  An extreme example of this procedure occurs at the end of Rhetoric VIII (cf. Blank 2007a). There the statement attributed to Aristotle as a reason for his decision to teach rhetoric, ‘It is shameful to be silent while allowing Isocrates to speak’, is dissected and rejected over the course of ten columns with arguments such as a reductio (why not say that it is shameful to sit idly while allowing Farmer Brown to till the soil?) or an ad hominem (the practice of political rhetoric is itself shameful, but then Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus not only collected the laws of various places, but also wrote about such low subjects as perfumery and metallurgy).