Poetics. Aristotle. Theodore Alois Buckley (Translator). London. 1857.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Theodore Alois Buckley) (OCR draft) (English) (Theodore Alois Buckley's English translation, first published in 1850 and represented from the Henry G. Bohn 1857 printing; corrected against a second OCR and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
Poetics
1. mvp-aristotle-comment-195
1.
mvp-aristotle-comment-196
1449b21
περὶ . . . τῆς ἐν ἑξαμέτροις μιμητικῆς
: in
chaps. 23–24
.
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mvp-aristotle-comment-197
περὶ κωμῳδίας
: in the lost Second Book of the Poetics.
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mvp-aristotle-comment-198
1449b23
ἀναλαβόντες
:
Top. 6. 14, 151 b 19
καλῶς εἰρημένον ὅρον ἀναλαβεῖν. —
Meteor. 1. 3, 339 a 33
ἀναλαβόντες οὖν τὰς ἐξ ἀρχῆς θέσεις . . λέγωμεν. —
1. 8, 345 b 31
ἡμεῖς δὲ λέγωμεν ἀναλαβόντες τὴν ὑποκειμένην ἀρχὴν ἡμῖν. —
Rhet. 1. 13, 1373 b 27
ἀναλαβόντες τί ἐστι τὸ ἀδικεῖσθαι λέγωμεν.
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mvp-aristotle-comment-199
ὅρον τῆς οὐσίας
: the definition of its essence, or essential nature; comp.
Metaph. Z 13, 1039 a 19
δοκεῖ γε πᾶσι καὶ ἐλέχθη πάλαι ἢ μόνον εἶναι οὐσίας ὅρον ἢ μάλιστα. —
De part. an. 1. 1, 642 a 26
ὁρίσασθαι τὴν οὐσίαν. —
4. 5, 678 a 34
τῷ λόγῳ... τῷ ὁρίζοντι τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῶν.
1449b24
6.1.
mvp-aristotle-comment-14
6.1
TRAGEDY IS AN IMITATION, IN ORNAMENTED LANGUAGE, OF AN ACTION IMPORTANT AND COMPLETE, AND POSSESSING A CERTAIN DEGREE OF MAGNITUDE, HAVING ITS FORMS DIS- TINCT IN THEIR RESPECTIVE PARTS, AND BY THE REPRE- SENTATION OF PERSONS ACTING, AND NOT BY NARRATION, EFFECTING THROUGH THE MEANS OF PITY AND TERROR, THE PURGATION OF SUCH PASSIONS.
VARIOUS and contradictory have been the explanations given by different commentators of this celebrated definition of tragedy; and yet the grand object it proposes to have in view, the purgation of the paffions by the means of pity and terror, and how those means operate to attain that end, or whether, in fact, they have any fuch operation at all, has received little elucidation from their combined enquiries. To entertain any hope of success where so many persons of the highest literary reputation have failed, would be a great degree of presumption. I shall therefore only state, with all the diffidence due where so little is certainty, and fo much conjecture, what appears to me, from all that can be collected on the fubject, the real notion of Aristotle as to the means and the effect of purging the paffions; and enquire how far that notion is founded in nature and confirmed by experience; allowing for the lapfe of time, and the consequent alteration of manners and opinions. Any
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. Any obscurity in an author, especially if it relates to his particular judgment on any general subject [A], will be most likely to receive light from comparifon with his other works, of which our critic has left us an ample store. Indeed, these have been so long, and so univerfally, the objects of scholaftic disquisition, that one should have imagined every correfpondent, and every discordant passage, would have long fince been collated and examined. But as M. Leffing (who strongly [в] recommends this method of illustration,) observes, their pursuits were very different from the investigation of elegant literature. Those writings of the Stagirite which, at the present time, are the principal subjects of enquiry, and especially the Poetic, had little to engage the attention of men devoted to the study of logic and metaphyfics: and, perhaps, there are few of those whose turn of mind induces them to make the treatise before us the particular object of their attention, who would have the patience and perfeverance, to go through the various and voluminous works of Aristotle, which treat of matters so foreign to their taste. There is one treatife, however, on a congenial fubject, (the Rhetoric) which throws light on the imperfect and mutilated state of the Poetic in a hundred instances. But the present subject of our enquiry receives most elucidation from a work where we should less expect to find it. The philofopher [c], in his treatise on government, speaking of the power of music to foften and alleviate the passions, says; • Whatever paffions have a strong effect [A] In regard to verbal obfcurity, this will often be fallacious. Ariftotle has frequently employed the same word in different senses, even in this short sketch. SEE NOTE III. ch. 1. [B] DRAMATURGIE, Vol II. p. 11. [C] POLITIC, 1. vii. chap. vii. T2 ، on
، on any minds, will have some effect on all, and they will only differ in degree. Such passions, for example, as pity and terror, to which we may add enthusiasm, an affection of the mind with which fome men are violently possessed. Now we fee this last, when those sacred • melodies which accompany the celebration of the mystic rights are ،
