Poetics

1Let†us here deal with Poetry, its essence and its several species, with the characteristic function of each species and the way in which plots must be constructed if the poem is to be a success; and also with the number and character of the constituent parts of a poem, and similarly with all other matters proper to this same inquiry; and let us, as nature directs, begin first with first principles.

2Epic poetry, then, and the poetry of tragic drama, and, moreover, comedy and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and harp-playing, these, speaking generally, may all be said to be representations of life.†

3But they differ one from another in three ways: either in using means generically different†or in representing different objects or in representing objects not in the same way but in a different manner.

4For just as by the use both of color and form people represent many objects, making likenesses of them— some having a knowledge of art and some working empirically—and just as others use the human voice; so is it also in the arts which we have mentioned, they all make their representations in rhythm and language and tune, using these means either separately or in combination.

5For tune and rhythm alone are employed in flute-playing and harp-playing and in any other arts which have a similar function, as, for example, pipe-playing.

6Rhythm alone without tune is employed by dancers in their representations, for by means of rhythmical gestures they represent both character and experiences and actions.†

7But the art which employs words either in bare prose or in metres, either in one kind of metre or combining several, happens up to the present day to have no name.

8For we can find no common term to apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus†and to the Socratic dialogues:

9nor again supposing a poet were to make his representation in iambics or elegiacs or any other such metre—

10except that people attach the word poet(maker)to the name of the metre and speak of elegiac poets and of others as epic poets. Thus they do not call them poets in virtue of their representation but apply the name indiscriminately in virtue of the metre.

11For if people publish medical or scientific treatises in metre the custom is to call them poets. But Homer and Empedocles†have nothing in common except the metre, so that it would be proper to call the one a poet and the other not a poet but a scientist.

12Similarly if a man makes his representation by combining all the metres, as Chaeremon did when he wrote his rhapsody The Centaur, a medley of all the metres, he too should be given the name of poet.†On this point the distinctions thus made may suffice.

13There are certain arts which employ all the means which I have mentioned, such as rhythm and tune and metre—dithyrambic and nomic poetry,†for example, and tragedy too and comedy. The difference here is that some use all these at once, others use now one now another.

14These differences then in the various arts I call the means of representation.

1Since living persons†are the objects of representation, these must necessarily be either good men or inferior—thus only are characters normally distinguished, since ethical differences depend upon vice and virtue—that is to say either better than ourselves or worse or much what we are. It is the same with painters.

2Polygnotus depicted men as better than they are and Pauson worse, while Dionysius made likenesses.†

3Clearly each of the above mentioned arts will admit of these distinctions, and they will differ in representing objects which differ from each other in the way here described.

4In painting too, and flute-playing and harp-playing, these diversities may certainly be found, and it is the same in prose and in unaccompanied verse.

5For instance Homer’s people are better, Cleophon’s are like, while in Hegemon of Thasos, the first writer of parodies, and in Nicochares, the author of the Poltrooniad, they are worse.†

6It is the same in dithyrambic and nomic poetry, for instance... a writer might draw characters like the Cyclops as drawn by Timotheus and Philoxenus.†

7It is just in this respect that tragedy differs from comedy. The latter sets out to represent people as worse than they are to-day, the former as better.

1A third difference in these arts is the manner in which one may represent each of these objects.

2For in representing the same objects by the same means it is possible to proceed either partly by narrative and partly by assuming a character other than your own—this is Homer’s method—or by remaining yourself without any such change, or else to represent the characters as carrying out the whole action themselves.

3These, as we said above, are the three differences which form the several species of the art of representation, the means, the objects, and the manner.

4It follows that in one respect Sophocles would be the same kind of artist as Homer, for both represent good men, and in another respect he would resemble Aristophanes, for they both represent men in action and doing things. And that according to some is the reason why they are called dramas, because they present people as doing†things.

5And for this reason the Dorians claim as their own both tragedy and comedy—comedy is claimed both by the Megarians here in Greece, who say that it originated in the days of their democracy, and by the Megarians in Sicily,†for it was from there the poet Epicharmus†came, who was much earlier than Chionides and Magnes; and tragedy some of the Peloponnesians claim. Their evidence is the two names.

6Their name, they say, for suburb villages is κῶμαι—the Athenians call them Demes—and comedians are so called not from κωμάζειν, to revel, but because they were turned out of the towns and went strolling round the villages( κῶμαι). Their word for action, they add, is δρᾶν, whereas the Athenian word is πράττειν.

7TSo much then for the differences, their number, and their nature.

1Speaking generally, poetry seems to owe its origin to two particular causes, both natural.

2From childhood men have an instinct for representation, and in this respect, differs from the other animals that he is far more imitative and learns his first lessons by representing things. And then there is the enjoyment people always get from representations.

3What happens in actual experience proves this, for we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses.

4The reason is this: Learning things gives great pleasure not only to philosophers but also in the same way to all other men, though they share this pleasure only to a small degree.

5The reason why we enjoy seeing likenesses is that, as we look, we learn and infer what each is, for instance, that is so and so.

6If we have never happened to see the original, our pleasure is not due to the representation as such but to the technique or the color or some other such cause.

7We have, then, a natural instinct for representation and for tune and rhythm†—for the metres are obviously sections of rhythms†—and starting with these instincts men very gradually developed them until they produced poetry out of their improvisations.

8Poetry then split into two kinds according to the poet’s nature. For the more serious poets represented fine doings and the doings of fine men, while those of a less exalted nature represented the actions of inferior men, at first writing satire just as the others at first wrote hymns and eulogies.

9Before Homer we cannot indeed name any such poem, though there were probably many satirical poets,

10but starting from Homer, there is, for instance, his Margites†and other similar poems. For these the iambic metre was fittingly introduced and that is why it is still called iambic, because it was the metre in which they lampooned each other.†

11Of the ancients some wrote heroic verse and some iambic.

12And just as Homer was a supreme poet in the serious style, since he alone made his representations not only good but also dramatic, so, too, he was the first to mark out the main lines of comedy, since he made his drama not out of personal satire but out of the laughable as such. His Margites indeed provides an analogy: as are the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies, so is the Margites to our comedies.

13When tragedy and comedy came to light, poets were drawn by their natural bent towards one or the other. Some became writers of comedies instead of lampoons, the others produced tragedies instead of epics; the reason being that the former is in each case a higher kind of art and has greater value. To consider whether tragedy is fully developed by now in all its various species or not, and to criticize it both in itself and in relation to the stage, that is another question.

14At any rate it originated in improvisation—both tragedy itself and comedy. The one came from the prelude†to the dithyramb and the other from the prelude to the phallic songs which still survive as institutions in many cities. Tragedy then gradually evolved as men developed each element that came to light

15and after going through many changes, it stopped when it had found its own natural form.

16Thus it was Aeschylus who first raised the number of the actors from one to two. He also curtailed the chorus and gave the dialogue the leading part. Three actors and scene-painting Sophocles introduced.

17Then as to magnitude. Being a development of the Satyr play,†it was quite late before tragedy rose from short plots and comic diction to its full dignity, and that the iambic metre was used instead of the trochaic tetrameter.

18At first they used the tetrameter because its poetry suited the Satyrs and was better for dancing, but when dialogue was introduced, Nature herself discovered the proper metre. The iambic is indeed the most conversational of the metres,

19and the proof is that in talking to each other we most often use iambic lines but very rarely hexameters and only when we rise above the ordinary pitch of conversation.

