‘In the epithets also, the application of them may be made (they may be derived, for application) from what is mean and low (morally bad in this sense), or foul and ugly, or disgraceful (another kind of badness), for instance “matricide”, or from what is (nobler and) better, as “a father's avenger”’. The one represents the fair side of Orestes' act, the other its bad aspect. “Locus ex Eur. Oreste 1587, ὁ μητροφόντης, ἐπὶ φόνῳ πράσσων φόνον inquit Menelaus, Orestem criminans: cui se defendens respondet Orestes, ὁ πατρὸς ἀμύντωρ ὃν σὺ προύδωκας θανεῖν.” On ἐπίθετα, see Introd. on c. 3. p. 289. Ernesti's Lex. Technologiae Gr. ‘And Simonides, when the victor in the mule-race offered him only a small fee, refused to write (the ode on this occasion) on the plea of being offended (shocked) at the notion of “composing an ode on halfasses,” but when the other gave him as much as he wanted (as satisfied him), he wrote at once, “All hail, daughters of storm-footed mares” [“Hurrah, for the brood of the storm-footed coursers!”], and yet they were daughters of the asses as well’. Dion., de Comp. Verb. c. 25 (Vol. V 201, ed. Reiske), quotes a pentameter verse, without the author's name, which contains an analogous epithet, κοῦραι ἐλαφροπόδων ἴχνἐ ἀειράμεναι. On Simonides' greed of gain and miserly habits, see Aristoph. Pax 697—9. Ar. Eth. N. IV 2. ult. (ὁ ἐλευθέριος) Σιμωνίδῃ οὐκ ἀρεσκόμενος, which has the air of a proverbial expression for a miser. Comp. his dictum in II 16.2, on the comparative advantages of money over wisdom. The case of Simonides is referred to by Whately, Rhet. c. III (p. 277, Encycl. Metrop. Enc. of mental philosophy), in illustration of the “employment of metaphors (epithets, not metaphors) either to elevate or degrade a subject,” of which he says in the note “a happier instance cannot be found” than this.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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