، performed, is foothed and quieted, as if it were by medicine or purgation; and the fame thing will happen to those who are liable to the impreffions of pity or terror, or whose passions in general are eafily excited, and others indeed as far as they may be under the influence of • fuch paffions. They will all feel a kind of purgation, or unburthening of the mind, accompanied by fome degree of pleasure.' Ariftotle is treating here only of the purgation of the passions, as effected by mufic, and [D] which he professes to explain in a flight and superficial manner, with a promise to be more explicit in his writings on poetry: if this promise has ever been fulfilled, it is generally supposed it must have been in some of those parts of his criticism on poetry which are loft. But [E] M. Leffing is of opinion, that it is compleatly fulfilled in the Poetic, as we now have it. If this is the cafe, I have [D] Τὶ δὲ λέγομεν τὴν κάθαρσιν, νῦν μὲν ΑΠΛΩΣ, πάλιν δ᾽ ἐν τοις περὶ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ ἐροῦμεν ΣΑΦΕΣΤΕΡΟΝ. [E] 'Aristotle, at the conclufion of his Treatise on Government, where he speaks of the < purgation of the passions by mufic, promises to treat of this purgation with more perfpicuity in his Poetic. "But (Corneille says,) fince we fee nothing at all of this matter there, most of the " interpreters think that we have it not complete." Nothing at all? For my part I think that I find, even in what remains of the Poetic, every thing that he could confider, as ne- ⚫ ceffary to say on the fubject to any one who was not ignorant of the principles of his philo- ' fophy.' DRAMATURGIE, Vol. II. p. 28. only
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. only to lament my own ill fortune in not finding it; or my stupidity in not comprehending it. The above quotation, from the Treatise on Government, however, if it does not itself receive much illustration from this, or any other part of the Poetic now extant, seems to throw fome light on the paffage under confideration, and affords some clue for the discovery of what Aristotle means by purging the passions. His example of the enthusiast having his mind relieved by sounds congenial, though in a milder degree, with his own more violent feelings, leads us to fuppofe, that he conceives the exceffive, habitual effects of pity and terror, and other paffions of the fame kind [F], may also be alleviated by exciting them in a more moderate degree, through the apparently fictitious means of dramatic imitation. Mr. Harris [G], perhaps, carries the efficacy of tragic imitation a little too far, when he supposes it capable of blunting the feelings, by frequent representation of scenes of terror and distress, in the way the realities act on military men, physicians, and furgeons. Yet, however, much allowance must be made for the difference of manners, and habits. The drama might have had an effect on the people of Athens, who made an attendance on the theatre almost the business of their lives, [F] Ariftotle confines this effect to pity and terror, and affections of the fame kind (among which he includes enthusiasm,) in express words, using τῶν τοιέτων, in both places. Such paffions as love and anger, are enflamed instead of foftened by the fame means. [G] Difcourse on Music, Poetry, and Painting, chap. v. note c. which
which we can have no idea of. We know (says M. Leffing [H]) to • what a degree the Greeks and Romans carried their passion for public ، spectacles, and the first more especially for tragedy; and, on the contrary, how indifferent and cold our people are in regard to the theatre. • Whence arifes this difference, if not from the Greeks finding them- ، selves affected with such strong and extraordinary [1] feelings, during • the representation, that they waited with transport the moment of their return? On the contrary, the impressions we receive at the • theatre are so trivial, and so weak, that we scarcely esteem them worth ⚫ the time and expence it costs to procure them. We almost all, and • almost always go, either from curiosity, or because it is the fashion, or • for want of fomething else to do, or for the fake of company, or to • fee and be seen; very few go with other views, and those but feldom.' [H] Though M. Lessing speaks of the Germans, it is full as applicable to the people of this country. Indeed, he himself adds, 'I say WE, OUR PEOPLE, OUR THEATRE, but I do not ' mean to be understood as speaking only of the Germans. For we freely acknowledge that as yet we have no theatre.. [1] This must have arisen from the sensibility of the people, rather than the superior effect of the drama. The fatire of M. Leffing is directed against the infipidity of the French tragedy; for he puts the Greek and English stage together, and classes Shakespear with Euripides and Sophocles: and yet it is impossible for any people to be less interested in the amufements of the theatre than we are. The truth feems to be, that the conftant attendance of the Athenian people on the theatre, arose from the splendor of the exhibition, and its being at the public charge; and that the fuperior effect of the representation on their minds, was the confequence, not the cause, of their strong attachment to tragic imitation. The Romans were, as M. Leffing allows, equally attached to spectacles, though of another kind; and yet they have never been particularly characterized for strong and extraordinary feelings; nor were their favourite exhibitions calculated to excite them.