20Then there is the number of acts. The further embellishments†and the story of their introduction one by one we may take as told,

21for it would probably be a long task to go through them in detail.

1Comedy, as we have said, is a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the base or ugly.†

2It consists in some blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly and distorted but not painful.

3The various stages of tragedy and the originators of each are well known, but comedy remains obscure because it was not at first treated seriously. Indeed it is only quite late in its history†that the archon granted a chorus for a comic poet; before that they were volunteers.†

4Comedy had already taken certain forms before there is any mention of those who are called its poets. Who introduced masks or prologues, the number of actors, and so on, is not known.

5Plot making [Epicharmus and Phormis]†originally came from Sicily,

6and of the Athenian poets Crates†was the first to give up the lampooning form and to generalize his dialogue and plots.

7Epic poetry agreed with tragedy only in so far as it was a metrical representation of heroic action, but inasmuch as it has a single metre and is narrative in that respect they are different.

8And then as regards length, tragedy tends to fall within a single revolution of the sun or slightly to exceed that, whereas epic is unlimited in point of time;

9and that is another difference, although originally the practice was the same in tragedy as in epic poetry.

10The constituent parts are some of them the same and some peculiar to tragedy.

11Consequently any one who knows about tragedy, good and bad, knows about epics too, since tragedy has all the elements of epic poetry, though the elements of tragedy are not all present in the epic.

1With the representation of life in hexameter verse†and with comedy we will deal later. We must now treat of tragedy after first gathering up the definition of its nature which results from what we have said already.

2Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action†that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude—by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions.†

3By language enriched I mean that which has rhythm and tune, i.e., song,

4and by the kinds separately I mean that some effects are produced by verse alone and some again by song.

5Since the representation is performed by living persons, it follows at once that one essential part of a tragedy is the spectacular effect, and, besides that, song-making and diction. For these are the means of the representation.

6By diction I mean here the metrical arrangement of the words; and song making I use in the full, obvious sense of the word.

7And since tragedy represents action and is acted by living persons, who must of necessity have certain qualities of character and thought—for it is these which determine the quality of an action; indeed thought and character are the natural causes of any action and it is in virtue of these that all men succeed or fail—

8it follows then that it is the plot which represents the action. By plot I mean here the arrangement of the incidents: character is that which determines the quality of the agents, and thought appears wherever in the dialogue they put forward an argument or deliver an opinion.

9Necessarily then every tragedy has six constituent parts, and on these its quality depends. These are plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song.

10Two of these are the means of representation: one is the manner: three are the objects represented.†

11This list is exhaustive, and practically all the poets employ these elements, for every drama includes alike spectacle and character and plot and diction and song and thought.

12The most important of these is the arrangement of the incidents,†for tragedy is not a representation of men but of a piece of action, of life, of happiness and unhappiness, which come under the head of action, and the end aimed at is the representation not of qualities of character but of some action; and while character makes men what they are, it’s their actions and experiences that make them happy or the opposite.

13They do not therefore act to represent character, but character-study is included for the sake of the action. It follows that the incidents and the plot are the end at which tragedy aims, and in everything the end aimed at is of prime importance.

14Moreover, you could not have a tragedy without action, but you can have one with out character-study.

15Indeed the tragedies of most modern poets are without this, and, speaking generally, there are many such writers, whose case is like that of Zeuxis compared with Polygnotus.†The latter was good at depicting character, but there is nothing of this in Zeuxis’s painting.

16A further argument is that if a man writes a series of speeches full of character and excellent in point of diction and thought, he will not achieve the proper function of tragedy nearly so well as a tragedy which, while inferior in these qualities, has a plot or arrangement of incidents.

17And furthermore, two of the most important elements in the emotional effect of tragedy, reversals and discoveries, are parts of the plot.

18And here is further proof: those who try to write tragedy are much sooner successful in language and character-study than in arranging the incidents. It is the same with almost all the earliest poets.

19The plot then is the first principle and as it were the soul of tragedy: character comes second.

20It is much the same also in painting; if a man smeared a canvas with the loveliest colors at random, it would not give as much pleasure as an outline in black and white.†

21And it is mainly because a play is a representation of action that it also for that reason represents people.

22Third comes thought. This means the ability to say what is possible and appropriate. It comes in the dialogue and is the function of the statesman’s or the rhetorician’s art.

23The old writers made their characters talk like statesmen,†the moderns like rhetoricians.

24Character is that which reveals choice†, shows what sort of thing a man chooses or avoids in circumstances where the choice is not obvious, so those speeches convey no character in which there is nothing whatever which the speaker chooses or avoids.

25Thought you find in speeches which contain an argument that something is or is not, or a general expression of opinion.

26The fourth of the literary elements is the language. By this I mean, as we said above, the expression of meaning in words,†and this is essentially the same in verse and in prose.

27Of the other elements which enrich†tragedy the most important is song-making.

28Spectacle, while highly effective, is yet quite foreign to the art and has nothing to do with poetry. Indeed the effect of tragedy does not depend on its performance by actors, and, moreover, for achieving the spectacular effects the art of the costumier is more authoritative than that of the poet.

1After these definitions we must next discuss the proper arrangement of the incidents since this is the first and most important thing in tragedy.

2We have laid it down that tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude, since a thing may be a whole and yet have no magnitude.

3A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

4A beginning is that which is not a necessary consequent of anything else but after which something else exists or happens as a natural result.

5An end on the contrary is that which is inevitably or, as a rule, the natural result of something else but from which nothing else follows;

6a middle follows something else and something follows from it.

7Well constructed plots must not therefore begin and end at random, but must embody the formulae we have stated.

8Moreover, in everything that is beautiful, whether it be a living creature or any organism composed of parts, these parts must not only be orderly arranged but must also have a certain magnitude of their own;

9for beauty consists in magnitude and ordered arrangement. From which it follows that neither would a very small creature be beautiful—for our view of it is almost instantaneous and therefore confused†—nor a very large one, since being unable to view it all at once, we lose the effect of a single whole; for instance, suppose a creature a thousand miles long.

10As then creatures and other organic structures must have a certain magnitude and yet be easily taken in by the eye, so too with plots: they must have length but must be easily taken in by the memory.

11The limit of length considered in relation to competitions and production†before an audience does not concern this treatise. Had it been the rule to produce a hundred tragedies, the performance would have been regulated by the water clock, as it is said they did once in other days.

12But as for the natural limit of the action, the longer the better as far as magnitude goes, provided it can all be grasped at once. To give a simple definition: the magnitude which admits of a change from bad fortune to good or from good fortune to bad, in a sequence of events which follow one another either inevitably or according to probability, that is the proper limit.

1A plot does not have unity, as some people think, simply because it deals with a single hero. Many and indeed innumerable things happen to an individual, some of which do not go to make up any unity, and similarly an individual is concerned in many actions which do not combine into a single piece of action.

2It seems therefore that all those poets are wrong who have written a Heracleid or Theseid or other such poems.†They think that because Heracles was a single individual the plot must for that reason have unity.

3But Homer, supreme also in all other respects, was apparently well aware of this truth either by instinct or from knowledge of his art. For in writing an Odyssey he did not put in all that ever happened to Odysseus, his being wounded on Parnassus, for instance, or his feigned madness when the host was gathered(these being events neither of which necessarily or probably led to the other), but he constructed his Odyssey round a single action in our sense of the phrase. And the Iliad the same.

