Rhetoric

Style will possess propriety if it is emotional, character-expressing, and proportionate to the subject matter.

​Proportion is preserved if grand subjects are not treated in a slapdash manner, nor trivial subjects solemnly, and if no ornament is attached to a trivial term; otherwise, it appears like comedy, as Cleophon does; for he used to say some things just as if he were to say “lady fig-tree.”

​The style is emotional if, in the case of insolence, it is the language of an angry man; in the case of impious and ugly things, that of one who is disgusted and hesitant even to speak them; in the case of praiseworthy things, admiringly; in the case of pitiable things, humbly; and similarly in other cases.

​And the appropriate style makes the matter persuasive; for the soul of the hearer is misled into thinking that the speaker is telling the truth, because people are so disposed in such circumstances, so that they think, even if the facts are not as the speaker says, that they are indeed so; and the hearer always sympathizes with the one who speaks emotionally, even if he says nothing of substance.

​Therefore many stun their hearers by making a clamor.

​And this expression of character is the showing by signs, when the style appropriate to each class and habit follows. By “class” I mean according to age, such as child, man, or old man, and woman or man, and Laconian or Thessalian; and by “habits” those according to which someone is of a certain character in life, for lives are not of a certain character according to every habit.

​If, therefore, one also uses words appropriate to the habit, he will produce character; for a rustic and an educated man would not say the same things nor in the same way. The hearers also experience an effect from what the speechwriters use to satiety: “Who does not know?”, “Everyone knows”; for the hearer agrees, feeling ashamed, so that he may share in what everyone else also shares.

​Using them opportunely or inopportunely is common to all these classes.

​And the remedy for every excess is the well-known one: for the speaker must rebuke himself in addition; for it seems to be true, since what he is doing does not escape the notice of the speaker himself.

​Furthermore, not to use all the proportionate devices at the same time (for in this way the hearer is deceived); I mean, for example, if the words are harsh, not to use also the voice and facial expression that fit them; otherwise, each device becomes manifest for what it is. But if one employs one and not the other, he achieves the same effect unnoticed. If, therefore, soft things are spoken harshly, and harsh things softly, it becomes persuasive.

​Compound words, multiple epithets, and foreign words are most suitable for one who speaks emotionally; for there is excuse for an angry man to call an evil “heaven-high” or to speak of it as “monstrous,” and also when he already holds his hearers and has made them enthusiastic either by praises or by censures or by anger or by friendship, as Isocrates also does at the end of the Panegyricus: “fame and memory” and “those who dared”; for they utter such things when they are enthusiastic, so that they also accept them, being clearly in the same state of mind. Therefore they also suited poetry, for poetry is an inspired thing. One must write either in this way, or with irony, as Gorgias used to do and as are the passages in the Phaedrus.