Book 3
9.8
This kind of style is pleasing, because contraries are easily understood and even more so when placed side by side, and also because antithesis resembles a syllogism; for refutation is a bringing together of contraries.
9.9
Such then is the nature of antithesis; equality of clauses is parisosis; the similarity of the final syllables of each clause paromoiosis. This must take place at the beginning or end of the clauses. At the beginning the similarity is always shown in entire words; at the end, in the last syllables, or the inflections of one and the same word, or the repetition of the same word. For instance, at the beginning: Ἀγρὸν γὰρ ἔλαβεν ἀργὸν παρ’ αὐτοῦ,Aristoph. frag. 649 (Kock, Com. Att. Frag. 1.1880). for he received from him land untilled; δωρητοί τ’ ἐπέλοντο παράρρητοί τ’ ἐπέεσσιν,Hom. Il. 9.526. they were ready to accept gifts and to be persuaded by words; at the end: ᾠήθησαν αὐτὸν παιδίον τετοκέναι, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ αἴτιον γεγονέναι,The text is obviously corrupt. they thought that he was the father of a child, but that he was the cause of it; ἐν πλείσταις δὲ φροντίσι καὶ ἐν ἐλαχίσταις ἐλπίσιν, in the greatest anxiety and the smallest hopes. Inflections of the same word: ἄξιος δὲ σταθῆναι χαλκοῦς, οὐκ ἄξιος ὢν χαλκοῦ, worthy of a bronze statue, not being worth a brass farthing. Repetition of a word: σὺ δ’ αὐτὸν καὶ ζῶντα ἔλεγες κακῶς καὶ νῦν γράφεις κακῶς, while he lived you spoke ill of him, now he is dead you write ill of him. Resemblance of one syllable: τί ἂν ἔπαθες δεινόν, εἰ ἄνδρ’ εἶδες ἀργόν, what ill would you have suffered, if you had seen an idle man? All these figures may be found in the same sentence at once— antithesis, equality of clauses, and similarity of endings. In the TheodecteaSee Introduction. nearly all the beginningsRoemer's text has ἀρεταί (excellences). of periods have been enumerated.