4As then in the other arts of representation a single representation means a representation of a single object, so too the plot being a representation of a piece of action must represent a single piece of action and the whole of it; and the component incidents must be so arranged that if one of them be transposed or removed, the unity of the whole is dislocated and destroyed. For if the presence or absence of a thing makes no visible difference, then it is not an integral part of the whole.

1What we have said already makes it further clear that a poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could and would happen either probably or inevitably.

2The difference between a historian and a poet is not that one writes in prose and the other in verse— indeed the writings of Herodotus could be put into verse and yet would still be a kind of history, whether written in metre or not. The real difference is this, that one tells what happened and the other what might happen.

3For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

4By a general truth I mean the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say either probably or necessarily. That is what poetry aims at in giving names to the characters.†A particular fact is what Alcibiades did or what was done to him.

5In the case of comedy this has now become obvious, for comedians construct their plots out of probable incidents and then put in any names that occur to them. They do not, like the iambic satirists, write about individuals.†

6In tragedy, on the other hand, they keep to real names. The reason is that what is possible carries conviction. If a thing has not happened, we do not yet believe in its possibility, but what has happened is obviously possible. Had it been impossible, it would not have happened.

7It is true that in some tragedies one or two of the names are familiar and the rest invented; indeed in some they are all invented, as for instance in Agathon’s Antheus,†where both the incidents and the names are invented and yet it is none the less a favourite.

8One need not therefore endeavor invariably to keep to the traditional stories with which our tragedies deal. Indeed it would be absurd to do that, seeing that the familiar themes are familiar only to a few and yet please all.†

9It is clear, then, from what we have said that the poet must be a maker not of verses but of stories, since he is a poet in virtue of his representation, and what he represents is action.

10Even supposing he represents what has actually happened, he is none the less a poet, for there is nothing to prevent some actual occurrences being the sort of thing that would probably or inevitably happen, and it is in virtue of that that he is their maker.

11Of simple†plots and actions the worst are those which are episodic. By this I mean a plot in which the episodes do not follow each other probably or inevitably.

11bBad poets write such plays because they cannot help it, and good poets write them to please the actors. Writing as they do for competition, they often strain a plot beyond its capacity and are thus obliged to sacrifice continuity.†

11cBut this is bad work, since tragedy represents not only a complete action but also incidents that cause fear and pity, and this happens most of all when the incidents are unexpected and yet one is a consequence of the other.†

12For in that way the incidents will cause more amazement than if they happened mechanically and accidentally, since the most amazing accidental occurrences are those which seem to have been providential, for instance when the statue of Mitys at Argos killed the man who caused Mitys’s death by falling on him at a festival. Such events do not seem to be mere accidents.

13So such plots as these must necessarily be the best.

1Some plots are simple and some complex, as indeed the actions represented by the plots are obviously such.

2By a simple action I mean one that is single and continuous in the sense of our definition above,†wherein the change of fortune occurs without reversal or discovery;

3by a complex action I mean one wherein the change coincides with a discovery or reversal or both.

4These should result from the actual structure of the plot in such a way that what has already happened makes the result inevitable or probable; for there is indeed a vast difference between what happens propter hoc and post hoc.

1A reversal is a change of the situation into the opposite, as described above,†this change being, moreover, as we are saying, probable or inevitable—

2like the man in the Oedipus who came to cheer Oedipus and rid him of his anxiety about his mother by revealing his parentage and changed the whole situation.†

3In the Lynceus, too, there is the man led off to execution and Danaus following to kill him, and the result of what had already happened was that the latter was killed and the former escaped.†

4A discovery, as the term itself implies, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing either friendship or hatred in those who are destined for good fortune or ill.

5A discovery is most effective when it coincides with reversals, such as that involved by the discovery in the Oedipus.

6There are also other forms of discovery, for what we have described may in a sense occur in relation to inanimate and trivial objects, or one may discover whether some one has done something or not.

7But the discovery which is most essentially part of the plot and part of the action is of the kind described above, for such a discovery and reversal of fortune will involve either pity or fear, and it is actions such as these which, according to our hypothesis, tragedy represents; and, moreover, misfortune and good fortune are likely to turn upon such incidents.

8Now since the discovery is somebody’s discovery, in some scenes one character only is discovered to another, the identity of the other being obvious; but sometimes each must discover the other. Thus Iphigeneia was discovered to Orestes through the sending of the letter, but a separate discovery was needed to make him known to Iphigeneia.†

9We see then that two elements of the plot, reversal and discovery, turn upon these incidents. A third element is a calamity. Of these three elements we have already described reversal and discovery.

10A calamity is a destructive or painful occurrence, such as a death on the stage, acute suffering and wounding and so on.

1We have already spoken of the constituent parts to be used as ingredients of tragedy. The separable members into which it is quantitatively divided are these: Prologue, Episode, Exode, Choral Song,

2the last being divided into Parode and Stasimon.

3These are common to all tragedies; songs sung by actors on the stage and commoi are peculiar to certain plays.

4A prologue is the whole of that part of a tragedy which precedes the entrance of the chorus.

5An episode is the whole of that part of a tragedy which falls between whole choral songs.

6An exode is the whole of that part of a tragedy which is not followed by a song of the chorus.

7A parode is the whole of the first utterance of the chorus.

8A stasimon is a choral song without anapaests or trochaics.†

9A commos is a song of lament shared by the chorus and the actors on the stage.

10The constituent parts to be used as ingredients of tragedy have been described above; these are the separable members into which it is quantitatively divided.†

1Following upon what has been said above we should next state what ought to be aimed at and what avoided in the construction of a plot, and the means by which the object of tragedy may be achieved.

2Since then the structure of the best tragedy should be not simple but complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity—for that is peculiar to this form of art—it is obvious to begin with that one should not show worthy men passing from good fortune to bad. That does not arouse fear or pity but shocks our feelings.

3Nor again wicked people passing from bad fortune to good. That is the most untragic of all, having none of the requisite qualities, since it does not satisfy our feelings†or arouse pity or fear.

4Nor again the passing of a thoroughly bad man from good fortune to bad fortune. Such a structure might satisfy our feelings but it arouses neither pity nor fear, the one being for the man who does not deserve his misfortune and the other for the man who is like ourselves—pity for the undeserved misfortune, fear for the man like ourselves—so that the result will arouse neither pity nor fear.

5There remains then the mean between these. This is the sort of man who is not pre-eminently virtous and just, and yet it is through no badness or villainy of his own that he falls into the fortune, but rather through some flaw in him,†he being one of those who are in high station and good fortune, like Oedipus and Thyestes and the famous men of such families as those.

6The successful plot must then have a single†and not, as some say, a double issue; and the change must be not to good fortune from bad but, on the contrary, from good to bad fortune, and it must not be due to villainy but to some great flaw in such a man as we have described, or of one who is better rather than worse.

7This can be seen also in actual practice. For at first poets accepted any plots, but to-day the best tragedies are written about a few families— Alcmaeon for instance and Oedipus and Orestes and Meleager and Thyestes and Telephus and all the others whom it befell to suffer or inflict terrible disasters.

8Judged then by the theory of the art, the best†tragedy is of this construction.

9Those critics are therefore wrong who charge Euripides with doing this in his tragedies, and say that many of his end in misfortune.