It
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. ! i It remains now to enquire how far our paffions are really blunted or softened, by being excited in a fainter degree, through the fictions of tragedy. Or whether, on the contrary, they are not, at least sometimes, rather heightened and enflamed by them. Indeed, this was a point at issue in the time of Aristotle, and had, before him, been decided contrary to his opinion, by Plato, who banished poets from his republic on this account. His expreffion on this head I shall give in the words of M. Twining's tranflation, together with his observation on it [k]. "The habit of indulging our paffions, in the concerns of others, will, " of neceffity, bring on the same habitual indulgence in those which " relate to ourselves: for he who has nourished and strengthened to "excess, the passion of pity for example, by habitual sympathy with "the misfortunes of others, will not find it easy to restrain the same "kind of feelings in his own." • To this objection there cannot be a more direct and pointed answer than Aristotle's affertion, as usually • understood, that the habit of indulging the emotions of pity or terror, in the fictitious representations of tragedy, tends, on the contrary, to moderate and refine those passions when they occur in real life.' TWINING'S NOTES ON ARISTOTLE, note 45, p. 240. That this doctrine of Aristotle is intended as an anfwer to the objection of Plato, is confirmed, if any confirmation were necessary, by its being first started in his own treatise on a republic. It may feem great arrogance even to attempt to decide, when such doctors as Plato and Ariftotle disagree. But as they are both defending [κ] ᾿Απολαύειν ἀνάγκη ἀπὸ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων ἐις τὰ ὀικῖια· Θρέψαντα γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις ἰσχυρὸν τὸ ἐλεεινὸν, ὀυ ρἅδιον ἐν τοις άντε πάθεσι κατέχειν. Plato de Rep. 1. x. Ed. Seran. 1602. p. 756. В. a favorite
a favorite hypothefis, they may possibly each be partly right, and partly wrong. Much must depend on the different feelings of individuals, as well as of nations, these depending on habits of mind and body, profeffion, or education, and those on the form of government, and degree of civilization, and refinement. The foldier will be affected differently from the mechanic, the polished from the rude, the indolent from the active. And the inhabitant of London, or Paris, will certainly have different sensations of pity and terror, from the inhabitant of the desarts of Arabia, or the woods of America. When the objects of pity or terror, whether real or imaginary, press so strongly on our fenfations as to exclude any fentiment of pleasure, they will, in my opinion, have rather a tendency to increase than diminish the natural force of those paffions, and this will often depend on the firmness of the mind, or the ductility of the imagination. But when the excitement of these passions is accompanied by any degree [L] of pleasure, however flight, the mind will acquire gradual strength to bear stronger representations by habitual exercise, till at length, as pofsibly was the cafe with the people of Athens, the sensations might attain such a state as to require encreasing force of terror and distress, to awaken the sensibility so as to cause that agitation, which is the fource [L] Hume, in one of his effays, observes, that the pleasure of being out of danger, and near it, (which he exemplifies by standing on the edge of a precipice, so as to be perfectly safe) is a species of terror so modified as to be perfectly pleasing. Now to a seaman, or a mountaineer, this would convey no idea at all of terror; and I know a person who would feel a greater dread from it, than if exposed to the most imminent danger in any other form whatever, and which, confequently, could not be attended with the flightest semblance. of pleasure. of
