when speaking ironically, after the manner of Gorgias, or of Plato in the Phaedrus.2
1 Isoc. 4.186, where μνήμη is the reading, translated “name” above (lit. memory) for the sake of the jingle, which also appears in the Greek of Isocrates. All the Mss. of Aristotle give γνώμην here, which shows that it is a misquotation.
2 Plat. Phaedrus 238d, Plat. Phaedrus 241e. In the first of these passages Socrates attributes his unusual flow of words to the inspiration of the nymphs, and tells Phaedrus not to wonder if he seems to be in a divine fury, for he is not far from breaking out into dithyrambs. An example of the irony (a term implying a certain amount of contempt (2.2.25)) of Gorgias is given in Aristot. Pol. 3.1. When asked how a person comes to be a citizen, he answers: “as those are mortars which have been made by mortar-makers, so those are Larissaeans who have been made by artisans ( δημιουργούς); for some of these were Larissa-makers ( λαρισοποιούς).” There is a play on the double meaning of δημιουργός, (1) artisan, (2) magistrate, lit. people-maker. Larissa-makers means makers of Larissaeans in such numbers that they might be regarded as makers of Larissa itself. It has also been suggested that λαρισοποιούς may mean “kettle-makers,” from λάρισα “a kettle,” so called from having been first made at Larissa, but this seems unnecessary. The point is that Gorgias maintained that all were citizens who were made so by the magistrates, that citizenship was a manufactured article (see W. L. Newman's note on the passage, and W. H. Thompson's Appendix to his edition of Plato's Gorgias).
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