10That is, as we have shown, correct. And there is very good evidence of this, for on the stage and in competitions such plays appear the most tragic of all, if they are successful, and even if Euripides is in other respects a bad manager,†yet he is certainly the most tragic of the poets.

11Next in order comes the structure which some put first, that which has a double issue, like the Odyssey, and ends in opposite ways for the good characters and the bad.

12It is the sentimentality of the audience which makes this seem the best form; for the poets follow the wish of the spectators.

13But this is not the true tragic pleasure but rather characteristic of comedy, where those who are bitter enemies in the story, Orestes and Aegisthus, for instance, go off at the end, having made friends, and nobody kills anybody.

1Fear and pity sometimes result from the spectacle and are sometimes aroused by the actual arrangement of the incidents, which is preferable and the mark of a better poet.

2The plot should be so constructed that even without seeing the play anyone hearing of the incidents happening thrills with fear and pity as a result of what occurs. So would anyone feel who heard the story of Oedipus.

3To produce this effect by means of an appeal to the eye is inartistic and needs adventitious aid,

4while those who by such means produce an effect which is not fearful but merely monstrous have nothing in common with tragedy.†For one should not seek from tragedy all kinds of pleasure but that which is peculiar to tragedy,

5and since the poet must by representation produce the pleasure which comes from feeling pity and fear, obviously this quality must be embodied in the incidents.

6We must now decide what incidents seem dreadful or rather pitiable. Such must necessarily be the actions of friends to each other or of enemies or of people that are neither.

7Now if an enemy does it to an enemy, there is nothing pitiable either in the deed or the intention,

8except so far as the actual calamity goes.

9Nor would there be if they were neither friends nor enemies. But when these calamities happen among friends, when for instance brother kills brother, or son father, or mother son, or son mother—either kills or intends to kill, or does something of the kind, that is what we must look for.

10Now it is not right to break up the traditional stories, I mean, for instance, Clytaemnestra being killed by Orestes and Eriphyle by Alcmaeon,

11but the poet must show invention and make a skilful use of the tradition. But we must state more clearly what is meant by skilful.

12The action may happen in the way in which the old dramatists made their characters act—consciously and knowing the facts, as Euripides†also made his Medea kill her children.

13Or they may do the deed but without realizing the horror of it and then discover the relationship afterwards, like Oedipus in Sophocles. That indeed lies outside the play,†but an example of this in the tragedy itself is the Alcmaeon of Astydamas†or Telegonus in the Wounded Odysseus.

14A third alternative is to intend to do some irremediable action in ignorance and to discover the truth before doing it.

15Besides these there is no other way, for they must either do the deed or not, either knowing or unknowing.

16The worst of these is to intend the action with full knowledge and not to perform it. That outrages the feelings and is not tragic, for there is no calamity. So nobody does that, except occasionally, as, for instance, Haemon and Creon†in the Antigone.

17Next comes the doing of the deed.

18It is better to act in ignorance and discover afterwards. Our feelings are not outraged and the discovery is startling.

19Best of all is the last; in the Cresphontes,†for instance, Merope intends to kill her son and does not kill him but discovers; and in the Iphigeneia†the case of the sister and brother; and in the Helle†the son discovers just as he is on the point of giving up his mother.

20So this is the reason, as was said above,†why tragedies are about a few families. For in their experiments it was from no technical knowledge but purely by chance that they found out how to produce such an effect in their stories. So they are obliged to have recourse to those families in which such calamities befell.†

21Now concerning the structure of the incidents and the proper character of the plots enough has been said.

1Concerning character there are four points to aim at. The first and most important is that the character should be good.

2The play will show character if, as we said above,†either the dialogue or the actions reveal some choice; and the character will be good, if the choice is good.

3But this is relative to each class of people. Even a woman is good and so is a slave, although it may be said that a woman is an inferior thing and a slave beneath consideration.

4The second point is that the characters should be appropriate. A character may be manly, but it is not appropriate for a woman to be manly or clever.

5Thirdly, it should be like.†This is different from making the character good and from making it appropriate in the sense of the word as used above.

6Fourthly, it should be consistent. Even if the original be inconsistent and offers such a character to the poet for representation, still he must be consistently inconsistent.

7An example of unnecessary badness of character is Menelaos in the Orestes†;

8of character that is unfitting and inappropriate the lament of Odysseus in the Scylla†and Melanippe’s speech†;

9of inconsistent character Iphigeneia in Aulis, for the suppliant Iphigeneia is not at all like her later character.

10In character-drawing just as much as in the arrangement of the incidents one should always seek what is inevitable or probable, so as to make it inevitable or probable that such and such a person should say or do such and such; and inevitable or probable that one thing should follow another.

10bClearly therefore the denouement of each play should also be the result of the plot itself and not produced mechanically as in the Medea and the incident of the embarkation in the Iliad.†

10cThe god in the car†should only be used to explain what lies outside the play, either what happened earlier and is therefore beyond human knowledge, or what happens later and needs to be foretold in a proclamation. For we ascribe to the gods the power of seeing everything.

10dThere must, however, be nothing inexplicable in the incidents, or, if there is, it must lie outside the tragedy. There is an example in Sophocles’ Oedipus.†

11Since tragedy is a representation of men better than ourselves we must copy the good portrait-painters who, while rendering the distinctive form and making a likeness, yet paint people better than they are. It is the same with the poet. When representing people who are hot-tempered or lazy, or have other such traits of character, he should make them such, yet men of worth [an example of hardness]†; take the way in which Agathon and Homer portray Achilles.

12Keep, then, a careful eye on these rules and also on the appeal to the eye†which is necessarily bound up with the poet’s business; for that offers many opportunities of going wrong. But this subject has been adequately discussed in the published treatises.†

1What a Discovery is has been already stated. As for kinds of Discovery, first comes the least artistic kind, which is largely used owing to incompetence—discovery by tokens.

2These may be congenital, like the spear the Earth-born bear or stars, like those which Carcinus†uses in his Thyestes†;

3or they may be acquired and these may be on the body, for instance, wounds, or external things like necklaces, and in the Tyro†the discovery by means of the boat.

4There is a better and a worse way of using these tokens; for instance Odysseus, by means of his wound, was discovered in one way by the nurse and in another way by the swine-herds.†

5Discovery scenes constructed to prove the point are inartistic and so are all such scenes, but those are better which arise out of a reversal scene, as, for instance, in The Washing.†

6In the second place come those which are manufactured by the poet and are therefore inartistic. For instance, in the Iphigeneia†Orestes revealed himself. She was revealed to him through the letter,

7but Orestes says himself what the poet wants and not what the plot requires. So this comes near to the fault already mentioned, for he might just as well have actually brought some tokens.†And there is the voice of the shuttle†In Sophocles’ Tereus.

8The third kind is due to memory, to showing distress on seeing something. An example of this is the scene in the Cyprians by Dicaeogenes; on seeing the picture he burst into tears†: and again in the Tale of Alcinous,†hearing the minstrel he remembered and burst into tears; and thus they were recognized.

