Genre and place in the book. A bare catalogue of bad characters (ἦθη) — eleven labels in a row, without a single verb or argument. A nominal list of vice-dispositions.

The list. μέλαν (dark, malign), θῆλυ (effeminate, "womanish"), περισκελές (stubborn, unbending); θηριῶδες (bestial), βοσκηματῶδες (cattle-like — like grazing livestock), παιδαριῶδες (childish), βλακικόν (dull, stupid), κίβδηλον (counterfeit — like a false coin), βωμολόχον (buffoonish, vulgar), καπηλικόν (huckstering — like a petty shopkeeper who cheats in trade), τυραννικόν (tyrannical).

Function (open). The list has no frame, and its purpose is not stated. Most likely it is a diagnostic register: either to recognise these characters and not be them (so Long reads it — "flawed dispositions to avoid"), or to understand the people one deals with (cf. the morning catalogue of 02-01). The animal labels (θηριῶδες, βοσκηματῶδες) belong to the same "rational / animal" scale as 04-16 (god ↔ beast and ape), Med. 5.11 (whose soul have I now — a child's, a tyrant's, a beast's?), and 3.16 (the appetites shared with a Phalaris or a Nero). "μέλαν ἦθος" is the very phrase of 04-18 ("do not peer round at another's black character").

The disciplines. The principal one is assent: to recognise and rightly name a bad disposition (a diagnostic act). The secondary is action: the practical upshot — not to be such, and to know how to bear oneself toward such people.

Parallels. A catalogue of bad characters — 02-01; Med. 5.11. The bestial versus the rational — 04-16; Med. 3.16; 5.11. The "black character" — 04-18.