were in trimeters or elegiacs or some other kind of verse--though it
is the way with people to tack on 'poet' to the name of a metre, and
talk of elegiac-poets and epic-poets, thinking that they call them
poets not by reason of the imitative nature of their work, but
indiscriminately by reason of the metre they write in. Even if a
theory of medicine or physical philosophy be put forth in a metrical
form, it is usual to describe the writer in this way; Homer and
Empedocles, however, have really nothing in common apart from their
metre; so that, if the one is to be called a poet, the other should be
termed a physicist rather than a poet. We should be in the same
position also, if the imitation in these instances were in all the
metres, like the _Centaur_ (a rhapsody in a medley of all metres) of
Chaeremon; and Chaeremon one has to recognize as a poet. So much,
then, as to these arts. There are, lastly, certain other arts, which
combine all the means enumerated, rhythm, melody, and verse, e.g.
Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, Tragedy and Comedy; with this
difference, however, that the three kinds of means are in some of them
all employed together, and in others brought in separately, one after
the other. These elements of difference in the above arts I term the
means of their imitation.




2


II. The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who
are necessarily either good men or bad--the diversities of human
character being nearly always derivative from this primary