9The fourth kind results from an inference; for instance, in the Choephoroe Someone like me has come; but nobody is like me except Orestes; therefore he has come. And there is Polyidus’s†idea about Iphigeneia, for it is likely enough that Orestes should make an inference that, whereas his sister was sacrificed, here is the same thing happening to him. And in Theodectes’ Tydeus that having come to find a son, he is perishing himself. And the scene in the Phineidae, where on seeing the spot the women inferred their fate, that they were meant to die there for it was there that they had been exposed.†

10There is also a kind of fictitious discovery which depends on a false inference on the part of the audience, for instance in Odysseus the False Messenger, he said he would recognize the bow, which as a matter of fact he had not seen, but to assume that he really would reveal himself by this means is a false inference.†

11Best of all is the discovery which is brought about directly by the incidents, the surprise being produced by means of what is likely—take the scene in Sophocles’ Oedipus or in the Iphigeneia—for it is likely enough that she should want to send a letter. These are the only discovery scenes which dispense with artificial tokens, like necklaces.†

12In the second place come those that are the result of inference.

1In constructing plots and completing the effect by the help of dialogue the poet should, as far as possible, keep the scene before his eyes. Only thus by getting the picture as clear as if he were present at the actual event, will he find what is fitting and detect contradictions.

2The censure upon Carcinos is evidence of this. Amphiaraos was was made to rise from a temple. The poet did not visualize the scene and therefore this escaped his notice, but on the stage it was a failure since the audience objected.†

3The poet should also, as far as possible, complete the effect by using the gestures. For, if their natural powers are equal, those who are actually in the emotions are the most convincing; he who is agitated blusters and the angry man rages with the maximum of conviction.†

4And that is why poetry needs either a sympathetic nature or a madman,†the former being impressionable and the latter inspired.

5The stories, whether they are traditional or whether you make them up yourself, should first be sketched in outline and then expanded by putting in episodes.

6I mean that one might look at the general outline, say of the Iphigeneia, like this: A certain maiden has been sacrificed, and has disappeared beyond the ken of those who sacrificed her and has been established in another country, where it is a custom to sacrifice strangers to the goddess; and this priesthood she holds. Some time afterwards it happens that the brother of the priestess arrives there—the fact that the god told him to go there, and why, and the object of his journey, lie outside the outline-plot. He arrives, is seized, and is on the point of being sacrificed, when he reveals his identity either by Euripides’ method or according to Polyidos, by making the very natural remark that after all it is not only his sister who was born to be sacrificed but himself too; and thus he is saved.

7Not until this has been done should you put in names and insert the episodes;

8and you must mind that the episodes are appropriate, as, for instance, in the case of Orestes the madness that led to his capture and his escape by means of the purification.†

9Now in drama the episodes are short, but it is by them that the epic gains its length.

10The story of the Odyssey is quite short. A man is for many years away from home and his footsteps are dogged by Poseidon and he is all alone. Moreover, affairs at home are in such a state that his estate is being wasted by suitors and a plot laid against his son, but after being storm-tossed he arrives himself, reveals who he is, and attacks them, with the result that he is saved and destroys his enemies.

11That is the essence, the rest is episodes.

1In every tragedy there is a complication and a denouement.†The incidents outside the plot and some of those in it usually form the complication, the rest is the denouement.

2I mean this, that the complication is the part from the beginning up to the point which immediately precedes the occurrence of a change from bad to good fortune or from good fortune to bad; the denouement is from the beginning of the change down to the end.

3For instance, in the Lynceus of Theodectes the complication is the preceding events, and the seizure of the boy, and then their own seizure; and the denouement is from the capital charge to the end.†

4Tragedies should properly be classed as the same or different mainly in virtue of the plot, that is to say those that have the same entanglement and denouement. Many who entangle well are bad at the denouement. Both should always be mastered. There are four varieties of tragedy—the same as the number given for the elements†—

5first the complex kind, which all turns on reversal and discovery;

6the calamity play like the stories of Ajax and Ixion;

7the character play like the Phthian Women and the Peleus†.

8The fourth element is spectacle, like the Phorcides†and Prometheus, and all scenes laid in Hades.

9One should ideally try to include all these elements or, failing that, the most important and as many as possible, especially since it is the modern fashion to carp at poets, and, because there have been good poets in each style, to demand that a single author should surpass the peculiar merits of each.

10

11

12One must remember, as we have often said, not to make a tragedy an epic structure:

13by epic I mean made up of many stories—suppose, for instance, one were to dramatize the IIiad as a whole.

14The length of the IIiad allows to the parts their proper size, but in plays the result is full of disappointment.

15And the proof is that all who have dramatized the Sack of Troy as a whole, and not, like Euripides, piecemeal, or the Niobe story as a whole and not like Aeschylus, either fail or fare badly in competition. Indeed even Agathon failed in this point alone.

16In reversals, however, and in simple stories†too, they admirably achieve their end, which is a tragic effect that also satisfies your feelings.

17This is achieved when the wise man, who is, however, unscrupulous, is deceived—like Sisyphus—and the man who is brave but wicked is worsted.

18And this, as Agathon says, is a likely result, since it is likely that many quite unlikely things should happen.

19The chorus too must be regarded as one of the actors. It must be part of the whole and share in the action, not as in Euripides but as in Sophocles.

20In the others the choral odes have no more to do with the plot than with any other tragedy. And so they sing interludes, a practice begun by Agathon. And yet to sing interludes is quite as bad as transferring a whole speech or scene from one play to another.

1The other factors have been already discussed. It remains to speak of Diction and Thought.

2All that concerns Thought may be left to the treatise on Rhetoric, for the subject is more proper to that inquiry.†

3Under the head of Thought come all the effects to be produced by the language.

4Some of these are proof and refutation, the arousing of feelings like pity, fear, anger, and so on, and then again exaggeration and depreciation.†

5It is clear that in the case of the incidents, too, one should work on the same principles, when effects of pity or terror or exaggeration or probability have to be produced.

6There is just this difference, that some effects must be clear without explanation,†whereas others are produced in the speeches by the speaker and are due to the speeches. For what would be the use of a speaker, if the required effect were likely to be felt without the aid of the speeches?

7Under the head of Diction one subject of inquiry is the various modes of speech, the knowledge of which is proper to elocution or to the man who knows the master art†—I mean for instance, what is a command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, question, answer, and so on.

8The knowledge or ignorance of such matters brings upon the poet no censure worth serious consideration. For who could suppose that there is any fault in the passage which Protagoras censures, because Homer, intending to utter a prayer, gives a command when he says, Sing, goddess, the wrath? To order something to be done or not is, he points out, a command.

9So we may leave this topic as one that belongs not to poetry but to another art.

1Diction as a whole†is made up of these parts: letter, syllable, conjunction, joint,†noun, verb, case, phrase.

2A letter is an indivisible sound, not every such sound but one of which an intelligible sound can be formed. Animals utter indivisible sounds but none that I should call a letter.

3Such sounds may be subdivided into vowel, semi-vowel, and mute. A vowel is that which without any addition has an audible sound; a semivowel needs the addition of another letter to give it audible sound, for instance S and R; a mute is that which with addition has no sound of its own but becomes audible when combined with some of the letters which have a sound. Examples of mutes are G and D.

4Letters differ according to the shape of the mouth and the place at which they are sounded; in being with or without aspiration; in being long and short; and lastly in having an acute, grave, or intermediate accent. But the detailed study of these matters properly concerns students of metre.

5A syllable is a sound without meaning, composed of a mute and a letter that has a sound. GR, for example, without A is a syllable just as much as GRA with an A. But these distinctions also belong to the theory of metre.

