Book 3
8.1
The form of diction should be neither metrical nor without rhythm. If it is metrical, it lacks persuasiveness, for it appears artificial, and at the same time it distracts the hearer's attention, since it sets him on the watch for the recurrence of such and such a cadence; just as, when the public criers ask, Whom does the emancipatedHe did not generally possess full rights of citizenship. The point of the illustration is that the hearer looks for the cadence just as confidently as, when a freedman is asked what patron he selects, every one expects him to say Cleon. choose for his patron? the children shout Cleon.
8.2
If it is without rhythm, it is unlimited, whereas it ought to be limited (but not by meter); for that which is unlimited is unpleasant and unknowable. Now all things are limited by number, and the number belonging to the form of diction is rhythm, of which the meters are divisions.Bywater's emendation for τμητά of the Mss. Aristotle seems to be referring to the Pythagorean theory that number is the regulating force in all things, and in giving shape to language number is rhythm, which reduces a formless mass of words to order.
8.3
Wherefore prose must be rhythmical, but not metrical, otherwise it will be a poem. Nor must this rhythm be rigorously carried out, but only up to a certain point.
8.4
Of the different rhythms the heroic is dignified, but lacking the harmony of ordinary conversation; the iambic is the language of the many, wherefore of all meters it is most used in common speech; but speech should be dignified and calculated to rouse the hearer. The trochaic is too much like the cordax; this is clear from the tetrameters, which form a tripping rhythm. There remains the paean, used by rhetoricians from the time of Thrasymachus, although they could not define it.
