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

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‘If therefore (the speaker) use the words (language) also appropriate’ (οἰκεῖος, domestic: hence properly belonging to, things of one's own: hence special, appropriate, &c) ‘to the (given) state, he will produce this character (i. e. convey it to his speech): for the clown’ (rustic, boor: ἀγροῖκος, country-bred, opposed to ἀστεῖος, city-bred, polished, as urbanus to rusticus) ‘would not use the same language nor in the same way (sc. the same tone, pronunciation, action), as the educated gentleman’. These are the two ἕξεις of εὐτραπελία ‘easy, well-bred pleasantry’ and its opposite ἀγροικία, ‘rusticity, boorishness’; the contrasted ‘conversational virtue and vice’, of Eth. Nic. II 7, and IV 14. Comp. Poet. XV 4, δεύτερον δὲ τὰ ἁρμόττοντα: ἔστι γὰρ ἀνδρεῖον μὲν τὸ ἦθος, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ἁρμόττον γυναικὶ τὸ ἀνδρείαν ἢ δεινὴν εἶναι.

What follows is a note suggested by the preceding remarks upon the παθητικὴ λέξις, and not very closely connected with the immediate subject of ‘propriety’.

‘The hearers are affected also in some degree (some impression is also made upon the audience) by what (a trick which) the speech-writers employ to a nauseous excess; (the introduction viz. of such phrases as) “Who doesn't know?” “Everybody knows.” For the listener is shamed into an admission (of the fact) that he may be supposed to share (what is assumed to be) the feeling of “everybody else”’.

On λογογράφοι, the paid writers of speeches for the use of plaintiff or defendant in the law-courts, a much-despised class, see note on II 11. 7. Victorius supposes, in accordance with his preconceived opinion of a still continued hostility between Aristotle and Isocrates, that the latter is here alluded to; quoting four instances of it from Isocrates and two from Demosth. de Cor. This is hardly enough to sustain the charge. On this subject, see Introd. p. 41, foll.