t represent an action with a number
of parts going on simultaneously; one is limited to the part on the
stage and connected with the actors. Whereas in epic poetry the narrative
form makes it possible for one to describe a number of simultaneous
incidents; and these, if germane to the subject, increase the body of
the poem. This then is a gain to the Epic, tending to give it grandeur,
and also variety of interest and room for episodes of diverse kinds.
Uniformity of incident by the satiety it soon creates is apt to ruin
tragedies on the stage. (2) As for its metre, the heroic has been
assigned it from experience; were any one to attempt a narrative poem
in some one, or in several, of the other metres, the incongruity of
the thing would be apparent. The heroic; in fact is the gravest and
weightiest of metres--which is what makes it more tolerant than the rest
of strange words and metaphors, that also being a point in which
the narrative form of poetry goes beyond all others. The iambic
and trochaic, on the other hand, are metres of movement, the one
representing that of life and action, the other that of the dance. Still
more unnatural would it appear, it one were to write an epic in a medley
of metres, as Chaeremon did. Hence it is that no one has ever written
a long story in any but heroic verse; nature herself, as we have said,
teaches us to select the metre appropriate to such a story.

Homer, admirable as he is in every other respect, is especially so in
this, that he alone among epic poets is not unaware of the part to be
played by the poet himself in the poem. The poet should say very little
in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that. Whereas
the other poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and say but
little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer after a brief
preface brings in forthwith a man, a woman, or some other Character--no
one of them characterless, but each with distinctive characteristics.

The marvellous is certainly required in Tragedy. The Epic, however,
affords more opening for the improbable, the chief factor in the
marvellous, because in it the agents are not visibly before one. The
scene of the pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage--the
Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head to
stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked. The marvellous,
however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact that we all
t