sense. The poet who was 'maker' of a Fall of Troy clearly did
not make the real Fall of Troy. He made an imitation Fall of Troy. An
artist who 'painted Pericles' really 'made an imitation Pericles by
means of shapes and colours'. Hence we get started upon a theory of art
which, whether finally satisfactory or not, is of immense importance,
and are saved from the error of complaining that Aristotle did not
understand the 'creative power' of art.

As a rule, no doubt, the difficulty, even though merely verbal, lies
beyond the reach of so simple a tool as literal translation. To say that
tragedy 'imitates good men' while comedy 'imitates bad men' strikes a
modern reader as almost meaningless. The truth is that neither 'good'
nor 'bad' is an exact equivalent of the Greek. It would be nearer
perhaps to say that, relatively speaking, you look up to the characters
of tragedy, and down upon those of comedy. High or low, serious or
trivial, many other pairs of words would have to be called in, in order
to cover the wide range of the common Greek words. And the point is
important, because we have to consider whether in Chapter VI Aristotle
really lays it down that tragedy, so far from being the story
of un-happiness that we think it, is properly an imitation of
_eudaimonia_--a word often translated 'happiness', but meaning something
more like 'high life' or 'blessedness'. (1)

(1) See Margoliouth, p. 121. By water, with most editors, emends the
text.

Another difficult word which constantly recurs in the _Poetics_ is
_prattein_ or _praxis_, generally translated 'to act' or 'action'. But
_prattein_, like our 'do', also has an intransitive meaning 'to fare'
either well or ill; and Professor Margoliouth has pointed out that it
seems more true to say that tragedy shows how men 'fare' than how they
'act'. It shows their experiences or fortunes rather than merely their
deeds. But one must not draw the line too bluntly. I should doubt
whether a classical Greek writer was ordinarily conscious of the
distinction between the two meanings. Certainly it is easier to regard
happiness as a way of faring than as a form of action. Yet Aristotle can
use the passive of _prattein_ for things 'done' or 'gone through' (e.g.
52a, 22, 29: 55a, 25).

The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern
attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. Greek was
very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of