¹ See Socrates’ charge against the sophist (rhetorician) in the Gorgias 459dff. where the charge is once again on productive as well as prudential grounds. For the duplex peccatum see Wesley Trimpi, ‘The Quality of Fiction,’ Traditio 30 (1974) 113ff., Appendix A (cited hereafter as QF). For the artist's immunity from prudential concerns, according to the sophists, see Giuliana Lanata, Poetica Preplatonica, testimonianze e frammenti (Florence 1963) 224–25.Google Scholar

² Statesman 301a, trans. Skemp, J. B. from The Collected Dialogues, edd. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton 1961). All future references are to the Loeb edition, trans. Fowler, Harold N. (London 1925).Google Scholar

³ Laws 817b, trans. Bury, R. G. (London 1926). For an adumbration of this position see Republic 472a–73a and Philebus 50b. See also Trimpi, QF 30–31. For this tradition transmitted through Roman Law into the Renaissance see Kantorowicz, E. H., ‘The Sovereignty of the Artist: A Note on Legal Maxims and Renaissance Theories of Art’ in Selected Studies (Locust Valley, New York 1965) 355ff.Google Scholar

⁴ Gerald Else in Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge 1957) emphasizes the relationship in Aristotelian thought between the prudential and the productive activities (73): ‘Again and again we shall find it useful, in interpreting other passages, to remember that poetry imitates only men of action and has nothing to do with the life of thought as such; that if it is “philosophical” it must be so in another sense; and that because poetry is a portrayal of the life of action the closest affinities with the Poetics will turn up in the other works that deal with the “practical” sphere: the Rhetoric, the Politics, and especially the Ethics.’ See also Crane, R. S., The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (Toronto 1953), ch. 2, ‘Poetic Structure in the Language of Aristotle,’ 39–79.Google Scholar

⁵ For this tripartite division see Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Rackham, H. (London 1926) 6.2.2–3 (all further references are to this text): ‘We are here speaking of practical thinking, and of the attainment of truth in regard to action; with speculative thought, which is not concerned with action or production, right and wrong functioning consist in the attainment of truth and falsehood respectively.’ Else (72) associates π aττε and πo ε against θεω a. But for a reminder that Aristotle still differentiates between the productive and prudential see Nic. Ethics 2.4.3 where the distinction resides in the intention of the agent. See also QF 113ff., Else 305, and Huntington Cairns, Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel (Baltimore 1949) 79ff., esp. n. 3.Google Scholar

⁶ Nicomachean Ethics, 1.3.1ff. For a more concise statement of the same point see Nic. Ethics 1.7.17ff.: ‘Let this account then serve to describe the good in outline—for no doubt the proper procedure is to begin by making a rough sketch, and to fill it in afterwards (δε γà )… . Also the warning given must not be forgotten; we must not look for equal exactness () in all departments of study, but only such a degree as is appropriate to the particular line of enquiry.’Google Scholar

See also Nic. Ethics 6.4.6, Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (London 1926) 1.4.4 and Trimpi, QF 23–31.

⁷ See Cope, E. M., An Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric (London 1867) 155ff. for his discussion and also Rhetoric 1.2.11ff.: ‘… further, no art has the particular in view, medicine for instance, what is good for Socrates or Callias, but what is good for this or that class of persons (for this is a matter that comes within the province of an art, whereas the particular is infinite and cannot be the subject of a true science); similarly, therefore, Rhetoric will not consider what seems probable in each individual case, for instance to Socrates or Hippias, but that which seems probable to this or that class of persons.’ (All further references are to this text.)Google Scholar

⁸ Poetics, trans. Hamilton Fyfe, W. (London 1927) 17.5–8 (all further references are to this edition). For a complete discussion of this passage see Wesley Trimpi, ‘The Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction,’ Traditio 27 (1971) 43–55 (cited hereafter as AHF).Google Scholar

