act as a _katharsis_ of such 'passions' or 'sufferings' in real life.
(For the word _pathemata_ means 'sufferings' as well as 'passions'.)
It is worth remembering that in the year 361 B.C., during Aristotle's
lifetime, Greek tragedies were introduced into Rome, not on artistic
but on superstitious grounds, as a _katharmos_ against a pestilence
(Livy vii. 2). One cannot but suspect that in his account of the
purpose of tragedy Aristotle may be using an old traditional formula,
and consciously or unconsciously investing it with a new meaning, much
as he has done with the word _mythos_.

Apart from these historical causes of misunderstanding, a good teacher
who uses this book with a class will hardly fail to point out numerous
points on which two equally good Greek scholars may well differ in the
mere interpretation of the words. What, for instance, are the 'two
natural causes' in Chapter IV which have given birth to Poetry? Are
they, as our translator takes them, (1) that man is imitative, and (2)
that people delight in imitations? Or are they (1) that man is
imitative and people delight in imitations, and (2) the instinct for
rhythm, as Professor Butcher prefers? Is it a 'creature' a thousand
miles long, or a 'picture' a thousand miles long which raises some
trouble in Chapter VII? The word _zoon_ means equally 'picture' and
'animal'. Did the older poets make their characters speak like
'statesmen', _politikoi_, or merely like ordinary citizens, _politai_,
while the moderns made theirs like 'professors of rhetoric'? (Chapter
VI, p. 38; cf. Margoliouth's note and glossary).

It may seem as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated
detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the _Poetics_ to us as a
work of criticism. Certainly if any young writer took this book as a
manual of rules by which to 'commence poet', he would find himself