he element of the irrational, and, similarly, depravity of character,
are justly censured when there is no inner necessity for introducing
them. Such is the irrational element in the introduction of Aegeus by
Euripides and the badness of Menelaus in the Orestes.

Thus, there are five sources from which critical objections are drawn.
Things are censured either as impossible, or irrational, or morally
hurtful, or contradictory, or contrary to artistic correctness. The
answers should be sought under the twelve heads above mentioned.

XXVI

The question may be raised whether the Epic or Tragic mode of imitation
is the higher. If the more refined art is the higher, and the more
refined in every case is that which appeals to the better sort of
audience, the art which imitates anything and everything is manifestly
most unrefined. The audience is supposed to be too dull to comprehend
unless something of their own is thrown in by the performers, who
therefore indulge in restless movements. Bad flute-players twist and
twirl, if they have to represent 'the quoit-throw,' or hustle the
coryphaeus when they perform the 'Scylla.' Tragedy, it is said, has
this same defect. We may compare the opinion that the older actors
entertained of their successors. Mynniscus used to call Callippides
'ape' on account of the extravagance of his action, and the same view
was held of Pindarus. Tragic art, then, as a whole, stands to Epic in
the same relation as the younger to the elder actors. So we are told
that Epic poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need
gesture; Tragedy, to an inferior public. Being then unrefined, it is
evidently the lower of the two.

Now, in the first place, this censure attaches not to the poetic but to
the histrionic art; for gesticulation may be equally overdone in
epic recitation, as by Sosi-stratus, or in lyrical competition, as by
Mnasitheus the Opuntian. Next, all action is not to be condemned any
more than all dancing--but only that of bad performers. Such was the
fault found in Callippides, as also in others of our own day, who are
censured for representing degraded women. Again, Tragedy like Epic
poetry produces its effect even without action; it reveals its power
by mere reading. If, then, in all other respects it is superior, this
fault, we say, is not inherent in it.

And superior it is, because it has all the epic elements--it may even
use the epic metre--with the music and spectac