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. of the delight we receive from tragic imitation. And in this situation the mind may be something deadened to the fame impreffions, though occafioned by circumstances in real life. As we can only judge of the opinion of Aristotle, and how far it is really founded on nature, by our own sensations, or our observation of the sensations of others, we are much at a loss where to look for these means of decifion. Dramatic representation, we have already observed, neither occupies the time or attention enough to have any great, or permanent energy, on our paffions; and the perusal of tragedies, or other compofitions of a congenial cast, is confidered in general as the amusement of an idle hour, ready to be thrown aside in a moment on the arrival of the newspaper, or the summons to the card table. The only persons of the present day, who at all devote their attention with ardor and perfeverance to the reading compositions of fictitious distress, (and I believe their number, especially among the higher ranks, decreases every day,) are those usually called romantic young women, who dedicate much of their time to the study of the numerous tales, with which the press continually furnishes our circulating libraries. It is not my business here to enquire how this kind of application may influence their opinions, and conduct in life; but it certainly seems likely to throw some light on the influence a ferious attention to scenes of imitated paffion, may have on the force of real paffion. And here we must confefs, the first appearance is against the doctrine of the critic; the general effect of novel-reading on the gentler sex is too obvious to be doubted; it excites and enflames the paffion which is the principal subject of the tale, and the fufceptibility of the female votary of the circulating library, is proverbial. But we must, in the first place, recollect, that the passion of U love
love is very different in itself from terror and pity, though it may be the cause of circumftances replete with both [(M); and it is the tendency to this paffion, and not to those of pity and terror, which is encreased by this kind of reading. Befides, it is not perhaps so much the paffion itself that is enflamed, as the wish to feel it is created by this study. A defire of resembling the fictitious heroine of a novel, has often induced a young mind to enquire for those sensations, which, without fuch a search, might have continued for some time dormant in the bosom. So far, therefore, is love from being blunted by imitative fiction, that such fiction is often an efficient cause of its being first excited. But, in the next place, is it so clear that the paffion, of pity at least, (the terrible is seldom admitted in a novel,) is not purged and blunted in these very fufceptible minds? The reasoning of Aristotle seems to be this: the mind that has been awakened and agitated by the calamities of Edipus, Orestes, or Merope; that fees high rank and exalted character so far from exempting their possessors from pain and distress, only add accumulated weight to their sufferings, will be apt, from conftant attention to fuch scenes, to feel less from the contemplation of fimilar incidents in real life, which are seldom attended with those complicated and unallayed distresses which attend the fiction of the poet, whose business it is to select every circumstance proper to excite the paffions of pity and terror in the highest degree, and omit every event that might at all tend to alleviate or divert them. That such are the characters Ariftotle points out as proper for tragedy, appears from the thirteenth chapter.. [M] The advantage modern tragedy draws from love, confidered in this light, will be examined in another place. See Note IV. chap. хил. And
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. And Beni, in consequence of this, renders τῶν τοιέτων παθημάτων, ' the paffions of fuch perfons, i. e. σπουδαίων, as implied in σπουδαίας,' paraphrafing it thus. As it was the object of comedy to expose and cor- • rect the foibles of private perfons, so it was that of tragedy to inftance ⚫ those in persons of higher rank, and who were invested with authority.'