6A conjunction is a sound without meaning, which neither hinders nor causes the formation of a single significant sound or phrase out of several sounds, and which, if the phrase stands by itself, cannot properly stand at the beginning of it, e.g. μέν, δή, τοί, δέ; or else it is a sound without meaning capable of forming one significant sound or phrase out of several sounds having each a meaning of their own, e.g. ἀμφί, περί.

7A joint is a sound without meaning which marks the beginning or end of a phrase or a division in it, and naturally stands at either end or in the middle.†

8A noun is a composite sound with a meaning, not indicative of time, no part of which has a meaning by itself; for in compounds we do not use each part as having a meaning of its own, for instance, in Theodorus, there is no meaning of δῶρον (gift).

9A verb is a composite sound with a meaning, indicative of time, no part of which has a meaning by itself—just as in nouns. Man or white does not signify time, but walks and has walked connote present and past time respectively.

10A case (or inflection) of a noun or verb is that which signifies either of or to a thing and the like; or gives the sense of one or many e.g. men and man; or else it may depend on the delivery, for example question and command. Walked? and Walk! are verbal cases of this kind.

11A phrase†is a composite sound with a meaning, some parts of which mean something by themselves.

12It is not true to say that every phrase is made up of nouns and verbs, e.g. the definition of man†; but although it is possible to have a phrase without verbs, yet some part of it will always have a meaning of its own, for example, Cleon in Cleon walks.

13A phrase may be a unit in two ways; either it signifies one thing or it is a combination of several phrases. The unity of the Iliad, for instance, is due to such combination, but the definition of man is one phrase because it signifies one thing.

1Nouns are of two kinds. There is the simple noun, by which I mean one made up of parts that have no meaning, like γῆ, and there is the compound noun.

2These may be made up either of a part which has no meaning and a part which has a meaning—though it does not have its meaning in the compound—or of two parts both having a meaning.

3A compound noun may be triple and quadruple and multiple, e.g. many of the bombastic names like Hermocaicoxanthus.†...

4Every noun is either ordinary†or rare or metaphorical or ornamental or invented or lengthened or curtailed or altered.

5An ordinary word is one used by everybody, a rare word one used by some;

6so that a word may obviously be both ordinary and rare, but not in relation to the same people. σίγυνον, for instance, is to the Cypriots an ordinary word but to us a rare one.

7Metaphor is the application of a strange term either transferred from the genus and applied to the species or from the species and applied to the genus, or from one species to another or else by analogy.

8An example of a term transferred from genus to species is Here stands my ship. Riding at anchor is a species of standing.

9An example of transference from species to genus is Indeed ten thousand noble things Odysseus did, for ten thousand, which is a species of many, is here used instead of the word many.

10An example of transference from one species to another is Drawing off his life with the bronze and Severing with the tireless bronze, where drawing off is used for severing and severing for drawing off, both being species of removing.†

11Metaphor by analogy means this: when B is to A as D is to C, then instead of B the poet will say D and B instead of D.

12And sometimes they add that to which the term supplanted by the metaphor is relative.†For instance, a cup is to Dionysus what a shield is to Ares; so he will call the cup Dionysus’s shield and the shield Ares’ cup.

13Or old age is to life as evening is to day; so he will call the evening day’s old-age or use Empedocles’ phrase; and old age he will call the evening of life or life’s setting sun.

14Sometimes there is no word for some of the terms of the analogy but the metaphor can be used all the same. For instance, to scatter seed is to sow, but there is no word for the action of the sun in scattering its fire. Yet this has to the sunshine the same relation as sowing has to the seed, and so you have the phrase sowing the god-created fire.

15Besides this another way of employing metaphor is to call a thing by the strange name and then to deny it some attribute of that name.

16For instance, suppose you call the shield not Ares’ cup but a “wineless cup.”...†

17An invented word is one not used at all by any people and coined by the poet. There seem to be such words, eg. sprouters for horns and pray-er for priest.

18A word is lengthened or curtailed, the former when use is made of a longer vowel than usual or a syllable inserted, and the latter when part of the word is curtailed.

19An example of a lengthened word is πόληος for πολέως and Πηληιάδεω for Πηλείδου; and of a curtailed word κρῖ and δῶ, and e.g. μία γίνεται ἀμφοτέρων ὄψ.†

20A word is altered when the poet coins part of the word and leaves the rest unchanged, e.g. δεξιτερὸν κατὰ μαζόν instead of δεξιόν.

21Of the nouns themselves, some are masculine, some feminine, and some neuter.†

22Masculine are all that end in N and P and Σ and in the two compounds of Σ, Ψ and Ξ.

23Feminine are all that end in those of the vowels that are always long, for instance Η and Ω, and in Α among vowels that can be lengthened.

24The result is that the number of masculine and feminine terminations is the same, for Ψ and Ξ are the same as Σ.

25No noun ends in a mute or in a short vowel.

26Only three end in Ι, μέλι, κόμμι, and πέπερι. Five end in Υ. The neuters end in these letters and in Ν and Σ.

1The merit of diction is to be clear and not commonplace. The clearest diction is that made up of ordinary words, but it is commonplace.

2An example is the poetry of Cleophon and of Sthenelus.†

3That which employs unfamiliar words is dignified and outside the common usage. By unfamiliar I mean a rare word, a metaphor, a lengthening,†and anything beyond the ordinary use.

4But if a poet writes entirely in such words, the result will be either a riddle or jargon; if made up of metaphors, a riddle and if of rare words, jargon.

5The essence of a riddle consists in describing a fact by an impossible combination of words. By merely combining the ordinary names of things this cannot be done, but it is made possible by combining metaphors. For instance, I saw a man weld bronze upon a man with fire, and so on.†

6A medley of rare words is jargon.

7We need then a sort of mixture of the two. For the one kind will save the diction from being prosaic and commonplace, the rare word, for example, and the metaphor and the ornament, whereas the ordinary words give clarity.

8A considerable aid to clarity and distinction are the lengthening and abbreviation and alteration of words. Being otherwise than in the ordinary form and thus unusual, these will produce the effect of distinction, and clarity will be preserved by retaining part of the usual form.

9Those critics are therefore wrong who censure this manner of idiom and poke fun at the poet, as did the elder Eucleides†who said it was easy to write poetry, granted the right to lengthen syllables at will. He had made a burlesque in this very style: Ἐ̄πῐχᾰ́|ρη̄ν εἶ̄δο̆ν Μᾰρᾰ|θω̄νᾰ́δε̆ | βᾱδῑ|ζο̄ντᾰ οῡ̓κ ᾱ̓́ν | γ̆' ε̆ρᾰ́με̆νος το̄ν | ἐκεῑ́νοῡ ε̆λλε̆́βο̆ρο̄ν.†

10Now to make an obtrusive use of this licence is ridiculous;

11but moderation is a requisite common to all kinds of writing. The same effect could be got by using metaphors and rare words and the rest unsuitably for the express purpose of raising a laugh.

12What a difference is made by the proper use of such licence may be seen in epic poetry, if you substitute in the verse the ordinary forms.

13Take a rare word or metaphor or any of the others and substitute the ordinary word; the truth of our contention will then be obvious. For instance, Aeschylus and Euripides wrote the same iambic line with the change of one word only, a rare word in place of one made ordinary by custom, yet the one line seems beautiful and the other trivial. Aeschylus in the Philoctetes wrote, The ulcer eats the flesh of this my foot, and Euripides instead of eats put feasts upon. Or take I that am small, of no account nor goodly; suppose one were to read the line substituting the ordinary words, I that am little and weak and ugly. Or compare He set a stool unseemly and a table small. with He set a shabby stool and a little table, or the sea-shore is roaring with the sea-shore is shrieking.†

14Ariphrades again made fun of the tragedians because they employ phrases which no one would use in conversation, like δωμάτων ἄπο instead of ἀπὸ δωμάτων and their σέθεν and ἐγὼ δέ νιν and Ἀχιλλέως πέρι for περὶ Ἀχιλλέως, and so on.

