Chapter 24

The next point is that there must be the same varieties of epic as of tragedy: an epic must be simple or complex, or else turn on character or on calamity.

The constituent parts, too, are the same with the exception of song and spectacle. Epic needs reversals and discoveries and calamities, and the thought and diction too must be good.

All these were used by Homer for the first time, and used well. Of his poems he made the one, the Iliad, a simple story turning on calamity, and the Odyssey a complex story—it is full of discoveries —turning on character. Besides this they surpass all other poems in diction and thought.

Epic differs from tragedy in the length of the composition and in metre.

The limit of length already given will suffice—it must be possible to embrace the beginning and the end in one view, which would be the case if the compositions were shorter than the ancient epics but reached to the length of the tragedies presented at a single entertainment.

Epic has a special advantage which enables the length to be increased, because in tragedy it is not possible to represent several parts of the story as going on simultaneously, but only to show what is on the stage, that part of the story which the actors are performing; whereas, in the epic, because it is narrative, several parts can be portrayed as being enacted at the same time.

If these incidents are relevant, they increase the bulk of the poem, and this increase gives the epic a great advantage in richness as well as the variety due to the diverse incidents; for it is monotony which, soon satiating the audience, makes tragedies fail.

Experience has shown that the heroic hexameter is the right metre. Were anyone to write a narrative poem in any other metre or in several metres, the effect would be wrong.

The hexameter is the most sedate and stately of all metres and therefore admits of rare words and metaphors more than others, and narrative poetry is itself elaborate above all others.

The iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are lively, the latter suits dancing and the former suits real life.

Still more unsuitable is it to use several metres as Chaeremon did.

So no one has composed a long poem in any metre other than the heroic hexameter. As we said above, Nature shows that this is the right metre to choose.

Homer deserves praise for many things and especially for this, that alone of all poets he does not fail to understand what he ought to do himself.

The poet should speak as seldom as possible in his own character, since he is not representing the story in that sense. Now the other poets play a part themselves throughout the poem and only occasionally represent a few things dramatically, but Homer after a brief prelude at once brings in a man or a woman or some other character, never without character, but all having character of their own.

Now the marvellous should certainly be portrayed in tragedy, but epic affords greater scope for the inexplicable(which is the chief element in what is marvellous), because we do not actually see the persons of the story.

The incident of Hector’s pursuit would look ridiculous on the stage, the people standing still and not pursuing and Achilles waving them back, but in epic that is not noticed.

But that the marvellous causes pleasure is shown by the fact that people always tell a piece of news with additions by way of being agreeable.

Above all, Homer has taught the others the proper way of telling lies, that is, by using a fallacy. When B is true if A is true, or B happens if A happens, people think that if B is true A must be true or happen. But that is false. Consequently if A be untrue but there be something else, B, which is necessarily true or happens if A is true, the proper thing to do is to posit B, for, knowing B to be true, our mind falsely infers that A is true also. This is an example from the Washing.

What is convincing though impossible should always be preferred to what is possible and unconvincing.

Stories should not be made up of inexplicable details; so far as possible there should be nothing inexplicable, or, if there is, it should lie outside the story—as, for instance, Oedipus not knowing how Laius died—and not in the play; for example, in the Electra the news of the Pythian games, or in the Mysians the man who came from Tegea to Mysia without speaking.

To say that the plot would otherwise have been ruined is ridiculous. One should not in the first instance construct such a plot, and if a poet does write thus, and there seems to be a more reasonable way of treating the incident, then it is positively absurd.

Even in the Odyssey the inexplicable elements in the story of his landing would obviously have been intolerable, had they been written by an inferior poet. As it is, Homer conceals the absurdity by the charm of all his other merits.

The diction should be elaborated only in the idle parts which do not reveal character or thought. Too brilliant diction frustrates its own object by diverting attention from the portrayal of character and thought.