ular effects as important
accessories; and these produce the most vivid of pleasures. Further,
it has vividness of impression in reading as well as in representation.
Moreover, the art attains its end within narrower limits; for the
concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one which is spread over a
long time and so diluted. What, for example, would be the effect of the
Oedipus of Sophocles, if it were cast into a form as long as the Iliad?
Once more, the Epic imitation has less unity; as is shown by this, that
any Epic poem will furnish subjects for several tragedies. Thus if
the story adopted by the poet has a strict unity, it must either be
concisely told and appear truncated; or, if it conform to the Epic canon
of length, it must seem weak and watery. <Such length implies some loss
of unity,> if, I mean, the poem is constructed out of several actions,
like the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have many such parts, each with a
certain magnitude of its own. Yet these poems are as perfect as possible
in structure; each is, in the highest degree attainable, an imitation of
a single action.

If, then, Tragedy is superior to Epic poetry in all these respects, and,
moreover, fulfils its specific function better as an art for each art
ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to
it, as already stated it plainly follows that Tragedy is the higher art,
as attaining its end more perfectly.

Thus much may suffice concerning Tragic and Epic poetry in general;
their several kinds and parts, with the number of each and their
differences; the causes that make a poem good or bad; the objections of
the critics and the answers to these objections.

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