Aristotleonarto 00 Aris

ARISTOTLE

ON THE ART OF POETRY

TRANSLATED BY
INGRAM BYWATER

WITH A PREFACE BY
GILBERT MURRAY
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PREFACE
In the tenth book of the Republic^ when
Plato has completed his final burning denuncia-
tion of Poetry, the false Siren, the imitator of
things which themselves are shadows, the ally
of all that is low and weak in the soul against
that which is high and strong, who makes us
feed the things we ought to starve and serve the
things we ought to rule, he ends with a touch
of compunction : ' We will give her champions,
not poets themselves but poet- lovers, an op-
portunity to make her defence in plain prose
and show that she is not only sweet — as we
well know — but also helpful to society and the
life of man, and we will listen in a kindly
spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if
this can be proved.' Aristotle certainly knew
the passage, and it looks as if his treatise on
poetry was an answer to Plato's challenge.
Few of the great works of ancient Greek
literature are easy reading. They nearly all
need study and comment, and at times help
from a good teacher, before they yield up their
secret. And the Poetics cannot be accounted
2402 A 1
4 PREFACE
an exception. For one thing the treatise is

fragmentary. It originally consisted of two
books, one dealing with Tragedy and Epic, the
other with Comedy and other subjects. We
possess only the first. For another, even the
book we have seems to be unrevised and un-
finished. The style, though luminous, vivid,
and in its broader division systematic, is not
that of a book intended for publication. Like
most of Aristotle's extant writing, it suggests
the MS. of an experienced lecturer, full of
jottings and adscripts, with occasional phrases
written carefully out, but never revised as a
whole for the general reader. Even to accom-
plished scholars the meaning is often obscure,
as may be seen by a comparison of the three
editions recently published in England, all the
work of savants of the first eminence,^ or, still
more strikingly, by a study of the long series
of misunderstandings and 'overstatements and
corrections which form the history of the
Poetics since the Renaissance.
But it is of another cause of misunderstand-
ing that I wish principally to speak in this
preface. The great edition from which the
1 I'rof. Butcher, 1895 and 1898; Prof. Hywater,
1909; and Prof. Margoliouth, 1911.
PREFACE 5
present translation is taken was the fruit of

prolonged study by one of the greatest Aris-
totelians ofthe nineteenth century, and is itself
a classic among works of scholarship. In the
hands of a student who knows even a little
Greek, the translation, backed by the com-
mentary, may lead deep into the mind of
Aristotle. But when the translation is used,
as it doubtless will be, by readers who are
quite without the clue provided by a knowledge
of the general habits of the Greek language,
there must arise a number of' new difficulties
or misconceptions.
To understand a great foreign book by means
of a translation is possible enough where the
two languages concerned operate with a common
stock of ideas, and belong to the same period
of civilization. Rut between ancient Greece
and modern England there yawn immense gulfs
of human history ; the establishment and the
partial failure of a common European religion,
the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the
regrouping of modern Europe, the age of
mechanical invention, and the industrial revo-
lution. In an average page of French or
German philosophy nearly all the nouns can
be translated directly into exact equivalents in
6 P,R E F A C E
English ; but in Greek that is not so. Scarcely

one in ten of the nouns on the first few pages
of the Poetics has an exact English equivalent.
Every proposition has to be reduced to its
lowest terms of thought and then re-built.
This is a difficulty which no translation can
quite deal with ; it must be left to a teacher
Avho knows Greek. And there is a kindred
difficulty which flows from it. Where words
can be translated into equivalent words, the
style of an original can be closely followed ;
but no translation which aims at being written
in normal English can reproduce the style of
Aristotle. I have sometimes played with the
idea that a ruthlessly literal translation, helped
out by bold punctuation, might be the best.
For instance, premising that the words pocsis,
poetes mean originally ' making ' and ' maker ',
one might translate the first paragraph of the
Poetics thus : —
Making : kinds of making : function of each,

and how the Myths ought to be put to-
gether ifthe Making is to go right.
Number of parts : nature of parts : rest of
same inquiry.
Begin in order of nature from first principles.
PREFACE 7
Epos- making, tragedy- making (also comedy),

dithyramb-making (and most fluting and harp-
ing), taken as a whole, are really not Makings
but Imitations. They differ in three points ;
they imitate («) different objects, (b) by differ-
ent means, (c) differently (i. e. different manner).
Some artists imitate (i.e. depict) by shapes
and colours. (Obs. sometimes by art, some-
times byhabit.) Some by voice. Similarly the
above arts all imitate by rhythm, language,
and tune, and these either (1) separate or
(2) mixed.
Rhythm and tune alone : harping, fluting, and
other arts with same effect — e. g. panpipes.
Rhythm without tune : dancing. (Dancers
imitate characters, emotions, and experi-
form.) ences by means of rhythms expressed in
Language alone (whether prose or verse, and

one form of verse or many) : this art has
no name up to the present (i.e. there is no
name to cover mimes and dialogues and
any similar imitation made in iambics,
elegiacs, &c. Commonly people attach the
' making "" to the metre and say ' elegiac-
makers ■", ' hexameter-makers ', giving them
8 PREFACE
. a common class-name by their metre, as if

it was not their imitation that makes them
' makers ').
Such an experiment would doubtless be a

little absurd, but it would give an English
reader some help in understanding both Aris-
totle's style and his meaning.
For example, there is enlightenment in the
literal phrase, ' how the myths ought to be put
together.' The higher Greek poetry did not
make up fictitious plots ; its business was to
express the heroic saga, the myths. Again,
the literal translation of iôHes^ poet, as
'maker', helps to explain a term that otherwise
seems a puzzle in the Poetics. If we wonder
why Aristotle, and Flato before him, should
lay such stress on the theory that art is imita-
tion, it is a help to realize that common
language called it 'making', and it was clearly
not 'making' in the ordinary sense. The poet
who was ' maker ' of a Fall of Troy clearly did
not make the real Fall of Troy. He made
an imitation Fall of Troy. An artist who
' painted Pericles ' really ' made an imitation
Pericles by means of shapes and colours'.
Hence we get started upon a theory of art
PREFACE 9
which, whether finally satisfactory or not, is

of immense importance, and are saved from the
error of complaining that Aristotle did not
understand the ' creative power ' of art.
As a rule, no doubt, the difficulty, even
though merely verbal, lies beyond the reach of
so simple a tool as literal translation. To say
that tragedy ' imitates good men ' while comedy
* imitates bad men' strikes a modern reader as
almost meaningless. The truth is that neither
' good ' nor ' bad "* is an exact equivalent of the
Greek. It would be nearer perhaps to say
that, relatively speaking, you look up to the
characters of tragedy, and down upon those of
comedy. High or low, serious or trivial, many
other pairs of words would have to be called
in, in order to cover the wide range of the
common Greek words. And the point is im-
portant, because we have to consider whether
in Chapter VI Aristotle really lays it down that
tragedy, so far from being .the story of un-
happiness that we think it, is properly an imita-
tion of eiidaimonia — a word often translated
'happiness', but meaning something more like
' high life ' or ' blessedness ''}
^ See Margoliouth, p. 121. Bywater, witli most
editors, emends the text.
2402 A 2
10 PREFACE
Another difficult word which constantly

recurs in the Poetics is prattein or praxis,
generally translated ' to act ' or ' action '. But
prattein, like our ' do ', also has an intransitive
meaning ' to fare ' either Avell or ill ; and
Professor Margoliouth has pointed out that it
seems more true to say that tragedy shows how
men 'fare' than how they 'act\ It shows
their experiences or fortunes rather than
merely their deeds. But one must not draw
the line too bluntly. I should doubt whether
a classical Greek writer was ordinarily conscious
of the distinction between the two meanings.
Certainly it is easier to regard happiness as
a way of faring than as a form of action.
Yet Aristotle can use the passive of prattein
for things 'done** or 'gone through' (e.g.
52 a, 22, 29 : 55 a, 25).
The fact is that much misunderstanding is
often caused by our modern attempts to limit
too strictly the meaning of a Greek word.
Greek was very much a live language, and
a language still unconscious of grammar, not,
like ours,' dominated by definitions and trained
upon dictionaries. An instance is provided by
Aristotle's famous saying that the typical tragic
hero is one who falls from high state or fame,
PREFACE 11
not through vice or depravity, but by some

great hamartia. Hamai-tia means originally a
' bad shot ' or ' error "■, but is currently used for
'offence' or 'sin\ Aristotle clearly means
that the typical hero is a great man with
'something wrong' in his life or character;
but I think it is a mistake of method to arirue
whether he means ' an intellectual error ' or ' a
moral flaw '. The word is not so precise.
Similarly, when Aristotle says that a deed
of strife or disaster is more tragic when it
occurs ' amid affections ' or ' among peo})le who
love each other', no doubt the phrase, as
Aristotle's own examples show, would primarily
suggest to a Greek feuds between near rela-
tions. Yet some of the meaning is lost if one
translates simply ' within the family '.
Tliere is another series of obscurities or con-
fusions in the Poetics which, unless I am
mistaken, arises from the fact that Aristotle
was writing at a time when the great age of
Greek' tragedy was long past, and was usino-
language formed in previous generations. The
words and phrases remained in the tradition,
but the forms of art and activity which they
denoted had sometimes changed in the interval.
If we date the Poetics about the year 330 b.c,
12 PREFACE
as seems pi-obable, that is more than two

hundred years after the first tragedy of Thespis
was produced in Athens, and more than seventy
after tlie death of the last great masters of
the tragic stage. When we remember that
a training in music and poetry formed a
prominent part of the education of every well-
born Athenian, we cannot be surprised at
finding in Aristotle, and to a less extent in
Plato, considerable traces of a tradition of
technical language and even of aesthetic theory.
It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great
-services that he conceived so clearly the truth
that literature is a thing that grows and has
a history. But no writer, certainly no ancient
writer, is always vigilant. Sometimes Aristotle
analyses his terms, but very often he takes
them for granted ; and in the latter case, I
think, lie is sometimes deceived by them. Thus
there seem to be cases where he has been
affected in his conceptions of fifth-century
tragedy by the practice of his own day, when
the only living form of drama was the New
Comedy.
For example, as we have noticed above, true
Tragedy had always taken its material from
the sacred myths, or heroic sagas, which to the
PREFACE 13
classical Greek constituted history. But the

New Comedy was in the habit of inventing its
plots. Consequently Aristotle falls into using
the word miithos practically in the sense of
'plot', and writing otherwise in a way that is
unsuited to the tragedy of the fifth century.
He says that tragedy adheres to ' the historical
names' for an aesthetic reason, because what
has happened is obviously possible and there-
fore convincing. The real reason was that the
drama and the myth were simply two different
expressions of the same religious kernel (p. 44).
Again, he says of the Chorus (p. 65) that it
should be an integral part of the play, which is
true ; but he also says that it 'should be regarded
as one of the actors ', which shows to what an
extent the Chorus in his day was dead and its
technique forgotten. He had lost the sense of
what the Chorus was in the hands of the ereat
masters, say in the Bacchae or the Eumenides.
He mistakes, again, the use of that epiphany
of a God which is frequent at the end of the
single plays of Euripides, and which seems to
have been equally so at the end of the trilogies
of Aeschylus. Having lost the living tradition,
he sees neither the ritual origin nor the
dramatic value of these divine epiphanies. He
14 PREFACE
thinks of the convenient gods and abstractions

who sometimes spoke the prologues of the New
Comedy, and imagines that the God appears in
order to unravel the plot. As a matter of fact,
in one pla^y which he often quotes, the Ipliigenia
Taurica, the plot is actually distorted at the
very end in order to give an opportunity for
the epiphany.^
One can see the effect of the tradition also
in his treatment of the terms Anagnorisis and
Peripeteia, which Professor By water translates
as ' Discovery and Peripety ' and Professor
Butcher as ' Recognition and Reversal of 1 or-
tune\ Aristotle assumes that these two ele-
ments are normally present in any tragedy,
except those which he calls 'simple"'; we may
say, roughly, in any tragedy that really has
a plot. This strikes a modern reader as a very
arbitrary assumption. Reversals of Fortune of
some sort are perhaps usual in any varied plot,
but surely not Recognitions ? The clue to the
puzzle lies, it can scarcely be doubted, in the
historical origin of tragedy. Tragedy, accord-
ii)g to Greek tradition, is originally the ritual
play of Dionysus, performed at his festival, and
^ Sec my Eanpidcfi uiidhin Aye, pp. 2-1-45.