⁹ For a more complete discussion of the relation between the formal and logical principles of poetic construction see Wesley Trimpi, Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and its Continuity (Princeton; forthcoming) MS pp. 80–81.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Cf. Rhetoric 1.2.14. Also Posterior Analytics, trans. Hugh Tredennick (London 1960) 1.30, 87b22.Google Scholar

¹¹ Rhetoric 1.2.14: ‘But since few of the propositions of the rhetorical syllogism are necessary, for most of the things which we judge and examine can be other than they are, human actions, which are the subject of our deliberation and examination, being all of such a character and, generally speaking, none of them necessary; since, further, facts, which only generally happen or are merely possible can only be domonstrated by other facts of the same kind, and necessary facts by necessary propositions, it is evident that the materials from which enthymemes are derived will be sometimes necessary, but for the most part only generally true; and these materials being probabilities and signs, it follows that these two elements must correspond to these two kinds of propositions, each to each.’ Aristotle defines the syllogistic method, or deduction, in Rhetoric 1.2.9: ‘… but when, certain things being posited, something different results by reason of them, alongside of them, from them being true, either universally or in most cases ( τò πoλὺ), such a conclusion in Dialectic is called a syllogism, in Rhetoric an enthymeme.’Google Scholar

¹² Poetics 9.1–3. Note that there is nothing to prevent the poet, like the historian, from representing what has happened provided it has happened according to probability (Poetics 9.10).Google Scholar

The true, unlike the necessary, is not always demonstrable (Post. Anal. 74b14): ‘We may either argue in this way, or lay down the principle that demonstration implies necessity, i.e., that if a thing has been proved, it cannot be otherwise. Then it follows that the premisses of the [demonstrative] syllogism must be necessary; for whereas it is possible to draw a conclusion from true premisses without demonstrating anything, it is impossible to draw one from necessary premisses without doing so; for necessity directly implies demonstration.’

¹³ Poetics 15.10. Compare this with Poetics 9.4 in the context of the poet's use of universals.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See the discussion of ψvχaγωγ a below, p. 37.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Poetics 24.19–20: ‘What is convincing though impossible should always be preferred to what is possible and unconvincing. Stories should not be made up of inexplicable details; so far as possible there should be nothing inexplicable, or, if there is, it should lie outside the story… .’Google Scholar

¹⁶ Poetics 16.11. With the support of Rhetoric 1.2.17, I take the of the rhetorical premises to be identical with the premise for discovery , making the kinds of premises in each case correspond exactly: ‘I call those necessary signs from which a logical syllogism can be constructed, wherefore such a sign is called tekmèrion. …’Google Scholar

For Aristotle's discussion of the paralogism — logical fallacy or deception — and its place in fiction see Poetics 16.10 and 24.18. Both of Aristotle's examples, the lost Odysseus the False Messenger and the Washing, deal with false reasoning in the sense of false testimony (). Else considers the second passage an interpolation (626). Note, however, how well Aeschylus in the Choephoroi has learned his lesson from Homer, where Orestes’ false report of his identity enables him to enter the palace and effect his revenge. For the legal connotations of the poet as liar see Trimpi, QF 117.

¹⁷ , γνμη, and σvγγνμη are all related to (pardon or forgiveness) is discussed below.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Donatus (fourth-century grammarian) implies the syllogistic structure of drama in his tripartite division into protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe. See Herrick, Marvin T., Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century in Illinois University Studies in Language and Literature 34 (1950) 102. Charles Estienne preserves this understanding of the structure of drama in his preface to the Andria (1542) printed in Bernard Weinberg, Critical Prefaces of the French Renaissance (Evanston 1950) 90: ‘Car la fable n'est aultre chose sinon une deduction de matiere faicte et inventée, bien et proprement disposée, soubz le sens de laquelle gist une reprehention de vice ou remonstrance de vertue.’Google Scholar

