‘From all this it is plain what sort of men those are at whose misfortunes, and calamities, and failures, we are bound to rejoice, or (at any rate) to feel no pain: for from the statements already made, the opposites’ (i.e. opposite cases and circumstances) ‘are manifest: and therefore if the speech put those that have to decide (κρίνειν applicable to all three branches of Rhetoric) in such and such a frame of mind (namely, such as have been described), and shew that those who claim, appeal to, our compassion—as well as the things (the occasions and circumstances) for which they claim it—are unworthy to meet with it (in the particular case), or of such a character and reputation in general as to repel it altogether, it is impossible (for the judges or other audience) to feel it’. The persons here meant are, according to Victorius, rei et adversarii, the prisoner under trial, in a criminal, the opponent in a civil case: but besides these the other κριταί, the audiences of public as well as panegyrical orations, must be included, who are equally liable with the judges in a court of law to be unduly influenced by an appeal to the feelings on the part of an unscrupulous advocate or declaimer.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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