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, 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
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, 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.
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