¹⁹ Note that because poetry, unlike history, embodies the universal, it is able to reveal cause. See Post. Anal. 88a5 (δ) and 86a5–10: ‘Again, the more particular causes are, the more they tend to form an infinite regress, whereas universal demonstration tends towards the simple and finite; and causes qua infinite are not knowable, whereas qua finite they are knowable. Hence causes are more knowable qua universal than qua particular; and therefore universal causes are more demonstrable. But the demonstration of things which are more demonstrable is more truly demonstration; for correlatives vary simultaneously in degree. Hence universal demonstration is superior, inasmuch as it is more truly demonstrable.’Google Scholar

²⁰ For the importance of the second premise in establishing causation and its relation to literary theory, see Trimpi, AHF 41–42.Google Scholar

Note Rhetoric 3.16.8–9 where Aristotle advises, on Sophocles’ example, to smooth over the incredible by filling in cause. See also Trimpi, QF 98–103.

²¹ Rhetoric 3.13.3. Aristotle then ignores this statement and discusses the kind of narration appropriate to epideictic oratory at 3.16.1ff.Google Scholar

²² For Aristotle's theory of the will and responsibility see especially Nic. Ethics 3.1–5. Max Hamburger in his Morals and Law: The Growth of Aristotle's Legal Theory (New Haven 1951) argues the controversial order of the ethical tracts based on an increasing concern with the judicial definition of the voluntary and the involuntary (24–26).Google Scholar

See Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 1427a, for the fragmentation of this theory into a legal τóπo and for the relation between π óνo a and . See also David Daube, Aspects of Roman Law (Edinburgh 1969), especially chapter 3, the section on ‘intent’ (163–75), and the section on ‘negligence’ (157–63).

²³ Cantarella, Eva, Studi sull'omicidio in diritto greco e romano (Milan 1976) ch. 2, ‘La legge di Draconte sull'omicidio.’ On Thucydides’ understanding of the degrees of volition see Max Hamburger, The Awakening of Western Legal Thought (London 1942) 81 and Thucydides 3.40.1. See also Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy,’ in Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (1981) 28–62.Google Scholar

²⁴ Poetics 6.7. See also 6.24 and 15.2 and Eudemian Ethics 2.6.8–11 and note in addition that the virtues discussed in the Nic. Ethics (1.13.20) are either .Google Scholar

²⁵ Else 415: ‘This phrase, and the word μλλων, are the first hint of what will turn out to be a very important principle: that the crucial thing about the pathos, so far as its emotional effect is concerned, is not the act itself but the intention.’ See also his note on , 378 n. 43. For the central importance of intention in Aristotle's concept of , see Walter Lock, ‘The Use of in Aristotle's Poetics,’ The Classical Review 9 (1895) 251–53.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Nic. Ethics 5.8.6ff. Note that Aristotle's example of the voluntary vs. involuntary comes from Euripides’ Alcmaeon (5.9.1). The Rhetorica ad Alexandrum (1427a30–43) makes this same tripartite division.Google Scholar

²⁷ Else's translation of 13.5 is helpful (376): ‘Hence the man in the situation between these two remains. Such a man is one who on the one hand is not a paragon of virtue and justice and on the other hand does not suffer the change to misfortune because of wickedness or villainy but because of some mistake: one of those who are in a state of great reputation and good fortune, like Oedipus and Thyestes and illustrious men from families of that kind.’ Else concludes that results from (379) and that, like the , it is part of the complex plot (384–85).Google Scholar

²⁸ Rhetoric 1.13.16: ‘Actions which should be leniently treated are cases for equity; errors (τà ), wrong acts (τà ) and misfortunes (τà ) must not be thought deserving of the same penalty. Misfortunes are all such things as are unexpected (πa áλoγa), but are not vicious (); errors are not unexpected, but are not vicious; wrong acts are such as might be expected and vicious, for acts committed through desire arise from vice.’Google Scholar