PREFACE 15
representing, as Herodotus tells us, the ' suffer-

ings 'or ' passion ' of that God. We are never
directly told what these ' sufferings '' were which
were so represented ; but Herodotus remarks
that he found in Egypt a ritual that was 'in
almost all points the same'.^ This was the
well-known ritual of Osiris, in which the god
was torn in pieces, lamented, searched for, dis-
covered or recognized, and the mourning by
a sudden Reversal turned into joy. In any
tragedy which still retained the stamp of its
Dionysiac origin, this Discoverv and Peripety
might normally be expected to occur, and to
occur together. I have tried to show elsewhere
how many of our extant tragedies do, as a
matter of fi\ct, show the marks of this ritual. ^
I hope it is not rash to surmise that the
much-debated word 'katharsis, ' purification '

or ' purgation ', may have come into Aristotle's
mouth from the same source. It has all the
appearance of being an old word which is
accepted and re- interpreted by Aristotle rather
1 Cf. Hdt. ii. 48 ; cf. 42, 144. 'Hie name of Dionysus

must not be openly mentioned in connexion with
mourning (il). Gl, 132, 86). Tliis may help to explain
the transference of the tragic shows to other heroes.
2 In .Aliss Harrison's Them.s, pp. 341-G3.
16 PREFACE
than a word freely chosen by him to denote

the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
At any rate the Dionysus ritual itself was
a Tiatharmos or katharsis — a purification of
the community from the taints and poisons
of the past year, the old contagion of sin and
death. And the words of Aristotle's definition
of tragedy in Chapter VI might have been
used in the days of Thespis in a much cruder
and less metaphorical sense. According to
primitive ideas, the mimic representation on the
stage of ' incidents arousing pity and fear ' did
act as a katharsis of such ' passions ' or ' suffer-
ings'in real life. (For the word pathemata
means ' suff*erings " as well as ' passions '.) It is
worth remembering that in the year 361 b.c,
dui'ing Aristotle's lifetime, Greek tragedies
were introduced into Rome, not on artistic
but on superstitious grounds, as a katharmos
against a pestilence (Livy vii. 2). One
cannot but suspect that in his account of the
purpose of tragedy Aristotle may be using an
old traditional formula, and consciously or un-
consciously investing it with a new meaning,
much as he has done with the word mfithus.
Apart from these historical causes of mis-
understanding, a good teacher who uses this
PREFACE 17
book with a class will haidiy fail to point out

numerous points on which two equally good
Greek scholars may well differ in the mere in-
terpretation ofthe words. What, for instance,
are the ' two natural causes ' in Chapter IV
which have given birth to Poetry ? Are they,
as our translator takes them, (1) that man is
imitative, and (2) that people delight in imita-
tions ? Or are they (1) that man is imitative
and people delight in imitations, and (2) the
instinct for rhythm, as Professor Butcher
prefers ? Is it a ' creature ' a thousand miles
long, or a ' picture "" a thousand miles long which
raises some trouble in Chapter VII ? The word
zoon means equally ' picture ' and ' animal \
Did the older poets make their characters
speak like ' statesmen"', polH'ikoi^ or merely like

ordinary citizens, politai, while the moderns
made theirs like ' professors of rhetoric ** ?
(Chapter VI, p. 38 ; cf, Margoliouth's note and
glossary).
It may seem as if the large uncertainties
which we have indicated detract in a ruinous
maimer from the value of the Poetics to us as
a work of criticism. Certainly if anv young
writer took this book as a manual of rules by
which to 'commence poef, he would find him-
2402 A 3
18 PREFACE
self embarrassed. But, if the book is properly

read, not as a dogmatic text-book but as a first
attempt, made by a man of astounding genius, to
build up in the region of creative art a rational
order like that which he established in logic,
rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, psychology, and
almost every department of knowledge that
existed in his day, then the uncertainties become
rather a help than a discouragement. They
give us occasion to think and use our imagina-
tion. They make us, to the Ijest of our powers,
try really to follow and criticize closely the
bold gropings of an extraordinary thinker;
and it is in this process, and not in any mere
collection of dogmatic results, that we shall
find the true value and beauty of the Poetics.
The book is of permanent value as "a mere
intellectual achievement ; as a store of informa-
tion about Greek literature ; and as an original
or first-hand statement of what we may call
the classical view of artistic criticism. It does
not regard poetry as a matter of unanalysed
inspiration ; it makes no concession to personal
whims or fashion or ennni. It tries by rational
methods to find out what is good in art and
what makes it good, accepting the belief that
there is just ;is truly a good way, and many
PREFACE 19
had ways, in poetry as in morals or in playing

billiards. This is no place to try to sum up
its main conclusions. But it is characteristic
of the classical view that Aristotle lays his
greatest stress, first, on the need for Unity in/. "X^ltZ
the work of art, the need that each part should '^
subserve the whole, while irrelevancies, however
brilliant in themselves, should be cast away ;
and next, on the demand that great art must
have for
These its subjecthave
judgements the often
great been
way misunder-
of living.--v ^^,j^^
7
stood, but the truth in them is profound and
goes near to the heart of things.
Characteristic, too, is the observation that
different kinds of art grow and develop, but not.ô p. ^Sl^^
indefinitely ; they develop until they ' attain '^ ^ '
their natural form'; also the rule that each
form of art should produce ' not every sort of ^f- ^p''-
pleasure but its proper pleasure'; and the fjô.îHi^
sober^ language in which Aristotle, instead of
speaking about the sequence of events in a
tragedy being 'inevitable', as we bombastic ^ "^l-^^CiîuUV
moderns do, merely recommends that they ^^"^ ;',
should be 'either nccessaiy or probable' and 'i^^^^xbi
' appear to happen because of one another '. ^
Conceptions and attitudes of mind such as
these constitute what we may call the classical
20 PREFACE
faith in matters of art and poetry ; a faith

which is never perhajis fully accepted in any
age, yet, unlike others, is never forgotten but
lives by being constantly criticized, re-asserted,
and rebelled against. For the fashions of the
ages vary in this direction and that, but they
vary for the most part from a central road
which was struck out by the imagination of
Greece.
G. M.
ARISTOTLE

ARISTOTLE
1
Our subject being Poetry, I propose to speak
not only of the art in general but also of its
species and their respective capacities; of the
structure of plot required for a good poem ; of
the number and nature of the constituent parts
of a poem ; and likewise of any other matters
in the same line of inquiry. Let us follow the
natural order and begin with the primary
facts.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy,
Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and
lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes
nf jmifnfinn- But at the same time they differ
from one another in three ways, either by a
difference of kind in their means, or by differ-
ences in the objects, or in the manner of their
imitations.
I. Just as form and colour are used as means
by some, who (whether by art or constant
practice) imitate and portray many things by
their aid, and the voice is used by others • so
24 THE ART OF POETRY
also in the above-mentioned group of arts, the

means with them as a whole are rhythm,
language, and harmony — used, however, either
singly or in certain combinations. * A combina-
tion of rhythm and harmony alone is the means
in flute-playing and lyre-playing, and any other
arts there may be of the same description, e.g.
imitative piping. Rhythm alone, without har-
mony, isthe means in the dancer's imitations ;
for even he, by the rhythms of his attitudes,
may represent men's characters, as well as what
they do and suffer. There is further an art
which imitates by language alone, without har-
mony, in prose or in verse, and if in verse,
either in some one or in a plurality of metres.
This form of imitation is to this day without
a name. We have no common name for a mime
of Sophron or Xenarchus and a Socratic Con-
versation ;and we should still be without one
even if the imitation in the two instances were
in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of
verse — though it is the way with people to tack
on 'poef to the name of a metre, and talk of
elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they
call them poets not by reason of tlie imitative
nature of their work, but indiscriminately by
reason of the metre they write in. Even if
25
THE ART OF POETRY
a theory of medicine or physical philosophy he

put forth in a metrical form, it is usual to
describe the writer in this way ; Homer and
Empedocles, howeyer, have really nothing in
common apart from their metre ; so that, if the
one is to be called a poet, the other should be
termed a physicist rather than a poet. We
should be in the same position also, if the
imitation in these instances were in all the
metres, like the Centaur (a rhapsody in a
medley of all metres) of Chaeremon ; and
Chaeremon one has to recognize as a poet.
So much, then, as to these arts. / There are,
lastly, certain other artsa^which combine all the
means enumerated, rhytlun.. melody, and verse^_
e.g. Dithyranibic and Nomic poetry. Tragedy
and Comedy ; with this difference, however,
that the three kinds of means are in some of
them all employed together, and in others
brought in separately, one after the other.
These elements of difference in the aboye arts
1 term the means of tlieir imitation.
2
character being nearly always derivative from

this primary distinction, since the line between
virtue and vice is one dividing the whole of
mankind. It follows, therefore, thattheâgents
represented must be_either above Qiirownlevel
oiôoSnessT'orbeneath it, or just such as we
are ; in the same way as, with the painters, the
personages of Polygnotus are better than we
are, those of Pauson worse, and those of Dio-
nysius just like ourselves. It is clear that each
of the above-mentioned arts will admit of these
differences, and that it will become a separate
art by representing objects with this point of
difference. Even in dancing, flute -playing, and
lyre-playing such diversities are possible ; and
they are also possible in the nameless ^rt^that
iisegUaiiûagej^^rêorversg^^j^^
as its means ; Homer''s personages, for instance,
are l)etter than we are ; Cleophon's are on our
own level; and those of Hegemon of Thasos,
the first writer of parodies, and Nicochares, the
author of the Diliad, are l)eneath it. The same
is true of the Dithyramb and the Nome : the
personages may be presented in them with the
(Hfference exemplified in the . . . of . . . and
Argas, and in the Cyclopses of Timothcus and
Philoxenus. This difference it is that dis-
THE ART OF POETRY 27
tinguislies Tra^'cdy and Comedy also ; the one

