Enthymemes, maxims, metaphors: the persuasive power of brevity in Aristotle's "Rhetoric"

In the second chapter of his Rhetoric (1357 a 1 ff.) Aristotle comes for the first time to deal with the need of brevity in rhetorical discourses. The reason –he says– is the fact that the speaker in this case addresses listeners who are not able to see an argument built up from many particulars or to reason from a distant starting point. Hence the particularly persuasive effect of a shorter form of deductive reasoning, as enthymemes sometimes can be or enthymematic maxims are. The “quick knowledge” offered by theses logical processes matches with the pleasure stirred in the audience by the use of metaphors and by a periodic style, that is that kind of style which allows the listeners to “see the end” of the sentence. Aristotle’s consistency deserves our attention and I will investigate which kind of relationship these different requests of brevity have between each other.