²⁹ Aristotle's two most complete statements deserve quotation. Nic. Ethics 5.10.3–7: ‘The source of the difficulty is that equity, though just, is not legal justice, but a rectification () of legal justice. The reason for this is that law is always a general statement ( aθóλov), yet there are cases which it is not possible to cover in a general statement. In matters therefore where, while it is necessary to speak in general terms, it is not possible to do so correctly, the law takes into consideration the majority of cases (τò oν), although it is not unaware of the error this involves. And this does not make it a wrong law; for the error is not in the law nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the case: the material ( vλη) of the conduct is essentially irregular. When therefore the law lays down a general rule ( aθóλov), and thereafter a case arises which is an exception to the rule, it is then right, where the lawgiver's pronouncement because of its absoluteness () is defective and erroneous, to rectify the defect by deciding as the lawgiver would himself decide if he were present on the occasion, and would have enacted if he had been cognizant of the case in question. Hence, while the equitable is just, and is superior to one sort of justice, it is not superior to absolute justice, but only to the error due to its absolute statement (τoῦ ). This is the essential nature of the equitable: it is a rectification of law where law is defective because of its generality (). In fact this is the reason why things are not all determined by law: it is because there are some cases for which it is impossible to lay down a law, so that a special ordinance becomes necessary. For what is itself indefinite can only be measured by an indefinite standard, like the leaden rule used by Lesbian builders; just as that rule is not rigid but can be bent to the shape of the stone, so a special ordinance is made to fit the circumstances of the case.’Google Scholar

Rhetoric 1.13.17–19: ‘And it is equitable to pardon (σvγγνσεν) human weaknesses, and to look, not to the law but to the legislator; and not to the letter of the law ( τòν λòγoν) but to the intention of the legislator (); not to the action itself (), but to the moral purpose (); not to the part, but to the whole, not to what a man is now, but to what he has been, always or generally ( τò πoλύ); to remember good rather than ill treatment, and benefits received rather than those conferred; to bear injury with patience; to be willing to appeal to the judgment of reason rather than to violence; to prefer arbitration to the law court, for the arbitrator keeps equity in view, whereas the dicast looks only to the law, and the reason why arbitrators were appointed was that equity might prevail.’

For the earlier conception and the development of Aristotelian equity see Max Hamburger, Morals and Law: The Growth of Aristotle's Legal Theory 93ff.

³⁰ Nic. Ethics 2.6.5: ‘By the mean of the thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody.’Google Scholar

Although in the Laws (757d–e), Plato's Athenian insists on equity as an imbalance of the precise measure () of justice, the Statesman (284e) provides an adumbration of the Aristotelian distinction, where the science of measurement concerned with ‘number, length, depth, breadth and thickness and their opposites’ is contrasted with the science of measure applicable in the arts — one concerned rather with the moderate (τò ), the fitting (τò ππoν), the opportune (), the needful (τò δ oν), and ‘all the other standards that are situated in the mean between the extremes.’

For the Pythagorean origins of justice as an exact, numerical measure see Max Hamburger, The Awakening of Western Legal Thought 8; for its influence on Plato see Republic 395a–b; and for its transmission into later centuries see Augustine, De Ordine 1.7.19 and Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (Everyman ed.) 86–87.

³¹ For pre-Aristotelian juxtapositions of the strictness of the law vs. the fairness of equity see Gorgias quoted by Hamburger, Morals and Law 90; Sophocles quoted by Cope, The Rhetoric of Aristotle I 234; Euripides, Fr. 645.5–6, quoted by Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford 1944) 228; and Herodotus 3.53, quoted by Hamburger, The Awakening of Western Legal Thought 70 (‘Equity and fairness, remember, are by many set above strict law’).Google Scholar

³² For the relation between and see Metaphysics 11.8.11; Eudemian Ethics 2.7.2–2.8.2; Nic. Ethics 3.2.16–17 and Cope's discussion of Rhetoric 1.13.15–17 (I 257–58). For Plato's use of to designate intention see Laws 876e–77a. For an earlier example see Aeschylus, Eumenides 985 and 1013.Google Scholar