^ wonldanake its personages worse, and the other
better, than the men of the present day. '~~'
3
III. A third difference in these arts is in tlie
manner in which each kind of object is repre-
sented. Given both the same means and the
same kind of object for imitation, one may
either (1) speak at one moment in narrative
and at another in an assmned character, as
Homer does ; or (2) one may remain tlie same
throughont, without any such change; or (3)
the imitators may represent the whole story
dramatically, as though they were actually doing
the things descril)ed.
. As we said at the beginning, therefore, the
differences in the imitation of these arts come
Ky
under three heads, their means, their objects,
and their manner.
So that as an imitator Sophocles will be on.
one side akin to Homer, both portraying good
men ; and on another to Aristophanes, since
both present their personages as acting and
doing. This in fact, according to some, is the
reason for plays being termed dramas, because
in a play the personages act the story. Hence

too both Tragedy and Comedy are claimed by
the Dorians as their discoveries ; Comedy by
the Megarians — by tliose in Greece as having
arisen when Megara became a democracy, and
by the Sicilian Megarians on the ground that
the poet Epicharmus was of their country, and
a good deal earlier than Chionides and Magnes ;
even Tragedy also is claimed by certain of the
Peloponnesian Dorians. In support of this
claim they point to the words ' comedy ' and
' drama \ Their word for the outlying hamlets,
they say, is comae, \\ hereas Athenians call them
clemes — thus assuming that comedians got the
name not from their comoe or revels, but from
their strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of
appreciation keeping them out of the city.
Their word also for ' to act ', they say, is dran^
whereas Atlienians use jjrattcin.
So much, then, as to the number and nature
of the points of difference in the imitation of
these arts.
4
It is clear that the general origin of poetry
was due to two causes, each of tliem part of
human nature. Imitation is natural lo man
. j. XHE ART OF POETRY 29
from cH^/dhood, one of his advantages over the

lower animals "being this, that he is the most
imitative cres\Lure. in t^he world., and learns at
first by imitation. And it is also natural for
all to delight in works of imitation. The truth
of this second point is sha\vn by experience :
thou.o-h \\\e objects themselves may j)g_^miful-^
Jo^see, we delight to view the most reajistir,
representations of them in art, the forms for
example of the lowest animals and of dead
bodies. The explanation is to be found in
a further fact : to be learnino; something: is the
greatest of pleasures not only to tlie philo-
sopher but also to the rest of mankind, however
small their capacity for it ; the reason of the
delight in seeing the picture is that one is at
the same time learning — gathering the meaning
of things, e. g. that the man there is so-and-so ;
for if one has not seen the thing before, one's
^ pleasure will not be in the picture as an imita-
/tion of it, but will be due to the execution or
colouring or some similar cause. Imitation,
then, being natural to us — as also the sense
of harmony and rhythm, the metres being
obviously species of rhythms — it was through
their original aptitude, and by a series of
improvements for the most part gradual on
their first efforts, that they created poetry out

of their improvisations.
Poetry, however, soon broke up into two
kinds according to the differences of character
in the individual poets ; for the graver among
them would represent noble actions, and those
of noble personages ; and the meaner sort the
actions of the ignoble. The latter class pro-
duced invectives at first, just as others did
hymns and panegyrics. We know of no such
poem by any of the pre-Homeric poets, though
there were probably many such writers among
them ; instances, howevci', may be found from
Homer downwards, e. g. his MargUes, and the
similar poems of others. In this poetry of
invective its natural fitness brought an iambic
metre into use ; hence our present term ' iambic**,

because it was the metre of their ' iambs *■ or
invectives against one another. The result was
Uiat the .(Îd jioets became ^gjTJfi .of thpm writers
of Jheroic and others of iambic verse^ Homer's
position, however, is peculiar: just as he was
in the serious style the poet of poets, standing
alone not only through the literary excellence,
but also through the (h'amatic character of his
imitations, so too he was the first to outline
for us the general forms of Comedy by }no-
31
THE ART OF POETRY
ducing not a (Iramatic invective, but a dramatic

picture of the Ridiculous ; his Margites in fact
stands in the same relation to our comedies as
the Iliad and Odyssey to our tragedies. Asl
soon, hoM'ever, as Tragedy and Comedy appeared! ^X
in the field, those naturally drawn to the one'
line of poetry became \\Titers of comedies instead
of iambs, and those naturally drawn to the
other, writers of tragedies instead of epics,
because these new modes of art were grander
and of more esteem than the old.
If it be asked whether Tragedy is now all
that it need be in its formative elements, to
consider that, and decide it theoretically and
in relation to the theatres, is a matter for
another inquiry.
It certainly began in improvisations — as did
also Comedy ; the one originating with the
authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those
of the phallic songs, which still survive as
institutions in many of our cities. And its
advance after that was little bv little, throurrli
their improving on whatever they had before
them at each stage. It was in fact onlv after
a long series of changes thMf ^J^p n^n^-pmmviwU'
Tragedy stopped on its attaining to its natural
form. (1) The number of actors was fh'st
of J
increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed

the business of the Chorus, and made the
dialogue, or spoken portion, take the leading
part in the play. (2) A third actor and
scenery were due to Sophocles. (3) Tragedy
acquired also its magnitude. Discarding short
stories and a ludicrous diction, through its
passing out of its satyric stage, it assumed,
though only at a late ponit~m' its progress,

a tone of dignity ; and its metre changed then
from trochaic to iambic. The reason for their
original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that
their poetry was satyric and more connected
with dancing than it now is. As soon, however,
as a spoken part came in, nature herself found
the appropriate metre. The iambic, we know,
is the most speakable of metres, as is shown by
the fact that we very often fall into it in con-
versation, whereas we rarely talk hexameters,
and only when we depart from the speaking
tone of voice. (4<) Another change was a
plurality of episodes or acts. As for the
remaining matters, the superadded embellish-
ments and the account of their introduction,
these nnist be taken as said, as it would prob-
al)ly be a long piece of work to go through
the details.
5
As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed)
an imitation of men worse than the average ;
I/' worse, howevei", not as regards any and every

sort of fault, but only as regards one particular
kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the
Ugly. The Ridiculous may be,rlpfinpfl as n
mistake or deformity not productive of pain or
harm t(7 oth^J's : the mask, for instance^' that
excites laiighter, is something ugly and dis-
torted without causing pain.
Though the successive changes in Tragedy
and their authors are not unknown, we cannot
say the same of Comedy ; its early stages passed
unnoticed, because it was not as yet taken up
in a serious way. It was only at a late point
in its progress that a chorus of comedians was
officially granted by the archon ; thev used to
be mere volunteers. It Irad also already certain
definite forms at the time when the record of
those termed comic poets begins. AVho it was
who supplied it with masks, or prologues, or
a plurality of actors and the like, has remained
unknown. The invented Fable, or Plot, how-
ever, originated in Sicily, with Epicharmus
and Phormis ; of Athenian poets Crates was
2402 A 5
the first to drop the Comedy of invective and

frame stories of a general and non-personal
nature, in other words, Fables or Plots.
Epic poetry, then, has been seen to agree
with Tragedy to this extent, that of being an
imitation of serious subjects in a grand kind of
verse. It differs from it, however, (1) in that
it is in one kind of verse and in narrative form ;
and (2) in its length — which is due to its action ^
having no fixed limit of time, vdiereasJTragedj^ ^p-'
^nd§axQiira.^^keep as far as possible within
a single .circuit of thfi-SiilIn or something near
tha^ This, I say, is another point of difference
between them, though at first the practice in
this respect was just the same in tragedies as
in epic poems. They differ also (3) in their
constituents, some being common to both and
others peculiar to Tragedy — hence a jtidge of
good and bad in Tragedy is a judge of that in
epic poetry also. All tlie parts of an epic are
included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are
not all of them to be found in tlic Epic.
6
Reserving hexameter poetry and Comedy for
consideration hereafter, let us proceed now to
the discussion of Tragedy ; before doing so,
however, we must gather up the definition

resulting from what has been said. A trag-edy,
then,.' is the imitation of an action that is
serious and also, as having niugnituJe, complete " (i^

in itsel^-in language with pleasurable acces-
sories, each kind brought in_sepaXAtplv in the
parts of the wca-k ^ in a dramatic, not in a
narrative form ;^with incidents arousing pity
and fear, wherewith to accomplish its pahharsTs
of such emotions. Here by 'language with
pleasurable accessories'" I mean tliat with
rhythm and harmony or song superadded ; and
by 'the kinds separately' I mean that some
portions are worked out with verse only, and
others in turn witli sono-.
I. As they act the stories, it follows that in
the first pla(;e the Spectacle (ov stage-appearance
of the actors) must be some part of the whole ;
and in the second Melody and Diction, these
two being the means of their imitation. Here
by ' Diction ' I mean merely this, the composi-
tion of the verses ; and by ' Melody \ what is <*
too completely understood to require explana-
tion. But further : the subject represented
also is an action ; and the action involves agents, |
who must necessarily have their distinctive \ i 5"

qualities both of character and thought, since '
it is from these that we ascribe certain qualities

to tlieir actions. There are in the natural
order of things, therefore, tv.o causes, Character
and Thought, of their actions, and consequently
of their success or failure in tlieir lives. Now
the action (that which was done) is represented
in the play by the Fable or Plot. The Fable,
in our present sense of the term, is simply this,
the combination of the incidents, or things
done in the story ; whereas Character is what
makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the
agents ; and Thought is shown in all they say
when proving a particular point or, it may be,
enunciating a general truth. There are six
parts consequently of every tragedy, as a whole,
that is, of such or such quality, viz. a Fable or
Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle
and Melody ; two of them arising from the
means, one from the manner, and three from
the objects of the dramatic imitation ; and there
is nothing else besides these six. Of these, its
formative elements, then, not a few of the
dramatists have made due use, as every play,
one may say, admits of Spectacle, Character,
Fable, Diction, Melody, and Thought.
II. The most important of the six is the
combination of the incidents of the story.
Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of

persons but r£ aftimi m^ri Ijfip^ o£ happiness
an^ mi>;pj-y All hunian happiness or misery j
takes the form of action ; the end for whicli ^ *-
we live is a certain kind of activity, not a
quality. Character gives us qualities, but it
is in our actions — what we do — that we are
happy_or_the reverse. In a play accoFdingly"

they do not act in order to portray the Charac-
ters ;they include the Characters for the sake
of the action. So that it is the action- in it,
i.e. its Fable or Plot, that is the_.fcnd mid.
purpose of the traêdjy; and the end is every-
Avhere the chief thing. Besides- this, a tragedy
is impossible without action, but there may be
one without Character. The tragedies of most
of the moderns are characterless — a defect
connnon among poets of all kinds, and with its
counterpart in painting in Zeuxis as compared
with Polygnotus; for whereas the latter is
strong in character, the work of Zeuxis is devoid
of it. And again : one may string together
a series of characteristic speeches of the utmost
finish as regards Diction and Thought, and yet
fail to })roduce the true tragic effect ; but one
will have much better success with a tragedy
which, however inferior in these respects, has a
Plot, a combination of incidents, in it. And

again : the most powerful elements of attraction
in Tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are
parts of the Plot. A further proof is in the
fact that beginners succeed earlier with the
Diction and Characters than with the con-
struction ofa stoiy ; and the same may be said
of nearly all the early dramatists. We maintain,
therefore, that the first essential, the life and
soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot ; and /
"^^ that the Characters come second — compare the tv
parallel in painting, where the most beautiful
colours laid on without order will not give one
the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white
sketch of a portrait. We maintain that Tragedy
is primarily an imitation of action, and that
it is mainly for the sake of the action that it
imitates the personal agents. Third comes the
element of Thought, i.e. the power of saying
whatever can be said, or what is appropriate to
the occasion. This is what, in the speeches in
Tragedy, falls under the arts of Politics and
Rhetoric ; for the older poets make their
personages discourse like statesmen, and the
moderns like rhetoricians. One must not
confuse it with Character. Character in a play
is that which reveals the moral purpose of the
K
agents, i. e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid,
where that is not obvious — hence there is no
room for Character in a speech on a purely
indifferent subject. Thought, on the other
hand, is shown in all they sav when proving
or disproving some particular point, or enunciat-
ing some universal proposition. Fourth among
the literary elements is the Diction of the
personages, i.e. as before explained, the ex-
pression of their thoughts in Avords, which is
practically the same thing with verse as with
prose. As for the two remaining parts, the ^
Melody is the greatest of the pleasurable ac- ^^
cessories of Tragedy. The Spectacle, though
an attraction, is the least artistic of all the
parts, and has least to do with the art of poetry.
The tragic effect is quite possible without a
public performance and actors ; and besides,
the getting-up of the Spectacle is more a matter
for the costumier than the poet.
Having thus distinguished the parts, let us

now- consider the proper construction of the
Fable or Plot, as that is at once the first and
the most important thing in Tragedy. We
have laid it down that a tragedy is an imitation

