The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

were
distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning verse.
    As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for
he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he
too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the
ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears
the same relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to
tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes
of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became
writers of Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians,
since the drama was a larger and higher form of art.
    Whether Tragedy has as yet perfected its proper types or not;
and whether it is to be judged in itself, or in relation also to
the audience—this raises another question. Be that as it may,
Tragedy—as also Comedy—was at first mere improvisation. The one
originated with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those
of the phallic songs, which are still in use in many of our cities.
Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed
itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes,
it found its natural form, and there it stopped.
    Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the
importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the
dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added
scene-painting. Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot
was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction
of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The
iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was
originally employed when the poetry was of the satyric order, and
had greater with dancing. Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself
discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all
measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that
conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than
into any other kind of verse; rarely into hexameters, and only when
we drop the colloquial intonation. The additions to the number of
‘episodes’ or acts, and the other accessories of which tradition
tells, must be taken as already described; for to discuss them in
detail would, doubtless, be a large undertaking.
V
    Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a
lower type—not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the
ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in
some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To
take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but
does not imply pain.
    The successive changes through which Tragedy passed, and the
authors of these changes, are well known, whereas Comedy has had no
history, because it was not at first treated seriously. It was late
before the Archon granted a comic chorus to a poet; the performers
were till then voluntary. Comedy had already taken definite shape
when comic poets, distinctively so called, are heard of. Who
furnished it with masks, or prologues, or increased the number of
actors—these and other similar details remain unknown. As for the
plot, it came originally from Sicily; but of Athenian writers
Crates was the first who abandoning the ‘iambic’ or lampooning
form, generalized his themes and plots.
    Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation
in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic
poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They
differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavors, as far as
possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or
but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no
limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though
at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic
poetry.
    Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some
peculiar to Tragedy: whoever, therefore knows what is good or bad
Tragedy, knows also about Epic poetry. All the elements of an Epic
poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not
all found in the Epic poem.
VI
    Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy,
we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its
formal definition, as resulting from what has been already
said.
    Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with
each