³³ Poetics 9.6: ‘In tragedy, on the other hand, they keep to real names. The reason is that what is possible carries conviction. If a thing has not happened, we do not yet believe in its possibility, but what has happened is obviously possible. Had it been impossible, it would not have happened.’Google Scholar

³⁴ See Trimpi, , QF 23–31.Google Scholar

³⁵ Aristotle's preservers of the law, like Plato's keepers of the law (Laws 770b), fulfill the same office as Aristotle's poet who, like them, undertakes to fill in an outline through an investigation of intention (Poetics 17.5–8). For the importance of the hypothesis (established in this passage by the optative mood) for the drama see Trimpi, AHF 43–60.Google Scholar

Note that Aristotle's definition of equity is anticipated by Plato in the Statesman (295ff.).

³⁶ For the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, this division is already a commonplace (2.10.14): ‘Locus communis contra eum qui scriptum recitet et scriptoris voluntatem non interpretatur.’ See also Quintilian 3.6.43, 3.6.88, 7.1.13, 7.1.62, and 12.2.19, on the relation between the spirit and the letter, the syllogism and quality. Also Seneca, Controversiae 9.4.9. For the Greek influence on Roman legal theory see Jolowicz, H. F., Historical Intro duction to the Study of Roman Law (Cambridge 1954) 423; Buckland, W. W. and McNair, Arnold D., Roman Law and Common Law (Cambridge 1936), and Huntington Cairns 156. See also Jolowicz, H. F., ‘Academic Elements in Roman Law’ in Law Quarterly Review 48 (1932) 171–90, and Trimpi, QF 9–31 for the relation of such ideas as scriptum / voluntas, ius strictum / aequitas, ius naturale / qualitas, and the status system.Google Scholar

³⁷ Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law (New York 1888) 25. Note the technical definition of fictio in Roman law (24): ‘Fictio is a term of Roman pleading which signifies that plaintiff makes a false averment which defendant cannot traverse.’Google Scholar

³⁸ See Vinogradoff, Paul, Historical Jurisprudence (London 1920) 220. Also Buckland and McNair, Roman Law and Common Law 4 n. 44: ‘The tendencies of change were of course in the direction of equity and thus it is common to speak of praetorian law as the Roman Equity. And, apart from the general equitable trend of his innovations, the Praetor, like the Chancellor, respects the earlier law: he does not set aside the civil law, but he circumvents it.’Google Scholar

³⁹ See Buckland, W. W., Textbook of Roman Law (Cambridge 1950) 677ff. Jolowicz, H. F. describes the process in Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (215): ‘In some cases where one definite requirement for a civil law action is absent and it is desired that an action should be permitted, the praetor exercises his powers by authorizing a formula in which the iudex is simply told to assume that that requirement is present and decide accordingly. Thus the actio furti proper lies only between citizens, but if the thief is a foreigner an action may nevertheless be brought against him and the formula will be similar to that of the civil law action, but contain a fiction; it will say not “if he ought (i.e. at civil law) to pay damages as a thief,” but “if he ought, were he a Roman citizen, to pay damages as a thief” (Quam ob rem eum, si civis Romanus esset, pro fure damnum decidere opporteret).’Google Scholar

For Gaius’ explanation of the praetor's use of fiction and its place in the intentio which he defines as ea pars formulae qua actor desiderium suum concludit, velut haec pars formulae: si paret numerium negidium aulo agerio sestertium x milia dare oportere, etc. (289), see James Muirhead, ed., The Institutes of Gaius and Rules of Ulpian (Edinburgh 1904) 284–89. See also Lon Fuller, Legal Fictions (Stanford 1967) 37 n. 71, on fiction in relation to procedure.