of an action that is complete in itself, as a
whole of some magnitude ; for a whole may be
of no magnitude to speak of. Now a whole
is tliat which has beginning, middle, and end.
A beginning is that which is not itself necessa];ily
after anything else, and which has naturally
something else after it ; an end is that which
is naturally after something itself, either as its
necessary or usual consequent, and with nothing
else after it; and a middle, that which is by
nature after one thing and has also another
after it. A well-constructed Plot, therefore,
cannot either begin or end at a,ny point one
likes ; beginning and end in it must be of the
forms just described. Again: to be beautiful,
a living creature, and every whole made up of
parts, must iôt only present a certain order in
its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain
definite magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size
and order, and therefore impossible either (1) in
a very )T)inute creature, since our perception
becomes indistinct as it approaches instan-
taneity ; or (^) in a creature of vast size — one,
sav, 1,000 miles long — as in that case, instead
of the object being seen all at once, the unity
and wholeness of it is lost to the beholder.
Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole

made up of parts, or a beautiful living creature,
must be of some size, a size to be taken in by
the eve, so a storv or Plot must be of some
length, but of a length to be taken in by the
memory. As for the limit of its length, so far
as that is relative to public performances and
spectators, it does not fall within the theory of
poetry. If they had to perform a hundred
tragedies, they would be timed by water- clocks,
as they are said to have been at one period.
The limit, however, set by the actual nature
of the thing is this : the longer the story, con-
sistently with its being comprehensible as a
whole, the finer it is by reason of its magnitude.
As a rough general formula, ' a length whicli
allows of the hero passing by a series of
probable or necessary stages from misfortune
to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune'',

may suffice as a limit for the magnitude of the
story.
8
Tlie Unity of a Plot does not consist, as
some suppose, in its having one man as its
subject. An infinity of things befall that one
man, some of which it is impossible to reduce
to unity ; and in like manner there are many
2402 A 6
actions of one man which cannot be made to

form one action. One sees, therefore, the
mistake of all the poets who have written
a Heracleid, a Theseid, or similar poems ; they
suppose that, because Heracles was one man,
the story also of Heracles must be one story.
Homer, however, evidently understood this
point quite well, whether by art or instinct,
just in the same way as he excels the rest in
every other respect. In writing an Odyssey,
he did not make the poem cover all that ever
befell his hero — it befell him, for instance, to
get wounded on Parnassus and also to feign
madness at the time of the call to arms, but
the two incidents had no probable or necessary
connexion -with one another — instead of doing
that, he took an action with a Unity of the
kind we are describing as the subject of the
Odyssey^ as also of the Iliad. The truth is
that, just as in the other imitative arts one
imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry
the story, as an imitation of action, must
represent one action, a complete whole, with
its several incidents so closely connected that
the transposal or withdrawal of any one of
them will disjoin and dislocate tlie whole,
r'or tliat wliich makes no })erceptible difference
by its presence or absence is no real part of the

whole.
9
PVom what we have said it will be seen that
the poet's function is to describe, not the

thing that has happened, but a kind of thing
that might happen, i. e. what is possible as
being probable or necessary. The distinction
between historian and poet is not in the one
writing prose and the other verse — vou might
put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it
would still be a species of history ; it consists
really in this, that the one describes the thing
that has been, and the other a kind of thing
that might be. Hence poetry is something
more philosophic and of graver import than
history, since its statements are of the nature
rather of universals, whereas those of history
are singulars. By a universal statement I
mean one as to M'hat such or such a kind of
man will probably or necessarily say or do —
which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes
proper names to the characters ; by a singular
statement, one as to what, say, Alcibiades did
or had done to him. In Co)nedy this has
become clear by this time ; it is only when
their plot is already made up of probable
incidents that they give it a basis of proper

names, choosing for the purpose any names
that may occur to them, instead of writing
like the old iambic poets about particular
persons. In Tragedy, liowever, they still
adhere to the liistoric names ; and for this
reason : what convinces is the possible ; now
whereas we are not yet sure as to the possi-
bility of that which has not happened, that
which has happened is manifestly possible, else
it would not have come to pass. Nevertheless
even in Tragedy there are some plays with but
one or two known names in them, the rest
being inventions ; and there are some without
a single known name, e. g. Agathon's Anthcus,
in which both incidents and names are of the
poet's invention ; and it is no less delightful

on that account. So that one must not aim
at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories
on which tragedies are based. It would be
absurd, in fact, to do so, as even the known
stories are only known to a few, though they
are a delight none the less to all.
It is evident from tlie above that the poet
must be more the poet of his stories or Plots
than of liis verses, inasmuch as he is a poet
by virtue of the imitative element in his work,
and it is actions that he imitates. And if he

should come to take a subject from actual
history, he is none the less a poet for that •
since some historic occui'rences may very well
be in the probable and possible order of things ;
and it is in that aspect of them that he is their
poet.
Of simple Plots and actions the episodic are
the worst. I call a Plot episodic when there
is neither probability nor necessity in the
sequence of its episodes. Actions of this sort
bad poets construct through their own fault,
and good ones on account of the plavers. His
work being for public performance, a good
p6et often stretches out a Plot beyond its
capabilities, and is -thus obliged to twist the
sequence of incident.
Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only
of a complete action, but also of incidents
arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have
the very greatest effect on the mind when they
occur unexpeccedly and at the same time in
consequence of one another ; there is more of
the marvellous in them then than if they
happened of themselves or by mere chance.
Even matters of chance seem most marvellous
if there is an appearance of design as it were
ill them ; as for instance the statue of Mitys

at Argos killed the author of Mitys"' death by
falling down on him when a looker-on at a
public spectacle ; for incidents like that we
think to be not without a meaning. A Plot,
therefore, of this sort is necessarily finer than
others.
10
Plots-afe either simple or complex, since the
actions they represent are naturally of this
twofold description. The action, proceeding
in the way defined, as one continuous wholej
I call simple, when the change in the hero's
fortunes takes place without Peripety or
Discovery ; and complex, when it iii\ olves one
or the other, or both. These should each of
them arise out of the structure of the Plot
itself, so as to be the consequence, necessary or
probable, of the antecedents. There is a great
difference between a thing happening propter
hoc and post hoc.
11
A Peripety is the change from one state of
things within the play to its opposite of the
kind described, and that too in the way Ave are
saying, in the probable or necessary sequence
of e\ ents ; as it is for instance in Ocdiptis :
THE- ART OF POETRY 47
here the opposite state of things is produced

by *the Messenger, who, coming to gladden #
Oedipus and to remove his fears as to his
mother, reveals the secret of his birth. And
in Lynceus : just as he is being Ij^d oft' for

executioiiv with Danaus at his side tor put him
to death, the incidents preceding this bring it
about that he is saved and Danaus put to
death. A Discovery is, as the very word
implies, a change from ignorance to know-
ledge, and thus to either love or hate, in the
personages marked for good or evil fortune.
The finest .form of Discovery is one attended
by Peripeties, like that which goes with the
Discovery in Oedipus. There are no doubt
other forms of it ; what we have said may
happen in a way in reference to inanimate
things, even things of a very casual kind ; and
it is also possible to discover whether some one
has done or not done something. But the
form most directly connected with the Plot
and the action of the piece is the first-
mentioned. This, with a Peripety, will arouse
either pity or fear — actions of that nature
being what Tragedy is assumed to represent ;
and it will also serve to bring about the happy
or unhappy ending. The Discovery, then,
being_of_persons, it may be that of one party

only to the other, the latter being already
knoAvn ; or both the parties may have to
discover themselves. Iphigenia, for instance,
was discovered to Orestes by sending the letter ;
and another Discovery Avas required to reveal
him to Iphigenia.
Two parts of the Plot, then, Peripety and
Discoverv, are on matters of this sort. A third
part is Suffering ; which we may define as an
action of a destructive or painful nature, such
as murders on the stage, tortures, woundings,
and the like. The other two have been already
explained. 12
The parts of Tragedy to be treated as for-

mative elements in the whole were mentioned,
in a previous Chaptei". From the point of
view, however, of its quantity, i. e. the separate
sections into Avhich it is divided, a tragedy has
the following parts : Prologue, Episode, Exode,
and a choral portion, distinguished into Parode
and Stasimon ; these two are connnon to all
tragedies, whereas songs from the stage and
Comrnoe are only found in some, Tlie Prologue
is all tliat precedes the Parode of the chorus ;
an Episode all that comes in between two whole
choral songs ; the Exode all that follows after

the last choral song. In the choral portion the
Parode is the whole first statement of the
chorus ; a Stasimon, a song of the chorus
without anapaests or trochees ; a Coimnos, a
lamentation sung by chorus and actor in concert.
The parts of Tragedy to be used as formative
elements in the whole we have already men-
tioned the
; above are its parts from the point
of view of its quantity, or the separate sections
into which it is divided.
13
The next points after what A\e have said
above will be these : (1) "What is the poet to
aim at, and what is he to avoid, in constructing
k^
his Plots ? and (2) What are the conditions on
which the tragic effect depends ?
We assume that, for the finest form of
Tragedy, the Plot must be not simple but
complex ; and further, that it must imitate
actions arousing pity and fear, since that is the
distinctive function of this kind of imitation.
It follows, therefore, that there are three forms
of Plot to be avoided. (1) A good man must
not be seen passing from happiness to misery,
or (2) a bad man from misery to happiness.
The first situation is not fear-inspiring or

piteous, but simply odious to us. The second
is the most untragic that can be ; it has no one
of the requisites of Tragedy ; it does not appeal
either to the liuman feeling in us, or to our
pity, or to our fears. Nor, on the other hand,
should (3) an extremely bad man be seen falling
from happiness into misery. Such a story may
arouse the human feeling in us, but it will not
move us to either pity or fear ; pity is occasioned
by undeserved misfortune, and fear by that of
one like ourselves ; so that there will be nothing
either piteous or fear-inspiring in the situation.
There remains, then, the intermediate kind of
personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous
and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought
upon him not by vice and depravity but by
some error of judgement, of the number of
those in the enjoyment of great reputation and
prosperity ; e. g. Oedipus, Thyestes, and the
men of note of similar families. The perfect
Plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not
(as some tell us) a double issue ; the change in
the hero''s fortunes must be not from misery to
liappiness, but on the contrary from happiness
to misery ; and the cause of it must lie not in
any depravity, but in some great error on his
part ; the man himself* being either such as we

have described, or better, not worse, than that.
Fact also confirms our theory. Though the
poets began by accepting any tragic story that
came to hand, in these days the finest tragedies
are always on the story of some few houses, on
that of Alcmeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager,
Thyestes, Telephus, or any others that may
have been involved, as either agents or sufferers,
in some deed of horror. The theoretically best
tragedy, then, has a Plot of this description.
The critics, therefore, are wrong who blame
Euripides for taking this line in his tragedies,
and giving many of them an unhappy ending.
It is, as we have said, the right line to take.
The best proof is this : on the stage, and in
the public performances, such plays, properly
worked out, are seen to be the most truly tragic ;
and Euripides, even if his execution be faulty
in every other point, is seen to be nevertheless
the most tragic certainly of the dramatists.
After this comes the construction of Plot which
some rank first, one with a double story (like
the Odyssey) and an opposite issue for the good
and the bad personages. It is ranked as first
only through the weakness of the audiences ;
the poets merely follow their public, writing as
its wishes dictate. But the pleasure here is not

that of Tragedy. It belongs rather to Comedy,
where the bitterest enemies in the piece (e.g.
Orestes and Aegisthus) walk off good friends
at the end, with no slaying of any one by
any one.
14
The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by
the Spectacle ; but they may also be aroused
by the very structure and incidents of the
play — which is the better way and shows the
better poet. The Plot in fact should be so
framed that, even without seeing the things
take place, he who simply hears the account
of them shall be filled with horror and pity
at the incidents; which is just the effect that
the mere recital of the story in OedijJiis would
have on one. To produce this same effect by
means of the Spectacle is less artistic, and
requires extraneous aid. Those, however, who
make use of the Spectacle to put before us that
which is merely monstrous and not productive
of fear, are \sholly out of touch with Tragedy ;
not every kind of pleasure should be required
of a tragedy, but only its own proper pleasure.
The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear,
and the poet has to produce it by a work of
imitation ; it is clear, therefore, that the causes