15All that sort of thing, not being in the ordinary form, gives distinction to the diction, which was what he failed to understand.

16It is a great thing to make a proper use of each of the elements mentioned, and of double words and rare words too, but by far the greatest thing is the use of metaphor.

17That alone cannot be learnt; it is the token of genius. For the right use of metaphor means an eye for resemblances.†

18Of the various kinds of words the double forms are most suited for dithyrambs, rare words for heroic verse and metaphors for iambics.

19And indeed in heroic verse they are all useful; but since iambic verse is largely an imitation of speech, only those nouns are suitable which might be used in talking. These are the ordinary word, metaphor, and ornament.

20Now concerning tragedy and the art of representing life in action, what we have said already must suffice.

1We come now to the art of representation which is narrative and in metre. Clearly the story must be constructed as in tragedy, dramatically, round a single piece of action, whole and complete in itself, with a beginning, middle and end, so that like a single living organism it may produce its own peculiar form of pleasure.

2It must not be such as we normally find in history, where what is required is an exposition not of a single piece of action but of a single period of time, showing all that within the period befell one or more persons, events that have a merely casual relation to each other.

3For just as the battle of Salamis occurred at the same time as the Carthaginian battle in Sicily, but they do not converge to the same result†; so, too, in any sequence of time one event may follow another and yet they may not issue in any one result.

4Yet most of the poets do this.

5So in this respect, too, compared with all other poets Homer may seem, as we have already said, divinely inspired, in that even with the Trojan war, which has a beginning and an end, he did not endeavor to dramatize it as a whole, since it would have been either too long to be taken in all at once or, if he had moderated the length, he would have complicated it by the variety of incident. As it is, he takes one part of the story only and uses many incidents from other parts, such as the Catalogue of Ships and other incidents with which he diversifies his poetry.

6The others, on the contrary, all write about a single hero or about a single period or about a single action with a great many parts, the authors, for example, of the Cypria and the Little Iliad.†

7The result is that out of an Iliad or an Odyssey only one tragedy can be made, or two at most, whereas several have been made out of the Cypria, and out of the Little Iliad more than eight, e.g. The Award of Arms, Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, Eurypylus, The Begging, The Laconian Women, The Sack of Troy, and Sailing of the Fleet, and Sinon, too, and The Trojan Women.

1The next point is that there must be the same varieties of epic as of tragedy†: an epic must be simple or complex, or else turn on character or on calamity.

2The constituent parts, too, are the same with the exception of song and spectacle. Epic needs reversals and discoveries and calamities, and the thought and diction too must be good.

3All these were used by Homer for the first time, and used well. Of his poems he made the one, the Iliad, a simple story turning on calamity, and the Odyssey a complex story—it is full of discoveries—turning on character. Besides this they surpass all other poems in diction and thought.

4Epic differs from tragedy in the length of the composition and in metre.

5The limit of length already given†will suffice—it must be possible to embrace the beginning and the end in one view, which would be the case if the compositions were shorter than the ancient epics but reached to the length of the tragedies presented at a single entertainment.†

6Epic has a special advantage which enables the length to be increased, because in tragedy it is not possible to represent several parts of the story as going on simultaneously, but only to show what is on the stage, that part of the story which the actors are performing; whereas, in the epic, because it is narrative, several parts can be portrayed as being enacted at the same time.

7If these incidents are relevant, they increase the bulk of the poem, and this increase gives the epic a great advantage in richness as well as the variety due to the diverse incidents; for it is monotony which, soon satiating the audience, makes tragedies fail.

8Experience has shown that the heroic hexameter is the right metre. Were anyone to write a narrative poem in any other metre or in several metres, the effect would be wrong.

9The hexameter is the most sedate and stately of all metres and therefore admits of rare words and metaphors more than others, and narrative poetry is itself elaborate above all others.

10The iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are lively, the latter suits dancing and the former suits real life.

11Still more unsuitable is it to use several metres as Chaeremon did.

12So no one has composed a long poem in any metre other than the heroic hexameter. As we said above, Nature shows that this is the right metre to choose.

13Homer deserves praise for many things and especially for this, that alone of all poets he does not fail to understand what he ought to do himself.

14The poet should speak as seldom as possible in his own character, since he is not representing the story in that sense.†Now the other poets play a part themselves throughout the poem and only occasionally represent a few things dramatically, but Homer after a brief prelude at once brings in a man or a woman or some other character, never without character, but all having character of their own.

15Now the marvellous should certainly be portrayed in tragedy, but epic affords greater scope for the inexplicable(which is the chief element in what is marvellous), because we do not actually see the persons of the story.

16The incident of Hector’s pursuit†would look ridiculous on the stage, the people standing still and not pursuing and Achilles waving them back, but in epic that is not noticed.

17But that the marvellous causes pleasure is shown by the fact that people always tell a piece of news with additions by way of being agreeable.

18Above all, Homer has taught the others the proper way of telling lies, that is, by using a fallacy. When B is true if A is true, or B happens if A happens, people think that if B is true A must be true or happen. But that is false. Consequently if A be untrue but there be something else, B, which is necessarily true or happens if A is true, the proper thing to do is to posit B, for, knowing B to be true, our mind falsely infers that A is true also. This is an example from the Washing.†

19What is convincing though impossible should always be preferred to what is possible and unconvincing.

20Stories should not be made up of inexplicable details; so far as possible there should be nothing inexplicable, or, if there is, it should lie outside the story—as, for instance, Oedipus not knowing how Laius died—and not in the play; for example, in the Electra the news of the Pythian games,†or in the Mysians the man who came from Tegea to Mysia without speaking.

21To say that the plot would otherwise have been ruined is ridiculous. One should not in the first instance construct such a plot, and if a poet does write thus, and there seems to be a more reasonable way of treating the incident, then it is positively absurd.

22Even in the Odyssey the inexplicable elements in the story of his landing†would obviously have been intolerable, had they been written by an inferior poet. As it is, Homer conceals the absurdity by the charm of all his other merits.

23The diction should be elaborated only in the idle parts which do not reveal character or thought.†Too brilliant diction frustrates its own object by diverting attention from the portrayal of character and thought.

1With regard to problems,†and the various solutions of them, how many kinds there are, and the nature of each kind, all will be clear if we look at them like this.

2Since the poet represents life, as a painter does or any other maker of likenesses, he must always represent one of three things—either things as they were or are; or things as they are said and seem to be; or things as they should be.

3These are expressed in diction with or without rare words and metaphors, there being many modifications of diction, all of which we allow the poet to use.

4Moreover, the standard of what is correct is not the same in the art of poetry as it is in the art of social conduct or any other art.

5In the actual art of poetry there are two kinds of errors, essential and accidental.

6If a man meant to represent something and failed through incapacity, that is an essential error. But if his error is due to his original conception being wrong and his portraying, for example, a horse advancing both its right legs, that is then a technical error in some special branch of knowledge, in medicine, say, or whatever it may be; or else some sort of impossibility has been portrayed, but that is not an essential error.