⁴⁰ See Parks, E. P., The Roman Rhetorical Schools as a Preparation for the Courts under the Early Empire (Baltimore 1945) 78. For the origins of these terms and their original meanings in Cicero, see Cairns, Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel 133.Google Scholar

See also Jolowicz, ‘The Academic Elements of Roman Law,’ passim.

⁴¹ Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. Butler, H. E. (London 1953) 5.10.95–96. See also Papinian on the Praetorian Edict (D. 1.1.7.1) quoted in Buckland and McNair, Roman Law and Common Law (4): ‘ius praetorium est quod praetores introduxerunt adiuvandi vel supplendi vel corrigendi iuris civilis gratia propter utilitatem publicam.’Google Scholar

For the relation between fiction (fictio) and quality (qualitas), see Quintilian, 5.10.99, and Trimpi, AHF 24 n. 23.

For the pedagogical use of the fictional theme see E. P. Parks, The Roman Rhetorical Schools as a Preparation for the Courts under the Early Empire 94, and S. F. Bonner, Roman Declamation in the Late Republic and Early Empire (Berkeley 1949) passim.

⁴² Isocrates, Antidosis, trans. George Norlin (London 1929) 189. See Trimpi, , AHF 58–59.Google Scholar

⁴³ In literary matters, appropriateness () becomes stylistic decorum (τò ππoν). For Aristotle's discussion of decorum (τò ππoν) see Rhet. 3.7.1; for the appropriateness of speech to character see Rhet. 3.7.6–7 and Poetics 15.10 and 25.15. For decorum as the measure for all discourse see Poetics 22.11 and compare Rhet. 3.2.1 and 3.12.6. In ethical matters, appropriateness is equity (τò ). For Aristotle's treatment of equity see n. 29 above.Google Scholar

For Gorgias’ earlier association of these concepts see Mario Untersteiner, I Sofisti (Turin 1949) I 249ff. The argument which follows owes a debt to Untersteiner's discussion of Gorgias’ philosophy. See also Trimpi, QF 28.

⁴⁴ Untersteiner, Mario, I Sofisti I 249–94.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Untersteiner 239.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Plutarch, Moralia 15d. Gorgias’ famous paradox is also quoted in Giuliana Lanata's Poetica Pre-platonica 204f., and should be compared with 1.3.10, p. 224. Guillaume Bouchetel opens his dedication to Euripides’ Hecuba, translated in 1544, with a gloss on Gorgias’ paradox (quoted in Bernard Weinberg, Critical Prefaces of the French Renaissance, 105–109). Note the extreme didacticism of Bouchetel's position (107): ‘Car la tragedie nous trompe et deçoit en ce que bien souvent elle traicte argumens fabuleux si sagement controuvez que nous cuidons qu'ils soyent veritables. Or celuy qui trompe ung autre, et par ceste tromperie luy monstre et enseigne ce qui luy est proffitable ou nuysible, bon ou mauvais, honneste ou deshonneste, est sans doubte plus juste que celuy qui n'ha pouvoir ou vouloir de ce faire. Car il n'y a point d'acte plus vertueux ne tant convenable à l'homme que de bien merir et proffiter à la communalté des autres. D'autre part, celuy à qui par la fiction de la tragedie demeure la cognoissance de vice et de vertu et de bien et de mal est beaucoup plus sage et advisé en tous ses affaires que celuy qui, pour n'avoir esté si heureusement trompé, n'ha ceste cognoissance. Et comme l'on voit, la coustume des poetes, premiers aucteurs et inventeurs de la philosophic, a tousjours esté de couvrir et cacher soubs le voile des fables la verité des choses qu'ils vouloyent enseigner, ou bien mesler le plaisir qu'on ha de leur ingenieuse fiction avec bons et proffitables documens.’Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Demosthenes’ citation of the ancient law against those who deceive the city (20.100: πàσχεν) is quoted by Bonner, R. J. and Smith, Gertrude in The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle (Chicago 1930) II 63.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See de Romilly, Jacqueline, ‘Gorgias et le Pouvoir de la Poesie,’ JHS 93 (1973) 160–61.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See QF, Appendix A, 117, for the legal connotation of the poet as liar. For the relation between lying and false testimony see Heraclitus (Diels, Frag. 28), quoted in Max Hamburger, The Awakening, 10: ‘Diké, the goddess of justice “shall overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.”’Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Untersteiner translates two fragments from Aeschylus which illustrate the tension between divine and human law through this same paradox. I Sofisti I 183: (1) ‘da una giusta azione ingannevole non si tiene lontano dio’; (2) ‘talora dio riconosce un valore all’ opportunità di false parole.’ Untersteiner makes a subjective/objective distinction between aπáτη and ψεῦδo (I 179): ‘Meglio coglie nel segno chi vede in ψεῦδo l'aspetto obbiettivo del falso, senza badare alla diversità del momento subiettivo che lo ha determinato, sia che si tratta di errore, sia di consapevole bugia; in aπàτη viene riconosciuto il momento subbiettivo, in quanto si mette in luce l'intento d'ingannare, che non se lascia ben definire, poiché si può manifestare per molteplici vie.’ For the basis of this distinction in Thucydides and Plato see 200–201 n. 23. The distinction perhaps anticipates Augustine's division between the mendax and the fallax in his Soliloquies. Google Scholar