should be included in tlie incidents of his story.
Let us see, then, \\hat kinds of incident strike
one as horrible, or rather as piteous. In a deed
of this description the parties must necessarily
be either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to
one another. Now when enemy does it on
enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity
either in his doing or in his meditating the
deed, except so far as the actual pain of the
sufferer is concerned ; and the same is true
when the parties are indifferent to one another.
Whenever the tragic deed, however, is done
within the family — when murder or the like
is done or meditated by brother on brother,
by son on father, by mother on son, or son on
mother — these are the situations the poet should
seek after. The traditional stories, accordingly,
must be kept as they are, e.g. the murder of
Clytaemnestra by Orestes and of Eriphyle by
Alcmeon. At the same time even with these
there is something left to the poet himself;
it is for him to devise the right way of treating
them. Let us explain more clearly what we
mean by ' the right way \ '^^The deed of horror
may he done by the doer knowingly and con-
sciously, as in the old poets, and in Medea's
murder of her children in Euripides. Or he

may do it, but in ignorance of his relationship,
and discover that afterwards, as does the
Oedipus in Sophocles. Here the deed is outside
the play ; but it may be within it, like the act
of the Alcmeon in Astvdamas, or/that of the
Telegonus in Ulysses Wounded. JA. third pos-
sibility isfor one meditating some deadly injury
to another, in ignorance of his relationship,
to make the discovery in time to draw back.
These exhaust the possibilities, since the deed
must necessarily be either done or not done,
and either knowingly or unknowingly.
The worst situation is when the personage
is with full knowledge on the point of doing
the deed, and leaves it undone. It is odious
and also (through the absence of suffering)
untragic; hence it is that no one is made to
act thus except in some few instances, e.g.
Haemon and Creon in Antigone. Next after
this comes the actual perpetration of the deed
meditated. ^/A better situation than that, how-
ever, is for the deed to be done in ignorance,
and the relationship discovered afterwards, since
there is nothing odious in it, and the Discovery
will serve to astound us. But the best of all is
tlie last; what we have in Cies^hontes, for
example, where Merope, on the point of slaying

her son, recognizes him in time ; in Iphigenia,
where sister and brother are in a like position ;
and in Helle, where the son recognizes his mother,
Avhen on the point of giving lier up to her enemv.
This will explain why our tragedies are
restricted (as we said just now) to such a
small number of families. It was accident
rather than art that led the poets in quest
of subjects to embody this kind of incident
in their Plots. They are still obliged, accord-
ingly, to have recourse to the families in which
such horrors have occurred.
On the construction of the Plot, and the
kind of Plot required for Tragedy, enough has
now been said.
15
In the Characters there are four points to

aim at. First and foremost, that they shall
be good. There will be an element of character
in the play, if (as has been observed) what a
personage says or does reveals a certain moral
purpose; and a good element of character,
if the purpose so revealed is good. Such good-
ness is possible in every type of personage,
even in a woman or a slave, though the one
is perhaps an inferior, and the other a wholly
worthless being. The second point is. to make

them appropriate. The Character before us
may be, say, manly ; but it is not appropriate
in a female Character to be manly, or clever.
The third is to make them like the reality,
which is not the same as their being good and
appropriate, in our sense of the term. The
fourth is to make them consistent and the
same throughout ; even if inconsistency be part
of the man before one for imitation as present-
ing that form of character, he should still be
consistently inconsistent. We have an instance
of baseness of character, not required for the
story, in the Menelaus in Oi'cstes ; of the in-
congruous and unbefitting in the lamentation
of Ulysses in Scylla, and in the (clever) speech
of Melanippe ; and of inconsistency in Iphigenia
at Auli.<}, where Iphigenia the suppliant is
utterly unlike the later Iphigenia. The right
thing, however, is in the Characters just as in
the incidents of the play to endeavour always
after the necessary or the probable : so that
whenever such-and-such a personage says or
does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the
})robable or necessary outcome of his character;
and whenever this incident folloMs on that,
it shall be either the necessary or the probable
^THE ART OF POETRY 57
consequence of it. From this one sees (to

digress for a moment) that thj2 Denouement
also should arise out of the plot itself, and not
depend on a stage-artifice, as in Medea, or in
the story of the (arrested) departure of the
Greeks in the Iliad. The artifice must be
reserved for matters outside the play — for past
events beyond human knowledge, or events vet
to come, which require to be foretold or an-
nounced ;since it is the privilege of the Gods
to know evervthing. There should be nothing
improbable among the actual incidents. If it
be unavoidable, however, it should be outside
the tragedy, like the improbability in the
Oedipus of Sophocles. But to return to the
Characters. As Tragedy is an imitation of
personages better than the ordinary man, we
in our way should follow the example of good
portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive
features of a man, and at 'the same time, without
losing the likeness, make him handsomer than
he is. The poet in like manner, in portraying
men quick or slow to anger, or with similar
infirmities of character, must know how to
represent them as such, and at the same time
as good men, as Agathon and Homer have
represented Achilles.
All these rules one must keep in mind

throughout, and further, those also for such
points of stage-effect as directly depend on the
art of the poet, since in these too one may
often make mistakes. Enough, however, has
been said on the subject in one of our published
writings. 16
Discovery in general has been explained

already. As for the species of Discovery, the
first to be noted is (1) the least artistic form
of it, of which the poets make most use through
mere lack of invention. Discovery by signs or
marks. Of these signs some are congenital,
like the ' lance-head which the Earth-born have
on them ', or ' stars ', such as Carcinus brings in
in his Thijcstes ; others acquired after birth —
these latter being either marks on the body,
e.g. scars, or external tokens, like necklaces, or
to take another sort of instance, the ark in the
Discovery in Tyro. Even these, however, admit
of two uses, a better and a Avorse ; the scar of
Ulysses is an instance ; the Discovery of him
through it is made in one way by the nurse
and in another by the' swineherds. A Discovery
usinir si<i:ns as a means of assurance is less
artistic, as indeed are all such as imply re-
flection ; whereas one bringing them in all of

a sudden, as in the 'Bath-story^ is of a better
order. Next after these are (2) Discoveries
made directly by the poet ; which are inartistic
for that very reason ; e.g. Orestes' Discovery of
himself in IpMgema : whereas his sister reveals
who she is by the letter, Orestes is made to say
himself what the poet rather than the story
demands. This, therefore, is not far removed
from the first-mentioned fault, since he might
have presented certain tokens as well. Another
instance is the ' shuttle's voice ' in the Tereus
of Sophocles. (3) A third species is Discovery
through memory, from a man's consciousness
being awakened by something seen or heard.
Thus in The CyjJrioe of Dicaeogenes, the sight
of the picture makes the man burst into tears ;
and in the Tale of Alcinoiis^ hearing the harper
Ulysses is reminded of the past and weeps ; the
Discovery of them being the result. (4?) A
fourth kind is Discovery through reasoning ;
e.g. in The Choephoroe: 'One like me is here;
there is no one like me but Orestes ; he, there-
fore, must be here.** Or that which Polyidus
the Sophist suggested for Iphigenia ; since it
was natural for Orestes to reflect : ' My sister
was sacrificed, and I am to be sacrificed like
her.'' Or that in the Tydens of Theodectes :

' I came to find a son, and am to die myself.'
Or that in The Phinidae : on seeing the place
the women inferred their fate, that they were
to die there, since they had also been exposed
there. (5) There is, too, a composite Discovery
arising from bad reasoning on the side of the
other party. An instance of it is in Ulysses
the False Messenger: he said he shonld knoAv
the bow — which he had not seen ; but to
suppose from that that he would know it again
(as though he had once seen it) was bad reason-
ing. (6) The best of all Discoveries, hoAvever,
is that arising from the incidents themselves,
when the great surprise comes about through
a probable incident, like that in the Oedipus of
Sophocles; and also in Iphigenia; for it was
not improbable that she should wish to have
a letter taken home. These last are the only
Discoveries independent of the artifice of signs
and necklaces. Next after them come Dis-
coveries through reasoning.
17
At the time when he is constructing his

Plots, and engaged on the Diction in which
they are worked out, the poet should remember
(1) to put the actual scenes as far as possible

before his eves. In this way, seeing everything
with the vividness of an eye-witness as it were,
he will devise what is appropriate, and be least
likely to overlook incongruities. This is shown
by what was censured in Carcinus, the return of
Amphiaraus from the sanctuary ; it would have
passed unnoticed, if it had not been actually
seen by the audience ; but on the stage his
play failed, the incongruity of the incident
oflFending the spectators. (2) As far as may
be, too, the poet should even act his story
with the very gestures of his personages. Given
the same natural qualifications, he who feels
the emotions to be described will be the most
convincing ; distress and anger, for instance,
are portrayed most truthfully by one who is
feeling them at the moment. Hence it is that
poetry demands a man with special gift for it,
or else one with a touch of madness in him ;
the former can easily assume the required
mood, and the latter may be actually beside
liimself with emotion. (3) His story, again,
whether already made or of his own making, he
should first simplify and reduce to a universal
form, before proceeding to lengthen it out by
the insertion of episodes. The following will
show how the universal element in Iphigenia,

for instance, may be viewed: A certain maiden
having been offered in sacrifice, and spirited
away from her sacrificers into another land,
Avhere the custom was to sacrifice all strangers
to the Goddess, she Vv'as made there the priestess
of this rite. Long after that the brother of
the priestess happened to come ; the fact, how-
ever, of the oracle having for a certain reason
bidden him go thither, and his object in going,
are outside the Plot of the play. On his
coming he was arrested, and about to be
sacrificed, when he revealed wlio he was — either
as Euripides puts it, or (as suggested by
Polyidus) by the not improbable exclamation,
'So I too am doomed to be sacrificed, as my
sister was ' ; and the disclosure led to his salva-
tion. This done, the next thing, after the
proper names have been fixed as a basis for the
storv, is to Avork in episodes or accessory inci-
dents. One must mind, however, that the
episodes are appropriate, like the fit of madness
in Orestes, which led to his arrest, and the
purifying, which brought about his salvation.
In plays, then, the episodes are short ; in epic
poetry they serve to lengthen out the poem.
The argument of the Odyssey is not a long one.
A certain man has been abroad many years ;

Poseidon is ever on the watch for him, and he
is all alone. Matters at home too have come
to this, that his substance is being wasted and
his son's death plotted by suitors to his wife.
Then he arrives there himself after his grievous
sufferings; reveals himself, and falls on his
enemies ; and the end is his salvation and their
death. This being all that is proper to the
Odyssey, everything else in it is episode.
18
(4) There is a further point to be borne in

mind. Everv tragedy is in part Complication
and in part Denouement ; the incidents before
the opening scene, and often certain also of
those within the play, forming the Compli-
cation; and the rest the Denouement. By
Complication I mean all from the beginning of
the story to the point just before the change
in the hero's fortunes; by Denouement, all
from the beginn ing of the change to the end.
In the Lynceus of Theode ctes, for instance, the
Complication includes, together with the pre-
supposed incidents, the seizure of the child and
that in turn of the parents ; and the Denoue-
ment all from the indictment for the murder to

the end. Now it is right, when one speaks of
a tragedy as the same or not the same as an-
other, to do so on the ground before all else of
their Plot, i. e. as having the same or not the
same Complication and Denouement. Yet
there are many dramatists who, after a good
Complication, fail in the Denouement. But it
is necessary for both points of construction to
be always duly mastered. (5) There are four
distinct species of Tragedy — that being the
number of the constituents also that have been
mentioned : first, the complex Tragedy, which
is all Peripety and Discovery ; second, the
Tragedy of suffering, e. g. the Ajaxes and Ixions ;
third, the Tragedy of character, e.g. The Phthi-
otides and Ptieus. The fourth constituent is that
of ' Spectacle ', exemplified in The Phorcides, in