My opinion of the idea of Aristotle receives the strongest corroboration from the fragment of Timocles, an Athenian comic poet, quoted by Mr. Cumberland, in the Obferver, No. 106. Yet hear me fpeak. Man is, of living beings, By nature most unhappy. Life to him Then for your woes Brings many a bitter pang. • This confolation feek. He finds oblivion • Of his own griefs, whose fufceptible heart • Is gently drawn to feel another's suff'rings, • And finds instruction mingled with delight. ، ، Turn to the tragic muse, and meet relief In every scene. If " steep'd in poverty Up to the lips; there Telephus shall shew A monarch poorer, and confole your want. Say, Are you mad? Behold Alcmæon's frenzy. • Are your eyes dim? Lo the Phineidæ blind! Is your fon dead? The loss of Niobe • Shall lighten yours. Or, are you old and wretched ? • Learn from Oëneus. If unnumber'd ills • Worse than all these should press you, he who turns U2 His
• His thoughts on other's miseries, will know • With patience more refign'd, to bear his own [N].' On the fame principle with this mode of reasoning, (and I fee no cause to question the justness of it) may not the young woman, who is for ever weeping over the distresses of a Clarissa, or a Sydney Biddulph, and tracing the affecting scenes, and wonderful revolutions, to be found in the adventures of a Cecilia, or an Emmeline, have her feelings something deadened to the less interesting distresses of ordinary life; or, to use the words of Ariftotle, with some paraphrafe, may not the paffion of pity be purged of fome of its more violent effects in reality, from being frequently excited for amusement by fictitious tales [o] of woe. Much [N] I ought, perhaps, to apologize to the reader for substituting a version of my own, for the elegant tranflation of Mr. Cumberland. But my purpose required a closer copy of the original; especially in the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th lines, which correspond so exactly with the opinion of Ariftotle. Παραψυχὰς ἐν φρόντιδων ἀνεῦρατον Τάυτας, ὁ γὰρ νοῦς τῶν ἰδίων λήθην λαβών Πρὸς ἄλλοτριῳ τε ψυχαγωγηθείς πάθει ΜΕΘ' ΗΔΟΝΗΣ ἀπῆλθε, παιδευθεὶς ἅμα. [o] May I be allowed to quote a former attempt of my own, to support this opinion? • Awake to each fictitious feeling grown, And moved by ills to real life unknown; The mind, with scenes of fabled woe possess'd, • Will shut to homely grief the senseless breaft, • And turn from want and pain the offended ear, • To pour for feign'd distress the barren tear." PROGRESS OF REFINEMENT. Perhaps the effect of comic imitation may, in some measure, illustrate this subject. Does not the representation of ridiculous characters and incidents, heightened beyond what we ever find in reality, blunt in some degree the force of ridicule on characters in life, which are never so truly laughable as the fictitious ones: for as Longinus observes, laughter is a paffion, though a pleasing one. Κὰι γὰρ ὁ γελὼς πάθος ἐν ἡδονῆ. Long. sect. xxxviii. See also Note XIV. on chap. xxv. has
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. has been faid of the tear of sensibility, and I own I should have little opinion of the head or heart of any person, and especially of a woman, that could laugh over Clariffa, or fit with dry eyes, while Mrs. Siddons was acting Isabella or Belvidera. But these tears are the means, and not the end; or, to pursue the medical metaphor of Aristotle, they are the operation of the medicine, and not its final effect; neither are these feelings always a test of real humanity. Rousseau observes somewhere, that the tears which we shed for fictitious forrow, are admirably ' adapted to make us proud of all the virtues we do not possess.' Some very humane and benevolent men are fond of being present at executions; and others will feel for distress on the stage, without having, in reality, any humanity at all. Plutarch, in his Life of Pelopidas, and in his treatise on the Fortune of Alexander, relates an anecdote of Alexander, king of Phærea, one of the most cruel tyrants of antiquity, who, on being moved to tears by the representation of a tragedy of Euripides, left the theatre with confufion, ashamed to discover, that he who was insensible to the fufferings of his people, should be so strongly affected by the distresses of [P] Hecuba and Andromache. [P] These are the characters Plutarch mentions in the Life of Pelopidas, where he names the Troades as the tragedy: but in the treatise on the Fortune of Alexander, he names Hecuba and Polyxena, which last character is not in the Troades, but in the tragedy of Hecuba. Mr. Upton, in his note on this line in Hamlet, ' What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,' observes, that it is plain Shakespear alludes to this anecdote, which, confidering how much Shakespear appears to be converfant with Plutarch, (all of whose works were translated in his time) seems highly probable. Though there is a confiderable difference in the application, as the emotion of a performer is mentioned by Shakespear, and Alexander was a spectator. If Hamlet himself had been moved by the recital, it would have been more germane to the allufion. Before