⁵¹ La Rue Van Hook, ‘The Encomium on Helen by Gorgias,’ Classical Weekly (February 15, 1913) 123. Compare Gorgias’ Helen, ch. 10, with Plato, Republic 598d: ‘When anyone reports to us of someone, that he has met a man who knows all the crafts and everything else that men severally know, and that there is nothing that he does not know more exactly () than anybody else, our tacit rejoinder must be that he is a simple fellow, who apparently has met a magician or sleight-of-hand man and imitator and has been deceived by him (γó ) into belief that he is all-wise, because of his own inability to put to the proof and distinguish knowledge, ignorance, and imitation ().’Google Scholar

⁵² For ψvχaγωγ a see Phaedrus, trans. Harold North Fowler (London 1953) 271d: ‘Since it is the function of speech to lead souls by persuasion, he who is to be a rhetorician must know the various forms of soul.’Google Scholar

For fear and pity see Phaedrus 268c and 272a. For poetry as pleasurable see Laws 667b, and Republic (trans. Paul Shorey) 607d–e and 214 n. b.

⁵³ Aristophanes, Frogs, trans. Benjamin Bickley Rogers (London 1924). Euripides responds to Aeschylus’ question why the poet obtains praise (1009–10):Google Scholar

and Aeschylus reinforces the same attitude (1055–56):

Plato, in his final work, the Laws, takes a less rigid stand against tragedy, and would seem in some measure to agree that mimetic poetry can instruct (Laws 838c): ‘And does not the reason lie in this, that nobody speaks of them [the shameful pleasures] otherwise, but every one of us, from the day of his birth, hears this opinion expressed always and everywhere, not only in comic speech, but often also in serious tragedy — as when there is brought on to the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret intercourse with a sister, and all these are seen inflicting death upon themselves willingly as a punishment for their sins?’ Plato anticipates this later position in the Republic (472a–73a).