Prometheus, and in all plays with the scene laid
in the nether world. The poet's aim, then,
should be to combine every element of interest,
if possible, or else the more important and the
major part of them. This is now especially
necessary owing to the unfair criticism to which
the poet is subjected in these days. Just be-
cause there have been poets before him strong
in the several species of tragedy, the critics
now expect the one man to surpass that which

was the strong point of each one of his pre-
decessors. (6)One should also remember what
has been said more than once, and not write
a trJigedy on an epic body of incident (i.e. one
with a plurality of stories in it), by attempting
to dramatize, for instance, the entire story of
the Iliad. In the epic owing to its scale everv
part is treated at proper length ; with a drama,
however, o)i the same story the result is very
disappointing. This is shown by the fact that
all who have dramatized the fall of Ilium in its
entirety, and not part by part, like Euripides,
or the whole of the Niobe story, instead of
a portion, like Aeschylus, either fail utterly or
have but ill success on the stage ; for that and
that alone was enough to ruin even a plav by
Agathon. Yet in their Peripeties, as also in
their simple plots, the poets I mean show
wonderful skill in aiming at the kind of effect
they desire — a tragic situation tliat arouses the
human feeling in one, like the clever villain
(e.g. Sisyphus) deceived, or the brave wrong-
doer worsted. This is probable, however, only
in Agathon's sense, when he speaks of the prob-
ability of even improbabilities coming to pass.
(7) The Chorus too should be regarded as one
of the actors ; it should Ije an integral part of

the whole, and take a share in the action — that
which it has in Sophocles rather than in Euri-
pides. With the later poets, however, the
songs in a pla}? of theirs have no more to do
with the Plot of that than of any other
tragedy. Hence it is that they are now singing
intercalary pieces, a practice first introduced
by Agathon. And yet what real difference is
there between singing such intercalary pieces,
and attempting to fit in a speech, or even
a whole act,- from one play into another ?
19
The Plot and Characters having been dis-

cussed, itremains to consider the Diction and
Thought. As for the Thought, we may assume
what is said of it in our Art of Rhetoric, as it
belongs more properly to that department of
inquiry. The Thought of the personages is
shown in everything to be effected by their
language — in every effort to prove or disprove,
to arouse emotion (pity, fear, anger, and the
like), or to maximize or minimize things. It is
clear, also, that their menial procedure nmst be
on the same lines in their actions likewise,
whenever they \vish them to arouse pity or

horror, or have a look of importance or prob-
ability. The only difference is that with the
act the impression has to be made without ex-
planation whereas
; with the spoken word it has
to l)e produced by the speaker, and result from
his language. What, indeed, would be the
good of the speaker, if things appeared in the
required light even apart from anything he
says ?
As regards the Diction, one subject for in-
cjuiry under this head is the turns given to the
language when spoken; e.g. the difference be-
tween command and prayer, simple statement
and threat, question and answer, and so forth.
The theory of such matters, however, belongs
to Elocution and the professors of that art.
Whether the poet knows these things or not,
his art as a poet is never seriously criticized on
that account. AVhat fault can .one see in
Homer's ' Sing of the wrath. Goddess ' ?— which

Protagoras has criticized as being a command
where a prayer was meant, since to bid one do
or not do, he tells us, is a connnand. Let us
pass over this, then, as a})pertaining to another
art, and not to that of poetry.
THE ART OF POETRY
20
The Diction viewed as a whole is made up
of the following parts : the Letter (or ultimate
element), the Syllable, the Conjunction, the
Article, the Noun, the Verb, the Case, and
the Speech. (1) The Letter is an indivisible
sound of a particular kind, one that may
become a factor in an intelligible sound. In-
divisible sounds are uttered by the brutes also,
but no one of these is a Letter in our sense
of the term. These elementary sounds are
either vowels, semivowels, or mutes. A vowel
is a Letter having an audible sound without
the addition of another Letter. A semivowel,
one having an audible sound by the addition
of another Letter ; e. g. S and R. A mute,
one having no sound at all by itself, but be-
coming audible by an addition, that of one of
the Letters which have a sound of some sort
of their own ; e. g. U and G. The Letters
differ in various ways : as produced by different
conformations or in different regions of the
mouth ; as aspirated, not aspirated, or some-
times one and sometimes the other; as long,
short, or of variable (quantity ; and further as
having an acute, grave, or intermediate accent.
The details of these matters we must leave

to the metricians. (2) A Syllable is a non-
significant composite sound, made up of a
mute and a Letter having a sound (a vowel or
semivowel) ; for GR, without an A. is just as
much a Syllable as GRA, with an A. The
various forms of the Syllable also belong to
the theory of metre. (3) A Conjunction is
(a) a non-significant sound which, when one
significant sound is formable out of several,
neither hinders nor aids the union, and which,
if the Speech thus formed stands by itself
(apart from other Speeches) must not be
inserted at the beginning of it ; e. g. /zej/, Si],
Toi, Se. Or (h) a non- significant sound capable
of combining two or more significant sounds
into one ; e. g. dficpi, rrepi, etc. (4) An Article
is a non -significant sound marking the be-
ginning, end, or dividing-point of a Speech,
its natural place being either at the extremities
or in the middle. (5) A Noun or name is a
composite significant sound not involving the
idea of time, with parts which have no signifi-
cance by themselves in it. It is to be remem-
bered that in a compound we do not think
of the parts as having a significance also by
theuiselves ; in the name ' Theodorus \ for
instance, the Soopou means nothing to ns,

(6) A Verb is a composite significant sound
involving the idea of time, with parts which
(just as in the Noun) have no significance by
themselves in it. Whereas the word ' man '' or
' white ' does not imply when, ' walks ' and ' has
walked' involve in addition to the idea of
walking that of time present or time past.
(7) A Case of a Noun or Verb is when the
word means 'of or 'to' a thing, and so forth,
or for one or many (e. g. ' man ' and ' men ') ;
or it may consist merely in the mode of
utterance, e. g. in question, command, etc.
' Walked ? ' and ' Walk ! ' are Cases of the verb
' to walk ' of this last kind. (8) A Speech is
a composite significant sound, some of the
parts of which have a certain significance bv
themselves. It may be observed that a Speech
is not always made up of Noun and Verb ; it
may be without a Verb, like the definition of
man ; but it will alwav;^ have some part with
a certain significance by itself. In the S})eech
'Cleon walks', 'Cleon' is an instance of such
a part. A Speech is said to l)e one in two
ways, either as signifying one thing, or as a
union of several Speeches made into one by
conjunction. Tiius the niad is one Speech by
conjunction of several ; and the definition of

man is one through its signifying one thing.
SI
Nouns are of two kinds, either (1) simple,

i. e. made up of non-significant parts, like the
word yrj, or (2) double ; in the latter case the
word may be made up either of a significant
and a non-significant part (a distinction which
disappears in the compound), or of two signifi-
cant parts. It is possible also to have triple,
quadruple or higher compounds, like most of
our amplified names ; e.g. ' Hermocaicoxanthus '
and the like.
Whatever its structure, a Noun must always
be either (1) the ordinary word for the thing,
oi- (2) a strange word, or (3) a metaphor, or
(4) an ornamental word, or (5) u coined word,
or (6) a word lengthened out, or (7) curtailed,
or (8) altered in form. By the ordinary word
I mean that in general use in a (country ; and
by a strange word, one in use elsewhere. So
that the same word may obviously be at once
strange and ordinary, though not in reference
to the same people ; atyvvo^^ for instance, is
an ordinary word in Cyprus, and a strange
word with us. Metaphor consists in giving
tlie thing a name that belongs to something

else ; the transference being either from genus
to speci'es, or from species to genus, or from
species to species, or on grounds of analogy.
That from genus to species is exemplified in
' Here stands my ship ' ; for lying at anchor is
the ' standing ' of a particular kind of thing.
That from species to genus in 'Truly ten
thousand good deeds has Ulysses wrought \
where 'ten thousand', which is a particular
large numlêr, is put in place of the generic
' a large number \ That from species to
species in ' Drawing the life with the bronze \
and in ' Severing with the enduring bronze ' ;
where the poet uses 'draw' in the sense of
'sever' and 'sever' in that of 'draw', both
words meaning to 'take away' something.
That from analogy is possible whenever there
are four terms so related that the second (B)
is to the first (A), as the fourth (D) to the
thii-d (C) ; for one may then metaphorically
put B in lieu of U, and D in lieu of B. Now
and then, too, they qualify the metaphor by
adding on to it that to which the word it
supplants is relative. Tlius a cup (B) is in
relation to Dionysus (Aj what a sliield (D) is
to Ares (C). The cup accordingly will be
metaphorically described as the ' shield of

Dionysus ' (D + A), and the shield as the ' cup
of A res ' (B + C). Or to take another instance :
As old age-(D) is to life (C), so is evening (B)
to day (A). One will accordingly describe
evening (B) as the ' old age of the day '
(D + A) — or by the Empedoclean equivalent;
and old age (D) as the 'evening' or 'sunset of
life' (B + C). It may be that some of the
terms thus related have no special name of
their own, but for all that they will be meta-
phorically described in just the same way.
Thus to cast forth seed-corn is called ' sowing "* ;
but to cast forth its flame, as said of the sun,
has no special name. This nameless act (B),
hoAvever, stands in just the same relation to its
object, sunlight (A), as sowing (D) to the seed-
corn (C). Hence the expression in the poet,
'sowing around a god-created flame'' (D-i- A).
There is also another form of (jualified
metaphor. Having given the thing the alien
name, one may by a negative addition deny
of it one of the attributes naturally associated
with its new name. An instance of this would
be to call the shield not the 'cup of Ares \ as
in the former case, but a 'cup that holds no
xmne\ >i; * * A coined word is a name which,
being quite unknown among a people, is given

by the poet himself ; e. g. (for there are some
words that seem to be of this origin) epvvye?
for horns, and dprjrrjp for priest. A word is
said to be lengthened out, when it has a short
vowel made long, or an extra syllable inserted ;
e. g. TToXrjos for TroXeooy, IlrjXrjLdSeoo for TlrjXei-
Sov, It is said to be curtailed, when it has
lost a part ; e.g. KpT, Sco, and oy^r in fiLa yiverai
d/Kpor^pcoj/ oy^r. It is an altered word, when
part is left as it was and part is of the poet's
making ; e. g. Se^nepov for d^îov, in Seîrepbu
Kara jiaôv.
The Nouns themselves (to whatever class they
may belong) are either masculines, feminines,
or intermediates (neuter). All ending in iV, P,
^, or in the two compounds of this last, W and
H, are masculines. All ending in the invariably
long vowels, H and H, and in A among the
vowels that may be long, are feminines. So
that there is an equal number of masculine and
feminine terminations, as W and E are the
same as 5", and need not be counted. There
is no Noun, however, ending in a mute or in
either of the two short vowels, E and O. Only
three {/xiXi, ko/x/xi, iri-mpL) end in I, and five
in T. '^J'he intermediates, or neuters, end in
the varialjle vowels or in iV. P, 5*.
': Tlic perfection of Diction is for it to be at

once clear and not mean. The clearest indeed
is that made up of the ordinary words for
things, but it is mean, as is shown by the
poetry of Cleophon and Sthenelus. On the
other hand the Diction becomes distinguished
and non-prosaic by the use of unfamiliar terms,
i. e. strange words, metaphors, lengthened
forms, and everything that deviates from the
ordinary modes of speech. — But a whole state-
ment in such terms will be either a riddle or
a barbarism, a riddle, if made up of metaphors,
a barbarism, if made up of strange words. The
very nature indeed of a riddle is this, to
describe a fact in an impossible combination of
words (^\hich cannot be done with the real
names for things, but can be with their meta-
phorical substitutes); e.g. 'I saw a man glue
brass on another with fire', and the like. The
corresponding use of strange words results in
a barbarism. — A certain admixture, accordingly,
of unfamiliar terms is necessary. These, the
strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental
equivalent, etc., will save the language from
seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary
words in it will secure the requisite clearness.

