Rhetoric

As for interrogation, it is opportune to employ it especially when the opponent has already said one of the two premises, so that if one more question is asked, an absurdity results. For example, Pericles asked Lampon about the initiation into the rites of the Savior Goddess; when Lampon said that it was not possible for an uninitiated person to hear of them, Pericles asked if Lampon himself knew them. When he said he did, Pericles asked: “And how so, since you are uninitiated?”

​Secondly, when one of the premises is obvious, and it is clear to the questioner that the opponent will grant the other if asked. For after asking for the one premise, one should not ask further about the obvious one but state the conclusion. For example, Socrates, when Meletus denied that he believed in gods but said that he spoke of some daimonic thing, asked if the daimones were not either children of gods or something divine. When Meletus said: “They are, indeed,” ​Socrates said: “Is there, then, anyone who thinks there are children of gods, but not gods?” Furthermore, when one is about to show the opponent either saying contradictory things or a paradox.

​Fourthly, when there is no other way than to dissolve the question by answering sophistically. For if the opponent answers in this way, saying “it is and it is not,” or “partly yes and partly no,” or “in one way yes and in another way no,” the audience clamors as if he is at a loss. Otherwise, do not attempt interrogation; for if the opponent resists, you will seem to have been defeated. For it is not possible to ask many questions because of the weakness of the hearer; and for this reason, one must also compress the enthymemes as much as possible.

In answering, one must meet ambiguous questions by making distinctions in speech and not briefly; and to those that seem contradictory, one must offer the solution immediately with the answer, before the opponent asks the next question or draws a conclusion. For it is not difficult to foresee what the argument is about. This is clear to us from the Topics, both this and the solutions.

​And when the opponent is drawing a conclusion, if he makes the conclusion a question, one must state the reason. For example, Sophocles, when asked by Peisander if it seemed to him, as it did to the other commissioners, right to establish the Four Hundred, said: “Yes.” “What then? Did these things not seem to you to be bad?” He said: “Yes.” “Did you not then do these bad things?” “Yes,” he said, “for there were no other better ways.” And as the Lacedaemonian undergoing audit for his ephoralty, when asked if it seemed to him that the others had been justly put to death, said: “Yes.” “Did you not then make the same decisions as they did?” He said: “Yes.” “Would you not then also,” the other said, “be justly put to death?” “Not at all,” he said, “for they did these things after receiving money, but I did not, but by my own judgment.” Therefore, one should not ask further questions after the conclusion, nor ask the conclusion itself as a question, unless the truth is overwhelmingly on one’s side.

​As for the laughable, since it seems to have some use in contests, and Gorgias said correctly that one must destroy the seriousness of the opponents with laughter, and their laughter with seriousness, the number of kinds of the laughable has been stated in the Poetics. Of these, some fit a free man and others do not, so that one may take what is fitting for oneself. Irony is more fitting for a free man than buffoonery; for the ironical man makes a laugh for his own sake, but the buffoon for someone else.