The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  For the conclusion, the disconnected style of language is appropriate, and will mark the difference between the oration and the peroration. ‘I have done. You have heard me. The facts are before you. I ask for your judgement.’46

  * * *

  1 i, c. 2.

  2 i and ii.

  3 Poetics, cc. 20–2.

  4 sc. in rhetoric.

  5 sc. in dialectic.

  6 A good effect where a speech may seem too long; bad, where it may seem too short already.

  7 Isocrates, Helena, 1–13.

  8 i. e. the disputatious dialecticians to whom Isocrates refers in the introduction to his Helena, 3, 4: Protagoras, Gorgias, &c.

  9 Isocrates, Paneg. 1, 2.

  10 Iliad, i. 1.

  11 Odyssey, i. 1.

  12 Choerilus?

  13 Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 774.

  14 Sophocles, Antigone, 223.

  15 Cp. Euripides, Iph. Taur., 1162.

  16 ii, cc. i ff.

  17 Odyssey, vi. 327.

  18 Cp. Plato, Menexenus, 235 D.

  19 sc. but he was.

  20 Euripides, Hippolytus, 612.

  21 Sophocles.

  22 Cp. Iliad, x. 242–7.

  23 Cp. Herodotus, ii. 30.

  24 Odyssey, ix–xii.

  25 Odyssey, xxiii. 264–84 and 310–43.

  26 Euripides.

  27 Sophocles, Antigone, 911, 912.

  28 Odyssey, xix. 361.

  29 Cp. Sophocles, Antigone, 635–8, 701–4.

  30 Odyssey, iv. 204.

  31 Isocrates, Paneg., 110–14.

  32 Cp. Isocrates, De Pace, 27.

  33 Isocrates has episodic passages on Theseus (Helena 23–38), on Paris (Helena 41–8), on Pythagoras and the Egyptian priests (Busiris 21–9), on the poets (Busiris 38–40), and on Agamemnon (Panathenaicus, 72–84).

  34 Euripides, Troades, 969 and 971.

  35 Isocrates, Philippus, 4–7.

  36 Ib., Antidosis, 132–9, 141–9.

  37 Sophocles, Antigone, 688–700.

  38 Cp. Isocrates, Archidamus, 50.

  39 sc. Demeter.

  40 Cp. Plato, Apology, 27 c.

  41 Topics, viii.

  42 Not in the existing Poetics. Cp. 1372a 1.

  43 i, c. 9.

  44 ii, c. 19.

  45 ii, cc. 1–11.

  46 Cp. Lysias, Eratosthenes, fin.

  De Poetica

  Translated by Ingram Bywater

  CONTENTS

  (A) Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, and comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry.

  CHAPTER

  1. The poetic arts distinguished (1) by the means they use.

  2. “ “ (2) by their objects.

  3. “ “ (3) by the manner of their imitations.

  4. Origin and development of poetry and its kinds.

  5. Comedy and epic poetry.

  (B) Definition of a tragedy, and the rules for its construction.

  6. Definition, and analysis into qualitative parts.

  7–11. The plot.

  7. Arrangement and length of the play.

  8. Unity of action.

  9. The poet must depict the probable and the universal.

  10. Simple and complex plots.

  11. Peripety, Discovery, and Suffering.

  12. The quantitative parts of a tragedy.

  13–14. How the plot can best produce the emotional effect of tragedy.

  13. The tragic hero.

  14. The tragic deed.

  15. Rules for the character of the tragic personages; note on the use of stage-artifice.

  16–18. Appendix to discussion of plot.

  16. The various forms of discovery.

  17–18. Additional rules for the construction of a play.

  19. The thought of the tragic personages.

  20–22. The diction of tragedy.

  20. The ultimate constituents of language.

  21. The different kinds of terms.

  22. The characteristics of the language of poetry.

  (C) Rules for the construction of an epic.

  23. It must preserve unity of action.

  24. Points of resemblance and of difference between epic poetry and tragedy.

  (D) 25. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, and the answers to them.

  (E) 26. Tragedy artistically superior to epic poetry.

