As we said at the beginning, therefore, the differences in the
imitation of these arts come under three heads, their means, their
objects, and their manner.
So that as an imitator Sophocles will be on one side akin to Homer,
both portraying good men; and on another to Aristophanes, since both
present their personages as acting and doing. This in fact, according
to some, is the reason for plays being termed dramas, because in a
play the personages act the story. Hence too both Tragedy and Comedy
are claimed by the Dorians as their discoveries; Comedy by the
Megarians--by those in Greece as having arisen when Megara became a
democracy, and by the Sicilian Megarians on the ground that the poet
Epicharmus was of their country, and a good deal earlier than
Chionides and Magnes; even Tragedy also is claimed by certain of the
Peloponnesian Dorians. In support of this claim they point to the
words 'comedy' and 'drama'. Their word for the outlying hamlets, they
say, is comae, whereas Athenians call them demes--thus assuming that
comedians got the name not from their _comoe_ or revels, but from
their strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping
them out of the city.
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