Page - 2275 - in The Complete Aristotle

and march through the sea, by bridging the Hellespont and cutting through Athos’; ‘nature gave them their country and law took it away again’; ‘of them perished in misery, others were saved in disgrace’; ‘Athenian citizens keep foreigners in their houses as servants, while the city of Athens allows her allies by thousands to live as the foreigner’s slaves’; and ‘to possess in life or to bequeath at death’. There is also what some one said about Peitholaus and Lycophron in a law-court, ‘These men used to sell you when they were at home, and now they have come to you here and bought you’. All these passages have the structure described above. Such a form of speech is satisfying, because the significance of contrasted ideas is easily felt, especially when they are thus put side by side, and also because it has the effect of a logical argument; it is by putting two opposing conclusions side by side that you prove one of them false. Such, then, is the nature of antithesis. Parisosis is making the two members of a period equal in length. Paromoeosis is making the extreme words of both members like each other. This must happen either at the beginning or at the end of each member. If at the beginning, the resemblance must always be between whole words; at the end, between final syllables or inflexions of the same word or the same word repeated. Thus, at the beginning agron gar elaben arlon par’ autou and dorhetoi t epelonto pararretoi t epeessin At the end ouk wethesan auton paidion tetokenai, all autou aitlon lelonenai, and en pleiotals de opontisi kai en elachistais elpisin An example of inflexions of the same word is axios de staoenai chalkous ouk axios on chalkou; Of the same word repeated, su d’ auton kai zonta eleges kakos kai nun grafeis kakos. 2275