  DE POETICA

  (Poetics)

  1 [1447a] 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. (10) 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, (15) modes of imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences in the objects, or in the manner of their imitations.

  I. Just as colour and form 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 also in the above-mentioned group of arts, (20) the means with them as a whole are rhythm, language, and harmony—used, however, either singly or in certain combinations. A combination of harmony and rhythm 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, (25) without harmony, is the 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 harmony, in prose or in verse, and if in verse, either in some one or in a plurality of metres. [1447b] 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 Conversation; 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 ‘poet’ to the name of a metre, (10) and talk of elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they call them poets not by reason of the imitative nature of their work, (15) but indiscriminately by reason of the metre they write in. Even if a theory of medicine or physical philosophy be put forth in a metrical form, it is usual to describe the writer in this way; Homer and Empedocles, however, have really nothing in common apart from their metre; so that, if the one is to be called a poet, (20) 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 arts, (25) which combine all the means enumerated, rhythm, melody, and verse, e. g. Dithyrambic 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 above arts I term the means of their imitation.

  2 [1448a] II. The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad—the diversities of human 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, that the agents represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath it, (5) 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 Dionysius 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, (10) and lyre-playing such diversities are possible; and they are also possible in the nameless art that uses language, prose or verse without harmony, as its means; Homer’s personages, for instance, are better 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 beneath it. (15) The same is true of the Dithyramb and the Nome: the personages may be presented in them with the difference exemplified in the … of … and Argas, and in the Cyclopses of Timotheus and Philoxenus. This difference it is that distinguishes Tragedy and Comedy also; the one would make its personages worse, and the other better, than the men of the present day.

  3 III. A third difference in these arts is in the manner in which each kind of object is represented. (20) 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 assumed character, as Homer does; or (2) one may remain the same throughout, without any such change; or (3) the imitators may represent the whole story dramatically, as though they were actually doing the things described.

  As we said at the beginning, therefore, the differences in the imitation of these arts come under three heads, their means, their objects, and their manner.

  So that as an imitator Sophocles will be on one side akin to Homer, (25) 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 those in Greece as having arisen when Megara became a democracy, (30) 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’. (35) Their word for the outlying hamlets, they say, is comae, whereas Athenians call them demes—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. [1448b] Their word also for ‘to act’, they say, is dran, whereas Athenians use prattein.

  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 them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from childhood, (5) one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the 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 shown by experience: though the objects themselves may be painful to see, (10) we delight to view the most realistic 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 learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher 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, (15) 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 imitation of it, but will be due to the execution or colouring or some similar cause. (20) 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, (25) and those of noble personages; and the meaner sort the actions of the ignoble. The latter class produced 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, however, may be found from Homer downwards, e. g. his Margites, (30) 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 that the old poets became some of them writers of heroic and others of iambic verse. Homer’s position, however, is peculiar: just as he was in the serious style the poet of poets, (35) standing alone not only through the literary excellence, but also through the dramatic character of his imitations, so too he was the first to outline for us the general forms of Comedy by producing not a dramatic 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. [1449a] As soon, however, as Tragedy and Comedy appeared in the field, those naturally drawn to the one line of poetry became writers of comedies instead of iambs, (5) 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, (10) 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 by little, through their improving on whatever they had before them at each stage. It was in fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy stopped on its attaining to its natural form. (15) (1) The number of actors was first 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, (20) through its passing out of its satyric stage, it assumed, though only at a late point in 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 conversation, (25) 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 embellishments and the account of their introduction, these must be taken as said, as it would probably be a long piece of work to go through the details. (30)

  5 As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed1 an imitation of men worse than the average; worse, however, 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 defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, (35) for instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted 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. [1449b] It was only at a late point in its progress that a chorus of comedians was officially granted by the archon; they used to be mere volunteers. It had also already certain definite forms at the time when the record of those termed comic poets begins. Who 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, however, (5) originated in Sicily with Epicharmus and Phorm
is; of Athenian poets Crates was 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. (10) 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, whereas Tragedy endeavours to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that. This, I say, is another point of difference between them, (15) 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 judge of good and bad in Tragedy is a judge of that in epic poetry also. All the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are not all of them to be found in the Epic.