CHAPTER 2
The Objects of Poetic Imitation
SINCE imitative artists represent men in action, and men who are necessarily either of good or of bad character (for as all people differ in their moral nature according to the degree of their goodness or badness, characters almost always fall into one or other of these types), these men must be represented either as better than we are, or worse or as the same kind of people as ourselves. Thus among the painters Polygnotus represented his subjects as better, and Pauson as worse, while Dionysius painted them just as they were. It is Clear that each of the kinds of imitation I have referred to will admit of these variations, and they will differ in this way according to the differences in the objects they represent. Such diversities may occur even in dancing, and in music for the flute and the lyre; they occur also in the on language, whether it uses prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, depicts the better types of men, and Cleophon normal types, While Hegemon of Thasos, the first writer of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, show them in a bad light. The same thing happens in dithyrambic and nomic poetry; for instance, the Cyclops might be represented in different ways, as was done by Timotheus and Philoxenus. This is the difference that marks the distinction between comedy and tragedy; for comedy aims representing men as worse than they are nowadays, tragedy as better.