‘Or again, such as are of an ambitious temper, and eagerly striving after certain actions’ (πράξεις, modes of activity, such as public employments in the service of the state; these are also objects of ambition, as giving scope for the exercise of special excellences, for the attainment of distinction, of honours, and the like); ‘and especially when their ambition is directed to such objects as the others happen to be unworthy of’. The greater a man's ambition, and the stronger his desire of the honours and distinctions which he feels to be due to himself, the deeper his resentment at the unfairness of their attainment by those whom he knows, by comparison with himself, to be undeserving of them.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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