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‘The enthymemes, or argumentative inferences, should not be all brough forward one after another, in a continuous connected series, but mixed up (ἀνά) with other topics: otherwise they injure one another by destroying (κατά) the effect1. (And this is not all,) for there is also a limit of quantity; (as Homer says, Od. IV 204, Menelaus to Nestorides Pisistratos,) “Dear boy, seeing that thou hast said as much as a prudent man would” (speak and utter, εἴποι καὶ ῥέξειε）—τόσα he says, not τοιαῦτἀ, shewing thereby that it is the quantity and not the quality of the words that he had in view.
1 This is, “to relieve the weariness, and assist the intelligence of the uncultivated audience. A long and connected chain of arguments not only puzzles and confounds a listener unaccustomed to continuous reasoning, but also wearies and overwhelms him: so that, one argument coming upon another before he has perceived the force of the preceding, they clash together, come into conflict, as it were, and the force and effect of the whole is weakened or destroyed. Comp. I 2. 12, 13, II 22. 3, alibi.” From Introd. p. 357.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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