Before I conclude this part of my fubject, I will hazard a quotation from a very intelligent financier and statefman, (M. Pinto) on the effect of the universal prevalence of cards on modern manners, as I conceive it is by no means foreign to our present enquiry. It is part of a letter, printed at the end of his treatise on Circulation and Credit. • The magic of cards forms a common focus of almost all the passions in miniature. They all find there, if I may use the expreffion, their proper food. It is true that every thing there is microscopic, and more illufive than common illufions are; a confused idea of happiness ' and mifery is found there. The sphere of the paffions is reduced, concentred, and drawn into a narrower circle; all the paffions in a manner entangle themselves, evaporate and spend themselves at a diftance from their fource and their proper object; restlessness, leifure, idleness, avarice and ambition, devour in common an unsubstantial food, which enervates their force and their activity.' The ESSAY ON THE END OF TRAGEDY, ACCORDING TO ARIS- TOTLE, by profeffor Moore, of Glasgow, which is mentioned by Mr. Twining, is an ingenious, but unfuccefsful attempt to reconcile this passage with his own hypothefis, that the end of tragedy is the awakening the mind, to a sense of the evils attending errors of conduct in human life, and to cause, by the pity and terror they occafion, an exemption or removal of fuch calamities from themselves. I once had the book, but as it was at a time when I had no particular interest in its contents, it made but a flight impreffion on my mind, and having lost it, I have never been able to procure a fecond copy. His chief argument, I remember, rests on παθημάτα, being generally used not for passions, but actual misfortunes; and he cites various inftances from Ariftotle and other writers. But
POETIC OF ARISTOTLE. But though there can be no reasonable doubt, I think, of the meaning of Aristotle, yet it by no means follows, but that the hypothesis of Dr. Moore, though not that of Aristotle, may be still more congenial with modern tragedy, whose end I cannot conceive to be the purging of the paffions of pity and fear. But this will be much more fully treated of, when we come to speak of Aristotle's opinion of the proper tragic catastrophe.
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mvp-aristotle-comment-36
Ritter, cap. 6 § 1
De tragoediae forma et fine. partes eius esse sex et gravissimam quidem fabulam sive
τὸν μύθον. Poeticae causas postquam universe declaravit et praecipuas eius formas demonstravit, genera poesis singillatim pertractare eorumque formam et vim explicare pergit. incipit a tragoedia, deinceps descendit ad epopoeiam, denique ad comoediam pervenit, sed in operis parte nobis deperdita. rectius ille haud dubie poesin epicam primo loco expediendam sibi sumpsisset: ea enim non solum simplicissima est ex omnibus generibus et antiquissima, sed etiam ita subiecta tragoediae, ut haec ipsa tamquam filia pulchrior ex decora matre in luminis auras prodierit, sed quia tragoedia magis culta et perfecta ei videbatur, ab hac disputationis initium capere maluit, ut de epopoeia brevius posset absolvere, via interim ad illam disputationem praemunita. vid. c. 5 extr. sed si opus integrum ad nos pervenisset, maius videremus, credo, incommodum huic poeticae artis explicationi inde accidisse, quod non utramque dramatici generis speciem, tragoediam dico comoediamque, deinceps tractavit, sed alteram a priore illata epopoeiae explicatione discrevit.
περὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς ἐν ἑξαμέτροις μιμητικῆς - ἐροῦμεν : quam vulgo
ἐποποιίαν vocant, eam h. 1.
τὴν ἐν ἑξαμέτροις μιμητικὴν appellavit. infra (c. 23, 1) epopoeiam quam vulgo intelligunt, nomen ipsum evitaturus,nam designavit
τὴν διηγηματικὴν καὶ ἐν μέτρῳ μιμητικήν. cum
ἐποποιίας nomine in operis principio (c. 1, 6) nove usus esset, telam pertexens modo ad vulgarem dicendi usum revolvitur modo ab ipso nomine abstinere voluit.
ἀπολαβόντες αὐτῆς - ὅρον τῆς οὐσίας: tragoediae forma et habitus in antecedentibus iam exposita, originesque et incrementa breviter enarrata erant. inde igitur sumi (
ἀπολαμβάνεσθαι) poterat definitio (
ὅρος), ita tamen ut finis tragoediae nunc demum indicetur. dictum enim ante erat (c. 2 et 3) tragoediam esse eam agentium imitationem ut agentes ipsi producerentur narratioque excluderetur, esse porro imitationem meliorum (
βελτιόνων) hominum graviumque (
σπουδαίων); dictum erat praeterea c. 5, 4. eandem certo temporis ambitu fere includi, nec saltationem cantumque et dictionem coniuncta in illa reperiri (c. 1, 10). ea iam in unum collecta ita augentur, ut simul quem finem tragoedia propositum habeat declaretur.