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. Their word also for 'to act',
they say, is _dran_, whereas Athenians use _prattein_.

So much, then, as to the number and nature of the points of difference
in the imitation of these arts.

4

It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes,
each of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from
childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that
he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first
by imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of
imitation. The truth of this second point is shown by experience: though
the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the
most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for example of
the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is to be found
in a further fact: to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures
not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however
small their capacity for it; the reason of the delight in seeing the
picture is that one is at the same time learning--gathering the meaning
of things, e.g. that the man there is so-and-so; for if one has not
seen the thing before, one's pleasure will not be in the picture as an
imitation of it, but will be due to the execution or colouring or some
similar cause. Imitation, then, being natural to us--as also the sense
of harmony and rhythm, the metres being obviously species of rhythms--it
was through their original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for
the most part gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry
out of their improvisations.

Poetry, however, soon broke up into two kinds according to the
differences of character in the individual poets; for the graver among
them would represent noble