‘And if we have done no injury, either to no one at all, or to few, or if those few are not the sort of persons that are feared’. Compare § 8, which supplies the reason: it is, because they don't fear retaliation. On περὶ ὧν (=οὓς) φοβοῦνται, see note on I 9. 14. ‘And, in general, if our religious relations are in a favourable state (our account with Heaven stands well), and especially’ (τά τε ἄλλα καί, ‘not only in everything else, but especially in this’: comp. ἄλλως τε καί, καὶ δὴ καί) ‘in the communications of’ (τὰ ἀπό, ‘what proceeds from’ the intimations as to our future conduct derived from them) ‘omens’ (signs from heaven, to direct us) ‘and oracles’. Victorius quotes Cicero (who calls σημεῖα sometimes notae, indications, sometimes signa), and Plutarch to shew that λόγια means ‘oracles’. λόγιον and χρησμός are used indifferently by Herodotus for ‘oracle’, and the word is also found, though rarely, in other writers; Thucydides, Aristoph. Eq. 120, Eurip. Heracl. 405. ‘For the angry feeling is accompanied with confidence, and to abstain from wrong oneself and yet to be wronged by others is provocative of anger, and the divine power is supposed to aid (side with) the injured’. The argument is this, Innocence of wrong is a ground of confidence: but this may be extended to the general (ὅλως) case of the divine favour, and the feeling of confidence is heightened if we believe that we have heaven on our side, which we argue from favourable omens and oracles. This divine authority strengthens our conviction of our innocence, of our having right on our side (so Victorius), and therefore our confidence. Another reason for this increase of confidence is the angry feeling which is excited in us by the sense of unjust treatment from others to whom we have done no wrong, for anger always implies confidence; and at the same time we feel ourselves under the protection of heaven, which is always supposed to take the part of the innocent and injured. θαῤῥαλέον ἡ ὀργή. Comp. Cic. Acad. Pr. II 44. 135, ipsam iracundiam fortitudinis quasi cotem esse dicebant (veteres Academici), referred to by Victorius and Majoragius.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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