E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

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‘Further (a third kind) they may be borrowed from the forensic introductions; that is to say, from the appeals to the audience, or as an apology to them, (comp. infra § 7)—when the subject of the speech happens to be either paradoxical (contrary to ordinary opinion or expectation, and therefore incredible), or painful¹, or trite and worn-out, and therefore tiresome (τεθρυλημένου that which is in everyone's mouth, decantatum, note on II 21. 11)—for the purpose of obtaining indulgence (with an apologetic object); as Choerilus says, for instance, “But now when all is spent”’ (lit. has been distributed sc. amongst others; and nothing is left for me). [Compare Virgil's omnia iam vulgata in the Exordium of the third Georgic.]

Of the four Choeriluses distinguished by Näke, this is the Epic poet of Samos, born, according to Näke, in B.C. 470. His principal work, from which this fragment is taken, was a poetical narrative of the Persian wars with Greece under Darius and Xerxes—“all that was left him” by his predecessors—very much applauded, as Suidas tell us, and “decreed to be read with Homer.” Aristotle (Top. Θ I, ult. παραδείγματα...οἷα Ὅμηρος, μὴ οἷα Χοίριλος) thinks less favourably of it; and it was afterwards excluded from the Alexandrian Canon in favour of the poem of Antimachus. An earlier Choerilus was the Athenian tragic poet, contemporary with Phrynichus, Pratinas, and Aeschylus in early life; the third a slave of the Comic poet Ecphantides, whom he is said to have assisted in the composition of his plays; and the fourth, Horace's Choerilus, Ep. II 1. 232, Ars Poet. 357, a later and contemptible epic poet who attended Alexander on his expedition, and according to Horace, incultis qui versibus et male natis rettulit acceptos, regale nomisma, Philippos. Suidas tells this story of the Samian Choerilus, an evident mistake. The fragments of the Choerilus of our text are all collected and commented on by Näke in his volume on Choerilus. This fragm. is given on p. 104. See also Düntzer Epic. Gr. Fragm. p. 96 seq. where five lines of the poem, from which our extract is made are given: and the four articles in Biogr. Dict. The context is supplied by the Schol. on this passage—see in Spengel's ed., Scholia Graeca², p. 160: printed also in Näke and Düntzer—and runs thus: ἆ μάκαρ, ὅστις ἔην κεῖνον χρόνον ἴδρις ἀοιδῆς, Μουσάων θεράπων ὅτ᾽ ἀκήρατος ἦν ἔτι λειμών: νῦν δ̓ ὅτε πάντα δέδασται, ἔχουσι δὲ πείρατα τέχναι, ὕστατοι ὥστε δρόμου καταλειπόμεθ̓, οὐδέ πῃ ἐστὶ πάντη παπταίνοντα νεοζυγὲς ἅρμα πελάσσαι. καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς³. Which are certainly pretty lines enough: perhaps the rest was not equal to them. Compare with λειμὼν Μουσάων, and the whole passage, Lucr. I 925 seq. avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante trita solo, et seq., which might possibly have been suggested by this of Choerilus. An apology of the same kind is introduced by Isocrates in the middle of his Panegyr. § 74; and another in his ἀντίδοσις, § 55. In the latter the word διατεθρυλημένους occurs.

‘So the introductions of the epideictic speeches are derived from the following topics; from praise, blame, exhortation, dissuasion, appeals to the hearer: and these “introductions”’ (see the note on § I: ἐνδόσιμα is used here for προοίμια in general, instead of the more limited sense of the preceding passage) ‘must be either foreign or closely connected with the speeches (to which they are prefixed)’.

ξένος, a stranger or foreigner, is properly opposed to οἰκεῖος, domesticus, one of one's own household. This last clause, δεῖ δέ κ.τ.λ. is, as Vater remarks, introduced as a transition to the next topic, the forensic prooemia.