoted, for exemplifications of it: and II 22. 16. It therefore (it is here spoken of as one) differs from the τόποι ἐνθυμημάτων of II 23. 24, which are special topics of particular classes of enthymemes.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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