⁵⁴ For the tradition to 1909 see Ingram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (Oxford 1909) 152–61 and Else, 225–32 and 433–47. For the relation between catharsis and dialectic see Plato, Sophist 226ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See Else's discussion beginning 433 which concludes (435): ‘What Aristotle has done, essentially, to Plato's scheme is to put in the place of the “noble horse,” as Plato had defined him, the whole body of feeling that constitutes the irrational side of man's psychic life, the vacated place at the bottom of the scale being taken by the “vegetative” or purely nutritive principle. Through this change of status the life of feeling is brought into direct contact with reason, instead of being insulated from it, so that henceforth we can speak of rational aspects of feeling or emotional employments of reason (that is, of the “practical” or moral reason), depending on our point of view.’Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Rhetoric 2.5.12 and 2.8.12 restate this connection: ‘In a word, all things are to be feared which, when they happen, or are on the point of happening, to others, excite compassion’ (2.5.12); ‘And generally speaking, a man is moved to pity when he is so affected that he remembers that such evils have happened or expects that they may happen, either to himself or to one of his friends’ (2.8.12).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Rhetoric 2.5.15: ‘So that whenever it is preferable that the audience should feel afraid, it is necessary to make them think they are likely to suffer, by reminding them that others greater than they have suffered, and showing that their equals are suffering or have suffered, and that at the hands of those from whom they did not expect it, in such a manner and at times when they did not think it likely.’ Compare this with Poetics 9.11, where tragedy is described as a complete action causing fear and pity particularly when the incidents are unexpected ( δóξaν).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The disagreement between Wolfgang Schadewaldt and Max Pohlenz on the nature of the two emotions peculiar to tragedy helps to clarify the issue. In ‘Furcht und Mitleid?’ Hermes 83 (1955) 129–71, Schadewaldt argues that the Christian tradition of interpretation has emasculated the original meanings of ϕóβo and which belong entirely to physical and not to moral processes. In a response to Schadewaldt — ‘Furcht und Mitleid?’ Hermes 84 (1956) 49–74 — Pohlenz supports the specifically ethical context of , in contradistinction to the former he defines as ‘nicht nur ein Gefühl, sondern ein Impuls zum Handeln’ (52).Google Scholar

For the juxtaposition in Attic legal oratory of and see Antiphon, ‘The Prosecution of the Stepmother for Poisoning,’ 25. For its transmission into Christian ethics see Romans 9:15. As I have argued elsewhere, Aristotle's isolation of fear and pity as the two emotions most operative in ethical action becomes a central doctrine in Christian ethics, most clearly illustrated in the Christian perspective on the relation between the Old Dispensation under Yahweh and the New under Christ: the one of fear (ϕóβo ) and punishment, the other of pity ( mercy) and pardon.

Thomas Wilson in his Arte of Rhetorique (ed. G. H. Mair [London 1909]) 133, maintains the distinction and recalls the Aristotelian discussion of the same issues: ‘Now in moving pitie, and stirring men to mercie, the wrong done, must first be plainly tolde: or if the Judges have sustained the like extremitie, the best were to wil them, to remember their own state, how they have bene abused in like maner, what wrongs they have suffered by wicked doers: that by hearing their owne, they may the better harken to others.’

Thomas Preston in Cambises (1070–77), Thomas Heywood in A Woman Killed with Kindness, and Shakespeare in Measure for Measure develop the relation between legal mercy and Christian pity.

⁵⁹ In the Poetics (13.2), however, this same situation is . That is to say, there must be some error committed. Compare Plato's man deserving pity (Laws 936b, trans. Taylor, A. E. in The Collected Dialogues): ‘The true object of pity is not the man who is hungry or in some similar needy case, but the man who has sobriety of soul or some other virtue, or share in such virtue, and misfortunes to boot.’Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Rhetoric 1.12.14: ‘And those who may possibly be thought to have acted by chance or from some necessity, from some natural impulse or from habit, in a word, to have committed an error rather than a crime. And those who hope to obtain indulgence (τo ῦ ).’ For the similar position in Plato see Laws 876e–77a.Google Scholar

For a treatment of the same issues as τóπo for the defense, see Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 1427a23–43.

⁶¹ Demosthenes, ‘Against Androtion’ in Orations, trans. Vince, J. H. (London 1935) 22.57.Google Scholar

⁶² See Else, , 437. For the diametrically opposed conclusion based on some very similar presuppositions see Alexandre Niçev, L'Enigme de la catharsis tragique dans Aristote (Sofia 1970) 57–58 and 69.Google Scholar