What helps most, however, to render the
Diction at once clear and non-prosaic is the
use of the lengthened, curtailed, and altered
forms of words. Their deviation from the
ordinary words Avill, by making the language
unlike that in general use, give it a non-prosaic
appearance ; and their having much in common
with the words in general use will give it the
quality of clearness. It is not right, then, to
condemn these modes of speech, and ridicule
the poet for using them, as some have done ;
e.g. the elder Euclid, who said it was easy to
make poetry if one were to be allowed -to
lengthen the words in the statement itself as
much as one likes — a procedure he caricatured
by reading 'ETn\dpr}v eiSov MapaOcovdSe (SaSi-
ôvra, and ovk dv y kpdjxevos tov eK^tvov iXXi-
l3opou as verses. A too apparent use of these
licences has certainly a ludicrous effect, but
they are not alone in that ; the rule of modera-
tion applies to all the constituents of the
poetic vo(ta])ulary ; even with metaphors, strange
Avords, and the rest, the effect will be the same,
if one uses them improperly and with a view
to provoking laughter. The proper use of
them is a very different thing. To realize the
difference one should take an epic verse and

see how it reads when the norinal words are
introduced. The same should be done too with
the strange word, the metaphor, and the rest ;
for one has only to put the ordinary words in
their place to see the truth of what we are
saying. The same iambic, for instance, is found
in Aeschylus and Euripides, and as it stands
in the former it is a poor line ; whereas Euri-
pides, by the change of a single word, the
substitution of a strange for what is by usage
the ordinary word, has made it seem a fine one.
Aeschylus having said in his Philoctetes :
(fiaykSaLva t] jjlov adpKa^ kaOki noSos,
Euripides has merely altered the ea-Qui here

into OoLvdrai. Or suppose
vvi' 8i [I €Ot)p oXtyo? re kol ovTiSavo's Koi diiKrjS

io be altered by the substitution of the ordinary
words into
I'vv 8e IX l(i)v fiLKpos re Kal daO^vLKO^ Kul deiSyj?.

Or the line
oi^pov d^LKkXiov KUTCcdch o\iyr]V re rpdneâv

into
Sicppor fioxOrjpou KaraOeh fiiKpdi^ re Tpdne(av.

Or rjLoves ôoccaLv into rjiove'i Kpdôvcnv. Add

to this that Ariphrades used to ridicule the
tragedians for introducing expressions unkno\\ n
in the language of common life, ScoficcToop a-rro
(for duo Sco/idrcoi^), aiOeu, eyo) Si vw, MîAXeo)?
irepi (for irepl 'A)(îXXicos), and the like. The
mere fact of their not being in ordinary speech
gives the Diction a non-prosaic character ; but
Ariphrades was unaware of that. It is a great
thing, indeed, to make a proper use of these
poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange
words. But the greatest thing by far is to be
a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that
cannot be learnt from others ; and it is also
a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies
an intuitive perception of the similarity in
dissimilars.
Of the kinds of words we have enumerated
it may be observed that compounds are most
in place in the dithyramb, strange . words in
heroic, and metaphors in iambic poetry. Heroic
poetiy, indeed, may avail itself of them all.
But in iambic verse, which models itself as far
as possible on the spoken language, only those
kinds of words arc in [)lace which are allowable
also in an oration, i. e. the ordinary word, the
metaphor, and the ornamental equivalent.
Let this, then, suifice as an account of

Tragedy, the art imitatino- by means of action
on the stage.
^3
As for the poetry which merely narrates, or
imitates by means of versified language (without
action), it is evident that it has several points
in conniion with Tragedv.
I. The construction of its stories should
clearly be like that in a drama ; thev should be
based on a single action, one that is a complete
whole in itself, with a beginning, middle, and
end, so as to enable the work to produce its
own proper pleasure with all the organic unity
of a living creature. Nor should one suppose
that there is anything like them in our usual
histories. A history has to deal not with one
action, but with one period and all that hap-
pened in that to one or more persons, however
disconnected the several events may have been.
Just as two events may take place at the same
time, e. g. the sea-fight off Salamis and the
battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily, without
converging to the same end, so too of two con-
secutive events one may sometimes come after
the other with no one end as their common
issue. Nevertheless most of our epic poets, one

may say, ignore the distinction.
Herein, then, to repeat what we have said
before, we have a further proof of Homer's
marvellous superiority to the rest. He did not
attempt to deal even with the Trojan war in its
entirety, though it was a whole with a definite
beginning and end — tlirough a feeling appar-
ently that it was too long a story to be taken
in in one view, or if not that, too complicated
from the variety of incident in it. As it is, he
has singled out one section of the whole ; many
of the other incidents, however, he brings in as
episodes, using the Catalogue of the Ships, for
instance, and other episodes to relieve the uni-
formity ofhis narrative. As for the other epic
poets, they treat of one man, or one period ; or
else of an action which, although one, has a
multiplicity of parts in it. This last is what
the authors of the (Jypr'ia and Little lUad have
done. And the result is that, whereas the Iliad
or Odyssey supplies materials for only one, or
at most two tragedies, the Cypr'ia does that for
several, and the Little Iliad ôr more than eiglib:
for an Adjudgment of Arms, a Philoctetrs, a
Aêoptolenms, a Eurypylns, a Ulysses as Beggar,
a Laconian Women, a Fidl of Ilhtm, and a De-
a
paHtire of the Fleet ; as also a Sinon, and
Women of Troy.
II. Besides this, Epic poetry must divide into

the same species as Tragedy ; it must be either
or one
simple or complex, a story of character
Its parts, too, with the excep tion
of suffering.
as it
of Song and Spectacle, must be the same,
s of
requires Peripeties, Discoveries, and scene
ght
suffering just like Tragedy. Lastly, the Thou
and Diction in it must be good in their way.
; and
All these elements appear in Homer first
he has made due use of them. His two poems
are each examp les of const ructi on, the Jlmd
rj
simple and a story of suffering, the Odysse
it) and
complex (there is Discovery throughout
a story of character. And they are more than
this, since in Diction and Thought too they
surpass all other poems.
as
There is, however, a difference in the Epic
h, and
compared with Tragedy, (1) in its lengt
As to its lengt h, the hmit
(2) in its metre. (1)
must be pos-
already suggested will suffice : itof the work to
sible for the begin ning and end
will
be taken in in one view— a condition which
the
be fulfilled if the poem be shorter than
old epics, and about as long as the series of

tragedies offered for one hearing. For the
extension of its length epic poetry has a special
advantage, of which it makes large use. In
a play one cannot represent ah action with a
number of parts going on simultaneously ; one
is limited to the part on the stage and con-
nected with the actors. Whereas in epic poetry
the narrative form makes it possible for one to
describe a number of simultaneous incidents ;
and these, if germane to the subject, increase
the body of the poem. This then is a gain to
the Epic, tending to give it grandeur, and also
variety of interest and room for episodes of
diverse kinds. Uniformity of incident by the
satiety it soon creates is apt to ruin tragedies
on the stage. (2) As for its metre, the heroic
has been assigned it from experience ; were any
one to attempt a narrative poem in some one,
or in several, of the other metres, the incon-
gruity of the thing would be apparent. The
heroic in fact is the gravest and weightiest of
metres — which is what makes it more tolerant
than the rest of strange words and metaphors,
that also being a point in Avliich the narrative
form of })oetry goes beyond all others. The
iambic and trochaic, on the other hand, are
metres of movement, the one representing that

of life and action, the other that of the dance.
Still more unnatural would it appear, if one
were to write an epic in a medley of metres, as
Chaeremon did. Hence it is that no one has
ever written a long story in any but heroic
verse ; nature herself, as we have said, teaches us
to select the metre appropriate to such a story.
Homer, admirable as he is in every other
respect, is especially so in this, that he alone
among epic poets is not unaware of the part to
be played by the poet himself in the poem.
The poet should say very little in propria jjer-
sona, as he is no imitator when doing that.
Whereas the other poets are perpetually coming
forward in person, and say but little, and that
only here and there, as imitators. Homer after
a brief preface brings in forthwith a man, a
woman, or some other Character — no one of
them characterless, but each with distinctive
characteristics.
The marvellous is certainly required in
Tragedy. The Epic, however, affords more
opening for the improbable, the chief factor
in the marvellous, because in it the agents are
not visibly before one. The scene of the pursuit
of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage —
the Greeks halting instead of pursuing him,

and Achilles shaking his head to stop them ;
but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked.
The marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure,
as is shown by the fact that we all tell a story
with additions, in the belief that we are doing
our hearers a pleasure.
Homer more than any other has taught the
rest of us the art of framing lies in the right
way. I mean the use of paralogism. When-
ever, if A is or happens, a consequent, B, is or ■/
happens, men's notion is that, if the B is, the .^
A also is— but that is a false conclusion. Ac-
cordingly, iA
f is untrue, but there is something
else, B, that on the assumption of its truth
follows as its consequent, the right thing then
is to add on the B. Just because we know the
truth of the consequent, we are in our own
minds led on to the erroneous inference of the
truth of the antecedent. Here is an instance,
from the Bath-story in the Odyssey.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to
an unconvincing possibility. The story should
never be made uj) of im])robable incidents;
there should be nothing of the sort in it. If,
however, such incidents are unavoidable, they
should be outside the piece, like the liero's
ignorance in Oedipus of the circumstances of

Laius' death ; not within it, like the report
of the Pythian games in Eledra^ or the man's
having come to Mysia from Tegea without
uttering a word on the \vay, in The Mysians.
So that it is ridiculous to say that one's Plot
would have been spoilt without them, since it
is fundamentally wrong to make up such Plots.
If the poet has taken such a Plot, however, and
one sees that he might have put it in a more
probable form, he is guilty of absurdity as well
as a fault of art. Even in the Odyssey the
improbabilities in tlie setting-ashore of Ulysses
would be clearly intolerable in the hands of an
inferior poet. As it is, the poet conceals them,
his other excellences veiling their absurdity.
Elaborate Diction, however, is required only
in places where there is no action, and no
Character or Thought to be revealed. Wliere
there is Character or Thought, on the otlier
hand, an over-ornate Diction tends to obscure
them.
25
As regards Problems and their Solutions,

one may see the number and nature of the
assumptions on which they proceed by viewing
the matter in the following way. (1) The poet
êing an imitator just like the painter or other

maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all
instances represent things in one or other of
three aspects, either as they were or are, or as
they are said or thought to be or to have been,
or as they ought to be. (2) All this he does in
language, with an admixture, it may be, of
strange words and metaphors, as also of the
various modified forms of words, since the use
of these is conceded in poetry. (S) It is to be
remembered, too, that there is not the same
kind of correctness in poetry as in politics, or
indeed any other art. There is, however,
within the limits of poetry itself a possibility
of two kinds of error, the one directly, the
other only accidentally connected with the art.
If the poet meant to describe the thing cor-
rectly, and failed througli lack of power of
expression, his art itself is at fault. But if it
Was throuo-h his having; meant to describe it in
some incorrect way (e. g. to make the horse in
movement have both right legs tlirown forward)
that the technical error (one in a matter of,
say, medicine or some other special science),
or impossibilities of whatever kind they may
be, ha\e got into his description, his error in
that case is jiot in the essentials of the poetic
art. These, therefore, must be the premisses

of the Sohitions in answer to the criticisms
involved in the Problems.
I. As to the criticisms relating to the poet's

