The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

so-and-so,
but I said so-and-so’. Or ‘How vain he would have been if he had
proved all this instead of that!’ Or put it in the form of a
question. ‘What has not been proved by me?’ or ‘What has my
opponent proved?’ You may proceed then, either in this way by
setting point against point, or by following the natural order of
the arguments as spoken, first giving your own, and then
separately, if you wish, those of your opponent.
    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.’

Poetics
    Translated by S. H. Butcher
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I
    I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds,
noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure
of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into the number and nature
of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into
whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the
order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come
first.
    Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and
the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are
all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ,
however, from one another in three respects—the medium, the
objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case
distinct.
    For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit,
imitate and represent various objects through the medium of color
and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned,
taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or
‘harmony,’ either singly or combined.
    Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, ‘harmony’ and
rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the
shepherd’s pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In
dancing, rhythm alone is used without ‘harmony’; for even dancing
imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical
movement.
    There is another art which imitates by means of language alone,
and that either in prose or verse—which verse, again, may either
combine different meters or consist of but one kind—but this has
hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could
apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic
dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations
in iambic, elegiac, or any similar meter. People do, indeed, add
the word ‘maker’ or ‘poet’ to the name of the meter, and speak of
elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were
not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles
them all to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural
science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom
given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in
common but the meter, so that it would be right to call the one
poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle,
even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all
meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed
of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general
term poet.
    So much then for these distinctions.
    There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above
mentioned—namely, rhythm, tune, and meter. Such are Dithyrambic and
Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them
originally the difference is, that in the first two cases these
means are all employed in combination, in the latter, now one means
is employed, now another.
    Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the
medium of imitation
II
    Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men
must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character
mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the
distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must
represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or
as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as
nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them
true to life.
    Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above
mentioned will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct
kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities
may be found even in dancing, flute-playing, and