tory. Let us see,
then, what kinds of incident strike one as horrible, or rather as
piteous. In a deed of this description the parties must necessarily
be either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to one another. Now when
enemy does it on enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity either in
his doing or in his meditating the deed, except so far as the actual
pain of the sufferer is concerned; and the same is true when the parties
are indifferent to one another. Whenever the tragic deed, however, is
done within the family--when murder or the like is done or meditated
by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son, or son
on mother--these are the situations the poet should seek after. The
traditional stories, accordingly, must be kept as they are, e.g. the
murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes and of Eriphyle by Alcmeon. At the
same time even with these there is something left to the poet himself;
it is for him to devise the right way of treating them. Let us explain
more clearly what we mean by 'the right way'. The deed of horror may be
done by the doer knowingly and consciously, as in the old poets, and
in Medea's murder of her children in Euripides. Or he may do it, but in
ignorance of his relationship, and discover that afterwards, as does the
_Oedipus_ in Sophocles. Here the deed is outside the play; but it may
be within it, like the act of the Alcmeon in Astydamas, or that of
the Telegonus in _Ulysses Wounded_. A third possibility is for
one meditating some deadly injury to another, in ignorance of his
relationship, to make the discovery in time to draw back. These exhaust
the possibilities, since the deed must necessarily be either done or not
done, and either knowingly or unknowingly.

The worst situation is when the personage is with full knowledge on the
point of doing the deed, and leaves it undone. It is odious and also
(through the absence of suffering) untragic; hence it is that no one is
made to act thus except in some few instances, e.g. Haemon and Creon in
_Antigone_. Next after this comes the actual perpetration of the deed
meditated. A better situation than that, however, is for the deed to
be done in ignorance, and the relationship discovered afterwards, since
there is nothing odious in it, and the Discovery will serve to astound
us. But the best of all is the last; what we have in _Cresphontes_, for
example, where Merope, on the point of slaying her son, recognizes
him in time; in _Iphigenia_