Who it was who supplied it with
masks, or prologues, or a plurality of actors and the like, has
remained unknown. The invented Fable, or Plot, however, originated in
Sicily, with Epicharmus and Phormis; of Athenian poets Crates was the
first to drop the Comedy of invective and frame stories of a general
and non-personal nature, in other words, Fables or Plots.
Epic poetry, then, has been seen to agree with Tragedy to thi.e.tent,
that of being an imitation of serious subjects in a grand kind of
verse. It differs from it, however, (1) in that it is in one kind of
verse and in narrative form; and (2) in its length--which is due to
its action having no fixed limit of time, whereas Tragedy endeavours
to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or
something near that. This, I say, is another point of difference
between them, though at first the practice in this respect was just
the same in tragedies as i.e.ic poems. They differ also (3) in their
constituents, some being common to both and others peculiar to
Tragedy--hence a judge of good and bad in Tragedy is a judge of that
i.
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