Chapter 3

A third difference in these arts is the manner in which one may represent each of these objects.

For in representing the same objects by the same means it is possible to proceed either partly by narrative and partly by assuming a character other than your own—this is Homer’s method—or by remaining yourself without any such change, or else to represent the characters as carrying out the whole action themselves.

These, as we said above, are the three differences which form the several species of the art of representation, the means, the objects, and the manner.

It follows that in one respect Sophocles would be the same kind of artist as Homer, for both represent good men, and in another respect he would resemble Aristophanes, for they both represent men in action and doing things. And that according to some is the reason why they are called dramas, because they present people as doing things.

And for this reason the Dorians claim as their own both tragedy and comedy—comedy is claimed both by the Megarians here in Greece, who say that it originated in the days of their democracy, and by the Megarians in Sicily, for it was from there the poet Epicharmus came, who was much earlier than Chionides and Magnes; and tragedy some of the Peloponnesians claim. Their evidence is the two names.

Their name, they say, for suburb villages is κῶμαι —the Athenians call them Demes —and comedians are so called not from κωμάζειν, to revel, but because they were turned out of the towns and went strolling round the villages(κῶμαι). Their word for action, they add, is δρᾶν, whereas the Athenian word is πράττειν.

TSo much then for the differences, their number, and their nature.