Art of Rhetoric

Dear Friends,

It has been a while since I have read any Aristotle. Recently, I picked up his work Art of Rhetoric and found it to be a far more useful piece than I had assumed. That is, of course, why one ought not to assume.

Anyway, the advice I have found most compelling concerns the relationship between litigant and dicast. The dicast was a sort of judge and jury roled into one. The litigant ought to bring forward (I like the term "marshall") to the dicast all of the facts of the case in as objective a manner as possible because "it is not the business of litigants to instruct him."

There is a term used regularly in Book I, "enthymeme," that I am having some difficulty understanding. I know it is a form of syllogism but am lost from there. As best as I can tell, it is a syllogism wherein either the major or minor premise is of a speculative nature.

I am probably wrong.

-LCC