art itself. Any impossibilities there may be in
his descriptions of things are faults. But from
another point of view they are justifiable, if
they serve the end of poetry itself — if (to
assume what we have said of that end) they
make the effect of some portion of the work
more astounding. The Pursuit of Hector is
an instance in point. If, however, the poetic
end might have been as well or better attained
without sacrifice of technical correctness in
such matters, the impossibilitv is not to be
justified, since the description should be, if it
can, entirely free from error. One may ask,
too, whether the error is in a matter directly
or only accidentally cx»nnected with the poetic
art ; since it is a lesser error in an artist not
to know, for instance, that the hind has no
horns, than to produce an unrecognizable
picture of one.
n. If the poet's description be criticized as
not true to fact, one may urge perhaps that
tlie object ought to be as described — an answer
like that of Sophocles, who said that he di'ew
men as they ought to he, and Euripides as

they were. If the description, however, be
neither true nor of the thing as it ought to be,
the answer must be then, that it is in accor-
dance with opinion. The tales about Gods, for
instance, may be as wrong as Xenophanes
thinks, neither true nor the better thing to
say ; but they are certainly in accordance with
opinion. Of other statements in poetry one
may perhaps say, not that they are better than
the truth, but that the fact was so at the time ;
e.g. the description of the arms : 'their spears
stood upright, butt-end upon the ground'; for
that was the usual way of fixing them then, as it
is still with the Illyrians. As for the question
whether something said or done in a poem is
morally right or not, in dealing with that one
should consider not only the intrinsic quality
of the actual word or deed, but also the person
who says or does it, the person to whom he
says or does it, the time, the means, and the
motive of the agent — whether he does it to
attain a greater good, or to avoid a greater
evil.
in. Other criticisms one must meet by con-
sidering the language of the poet: (1) by the
assumption of a strange word in a passage like
oupfja^ fief TrpcoToi', where by ovprjas Homer

may perhaps mean not mules but sentinels.
And in saying of Dolon, o? p rj tol etôy /xev
er]i/ KaKo^y his meaning may perhaps be, not
that Dolon's body was deformed, but that his
face was ugly, as eveiSrj^ is the Cretan word for
handsome-faced. So, too, ^(uporepov Se Kepaie
may mean not ' mix the wine stronger ', as
though for topers, but ' mix it quicker \ (2)
Other expressions in Homer may be explained
as metaphorical; e.g. in aXXoi /xeu pa Beot re
Kol duepe? ev8ov (ôLTTavres^ nap'i'i'XioLf as com-
pared with what he tells us at the same time,
rj TOL or' ey ireSiov to TpoiiKov dOprjoreuv, avXwv
<Tvpiyy(£)V fre bp.a^bv'\^ the word airavTe^^
'all', is metaphorically put for 'many', since
* all ' is a species of ' many '. So also his olt]
8' ap.fxopo9 is metaphorical, the best known
standing 'alone'. (3) A change, as Hippias
suggested, in the mode of reading a word will
solve the difficulty in SiSojxev Si oi, and to piv
ov KaTanvOeTai 6p.j3pa). (4) Other difficulties
may be solved by another punctuation ; e.g. in
Empedocles, aiyjra Se OvrjT' k(f)vovTO, to. rrplv
fidOov dOdvaTa ^(opd re 7rp/V KeKprjTO. Or (5)
by the assumption of an equivocal term, as
in napcpxrjKev Se TrXeco vv^, where TrAeco is
equivocal. Or (6) by an appeal -to the custom

of language. Wine-and-water we call ' wine ' ;
and it is on the same principle that Homer
speaks of a Kvrjfxls veorevKrov Kacrcnrkpoio^ a
' greave of new- wrought tin \ A worker in
iron Ave call a ' brazier ' ; and it is on the same
principle that Ganymede is described as the
' rvine-server ' of Zeus, though the Gods do not
drink wine. This latter, however, may be an
instance of metaphor. But whenever also a
word seems to imply some contradiction, it is
necessary to reflect how many ways there may
be of understanding it in the passage in
question ; e.g. in Homer's ttj p 'ia\eTO ^dXKeov
^VX"^ one should consider the possible senses
of ' was stopped there ' — whether by taking it
in this sense or in that one will best avoid the
fault of which Glaucon speaks : ' They start
with some improbable presumption ; and
having so decreed it themselves, proceed to
draw inferences, and censure the poet as though
he had actually said whatever they happen to
believe, if his statement conflicts with their
own notion of things.' This is how Homer's
silence about Icarius has been treated. Start-
ing with the notion of his having been a
Lacedaemonian, the critics think it strange for
Telemachus not to have met him when he went

to Lacedaemon. Whereas the fact may have
been as the Cephallenians say, that the Avife of
Ulysses was of a Cephallenian family, and that
her father's name was Icadius, not Icarius. So
that it is probably a mistake of the critics that
has given rise to the Problem.
Speaking generally, one has to justify (1) the
Impossible by reference to the requirements of
poetry, or to the better, or to opinion. For the
purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility
is preferable to an unconvincing possibility ; and
if men such as Zeuxis depicted be impossible,
the answer is that it is better they should be
like that, as the artist ought to improve on his
model. (2) The Improbable one has to justify
either by showing it to be in accordance with
opinion, or bv urging that at times it is not
improbable ; for there is a probability of things
happening also against probability. (3) The
contradictions found in the poet's language one
should first test as one does an opponent's con-
futation ina dialectical argument, so as to see
whether he means the same thing, in the same
relation, and in the same sense, before admitting
that he has contradicted either something he
has said himself or what a man of sound sense
assumes as true. But there is no possible

apology for improbability of Plot or depravity
of character, when they are not necessaiy and
no use is made of them, like the improbability
in the appearance of Aegeus in Medea and the
baseness of Menelans in Orestes.
The objections, then, of critics start with
faults of five kinds : the allegation is always
that something is either (1) impossible, (2) im-
probable, (3)corrupting, (4) contradictory, or
(5) against technical correctness. The answers
to these objections must be sought under one
or other of the above-mentioned heads, which
are twelve in number.
The question may be raised whether the epic

or the tragic is the higher form of imitation.
It may be argued that, if the less vulgar is the
higher, and the less vulgar is always that which
addresses the better public, an art addressing
an.y and every one is of a very vulgar order. It
is a belief that their public cannot see the
meaning, unless they add something themselves,
that causes the perpetual movements of the
perfprmers — bad flute-players, for instance, roll-
ing about, if quoit-throwing is to l)e represented,
and pulling at the conductor, if Scvlla is the

subject of the piece. Tragedy, then, is said to
be an art of this order — to be in fact just what
the later actors were in the eyes of their prede-
cessorsfor
; M ynniscus used to call Callippides
' the ape ', because he thought he so overacted
his parts ; and a similar view was taken of
Pindarus also. All Tragedy, however, is said
to stand to the Epic as the newer to the older
school of actors. The one, accordingly, is said
to address a cultivated audience, which does
not need the accompaniment of gesture ; the
other, an uncultivated one. If, therefore.
Tragedy is a vulgar art, it must clearly be
lower than the Epic.
The answer to this is twofold. In the first
place, one may urge (1) that the censure does
not touch the art of the dramatic poet, but
onlv that of his interpreter ; for it is quite
possible to overdo the gesturing even in an epic
recital, as did Sosistratus, and in a singing
contest, as did Mnasitheus of Opus. (2) That
one should not condemn all movement, unless
one means to condemn even the dance, but only
that of ignoble people — which is the point of
the criticism passed on Callippides and in the
present day on others, that their women are
not like gentlewomen. (3) That Tragedy may

produce its effect even without movement or
action in just the same way as Epic poetry; for
from the mere reading of a play its quality
may be seen. So that, if it be superior in all
other respects, this element of inferiority is no
necessary part of it.
In the second place, one must remember (1)
that Tragedy has everything that the Epic has
(even the epic metre being admissible), together
with a not inconsiderable addition in the shape
of the Music (a very real factor in the pleasure
of the drama) and the Spectacle. (2) That its
reality of presentation is felt in the play as
read, as well as in the play as acted. (3) That
the tragic imitation requires less space for the
attainment of its end ; which is a great advan-
tage, since the more concentrated effect is more
pleasurable than one with a large admixture
of time to dilute it — consider the Oedipus of
Sophocles, for instance, and the effect of ex-
j)anding it into the number of lines of the
JUad. (4) That there is less unity in the imi-
tation of the epic poets, as is proved by the
fact that any one work of theirs supplies matter
for several tragedies ; the result being that, if
they take what is really a single story, it seems
curt Mhen briefly told, and thin and waterish

when on the scale of length usual with their
verse. In saying that there is less unity in an
epic, I mean an epic made up of a plurality of
actions, in the same way as the Iliad and
Odyssey have many such parts, each one of
them in itself of some magnitude; yet the
structure of the two Homeric poems is as
perfect as can be, and the action in them is as
nearly as possible one action. If, then. Tragedy
is superior in these respects, and also besides
these, in its poetic effect (since the two forms
of poetry should give us, not any or everv
pleasure, but the very special kind we have
mentioned), it is clear that, as attaining the
poetic effect better than the Epic, it will be
the higher form of art.
So much for Tragedy and Epic poetry — for
these two arts in general and tlieir species ; the
number and nature of their constituent parts ;
the causes of success and failure in them ; the
Objections of the critics, and the Solutions in
answer to them.
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CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
PN Aristoteles
1040 Aristotle, on the art
A5B9 of poetry
SigSajn
SfCMUNB SAMUEL LIBBARI

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ARISTOTLE

ON THE ART OF POETRY

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

an exception. For one thing the treatise is

present translation is taken was the fruit of

English ; but in Greek that is not so. Scarcely

Making : kinds of making : function of each,

Epos- making, tragedy- making (also comedy),

Language alone (whether prose or verse, and

. a common class-name by their metre, as if

Such an experiment would doubtless be a

which, whether finally satisfactory or not, is

Another difficult word which constantly

not through vice or depravity, but by some

as seems pi-obable, that is more than two

classical Greek constituted history. But the

thinks of the convenient gods and abstractions

^ Sec my Eanpidcfi uiidhin Aye, pp. 2-1-45.

representing, as Herodotus tells us, the ' suffer-

much-debated word 'katharsis, ' purification '

1 Cf. Hdt. ii. 48 ; cf. 42, 144. 'Hie name of Dionysus

than a word freely chosen by him to denote

book with a class will haidiy fail to point out

speak like ' statesmen"', polH'ikoi^ or merely like

self embarrassed. But, if the book is properly

had ways, in poetry as in morals or in playing

faith in matters of art and poetry ; a faith

ON THE ART OF POETRY

also in the above-mentioned group of arts, the

a theory of medicine or physical philosophy he

character being nearly always derivative from

tinguislies Tra^'cdy and Comedy also ; the one

better, than the men of the present day. '~~'

in a play the personages act the story. Hence

from cH^/dhood, one of his advantages over the

their first efforts, that they created poetry out

metre into use ; hence our present term ' iambic**,

ducing not a (Iramatic invective, but a dramatic

increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed

though only at a late ponit~m' its progress,

I/' worse, howevei", not as regards any and every

the first to drop the Comedy of invective and

however, we must gather up the definition

serious and also, as having niugnituJe, complete " (i^

who must necessarily have their distinctive \ i 5"

it is from these that we ascribe certain qualities

Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of

happy_or_the reverse. In a play accoFdingly"

Plot, a combination of incidents, in it. And

Having thus distinguished the parts, let us

have laid it down that a tragedy is an imitation

Just in the same way, then, as a beautiful whole

to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune'',

actions of one man which cannot be made to

by its presence or absence is no real part of the

the poet's function is to describe, not the

incidents that they give it a basis of proper

poet's invention ; and it is no less delightful

and it is actions that he imitates. And if he