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Now1 the employment of persuasive speeches is directed towards a judgement; for when a thing is known and judged, there is no longer any need of argument. And there is judgement, whether a speaker addresses himself to a single individual and makes use of his speech to exhort or dissuade, as those do who give advice or try to persuade, for this single individual is equally a judge, since, speaking generally, he who has to be persuaded is a judge; if the speaker is arguing against an opponent or against some theory, it is just the same, for it is necessary to make use of speech to destroy the opposing arguments, against which he speaks as if they were the actual opponent; and similarly in epideictic speeches, for the speech is put together with reference to the spectator as if he were a judge. Generally speaking, however, only he who decides questions at issue in civil controversies2 is a judge in the proper sense of the word, for in judicial cases the point at issue is the state of the case, in deliberative the subjects of deliberation.3 We have already spoken of the characters of forms of government in treating
of deliberative rhetoric,4 so that it has been determined how and by what means we must make our speeches conform to those characters.

1 Having dealt with ethical and pathetic proofs, Aristotle proceeds to the discussion of topics of enthymemes common to all three kinds of Rhetoric. The difficulty in the Greek lies in the absence of a suitable apodosis to the long sentence beginning ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν πιθανῶν. Grammatically, it might be ὥστε διωρισμένον ἂν εἴη, but it by no means follows that “since the employment of persuasive speeches is directed towards a judgement . . . therefore it has been determined how . . . we must make our speeches ethical.” Spengel, regarding ἐπεὶ δὲ . . . βουλεύονται merely as an enlargement of Book 2.1, 2, brackets the passage. Cope suggests that something has fallen out after βουλεύονται: “Since in all the three kinds of Rhetoric the object is to secure a judgement, [I have shown how to put the judges into a certain frame of mind in the discussion of the characters and emotions]. I have also spoken of the characters of the forms of government; so that this part of the subject need no longer detain us.” It is generally agreed that we have not the chapter as originally arranged, although it is not supposed that any part of it is non-Aristotelian (see Cope and note in Jebb's translation).

2 Both forensic and deliberative.

3 Or, “for in both forensic and deliberative arguments the issue is the state of the case.”

4 Book 1.8.

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