7These considerations must, then, be kept in view in meeting the charges contained in these objections. Let us first take the charges against the art of poetry itself. If an impossibility has been portrayed, an error has been made.

8But it is justifiable if the poet thus achieves the object of poetry—what that is has been already stated—and makes that part or some other part of the poem more striking. The pursuit of Hector is an example of this.†

9If, however, the object could have been achieved better or just as well without sacrifice of technical accuracy, then it is not justifiable, for, if possible, there should be no error at all in any part of the poem.

10Again one must ask of which kind is the error, is it an error in poetic art or a chance error in some other field? It is less of an error not to know that a female stag has no horns than to make a picture that is unrecognizable.

11Next, supposing the charge is That is not true, one can meet it by saying But perhaps it ought to be, just as Sophocles said that he portrayed people as they ought to be and Euripides portrayed them as they are.

12If neither of these will do, then say, Such is the tale; for instance, tales about gods.

13Very likely there is no advantage in telling them, and they are not true either, but may well be what Xenophanes declared†—all the same such is the tale.

14In another case, perhaps, there is no advantage but such was the fact, e.g. the case of the arms, Their spears erect on butt-spikes stood,†for that was then the custom, as it still is in Illyria.

15As to the question whether anything that has been said or done is morally good or bad, this must be answered not merely by seeing whether what has actually been done or said is noble or base, but by taking into consideration also the man who did or said it, and seeing to whom he did or said it, and when and for whom and for what reason; for example, to secure a greater good or to avoid a greater evil.

16Some objections may be met by reference to the diction, for example, by pleading rare word, e.g. οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον, for perhaps he means not mules but sentinels.†And Dolon, One that was verily evil of form, it may be not his deformed body but his ugly face, for the Cretans use fair-formed for fair-featured.†And again Livelier mix it may mean not undiluted as for drunkards but quicker.†

17Other expressions are metaphorical, for example: Then all the other immortals and men lay all night in slumber, while yet he says: Yea, when indeed he gazed at the Trojan plain Agamemnon Marvelled at voices of flutes... All is used instead of many metaphorically, all being a species of many.†And again, Alone unsharing†is metaphorical; the best known is called the only one.

18By intonation also; for example, the solutions of Hippias of Thasos, his δίδομεν δέ οἱ†and τὸ μὲν οὗ καταπύθεται ὄμβρῳ†;

19and by punctuation; for example, the lines of Empedocles: Soon mortal grow they that aforetime learnt Immortal ways, and pure erstwhile commingled.†

20Or again by ambiguity, e.g. παρῴχηκεν δὲ πλέω νύξ, where πλείω is ambiguous.†

21Others according to the habitual use of the phrase, e.g. wine and water is called wine so you get the phrase greaves of new-wrought tin;†or workers in iron are called braziers, and so Ganymede is said to pour wine for Zeus, though they do not drink wine. This last might however be metaphorical.†

22Whenever a word seems to involve a contradiction, one should consider how many different meanings it might bear in the passage, e.g. in There the bronzen shaft was stayed,†we should ask in how many ways being stayed might be taken,

23interpreting the passage in this sense or in that,

24and keeping as far as possible from the attitude which Glaucon†describes when he says that people make some unwarrantable presupposition and having themselves given an adverse verdict proceed to argue from it, and if what they think the poet has said does not agree with their own preconceived ideas, they censure him, as if that was what he had said.

25This is what has happened in the case of Icarius.†They assume that he was a Spartan and therefore find it odd that when Telemachus went to Sparta he did not meet him. But the truth may be, as the Cephallenians say, that Odysseus married a wife from their country and that the name was not Icarius but Icadius. So the objection is probably due to a mistake.

26In general any impossibility may be defended by reference to the poetic effect or to the ideal or to current opinion.

27For poetic effect a convincing impossibility is preferable to that which is unconvincing though possible.

28It may be impossible that there should be such people as Zeuxis†used to paint, but it would be better if there were; for the type should improve on the actual.

29Popular tradition may be used to defend what seems irrational, and you can also say that sometimes it is not irrational, for it is likely that unlikely things should happen.

30Contradictions in terms must be examined in the same way as an opponent’s refutations in argument, to see whether the poet refers to the same thing in the same relation and in the same sense, and has contradicted either what he expressly says himself or what an intelligent person would take to be his meaning.

31It is right, however, to censure both improbability and depravity where there is no necessity and no use is made of the improbability. An example is Euripides’ intro duction of Aegeus†or(of depravity)the character of Menelans in the Orestes.

32The censures they bring are of five kinds; that things are either impossible or irrational or harmful or inconsistent or contrary to artistic correctness. The solutions must be studied under the heads specified above, twelve in number.†

1The question may be raised whether the epic or the tragic form of representation is the better.

2If the better is the less vulgar and the less vulgar is always that which appeals to the better audience, then obviously the art which makes its appeal to everybody is eminently vulgar.†

3And indeed actors think the audience do not understand unless they put in something of their own, and so they strike all sorts of attitudes, as you see bad flute-players whirling about if they have to do the Discus, or mauling the leader of the chorus when they are playing the Scylla.†

4So tragedy is something like what the older school of actors thought of their successors, for Mynniscus used to call Callippides the monkey, because he overacted, and the same was said of Pindarus.†

5The whole tragic art, then, is to epic poetry what these later actors were compared to their predecessors, since according to this view epic appeals to a cultivated audience which has no need of actor’s poses, while tragedy appeals to a lower class. If then it is vulgar, it must obviously be inferior.

6First of all, this is not a criticism of poetry but of acting: even in reciting a minstrel can overdo his gestures, as Sosistratus did, or in a singing competition, like Mnasitheus of Opus.

7Besides it is not all attitudinizing that ought to be barred any more than all dancing, but only the attitudes of inferior people. That was the objection to Callippides; and modern actors are similarly criticized for representing women who are not ladies.

8Moreover, tragedy fulfils its function even without acting, just as much as epic, and its quality can be gauged by reading aloud. So, if it is in other respects superior, this disadvantage is not necessarily inherent.

9Secondly, tragedy has all the elements of the epic

10—it can even use the hexameter—and in addition a considerable element of its own in the spectacle and the music, which make the pleasure all the more vivid;

11and this vividness can be felt whether it is read or acted.

12Another point is that it attains its end with greater economy of length. What is concentrated is always more effective than what is spread over a long period; suppose, for example, Sophocles’ Oedipus were to be turned into as many lines as there are in the Iliad.

13Again, the art of the epic has less unity, as is shown by the fact that any one epic makes several tragedies. The result is that, if the epic poet takes a single plot, either it is set forth so briefly as to seem curtailed, or if it conforms to the limit of length†it seems thin and diluted. In saying that epic has less unity I mean an epic made up of several separate actions.

14The Iliad has many such parts and so has the Odyssey, and each by itself has a certain magnitude. And yet the composition of these poems is as perfect as can be and each of them is—as far as an epic may be—a representation of a single action.

15If then tragedy is superior in these respects and also in fulfilling its artistic function—for tragedies and epics should produce not any form of pleasure but the pleasure we have described†—then obviously, since it attains its object better than the epic, the better of the two is tragedy.

16This must suffice for our treatment of tragedy and epic, their characteristics, their species, their constituent parts, and their number and attributes; for the causes of success and failure; and for critical problems and their solutions....